To date myself by quoting Will Smith, "I make this sh** look good."

Occasionally, I get dressed up. My day job allows me the latitude, in general, to throw on a pair of jeans and whatever wrinkled balled up thing I can find in the bottom of my closet without many people batting an eye. But as I’ve continued on my path to corporate domination through tightly written copy transmitted through Outlook Email Servers, I have occasionally been required to put on some dress pants.

Now don’t get me wrong. The stripes and argyle will go with me to the grave. But I trade in my jeans for some pinstripe, now and again. Like this past week.

And when I rode back from the airport, suitcase-laden Burley Trailer in tow, garbed in all the fittings of a proper businessman, I got some looks. But I’ll tell you, I felt like a million bucks. There I was, in all my corporate regalia, clearly adopting one despicable American cultural construct while at the same time flipping the bird to another other.

A few of you do this on a daily basis, especially back East, where corporate dress codes aren’t quite as relaxed as they are for us soft Californians. And you know what? You oughta be proud. I sure was.

Outliers are the harbingers of change. And speaking of outliers, I would be remiss if I did not pay my respects to Champ, who has been so artfully portrayed in this short film that’s been buzzing around the blogosphere of late. So from the suits of SOMA, I take you to the Scrapers of East Oakland.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Those of us who look at bicycling as more than a kid’s endeavor, and more than a sport for super athletes, want to tell everybody about it.

The Diana Bijou

About a year and a half ago, I was coming up on my mom’s birthday. I planned to see her the week before at a yearly family gathering in Yosemite, and I’d not yet figured out what to give her. My mom is a self-proclaimed “Book Woman,” a wild-haired, imaginative, intelligent, often spacey jewel of a person who I’m extremely fond of. She saw my passion for cycling grow and was proud of what I was doing. So when my partner found a classic white ladies bike on Craigslist branded “Diana,” the name of my mother, I knew I had found her gift.

I still remember pulling the bike out and showing it to her. “This is one of those gifts I will always remember,” she told me, and I believe she will.

I later convinced my dad to get a bike and now the two of them bring their bikes along when they hit the road with their tiny teardrop trailer, beach-hopping around in their semi-retirement years.

I put out a call on the ZPG facebook page for people to share their own stories. Quite a few great ones came in, like Joaquin of WeKeepGoing, whose 82 year old father still rides the bike Jo got him, and Matthew, who tweaked, polished, and fine tuned his dad’s old bike, putting in upwards of 100 miles of test riding until the bike just sung. I was reminded that we’re in the company of some pretty amazing people.

Whether you just use your bike to get to work or you’re a hardened road cyclist, you are making an impact with those around you. No matter how dubious they are of you when you walk into the workplace decked out in your winter regalia (seriously guys, put another sock over the top if you’re going to wear grocery bags on your feet), there is a nagging realization that you’re onto something–that being climate controlled, cruise controlled, and bluetooth ready isn’t really as rewarding as the millions in advertising would have us believe.

Bicycling like we do isn’t for everyone, and we’ll end up disappointed if we expect the whole world to join us. But there are a lot out there just waiting to be awakened to the efficiency, comfort, and sheer pleasure awaiting them on the other side of two pedals. Let’s keep modeling it for them, shall we? We’re making an impact.

Folding bike optional.

Jonny and I have long been fans of the like-minded folks over at the Tour d’Afrique, so we were pretty darn excited when we found out they were fans of ours, as well.

Turns out this very blog has been on their radar, and they wanted to know how much it would cost to tell people about their trips on our little blog. We’d never taken advertising before, but considering how complimentary we found these free-spirited individuals (and by that I mean the “Don’t mind me, I’ll just saw off these frost-bitten toes and we’ll get back on the road” free spirited, not the 1960s hippie kind), we thought “what the heck.”

Despite the rather Africa-centric sounding name, Tour d’Afrique does a lot more than just trapse around one continent. No, the continent of Africa just wasn’t enough for them. They’ve got routes all over the friggin’ planet, from Africa and South America to the one they’re currently taking sign-ups for: the Silk Route through the Middle East and Asia.

This monster 10500K (6525 mile) journey follows the open-toed sandals of the great conquerors of the past, including Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, and, I believe, Jason (of the Argonauts), who was pretty much just there for the skeleton chicks. But instead of doing it on foot, which would definitely take a bit longer than four months, the hard men and women at the Tour d’Afrique have planned for the brave souls signing up to do it in a mere 92 cycling days.

In all seriousness, this thing will test your mettle and your metal, expand your mind, introduce you to new friends from across the globe, and give you something to brag about to your grandkids.

While it’s damn hard to find a good taqueria in Turkmenistan, they take care of the meals and I’m guessing their chef has done the math on how many miles one can travel per Bilishi.

Head on over and check this trip out out. 2010 might just be the year you ride the trip of your dreams.

That’s me! That’s me! I’ve written an awesome interview with Evan P. Schneider, the awesome editor of the awesome “Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac.”

Buy a copy now and save it for your great grandkids! Send it to me for a real live autograph! Or just read it, cause it’s great.

Here’s another teaser (without the vowels removed):

…Is a symbol enough? No way. It’s just a symbol. I mean, I can’t eat the word CHEERIOS for breakfast. For god sakes, I’d much rather live in a world in which everybody rides bikes and nobody buys my stickers because they’re just so damned obvious. I’d love to see the day when, riding hands-free, some girl checks her email on her iPhone, clicks on a link her grandma emailed to her, ends up on ZeroPerGallon.com, and is like, “Geez, grandma, the symbolic gesture here is so L-A-M-E,” and then watches the latest Justin Timberlake Jr. video and is like, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” and then puts her hands back on the bars to take some wicked tight turns on a crazy descent.

But thanks for calling it powerful, ubiquitous, and semiotically-interesting. I appreciate that. To take a Kindergartener’s approach, “If you love it so much, why don’t you marry it?”

But really: the numbers do speak for themselves. That’s why my stickers keep selling. The loading of anger/contempt/etc. is only done by my words, on my website, and intended as sort of a comfort — a soft welcome mat, or a clean, dry bench in a heavy rain — for bicyclists who visit my website. “Aha,” I hope they’ll say. “This guy understands my situation. He feels like I do. He’s just like me. Except hairier, and taller, and better looking, and more awesome.” (Just kidding about that last part.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Say what you want about the performance art, or the music, or the temperature of your coffee this morning, but that’s Miranda July doing those poses, and that’s Blonde Redhead making that music, and the thing that brought it all together, or at least to my attention, was bikes. Serendipity doesn’t get any better than that. Huzzah! As Brendt likes to chant wherever he goes, BIKES ROCK!

So I spent the last 143 hours watching bike porn non-stop, and now I can barely feel my fingertips or blink my left eye. I saw a dozen short movies, including”Anima D’ Acciaio” (“Soul of steel”), a crisp profile of Framebuilder and mechanical poet Giovanni “Ciocc” Pelizzoli.

Anima D’Acciaio Trailer Ver5.1 from Cinecycle on Vimeo.

There was also “Made in Queens,” a short, funny window on some New York teenagers turning bikes into 300 lb music machines that topped out at maybe 2mph. But by far the best movie was called “Where are you go,” and it was directed by the illustrious Benny Zenga, who oversees the BFF in Toronto, and made the fantastic short movie “Ski Boys.”

Here’s the really cool part: Benny was in SF for the festival this year, and I couldn’t help noticing that he was riding one of my ZPG Anti Hero skateboards. I’m a fan of him, he’s a fan of me, and while the movies were showing, we made out in the back on a big squishy couch. It was friggin awesome.

Actually, that’s a lie. The couch was very firm. But anyway, “Where are you go,” features some spectacular moments. One subject of the film, a Dutch rider named Jos Kaal, summed up the time on his bike this way: “Sit, stand, drink, eat. You know, look around.” That, to him, was the essence of the 12,000 km Tour d’ Afrique, from Cairo to Cape Town. It was a 4-month endeavor, and another guy compared it to a time warp. There was talk of how such a ride makes you redefine your basic needs, and how, eventually, what was once really exotic can become routine. Another rider summed up the race this way: “It would be great to be home, but there’s a lot i enjoy: the company, the serenity, the riding.” Aint that the truth. My hat is off to you, Benny, for again making the finest movie of the festival.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Awesome (the cat)

-Summary
-Awesome’s story
-Childhood, and gender revelation
-Feline adolescence
-Supposed abandonment
-Blatant falsehoods

Summary

Awesome the cat is a rugged beast who roams the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC, particularly Kilbourne and 18th streets. He has exceptionally thick black fur, with white spots on his feet, chest, and stomach. His whiskers are unrivaled, his tail is elephantine, and his dreadlocks approach Bob Marley’s in quality. He has never lived indoors, or used a litter box, or been bathed. He eats with his fingers, and licks his chops. He reacts to catnip much in the way that Marion Barry reacted to crack. He’ll eat canned cat food, but he prefers barbecued meats. He regularly catches squirrels and birds. He sleeps where he feels like it. He doesn’t take crap from anybody. He is a manly, rugged cat, even if he doesn’t have balls anymore.

Awesome the cat is also, behind the furry veneer, an exceedingly friendly animal. He is a neighborhood socialite, snubbing nobody. He’ll follow you for blocks. His meow is one of greeting, not one of whining. He’s an extrovert, and likes shoving his tail up your shorts or attacking your foot. He’s not all goth and creepy and reclusive and Unabomber psycho like some cats. Awesome is awesome.

Awesome’s story:

Awesome was just a small, gender-neutral un-named furball when Jonny Waldman found him on December 29, 2005. This was at the Columbia Rd./Calvert St. gas station, where Jonny had stopped to fill up his tires. Awesome (then un-named) climbed out of a stack of tires, and inspected the inside Jonny’s Nissan like he owned it. It was a warm day. Jonny asked the gas station attendant about the lineage of the nascent beast, and was informed that the cat had been left there, abandoned. So Jonny adopted it, and brought it home. The next day, Jonny walked up to Petco, on Connecticut Ave., and paid $8 to have Awesome’s name etched into a small metal tag.

Childhood, and gender revelation

Less than two weeks later, big news reverberated around Mt. Pleasant. Here’s the original news announcement:

—

VET DISCOVERS BALLS; AWESOME IS A BOY!

Jan 12, 2006 — Washington, DC — Shock! Disbelief! Insanity! Two weeks after being adopted and brought back to life, Awesome, and his/her/its true identity, has at last been revealed by a medical expert — and it’s not what anybody thought.

According to an unnamed, undescribable veterinarian at the DC Humane Society, Awesome the cat has two awesome tiny cat-sized testicles hidden somewhere amid his thick black fur, making him a full-fledged member of the male club.

Soon after Awesome’s balls were discovered, they were surgically removed, though, prompting calls from Mr. Milton Ballsman, the president of Washington’s Male Club Local Union 43, to deny membership status to Awesome.

Mr. Ballsman, though, retracted his statement after Jonny5, Awesome’s awesome owner, threatened to remove Mr. Ballsman’s balls if anyone so much as thought of messing with Awesome.

Employees at the DC Humane Society, overhearing Jonny5’s awesome threat to protect Awesome and Awesome’s awesome status as a male, cried out in support of Jonny5.

“Word up!,” one said.

“That’s awesome for Awesome,” said another.

“Meow,” chimed in Awesome.

And then, while nobody was looking, the unnamed veterinarian hung TBTFBTA (The Balls That Formerly Belonged To Awesome) from the rear-view mirror of his 1996 Toyota Camry, and sped off towards the Maryland suburbs.

—-

Feline adolescence:

Over the next seven months, Awesome thrived under Jonny’s care at 3161 18th St. Awesome grew furrier, and dreadlockier, and learned to fetch sticks. He learned how to antagonize the two huge dogs next door, while avoiding their wrath. He learned how to peek into the kitchen, and how to climb up onto the roof. His popularity grew, even though he never joined Facebook or Myspace. He humped every female cat in the neighborhood, and never wore a condom, and never fathered any offspring. Awesome was a party animal, and was a key part of the Triumvirate of Awesomeness, the other two elements of which were a Keg of YuengLing and a barbecue grill fashioned out of a 55-gallon steel drum. As always, Awesome didn’t restrain his awesomeness.

Supposed “abandonment”:

In July of 2006, Jonny moved to San Francisco, and left Awesome under the care of his neighbors at 3159 Kilbourne St. Awesome would have liked San Francisco, and Jonny wishes he could have brought Awesome to the west coast, but Awesome would not have fared well during a month-long stop in Wyoming, a land of much larger, furrier, ruggeder, more carnivorous beasts. So it was with great sadness that Jonny said so long to Awesome. “Keep on being awesome, Awesome,” he said.

Blatant falsehoods about Awesome the cat:

Contrary to the opinions of some softer, wussier cat-owners:

*Awesome the cat would not “be happier indoors.”

*Awesome the cat would not be “happier without all those dreadlocks.”

*Awesome the cat does not “need to see a vet.”

*Awesome the cat has not “been abandoned.”

Additionally, a statement on one neighborhood forum attesting to Awesome the cat’s age (“this has been his home for almost a decade”) is untrue, unless 3.5 years equals “almost a decade.”

Furthermore, the statement “he was left behind by his irresponsible previous human” is both syntactically weird and unsubstantiated. First, “Previous human” suggests that Jonny was once, but is no longer, a human. This is not the case. Jonny hasn’t forsaken the species, and still has balls. And while “irresponsible” may be a suitable description for Jonny, it is unsubstantiated in this case, as Jonny carefully arranged for Awesome’s care after his departure. If anything, bringing Awesome to Wyoming to get devoured by a coyotoe/moose/bear would have been irresponsible. Last but not least, Jonny is not Awesome’s human anymore than Awesome is Jonny’s cat. Jonny believes that you east coasters gotta stop getting all possessive about relationships like that, loosen up a bit, maybe smoke a little bit of crack if that’s what it takes.

ZPG is biggering and biggering: more shops, more merch, more fun.

I’m most excited about new “53 miles per beer” stickers, and, at long last, “53 miles per burrito” patches.

Tell your friends Santa just woke up from hibernatation, went on a bender, shaved his head, got a skanky tattoo, and traded in his sleigh and those dumbass reindeer (parking was always a bitch, and you know how NOT fun it is to clean up reindeer poop in a plastic bag? You can’t use just a regular bag. You need a friggin industrial size garbage bag!) for a classy Italian bike. Yeah.

Some video-game designer made a video about a proposed law in Idaho that would allow bikers to treat stop signs like yield signs, which seems strange because it’s the hicks who shoot up the signs, not the bikers, but maybe things are different in Idaho.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It looked like one of those newfangled “interactive” things, so I tried plugging in my Wii, but couldn’t figure out how to make the little dude go faster. Then I pushed a bunch of other buttons, and almost got it working, and then, right when he got up to speed and morphed into a bright green commuter outfit, really flying along, a giant red NO symbol (even worse than a sternly-worded warning not to hold the wrong end of a chainsaw) appeared on the screen, along with a large dollar figure. I figured I’d broken it, and the price tag was pretty high, so I closed the window and went back to Tetris.

Anyway, it caught my attention, because I recently discussed (or ranted, as the case may be) issues like this, and so much more, with the editors of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac, which, for the record, is friggin’ wonderful. The first two issues were so good that I stayed up into the wee hours of the night gobbling them up. Take it from bike enthusiast who, on a recent bike ride, actually ran into three wild turkeys and maintained a brief but interesting gobble-laden conversation with them, and from a a literary elitist known for such profound statements as “Books is good,” and “Me like reading” — Boneshaker shakes my bones in the best possible way.

Here’s a hint of what I wrote. *Consonants have been removed for the author’s protection.

“ai e e oa ea ei an eae. I ea ei oeeae, a-aii, aie, a ioai — a eeeaie o e iyi oui. O a u i e ea e ee a oiia/oyi oe e ae ii o. O e a e ue eouio ei.”

Smart, huh?

In other goat related news, like 800 people alerted me to the goat on the front page of the NY times a few weeks ago, and the story that went with it: “Dr. Strangelove: How I learned to stop worrying and love the goat.

Stop worrying? NEVER! One redeeming feature of the story was the focus on dead goats — grilled, broiled, barbecued, or otherwise tortured — I mean cooked. Still, it made me shudder.

In other news, biking is hip these days. In Minneapolis and Denver, a wide range of “bike-people” — from white, affluent 25-year-olds to white, affluent 32-year-olds — are jizzing in their pants over two-dimensional representations of bicycles that they can hang up in their studios, thereby rendering bicycling less of an exclusive club activity.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I also got a bunch of other fan mail this week:

G., a serial lower-caser in Colorado Springs, sent me this note:

dear Jonny5,

I find your ZPG site to be seriously funny. by awesome coincidence, just last Saturday, as my wife and i were cruising the South Platte River trail north of Denver on our trusty Cannondale tandem, Janis (what can i say, she’s our blues-mobile), what did our eyes behold but a goat in a backyard next to the bike path. then today, i came across your site. i’m not usually one to believe in signs, but this is like a cosmic convergence is disconnected irrelevant information.

…watch out for the white vans…
-G.

I wrote back:

Hey G.,

Thanks for the encouragement, hombre. I, too, love living in the age of disconnected bits of irrelevant information, and am flattered to be considered the producer of some of it. Also, I dig the name Janis. I’ve been on that South Platte River trail, and never noticed the backyard goat, thank god. Rest assured, I’ll bring a weapon next time.

White vans? Am I missing something??

Cheers,
Jonny

Indeed, I was missing something. According to a brit named Ian Walker, drivers of white vans overtake cyclists an average of four inches closer than car drivers, while drivers of black cars give drivers the widest margins. Good to know. I’ll keep the eyes in the back of my head open.

Alert reader A. sent me a link to an SF chronicle “article” about flat biking routes in San Francisco featuring this atrocious wording: “if you just need to get to work without breaking a sweat or enjoy a weekend meander without performance-enhancing drugs, leave the mountains to the goats and cruise the flats.”

That’s what I expect out of a newspaper: practical, on-the-ground news-I-can-use, told in a tone that’s conversational, patronizing, and sounds like it’s coming from a vacuum-cleaner salesman, all at the same time. Ideally, it’d be in the present tense, so it sounds more ridiculous and faux-authoritative. Because that’s how my inner monologue sounds: “Why, look at that, today is Saturday. Methinks I fancy a weekend meander without performance-enhancing drugs.” The author, Michael Tanner, deploys an arsenal of big words like “topographically-neutral” and “no appreciable elevation gain” for the word “flat.” He also refers to “a short, walkable hump” — which made me think of the Mr. Tanner’s mom. For god sakes: if he’s getting paid to write this stuff, the newspaper industry is more royally F’d than I’d realized

Last but no more diminutive, W. tipped me off to a couple of scary goat-related developments:

Goat Finder, a “free nationwide listing of goats for sale” and Living Systems, here in San Francisco, where a woman named Charlotte will gladly rent you a goat. Prices aren’t listed, and apparently shipping is not available, and since there’s no FAQ section on the site, I can’t tell what would happen if, say, someone like me rented a goat for “grazing” and it somehow died as the result of a mysterious ritualistic sacrifice. Is Living Systems insured for stuff like that? Is a deposit required to rent a goat? Surely these questions have come up before

The weird part is that their “about us” page is so thorough and clear, much like my own “vision” page. You can read about the way they are “integrating community-based and ecologically informed models” to create “relevant and highly customized services for individuals, neighborhoods and municipal agencies” and how “long-term business relationships are valued and actively developed through multiyear contracting, direct marketing of long-term services, value-added long term services provided at discounted rates.”

It’s stuff like this, along with the use of “unnecessary quotes,” that makes the “new” “green” “movement” so awesome and accessible to the Hoi polloi. It is destined for greatness

from the NYTimes, 2/10/09