OK, that’s enough time. The Weekly had to edit my original piece down for space, and there are a couple of points that unfortunately didn’t make the final cut.

One misconception the Daily News has actively promoted is that “brakeless bikes” can’t stop (and how loaded is THAT term, when the proper nomenclature is “fixed gear bikes”). It’s simply not a true statement. Like any other skill, braking a fixed gear bike requires practice, the same way conventional bikers like me learn very quickly not to hit the front brakes as hard as the rear:

Decreasing the speed of your pedaling is the easiest ways to slow down a fixie. Since the rotation of the rear wheel and the movement of the pedals are directly connected, slowing down your strokes will put a damper on forward motion. In non-emergency situations this should bring you to a smooth, natural stop — time/distance permitting of course.

[The skid stop] process is started by leaning forward on the bike and relieving the weight on the rear wheel. If you have the balance to lift the rear wheel ever-so-slightly off the ground, even better.

Once the traction of the rear wheel has been taken out of the equation, use your feet to lock the pedals in a horizontal position. Push down on the pedal coming up, and pull up on the pedal going down (this is why being attached to the pedals is important) This should slow the suspended rear wheel to a stop. Shifting weight back onto the rear wheel should cause the rear tire to skid, causing the bike to slow to a stop.

But hey, why let facts ruin a perfectly good scapegoating?

I’d also like to address some comments by Breen Goodwin, education director of the Bicycle Coalition of the Delaware Valley, who’s cited in Ronnie Polaneczky’s article as identifying “stopping at red lights – and not moving again until the light has actually turned green” as a priority. It’s not the stopping I object to, but the not moving again. You can’t deny the truth in "SayHello2MyLittleFriend"'s comments in response to Bykofsky's column:

I don't know about you guys but I would not want to be behind a bicyclist who is following the rules of the road to the letter. You want to be stuck behind someone who can only go up to 15-20 miles per hour? I think not. You want bicyclists to stop at all red lights? What are you going to do when you have 5 or 10 of them at the light and there is no room for you to go around them when the light turns green?

"SayHello2MyLittleFriend" is absolutely right. I say that as a bicyclist AND a driver. What the city SHOULD do is recognize and implement the "Idaho stop" for bicycle riders:

A person operating a bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a steady red traffic control light shall stop before entering the intersection and shall yield to all other traffic. Once the person has yielded, he may proceed through the steady red light with caution. Provided however, that a person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if required, may cautiously make a right-hand turn. A left-hand turn onto a one-way highway may be made on a red light after stopping and yielding to other traffic.

Finally, over at the Weekly, a commentor wondered if I was "putting out a sinister "omg secret alliance with the city!" conspiracy theory motive" to generate page views. Man, I WISH I was clever like that, but no.

I don't see a conspiracy, but when three out of four opinion pieces parrot the official line, that two tragic acts by assholes constitute a need for a brand new bureacracy and a police crackdown, while exponentially more abuses by motorists go unremarked, I gotta ask where's the journalistic skepticism? And I especially have to ask that when both newspapers, with the exception of Stu Bykofsky (go figure) took the side of management in the recent SEPTA strike and in such an unproductive way. By and large, the Inky and the DN refused to address with the union's arguments and instead chose to publish self-serving whines about who makes more money and whether they deserve it or not. So while I don't see a conspiracy, I do see quite a bit of that tendency that Steven Colbert identified a few years back, writ small: "The president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home."
So no, I don't see a conspiracy. I see a failure of imagination coupled with perhaps outdated sensibilities, and amplified by deference to the powerful.

But then again, no one reads the DN or the Inky to read challenges to the conventional wisdom, do they?

RE: your bicycle column of 11/23:

Obviously, the more bikes on the streets, the more important it is for bikers to respect the rules and not ride recklessly. At the same time, the bike has to be recognized for the flexible, human-scale thing that it is – it’s not a car, and the world will survive if bikers hop up on the sidewalk from time to time, as long as they don’t forget that everyone’s safety counts. If everybody takes a nice deep breath it’s not hard to see how we can all share the roads.

That said, I want to take a moment to contest what’s evidently one of your basic beliefs: “[Bikes] will never be a serious mode of transportation in and around Philly.”

I say, tell that to every business in Center City that has a bike chained up out front and a paying customer inside.

Here’s a serious suggestion: go down to the Locust Walk apartments just by Schuylkill River Park (201 S. 25th St.). You’ll see, from the sidewalk, a view of the first-floor garage space where tenants store their bikes. Dozens of bicycles hang from the racks. Every day, some of those tenants ride some of those bikes to Center City’s shops, bars, restaurants, cafes, stores. They cannot do the same thing with their cars, because parking is expensive and inconvenient. But they can do it with their bikes – and they do.

As a friend said, “Bikers shop local.” For a person at 25th and Locust, a bicycle makes it fast and easy to get to hundreds of businesses and attractions. The car stays in the garage, and the money – no matter where it’s made – gets spread around the neighborhood.

That’s why even though bikes will never be the dominant transport option, they should be understood as a critical and unique piece of the whole urban puzzle. There are always people who want to live in the city and don’t want or can’t afford a car (like all those young professionals we’re trying to lure into places like Locust Walk!). There are also people who (like me) are happy to use their car for long trips, but love using bikes to bop around the neighborhood and take care of business.

I know it’s easy to get riled up about the grungy kids out on their hipster bikes scaring old ladies. But they’re the exception, not the rule – most bikers are just trying to get around and not get run down. So when you see a bike, imagine that it’s towing around a small wheelbarrow full of cash which will all end up in the hands of the bikers’ neighborhood businesses. That’s not a fantasy, that’s a fact.

And on that subject, I think it would be very interesting for you to talk to some of the business owners on Pine and Spruce, to find out what the impact of the new bike traffic lanes is on their biz. See if they’re getting more walk-ins. See if they like the change. See how many bikes are locked up on those streets, and ask yourself what those riders are doing when they’re not actually ON the bike. Then decide for yourself whether the bike is a “serious” form of transportation.

They’re good for neighborhoods, they’re good for business, and yeah, they’re great fun too!

- – Bill Hangley, West Philadelphia

PS If you’re interested in taking a ride to see what Philadelphia, its traffic and its amenities look like from atop two unmotorized wheels, I’d be glad to take you around. A bike can really show you the best of this town – but dealing with the traffic can be like shooting Class V rapids.

Oh dear. Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky is having a temper tantrum about bicycles. Let’s take a look and see if we can count the inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and mistakes in his latest “when-I-was-a-boy-we-ate-wool-and-we-liked-it” freakout.

JUMP ON MY handlebars. Let’s go for a ride.

Almost guaranteed to be a fiction: in all probability, Stu didn’t ride a bike anywhere.

In September, the city surrendered one of two traffic lanes on Spruce and Pine streets in Center City to cyclists.

What kind of a perverted quota system gives 50 percent of any city street – designed for cars – to bikes, which account for 1.2 percent of Philadelphia commuters?

Philadelphia gives all of TWO streets -out of a network of THOUSANDS- this kind of access for bikes. TWO. Stu’s freakout is based on a presumption that cars take precedence over bikes.

Kenney would dramatically hike fines for illegal biking. DiCicco wants bikes to be registered, like cars.

At a time when the city is BROKE, why does Stu want Council to adopt a policy that has been determined to be unworkable, and which has been repealed everywhere it’s been tried? Why is he trying to cost the city money?

Cyclists showed up at City Council howling like scalded dogs. They want nothing changed – except they want more and more of the roadway. What’s needed, they said, is “enforcement.” (Should we actually get enforcement, I predict they will be crying about being “singled out.”)

Lie. We don’t want more and more of the roadway, we want our bike lanes and our access. We don’t want to risk death to bike to work.

Let’s license adult bikers as we do motorists, to assure that they are competent and know the law.

No details about how this is to be accomplished, of course. That’s because it can’t be. You’re talking an enormous new bureaucracy in a state that is fairly hostile to big government. And over at Philly Bike Insurrection’s Facebook page, Su Shulman makes an even better point:

[Y]our definition of parity seems less about equal treatment and responsibilities than about subjecting bikers to laws that were designed to limit the damage that cars bring to a city. Registration, insurance, traffic laws and parking fees were created because cars are dangerous and consume valuable space. Everyone can surely agree, without being accused of having a morally superior attitude, that bikes are significantly less so.

Stu keeps ranting:

Let’s put more on the table. If you want parity with cars, how can you not agree to be insured? Last month two people were killed by cyclists. That was rare, but if we get more cyclists, as seems to be the city’s wet dream, we’ll get more injury and death.

A) Bicyclists don’t need insurance because bicyclists don’t typically kill people. Stu cites two deaths: what he leaves out is the comparison to deaths at the hands of drunk and reckless drivers. This is deliberate, because Stu knows that bikes are way safer than cars when it comes to pedestrians, and he knows that if he showed how many people are run down every day in Philadelphia, he’d look like the disingenuous idiot he is.

B) Many people who bike to work do so not out of preference, but because they can’t afford a car: just ask the immigrants who work in the city’s kitchens. So what Stu is proposing is, in effect, a regressive fee that will affect the poor more than it does anyone else.

C) Stu proves the lie to his claim that he’s “for cars sharing the road with bikes”, with snide remarks like “the city’s wet dream”. if anyone wants “nothing changed”, it’s Bykofsky, who can’t imagine a Philadelphia with fewer cars and more bikes. But as someone who spent a lot of time in Amsterdam and in Montreal, I can tell you that it’s possible, and makes for a much healthier population. Amsterdam is set up specifically to encourage biking and walking, with separate traffic signals and lanes for the cars, the trams, the bikes, and the pedestrians. Pity Stu is so small-minded… but then, you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks.

No more parking anywhere you want for free. Like cars, you will park only in designated areas. You will feed a meter or pay for space on a rack, in a lot or garage.

Here, Stu erupts in a petulant and jealous rage. Earth to Stu: the reason we meter cars and make them park in garages is because they take up A LOT of space. Bikes do not. Don’t like feeding the meter? Buy a fucking bike you lazy old man.

Again, I’ll cite Sue Shulman’s comments from facebook:

[B]ikers would gladly pay for parking, if the city made any effort to provide some (instead of making us lock to car-related infrastructure such as meters and parking signs.) We would happily pay for the square footage our bikes take up for a price proportionate to that devoted to a car space.

Furthermore, I want to know how Stu expects to enforce all this? There’s no way it can be done: first you’d have to implement a city-wide licensing system for bikes (at a time when the city can barely keep the libraries open and is losing events like the Dad Vail regatta). hen you’d have to make people participate, which would take countless police man-hours, in a city that just dealt with another average weekend:

On Friday alone, a man killed his mother with his bare hands, two home invasions resulted in slayings and a feud between two barbers ended with fatal gunfire, according to police.

In separate incidents on Saturday, two babies, neither of whom was a full year into life, were taken to area hospitals with serious and suspicious injuries. One of the children did not survive, police said.

And that doesn’t even take into account riders who take the train into 30th Street Station and Market east before continuing to work on their bikes: unless Stu’s proposing a statewide registration system, the licensing would only apply to Philadelphia residents, constituting two tiers of enforcement.

In short, it’s not gonna happen. It’s the printed fever-dreams of an angry old man who writes like he’s got a bad case of constipation. And, as if to put the lie to all his concerns about safety, Bykofsky lets the cat out of the bag. Here’s what it’s all about:

(Special note to Mayor Greenjeans: Added revenue!)

Stu knows what this is all about: generating much-needed revenue for a city that can’t meet its obligations, and flailing around anywhere to get it. He just doesn’t want to say so, because that would make for a much shorter column, and the guy’s got a word count to worry about.

Did I mention that your bike must have a horn or bell, brakes, a rear-view mirror, front and rear lights, all of which will be tested annually in a city-licensed bike shop? You will wear a helmet and reflective tape for safety.

Don’t forget the streamers on the end of the handlebars, Stu. Or a deck of cards on the spokes for that neat-o keen motorcycle sound.

The next paragraph I’d like to have sympathy with:

As already is required by law, you will stop at red lights and stop signs, signal for turns, ride on the right and in the same direction as traffic and stay off the damn sidewalks.

…because YES, riders should use turn signals, ride on the right, and go with the flow of traffic.

But it’s equally clear that Bykofsky doesn’t understand the concept of the rolling stop, its wide use among bicyclists, and how requiring bikers to obey the exact same laws as cars is a bad idea. One of his commentors gets it though:

I don’t know about you guys but I would not want to be behind a bicyclist who is following the rules of the road to the letter. You want to be stuck behind someone who can only go up to 15-20 miles per hour? I think not. You want bicyclists to stop at all red lights? What are you going to do when you have 5 or 10 of them at the light and there is no room for you to go around them when the light turns green? Be careful what you ask for.

Stu just doesn’t get that in Philadelphia’s 400-year old streets, where two lanes are crammed into space meant for one lane, cars can’t even get up to the 25 MPH speed limit, creating a maze that bicycle riders have to navigate. Couple that with all the drivers who use the bike lanes as a place to double-park or a passing lane, and throw in the people who slam open their car doors without looking for oncoming traffic and the city’s potholes, which have been known to break car axles, and you’ve got a situation where bicyclists get forced onto the sidewalks, fleeing injury or death.

Stu continues that because the police don’t have the time to enforce the laws, “If we want enforcement, give it to the Philadelphia Parking Authority. We’ll get enforcement out the wazoo.”

To which I respond, “How?” If bicyclists don’t have licenses or license plates, and there’s no city ordinance requiring the general public from carrying identification, how’s the PPA going to enforce this? It’s a joke!

Can we be real? Bicycling is good recreation, good for the environment and for the waistline, but it will never be a serious mode of transportation in and around Philly. Bikes will always be bit players.

And here we have the old standby, “failure of imagination”. In other news, man will never walk on the moon, people will never be able to fly between continents, ordinary families will never be able to afford computers (much less find space for the damn things), the steam engine was a bad idea, and a band made up of session musicians like Jimmy Page would go over like a lead balloon.

The fact is that if bicycle travel was subsidized and supported the way automobile travel is, bikes could easily dominate inner-city travel. Once you take into account traffic jams, the limited maneuverability of cars, the stop-signs and stop-lights, and the pedestrians, a bike is WAY faster than a car in the city.

Stu may think that “bikes will always be bit players”, but that’s not the truth (warning, pdf) as a few minutes of research demonstrate:

Bicycling has increased at an impressive rate since 2005. In three years between 2005 and 2008, bicycling doubled at counted locations (including all Schuylkill bridges and two intersections). Bicycling increased 104%, or roughly 35% a year. Prior to 2005, bicycling was increasing at a slower pace, roughly 6.1% a year, and it took fifteen years for bicycling to increase 98% between 1990 and 2005. Since 1990, bicycling in Philadelphia has increased 300%.

The same study shows that while only 1.2% of Philadelphians commuted by bike in 2006 (well before the gas shocks of 2008, which substantially increased the number of people finding alternate transportation to work), that’s still 11,000 daily commutes. The same study also found that “Between 2006 and 2008, the total number of bikes per hour counted on five Schuylkill Bridges (South, Walnut, Chestnut, Market and Spring Garden) jumped 40%. One of the most dramatic increases in bicycling occurred at the Spring Garden Bridge, which had a 95% increase in bicycle traffic since 2006.” Bit players? Hardly, Mr. Bykofsky. And since I’m irritated with you, let’s jam a few more FACTS up that snout of yours, eh?

According to a 2007 report by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission cited by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, “61% of Delaware Valley bicyclists surveyed use bikes for utilitarian purposes (commuting to school or work, work –related, social visits and errands)”. So much for the “recreation” nonsense. According to Managing Success in Center City: Reducing Congestion, Enhancing Public Spaces, a report issued by the Center City District, “Bicycling is faster than driving, walking or taking the bus across Center City”. So much for biking “will never be a serious mode of transportation in and around Philly”.

So there you have it: on all counts, Stu Bykofsky is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and then WRONG AGAIN about bicycles and Philadelphia. He has no credibility to write about the topic, and as a result no one should pay his worthless temper tantrum of a column any mind whatsoever.

As we all know by now, Councilmen Kenney and DiCicco have decided that the city needs new laws to regulate bicycles. These proposed regulations include:

1) That not only must you register your bikes- for a 20 dollar fee- but you must have a license plate on that bike;
2) Riding on the sidewalk costs you 300 dollars
3) Riding with headphones costs you 300 dollars
4) Riding without a brake costs you 1000 dollars.

And all of this is in the name of “public safety”. Right. And I read “Hustler” (obviously NSFW) for the articles.

Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, and this is not to excuse two needless deaths and a skull fracture caused by people breaking the law and acting like assholes, but my bet is that the number of car-related fatal collisions is astronomically worse. And as Dan points out, those fines are substantially lower than the fines proposed for bicyclists by Kenney and DiCicco. The fact is that the proposed legislation is an ill-thought out revenue scheme, by two councilmen desperately seeking to refill our practically-bankrupt city’s coffers.

If this was really about public safety, I’d expect to see Mr. Kenney and Mr. DiCicco proposing congestion fees, to reduce the amount of cars in our city. I’d see them proposing an ongoing drunk driving crackdown Thursday through Saturday. I’d see them enforcing the laws we already have, which could probably use a little tweaking, rather than trying to set up absurd new systems rigged to siphon the most money from bicyclists’ pockets.

I have a particular, and qualified, objection to the law against riding the wrong way down a one-way street and believe it should be amended in the following way. On arteries and major thorofares like east-west corridors Pine, Spruce, South, Walnut, Chestnut, and all of the numbered streets, biking against traffic should be illegal and rigorously enforced. But with the exceptions of Spruce and Pine, biking on those streets is treacherous and nervewracking, for bikers and motorists alike! The way a lot of bicyclists, including me, avoid that mess is by using the many side streets and alleys that criss-cross the city. And many of those, to deter motorists, change direction almost every block.

Streets like Naudain, Manning, and Delancey are godsends for bikers and we shouldn’t be penalized for using them. So perhaps council should come up with a bike-specific scheme for one-way streets that takes this into account.

I also have an objection to red light and stop sign rules, again qualified. Because bikes are powered by the rider, they’re most efficient when they keep moving, the same way joggers need to keep running to keep their stride. But unlike joggers, who can run in place at traffic lights, bikes, unless given the option of a rolling stop, must break their pace. And while I certainly don’t endorse launching out into oncoming traffic, if there’s nothing and no one in the bicyclist’s path, I think the Idaho stop, essentially a rolling stop, should be the standard. Bikes aren’t cars and shouldn’t be treated that way.

The same is true for “right on red”. Bikes flow into the traffic stream way more seamlessly than any car could: it’s almost imperceptible. In fact, to further incentivize bicycle commuting, I think bikes should always have right turn on red, even where it’s not permitted for cars.

Of course, in order to understand the common sense of these three proposals, you’d have to, ya know, spend some time on a bicycle in downtown Philadelphia. And it’s pretty clear that neither DiCicco nor Kenney have done that in a looooong time, because they obviously don’t understand the most basic benefits of choosing a bicycle over a car!

Adding “shit-for-brains” on top of stupid, there’s a loophole big enough to ride a bike race through. In order to be affected by the law, you have to be a Philadelphia resident. When you couple this with the fact that, according to a conversation I had with the Philadelphia Police Department last week, there’s no law requiring you to carry any form of photo ID in the city, it seems like it’s pretty easy to evade a ticket. “No officer, I’m just here for the weekend. I’m visiting my cousin who lives in Fishtown, but I’m from Arizona. ID? No, I’m afraid I left all that at the hotel. I’ve heard that Philly has a high crime rate and didn’t want to get mugged.”

So basically, the proposed laws: are based on faulty presumptions; try to tap bicyclists (typically not the wealthiest Philadelphians) as a revenue stream, while giving cars much lighter penalties; undermine the city’s efforts to become “America’s greenest city”; may end up throwing a lot of people out of work; and are probably unworkable anyway.

But then, no one every said Jim Kenney and Frank DiCicco were Mensa members. CITY COUNCIL FAIL.

meeting site, photo Erik Bitzek

It was a really interesting experience, and in so many ways. It’s hard to describe the casual self-consciousness you feel when you’re standing around buck-naked with hundreds of other naked people…

…but you get used to it. And yes, I do in fact manscape. In fact, the whole event was high comedy for everyone. Jim and I kept bursting into spontaneous laugh-attacks as we pedaled along, laughing at ourselves and everyone else for participating in something so ridiculous, laughing at the people on the sidewalk who stood there either dumbfounded or keeling over with laughter themselves. Everyone was laughing. How could you not?

It may have started out as a leisurely ride, but once we’d looped around the back of the Art Museum and hit the Ben Franklin Parkway, the pack really got up to speed.

Eakins Oval, photo Erik Bitzek

South Side of City Hall, photo Derek Carnegie

The route was never disclosed publicly, to avoid giving the police an opportunity to block a street on our harmless-but-still-illegal ride. Instead, the ride was an exercise in follow-the-leader, in this case a naked man in his 30s with the “share the road” logo painted on his back:

via Phrequency

I’m pretty sure there was more than one leader, because the pack definitely broke in different directions. After passing by the south side of City Hall, we rode down Broad Street, taking up as many lanes as possible, to Washington Avenue. Everywhere we went, crowds of people cheered and laughed. Heading north up 9th Street, right through the Italian Market someone yelled “You should be embarrassed! You should be ashamed of yourselves!” My buddy Jim yelled back “We should be, but we’re not!” “Whoopeeee!” added a naked girl, titties flopping in the wind. More laughter from everyone.

That’s when we hit South Street. if you’ve ever been to Philadelphia, you know this is a big outdoor shopping area, lots of boutiques, stores, bars, and restaurants. Traffic on this tight one-way street is always slow, and the pack of naked bicyclists just made it worse, weaving between cars idling along the thoroughfare. Honestly, no one knew WHAT to make of us, other than to point and laugh. “Why are you doing this,” a young woman called. “Why not?” I yelled back. I heard someone else yell “why aren’t YOU?”

A number of people wanted to know if all this was even legal. Well, in a word? No. There are laws against “indecent exposure” in the city, but considering none of us were doing anything indecent with our naturally naked bodies, we didn’t expect that the City’s overworked cops were in much of a mood to do anything about it. Not when there are naked girls to gawk at (drop by phrequency or city paper, which has video, for nudity.

Others have asked me whether this was uncomfortable in any way, suggesting chafing. Honestly, the fabric that covers my bike seat is pretty soft and friction-free. there was less chafing than i get when i ride in jeans, a much coarser fabric. Plus, every time i stood up while riding (to get more torque to the pedals) a refreshing breeze blew between my legs. It was comparable to skinny dipping. I could do this every day, no joke.

Speaking of naked girls and being comfortable, I had a wonderful conversation with a young topless woman in blue panties and a butch haircut while zooming down Broad Street. “It’s stuff like this that makes me happy I decided to move to Philly,” she said.

‘Yeah, it’s pretty cool here,” i admitted. “But keep in mind, things are gonna be tough soon and you’ll want a memory like this to see you through.”

“What, you mean, the winter?” she asked.

“No: the budget problem in Harrisburg,” I said. Just two people riding naked down the middle of Broad Street talking state politics, nothing out of the ordinary.

Anyway, back to the route. We followed South Street all the way to the end and crossed the bridge onto the Columbus Boulevard. A group of black kids laughed so hard as we passed by in our glory, they looked like they were going to have seizures. A girl in a white dress just stood and her eyes and mouth as wide as they could go.

No time to look back however: on we sped, north up the boulevard, with a line of bemused cars behind us. Jim took some great video of two guys driving a rental truck, who were literally sobbing from laughing so hard. I hope to have this up later.

Once we hit Spring Garden Street, we headed west, then south again on 5th Street, and north on Market. This time we didn’t just loop City Hall, we went right through.

It was getting dark as we headed south to Rittenhouse Square, where we looped around the park and provided some al fresco entertainment for diners who were enjoying their al fresco meals. Then it was back to Walnut Street, where we headed west until we reached Penn campus and followed Locust Walk right through the University until we reached Woodland Cemetery. By the time we got done following the paved path through the gravestones, it was night time. those riders still with us announced they were heading for the after-party at 5th and Fairmount, but after such a long ride, Jim and I opted to hit a bar in our own neighborhood, which at 10 blocks away was a lot closer.

“Should we get dressed before we head to Dahlak,” I asked Jim?

“Nah, let’s just head down Baltimore Avenue naked.”

and maybe this says more about our neighborhood than anything else: not one person batted an eye. I don’t think anyone even noticed.

check back for updated photos! Jim got some great shots and some funny video that don’t have access to just yet.

…still debating if i’m going to upload my naked portrait.

The rear wheel is always the more expensive, since it has to come with the gear set and everything else. it’s gonna cost me around $200 to replace.

motherfucker. If I had caught the guy in the act, I would have beaten him and thrown him in front of oncoming traffic. There’s a damn good reason I wear a belt, and it ain’t because my pants are too loose.

You guys are totally freakin’ awesome, and let me know if i can return the favor!

As it stands I’ll be buying my new wheel on Friday. Thanks so much to everyone who’s contributed so far. And if you haven’t contributed yet, please consider making a donation. I promise you, I won’t use your money to buy a credit default swap, just a bike wheel.

i just got my first sweet little donation toward my bike wheel and/or bass bag!

But one gift, generous as it is, won’t help me solve global warming by biking or help bring old-time and bluegrass music to the teeming masses by protecting my bass.
So again I ask you: click on the Pay Pal logo on the right sidebar, and if you can spare a few ducats, make a donation.

As I mentioned, some thieving bastard decided to help him or herself to the rear wheel of my road bike.

I need about $40.00 more dollars, and the wheel is mine. No more spewing toxic fumes into the air, and plus I’ll be able to set a better example for Sam next time he visits. You don’t want my son to hate his father do you? Don’t you want me to be a good dad?

If you donate to the bike wheel fund, you’ll helping me fight global warming, which means you’ll be fighting global warming too!

Meanwhile, any donations toward the much larger purchase of a bass bag (about $290.00, before shipping and taxes) are also very welcome. As I described last week, the funds I’d set aside for that new bass bag had to be used for a hotel in Montreal, when I traveled there in February to deal with my Sam’s citizenship and meet his teachers.

That exposure’s not just bad for the bass, it’s bad for my back and shoulders too. But with YOUR help, my bass could be traveling in style and security:

It’s even got luggage wheels!

Think of your donation as a way of saying “thanks” for harassing Bob Casey, Arlen Specter, John Boehner, and Goldman Sachs on a nearly daily basis. I’m working hard for you: won’t you help make MY life just a little bit easier? I’ll be super grateful for every cent, and when you need help, I’ll make sure to return the favor (like when I helped a certain blogger buy his new laptop).

Every gift helps!