Help Me Help You: All You Haters Pull My Bootstraps

Hi! Welcome to my Kickstarter page. I am a sardonic cycling enthusiast and aspiring blogger who spends the bulk of the day in my underpants surrounded by soggy half-eaten bowls of heavily-sweetened breakfast cereal.

Also, I have a cat:

(The cat that I have.)

I am planning to create an Internet blog post about bikes. This blog post will have words, and pictures, and possibly video, and will feature state-of-the-art 1990s-era blogging features such as "hyperlinks." It will also allow readers to leave "comments" such as "LOL," "Cats rule!," and "You suck!" Just imagine not only being able to read about bikes on your web-enabled device, but also being able to tell the person who wrote what you're reading that he sucks. Holy shit, right?

This is where YOU come in. I estimate that it will take me anywhere from one-half to one hour to complete this project, as well as a budget of around $5 (I'm out of Froot Loops), and I'm simply not prepared to launch a project of this scope purely on speculation. After all, this is America (the crappy prize hidden inside your box of Canada Flakes), and Americans shouldn't have to make any sort of effort unless our success is assured beforehand.

So I'm going to need 50 grand.

Also, I lied about the cat. I actually don't have a cat, but I thought if I said I had one you'd like me more.

(I don't really have this cat.)

I'm sort of starting to like the idea of having a cat though, so after I get this blog post off the ground I'm going to launch a new Kickstarter page to help me get one. Your life would obviously be greatly improved by my having a domesticated feline, and I figure I can get a comprehensive cat ownership plan up and running for not more than 75 grand.

Thanks for your support,

--Wildcat Rock Machine

Sure, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Why, the nerve of this guy!" Trust me, I can relate. I mean, why would you give some guy $50,000 to create a blog post when you could give some other guy $50,000 to make a glove that flashes turn signals?

He may not have a cat, but he does have the technological know-how to transform your wildest turn-signaling dreams into reality:


He can also control your thoughts, and once we've all been duped into wearing his insidious device he will use it to turn humankind into an army of drones and order us to lay waste to the Earth:

If you don't believe me, watch the video again. At exactly 1:51, the following subliminal image appears:

Thus satisfying my personal criteria for supervillainy:

By the way, Gerard Vroomen of Cervelo also scores two out of three:

The second I see a lizard pop up in a Cervelo commercial I'm summoning his arch-nemesis, the Clean Bottle doofus, who will imprison Vroomen in his redundantly-capped Bidon of Justice:

(Jens Voigt realizing he actually has the second-worst job in cycling.)

I wonder if the Clean Bottle will also get his own Tour blog on Bicycling.com next year.

Speaking of heroes and villains, one of America's biggest bike dork heroes is Congressman Earl Blumenauer--who, a number of readers inform me, made quite a stir in the UK when he wore a bike pin on the BBC:

When asked about it, Blumenauer declared himself "aggressively 'bike partisan:'"

Even Jeremy Paxman couldn't resist, ending the interview with the query: "Can I just ask you, Mr Blumenauer, what is that extraordinary green bicycle on your lapel?"

"Well, I am aggressively 'bike partisan'," replied Blumenauer, "and this is the congressional bike caucus membership pin."

Sadly, this admission will probably spell the end of his political career in the United States, where the average person thinks a "bike partisan" is someone who's romantically attracted to both males and females.

Of course, when it comes to romance, there's no better way to woo your partner than with a bottle of wine you've "portaged" by means of a leather holder mounted on your top tube. I've briefly mentioned this product before, but I had not seen the promotional video, which was forwarded to me by a reader:

Besides the fact that he could have just saved himself a bunch of time by throwing the bottle into his bag, I also noticed the gratuitous insertion of this leather popular smart phone holder:

Clearly when it comes to superfluous leather this guy is nothing less than a genius, and I wonder what it must be like to be unable to look at anything without envisioning a leather holder for it. Is it a blessing or a curse? He's like the John Nash of tchotchkes.

But while humankind has been making stuff out of leather for millennia, it's only recently that we've unleashed the seemingly limitless potential of carbon--or, if you prefer, "crabon." Already though a new miracle material is on the horizon, and it is called "cabon:"

(Via Chris from Electra Bikes)

Presumably, engineers at 3T have figured out how to remove the "r" from carbon/crabon for weight savings while retaining the material's lateral stiffness, vertical compliance, and superior wallet-emptying capability.

Of course, even the finest cabon steed is useless if you don't have a flashy wardrobe to match, and what better way to garner covetous looks from your fellow Freds than with a genuine disembodied hand jersey?

(Via Wheel and Sprocket)

Complete with Renaissance-era male genitalway:


If glove indicator light guy could figure out how to incorporate a directional signal into that jersey somehow I think he'd really be onto something.