I like Velveeta, and beer

While the debate on to wear or not to wear helmets rages on over at Copenhagenize, a separate and more sinister war of whether or not you should be bringing your cell phone along on rides is being waged over at RoadBikeRider.com. Among other things, the propopents say it's a good thing to have if a friend has a heart attack or you get hit by a car or meet some cute biker chick out on the trail (ok, I added that one), Ed Pavelka and his minions say that bringing your cell phone along on a ride gives you an out and you will be calling home to have someone come pick you up when you are tired of riding.

The lemming thinks that whole discussion is silly, but at least they've finally gotten off the whole caffeine discussion. Trying to dictate whether someone should or should not take their cell phone along on a ride is like trying to argue with a preschooler that cheddar would taste better than Velveeta on their grilled cheese. It's pointless, and who really cares? Seriously, who really cares? Perhaps the scarier part of the whole discussion is someone bailing on a ride simply because they can, that is an ideology that I have a hard time grasping, but maybe it's just me.



Ed is probably just lucky that the readers shot down the Twitter idea, feigning no interest, otherwise he'd have to have his phone along on rides to tweet and do twitpics.

Aside from that, RoadBikeRider had a link to a good video that proves that even in a road race you have to watch what is coming from behind.



And last but not least, Andrew Neubauer emailed me the other day and we've been having a little dialogue back and forth. The details are right here:

"I am really, really sorry about that opinion article and I feel that I owe you (along with the other folks I've heard from) an apology. I meant the column as a poorly written, highly contradictory and poorly researched joke. You have to realize, bicyclists are revered in Lawrence and I thought I was taking a jibe at what is a well-respected group in a largely suburban town. Any allusions to violence being visited upon cyclists was meant to be comically over dramatic or absurdly draconian and not taken seriously at all. The opening story is true, although my bike-centered phobia may have been blown a tad out proportion (I'm really only afraid of bikes when I hear them but cannot see them, as ludicrous as it sounds). I had absolutely no intention of making any sort of rallying cry to anyone who would actively choose to abuse cyclists for any reason. As sadly pandering as this sounds, I do myself own a bicycle and enjoy riding. Unfortunately, my roommate blew out the front tire recently and still hasn't given me the money to replace it, and even more unfortunately I seem to have deviated wildly from my original point. It is clearly my fault for doubting the power of the internet to broadcast my article to portions of the country where my extremely dumb sense of humor could be understandably misinterpreted as remotely serious.

Bicycle riders seem like great, easygoing people and there is no way I would want harm or incarceration visited on any of you. Also, there is no way in hell that I would want to be anything like Zach Colman or anyone else who would be irritatingly brazen enough to declare themselves an "opinionated prick" as if it were something to be proud of. "

Looking back at his piece, he actually had some good points about bikes riding on the sidewalk unannounced and wasn't trying to say the same thing as Zach Colman, although admittedly he made poor choices with the article and has owned up to it. Where he went wrong was joking about rights to the road. He realizes now that it is a very sensitive subject with cyclists, regardless of intent, and probably wasn't the best choice for an article. That even joking about it doesn't help the uphill battle cyclists face on the road every day if even just one person takes his thoughts seriously. After Andrew apologized, he also let me know that my blog of Franziskaner Hefeweizen was a good choice, and said I should try Bitburger.

I've never revealed this, but I suffer from a debilitating disease called homer simpson syndrome, my small brain is lined with an extra layer of fluid which allows me to be hit in the head over and over with seemingly no ill side effects. What this also means is that I have a preponderance of inclination to fall in to discussions of beer. Maybe I've been hit in the head too many times, or maybe I'm just a softie when it comes to beer, but I've decided to cut Andrew some slack. After several emails back and forth with him I genuinely believe he didn't have ill intentions and just made some unfortunate choices, something I can't say the same of Zach Colman.