Apoca-Watch Update: Archival Horsemen Footage Uncovered

In reading the comments on Friday's post, I was dismayed to find that a number of readers took the long weekend as an opportunity to engage in acrimonious discourse once again. However, as cycling teeters on the precipice of doom like a pro cyclist's haematocrit hovers around 50%, this kind of discord is hardly surprising. In the absence of some kind of cycling messiah, and in the face of increasingly disturbing signs, it's tragically inevitable that we should turn against one-another. Just consider the latest horrors with which we've been confronted:

The Return of Cipo

I can't have been the only person who found this sight from last Sunday horrifying. Cipollini's career was laid to rest years ago, and when Michael Ball exhumed it all he should have been able to retrieve from the grave were Mario's bridgework and a pair of silicone calf implants. Instead, Cipollini (or an entity looking remarkably like him) rolled off the start ramp and charged down the Tour of California prologue course, his protruding uni-tooth calling to mind a boxer's mouth guard or a humpback whale's baleen filtering plankton from the sea. Ominous also was the ectoplasmic lime green skinsuit. As the rim color of choice for fixed-gear freestylers everywhere, lime green is surely the hue of the damned.

Ghost Bikes Coming to Life

When I first saw this bicycle on fixedgeargallery, I puzzled over the motivation behind it. I thought perhaps the owner hoped people would see it locked up outside the bar and ask, "Hey, who died?" But then I noticed the absence of a chain, and I realized that it's in fact some kind of hateful specter. I'm sure as we come closer to the end we'll see ghost bikes all over the world unfetter themselves from street signs and roam the earth.

If they're not all stolen first, that is. (Thanks Jessica for the link.)


Apocalyptic Horsemen Working On Their Choreography

But compared to what I'm about to show you, the aforementioned signs are less threatening than Levi Leipheimer on a French mountain pass. In the spirit of eternal vigilance, I found myself watching Bike TV this past weekend. If you're unfamiliar with Bike TV, think of it this way: if Versus is the Trek Madone of cycling television, Bike TV is the early 90s Univega hybrid with the cracked and yellowed pie plate and the "One Less Car" stickers all over it.

Sandwiched between one segment about the NYC Century Bike Tour (which is apparently the world's largest gathering of heavyset bearded men) and another about bike lanes and traffic calming devices in Berkeley (in which the host repeats the phrase "speed humps" with alarming frequency) was this shocking video.

I knew right away when I saw this that I was watching an ungodly dance troupe of doom. I have no doubt that when the Apocalypse comes these bell-ringing hybrid-riding harbingers will be the first thing we see. Most alarming of all though is that this video is from 2005. That means they've had like three years to perfect these moves. Surely when they arrive we'll be powerless against them.