Smugliest Catch: Decking the Hauls

Everybody wants to be happy (except for goths and roadies, of course). However, in today's fast-paced, fatuous, and often malodorous world, finding contentment can be difficult. To that end, all sorts of people will come forward claiming to hold the secret to happiness. Various religions insist you'll be happy if you pray to their gods and follow their arbitrary rules concerning diet and masturbation. Minimalists claim you'll be happy if you get rid of all your stuff and buy every single product designed and sold by Apple Inc. And Dr. Drew from "Celebrity Rehab" says you'll be happy if only you'd put down that crack pipe and stop driving your car through crowded shopping malls.

I prefer to take a simpler approach, since none of the above philosophies changes the fact that, like it or not, we've all got to get crap done. Not only does getting crap done comprise most of our day, but it's largely the stress and irritation that goes along with getting crap done that makes us so unhappy. Therefore, it would stand to reason that, if you can render getting crap done into fun, you can turn drudgery into delight. It's sort of the alchemy of the mundane.

Like many people, I find a good way to do this is to run errands by bike, and as a non-minimalist I often have stuff that needs to go from one place to another. Furthermore, as it happens, yesterday I also had a bunch of packages waiting for me at my off-site mailing box, and on top of that we had had another snowstorm. Certainly one approach to moving lots of stuff on a snowy day would be to dig out your car, lose your parking space, sit in a bunch of traffic, hunt for another parking space when you get home, and so forth. Another one would be to wrestle your payload onto and off of the subway somehow, or else pay some fragrant lunatic in a dilapidated Town Car an absurd amount of money to chauffeur you for a couple of hours. Or, you could load up your smugness flotilla and revel in unabashed bike dorkitude.

I had been off frightening cows during our last snowstorm, which left the city in chaos. Streets, were unplowed, neighbor turned upon neighbor, dogs devoured housecats, and tent cities formed in the regional airports that remain to this day and have their own ZIP codes. Therefore, I didn't know what to expect this time around. Fortunately though, everything was fine, and even the bike lanes were kindasorta plowed:

This alleviated one of my concerns, but the other concern I had was this whole "New York City bike scofflaw crackdown" thing. People have been talking about this for months, and every time I get on my bike now I expect to be arrested for some arcane offense like not having "lawyer lips" on my fork, or using a bar/stem combo from two different manufacturers. Of course, we do have a modicum of control over whether or not we get pulled over, and one good way to keep this from happening is to stop at red lights, which I've been doing fairly diligently:

Traditionally, New York City cyclists don't stop at red lights, so for some people the idea of doing so is nearly unthinkable--like a celebrity putting down the crack pipe and no longer driving through shopping malls. I, however, have made my peace with it, mostly by using the same "alchemy of the mundane" technique. Instead of waiting impatiently, I try to enjoy my red light-induced respite. In the warmer months, there's of course the people watching for which New York City is famous, as well as the inadvertent displays of idiocy put on by other cyclists. However, on snowy, blustery days, these displays are at best far less "flambullient," and at worst nonexistent, and so I turn to one of my favorite winter hobbies, which is "carcake spotting." This involves admiring the snow formations on top of people's cars, an in fact I'm proud to say I recently discovered that the term "carcake" is now in the Urban Dictionary, complete with proper attribution:

I know it's a pathetic hobby, but really, it's all I have, and it beats getting a ticket.

Anyway, yesterday's weather conditions did make for some fairly decent carcake spotting. For example, I always enjoy a nice hastily-cleared "wild and woolly" economy car, and I was pleased to spot a nice example:


I also saw a very clean Brazilian wax-style "landing strip:"

Very subtle, but definitely there:

Also, carcakes don't need to be limited to a vehicle's roof. There's also the bald-head-with-goatee carcake, like this one:

Think Anthrax's Scott Ian, only without the bushy eyebrows:

As practical, everyday urban transporation, there's not much to recommend the SUV, but the fact that their owners can't reach all the way across the roof makes for a carcake spotter's delight, since it invariably results in the "Euro-hawk:"


As worn by the "Little Prince Who's Not So Little Anymore Now That He's Pushing 30," Damiano Cunego:

("Really, I need a new nickname, 'Little Prince' is just creepy now.")

But really, nothing beats the good old "pan of brownies," ready to fly off in a single piece as soon as the vehicle hits the expressway:

Watching a carcake lift itself off a roof and soar brilliantly through the air before breaking apart on either the highway surface or else, more commonly, the windshield of the vehicle behind it is one of the most spectacular moments a carcake watcher can hope to experience--though since it's mostly limited to highways you've generally got to be in a car yourself.

Of course, the carcake spotting was incidental, and the far more enjoyable part was the actual ride. Once I got to where I was going, I strapped a bunch of stuff to my bike, and it looked like this:

Not only does a long wheelbase help keep your child's face out of your ass, but it also makes for very stable handling in messy weather, and if anything the bike handled even better in the snow with all that crap on it since the weight helped the wheel dig in more deeply. (It's sort of hard to place your body weight over your rear wheel when it's all the way back there in a different county.)

Sure, as cyclists we'd all love to embark upon evocative Rapha-esque "epics" at a moment's notice, ascending monumental climbs with exquisitely hand-crafted artisanal race bikes rocking back and forth between our legs like pendulous testis as our faces broadcast expressions of pain and sensual insouciance, but the simple fact is most of us need to get crap done, and hauling boxes through the snow on a Taiwanese smugness toboggan is good enough for me. As the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, throw those lemons at strangers from behind parked cars and laugh at their confusion.

Best of all, I was not apprehended and beaten by police on trumped-up charges such as failing to signal before making a crotchal adjustment--and not only that, but the controversial Prospect Park West bike lane was also completely clear:

I'm sort of surprised the angry locals didn't fill it with nonplussed snowmen protesters holding teddy bears.

By the way, if you're wondering what was in those boxes, that's my business (my business being illegal drugs, off-brand AA batteries, and black market baby carrots that I sell from a cart on the subway), but I will say that one of the packages contained this:

As I opened it, my excitement mounted. Was it a saddle? Was it a bag? Was it Etc.? Well, it turns out it was just a tiny wrench, though it did come with a "bonus saddle:"

That bonus saddle being nothing less than the handiwork of Eric "The Chamferer" Murray:

I've never owned a Brooks saddle before, so I am eagerly looking forward to finding out if they do in fact conform to my contours as eagerly as a hipster conforms to the latest trends, or if it will merely be like riding with a rawhide doggie treat stuffed down my pants. I'm also wondering what I've done to deserve Brooks's munificence, though I also make a practice of never looking a gift horse in the mouth (especially if that gift horse is about to be slaughtered and turned over to Eric "The Chamferer" Murray). I will say though that the saddle is quite hard to the touch--so much so that the owner of that disembodied hand is crying unconsolably even now. But it does promise on the card that this particular saddle is "aged" and that it will give me "comfort from day 1," so I will withhold any judgement until I've actually mounted and ridden the thing.

One thing's for sure, though--if I'm going to "rock" a saddle like this I'm going to have to "upgrade" my cockpit to match, and I may go with a setup like this one, spotted by a reader in London:

The rider must be a bartender, so going from this bike to the beer taps is an easy transition.