The inanities of modern life

May 21, 2016 • 2:00 pm

Here are two items I encountered yesterday. The first is a bicycle with a cup holder affixed to the handlebars. Why someone would need a cup of liquid on their bicycle defies me. But perhaps it’s supposed to hold a water bottle, which isn’t much better. IMG_1026

The next item:

IMG_1027

Now what are these? Looking up “alternative” in the Oxford English Dictionary, the closest adjectival form I’ve found is this:

Of one thing or set of things: available in place of another or others.

In other words, these cookies are available in the place of “real” cookies. But they’re not: they’re gluten-free, or organic, or whatever. “Alternative medicine” is disjunct from real medicine, and so these cookies should be disjunct from other cookies. But they’re not; they’re just a special type of cookie. An Oreo, for instance, could be considered an “alternative” cookie if you’re a Brit. So get off my lawn!

 

100 thoughts on “The inanities of modern life”

  3. At least here in Boulder, those cups are used by cyclists for when we go out for drinks. We can bike to a local tavern have a beer and then ride to the next micro brewery frequently drinking a beer along the way. Sometimes we will just ride around the neighborhood with a gin and tonic. We can get pulled over for drinking and riding but none of us have more than two or three drinks before stopping and this might be in two or three hours or more.

    1. The fine for having an open container on a bike is the same (in most states) has having it in the car. It also affects your car insurance if you get a ticket, so I would stop doing this.

      A friend once gave me a canned beer for the ten mile ride back to my house. Near home, I stopped in front of a blues club to catch my breath, listen to the blues and pound down that cold beer. While chugging it, I look up and there is a cop in front of me giving me the stare-down. I slowly placed the beer (since my hand was covering the label), back into my bag and peddled off. Whew! Close one.

      1. mordacious1: as long as you limit the advice to “most states,” you’re on solid ground.

        Several states DON’T have “open-container” laws, and at least one (Mississippi) doesn’t prohibit drinking and driving, as long as your BAC is below the legal limit. And in TX and Louisiana, drive-through daiquiri bars are the big thing. Just don’t peel that little piece of tape off the straw-hole before reaching your destination…

        http://dui.findlaw.com/dui-charges/can-a-passenger-drink-in-a-car-.html

  4. $1.99 for a cookie, even in Hyde Park, is obscene.

    I leave Chicago for a few years, and the place goes all to hell.

  5. Not mad for the lilac color for the purportedly girlie bike, but the holder for a water bottle is not a bad idea for longish tours around the neighborhood or on bike trails. My kids and I used to bike for several hours at a time and I ended up carrying all the water.

    As for the alternative cookies, bleaaahhh, or thppttt (however Bill the Cat spelled it)…

    1. My sister was bemoaning the lack of mudguards on bikes a couple of days ago, so apart from the colour (which I don’t like either) I noticed it at least had those. She noticed a whole lot of kids with wet, and sometimes muddy, stripes up their backs on their way to school.

      1. My foldable Brompton has mudguards and they’ve saved me from dirt many a time!

        1. I hadn’t noticed that about it. Wouldn’t be the best look for the office! You’d think if they can get mudguards on a bike like that, they could get them on a “normal” bike.

          1. There are sets available for any bike. I installed a set on my trail bike, it’s fairly easy. Really cuts down on muddy splatter.

          2. A very old school bike, this one. No gears so that means no hills. What you call mudguards – we use to call them fenders. If you ride on wet pavement or in the rain, they are very useful.

          3. They’re completely available, but speed freaks (and people who want to look like speed freaks, down to the shaved legs and body-displaying-in-an-unflattering-way Lycra) don’t like them because they allegedly increase drag on the wheels and certainly increase the weight of the bike ; meanwhile mud freaks tend to take the mud as a badge of honour and “genuineness”. That’s my reading anyway.

          4. The people my sister was noticing were kids on their way to school – if they’d rather have a badge of honour than clean, dry clothes at school all day, fashion really has gone too far!

          6. g-A: Don’t be so tribal. I don’t shave, but I do loves my lycra.

            My wife likes it too..

          7. I stopped using fenders (I used to commute every day to work about 8.5 miles (14km) each way — in Seattle (yes, all winter)) when I was riding in to work one morning and had to make a quick turn to avoid something and had perfect coincidence between my toe and the aft tip of the front fender. The toe pushed the fender into the tire, which gobbled it up and froze – very suddenly, spilling me hard onto the pavement.

            I had to wear cycling gear (which, by the way, is purely for comfort and practicality — at least for me) anyway, so I carried my work clothes in a (triple-plastic-bagged) pannier and changed at work.

            After 8.5 miles riding in Seattle inter weather, no one’s clothes were going to survive. And maybe some people don;t sweat riding a bike; but I do, loads.

            And I was riding hard — for exercise. Yes, as fast as I could maintain. A bike is so energy efficient you can go along slowly and get virtually no exercise.

            If you are tootling along a few blocks, slowly, then, sure, clothing, shoes, water, a decent seat, minimizing weight and drag aren’t important. If you are walking on a paved bath in the city then you don’t need proper boots. If you are always within a few hundred meters of a pub or shop, you don’t need a rucksack.

            I can say from a great deal of personal experience that having the right gear makes a huge difference. I rode a bicycle around the world over 2-1/2 years.

          8. I’m a heavy sweater so even a ride over flat ground will make me sweat. There is a hill that I have to climb that I don’t seem to be able to master and it drenches me in sweat. I think some medication I am on affects my legs as they hurt when I climb stairs and such and they never stop hurting with practice nor do they become stronger….so I am seriously considering electrifying my Brompton just to give me a bit more kick up the hills.

          9. Ouch. Painful accident. I don’t think I could physically get toe to contact the front wheel, but it’s persisting with rain outside and I’m not going to dig the bike out of the shed to find out. Different frame geometry, I guess.
            I didn’t appreciate how sensitive the right geometry is until my 4th or 5th bike (2nd “non-kid” bike) when I had a car drivr swing his door open on me as I was going down hill. Flying, gravel rash and cursing and swearing later, I extracted half the cost of the bike from the driver (it was fairly new – an insurance claim from a theft) and set to picking road out of the cuts, straightening the wheel, fenders and forks at the side of the road. I discovered after he had gone that there was a crumple between the down tube and headset, making the head tube and seat tube converge by about 1-1.5 degrees. from being an OK bike, that one changed to eing one I could spend 9 hours a day in the saddle for days on end.
            I have wrested since with agonies of indecision over getting a made-to-measure frame. But having had 6 bikes stolen over the years … I treat them as more-or-less commodities. Though my current one, I have considered taking a calculated hammer to the headtube to try to replicate the accident.

          10. “I rode a bicycle around the world over 2-1/2 years.”

            WOW!

            Have you written this up anywhere?

      2. When I was a kid, all bikes had fenders. Now they’re nearly impossible to find; usually takes a special order and a higher price.

        Stupid!

        Same thing with kick stands.

        1. I haven’t used or wanted a kick-stand since I was about 12.

          I’ve never had any issue finding something to lean the bike against.

      3. Mudguards (along with mirrors, bells and lights at night) used to be conpulsory on bikes, IIRC, but they seem to be scorned by the fitness-freak lycra-clad muscle-bound idiots who ride bikes these days.

        The ones who ‘save the planet’ by driving all over the place in enormous 4X4’s with racks of bikes on the back obscuring the number plate.

        [/rant]

        cr

        1. Bells are compulsory in Ontario, Canada and lights also if you are riding at night.

    2. I agree totally on all points, even the Bill the Cat comment. I’ve seen kids with attitude that a drink of water was the cure.

  6. I can’t speak to the concept of alternative cookies, that subject is quite beyond my ken, but as to a cup or bottle holder on my bicycle handlebar, just wait till you reach an age where you’re all crippled up with arthritis, chronic pain syndrome, chronic fatigue, bad bowels, bad bladder, bad eyesight, bad hearing, etc, etc, and you might understand why some people might enjoy having a cup holder on the handlebar of their bicycle.
    I also ride an electric bike, I ride as far a my body will take me, and than when I’m ready to collapse with pain and fatigue, I switch on the wheel motor and electro-glide on home.

      1. Than you for your reply. Persons that haven’ reached that stage, (hopefully they never will, some people don’t),sometimes have little empathy or understanding for people who do have those afflictions whether from disability or age. I refer to it as the arrogance of the young/and or healthy and encounter it frequently.
        It’s seen often in supermarket checkout lines, where people often get impatient or even rude with elderly or disabled persons who are proceeding as quickly as the can.

        1. Ageism is the drizzling shits. The only consolation is knowing that all of today’s young Turks will eventually realize this; the sad thing is that we’ll not be around to enjoy the schadenfreude.

  7. We are way more hydrated as a country than we used to be. I remember as a kid going out and playing for several hours (including riding bikes), and then going in for a big glass of water before doing it again. Now if I don’t have a beverage (I was going to say ‘drink’ but that makes me sounds like a lush), I feel uncomfortable.

    1. You all need to move to NZ where we have both Oreos and Jammie dodgers (though we don’t call them that). Oreos are like jammy dodgers except they’re chocolate, there’s no hole, and the filiing is whute, creamy stuff.

      1. I’m not a big fan of either – too sickly sweet – but if I had to choose I’d go for Oreos, even though they’re the sweetest.

        1. No! 🙂

          But it was a way of explaing with as few words as possible the concept of sticking together two biscuits (cookies to USians)!

    3. Jammy Dodgers without the hole, and with a colour scheme homage to America’s history of interracial tolerance and mutual adoration.
      I was in Dundee yesterday, and trying to remember the third member of the Dundonian “J” triumvirate. Finally got it when I noticed the the bank’s waiting room had facsimiles of the Beano on the coffee table.
      How did Moleworth put it? “Eny fule nose.”

      1. With respect to the color scheme and race: Oreo had been used as a slur toward black Americans, generally, I think, by other blacks: “black on the outside but white on the inside”.

        1. Didn’t know that. Knowing nothing of the history of the “confection” – which I’ve definitely seen, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever tasted – I’m just wondering if they come from an era where people wouldn’t understand the question “what were they thinking of?”
          OK – to pose the question in a semi-coherent form is almost to answer it. “Oreo has become the best-selling cookie in the United States since its introduction in 1912” [Wiki]
          So, completely off the radar of political sensitivity.

          1. Yes. Oreos are about chocolate plus cream filling. (Plus sugar.) Not created with race in mind at all. (Of course, now they’re available for metaphorical use.)

    1. Reminds me of one of the feminist bookstore sketches on Portlandia, in which Candace returns from a gluten-free bakery and complains that the muffin she bought there tasted like it was made with sand.

      So I told them the muffin tasted like sand and asked them what was in it, and you know what they said?
      Sand!

      2. I’d love to see this: You go into a hardware store for some sand and the bags have “Gluten Free” on them…and possibly “No GMO’s”.

  10. I’m as curmudgeonly as the next person, but being irritated that people like to have water with them when they’re out and about is not something I get at all.

    1. As someone who profoundly embarrassed her son by collapsing from dehydration during an all-day birding junket, I tend to concur.

      1. As I said in the last water bottle thread: I’ve seen many people in trouble in the outdoors from dehydration. I have yet to see a single one in 40 years of hiking, mountainteering, rock and ice climbing, bicycling, sea- and white-water kayaking, backcountry skiing, snow-shoeing, etc., that was in trouble or even inconvenienced by drinking too much water or carrying a water bottle.

        1. Carrying a water bottle can be inconvenient, as when clambering along a little rock face* just above the stream with one hand while clutching the water bottle with the other.
          This is where shorts** with lots and lots of pockets are so handy.
          But I do carry a water bottle*** on any hikes of any significance anyway. (That is, not in town).

          * A very little rock face. I have no head for heights but sometimes the tracks I like to walk on have steep bits.
          ** ‘Shorts’ in English, not American. Not sure what they’re called in USA.
          *** Actually, an old Pepsi bottle full of water. Just so nobody thinks I’m being trendy. And the bottle comes free.

  11. I don’t understand your beef with water bottles. As an avid cyclist I really appreciate the value of bringing water on rides, even short ones. Also, the water in my area is terrible. I have a reusable filter battle that saves b=me the pain of water that tastes like it was filtered through arm pit hair.

    1. Agreed. Water bottle holders are fairly standard on a lot of bikes, usually on the frame, not the handlebars, but whatever works.

  12. I bring my god able bike to work because it’s a kilometre to my office from parking and it’s down hill going back so u get to my car faster. I contemplated getting a cup holder for my Starbucks runs as Starbucks is also about a km away and I could get there and back faster and just folf my bike and carry it in.

    I figured it was too much trouble in the end but if I used my bike for more commuting, I’d get something.

      1. Yes. I suspect my iPhone is religious. It autocorrects things like this all the time.

        1. A religious iPhone! That suggests all sorts of possibilities: a hotline to heaven, Jesus on the telephone…

    2. I bring my god able bike

      Hmmm, I thought I knew bike technology fairly well, but that’s a new one to me.
      The number of bike racks and bike lockers around stations is gradually increasing in the UK, which I take as a good thing overall.

      1. Yes. I meant foldable. I have a Brompton because it’s the only one that will fit in the trunk of my roadster.

        1. Yeah – I know of Bromptons. One of my colleagues has one as a relic from a previous life chained to a desk in some dungeon somewhere.

  13. Jerry, it’s good to see you working on your standup act. Let me know when you hit NYC!

    Barry

  14. Years ago when I still smoked I noticed a sign in a convenience store that said, “Genetic cigarettes 50 cents a pack!” Of course they meant “generic”, but considering the physical effects of smoking, the sign may have made more sense the way it was written.

  15. But perhaps it’s supposed to hold a water bottle, which isn’t much better.

    Holder for mobile phone?
    Socket for jamming the handle of your umbrella into?
    Or, the old standard – ashtray. (As in, “that’s as much use as a chocolate fireguard or an ashtray on a motor bike.”)
    What I noticed about the bike – no brake levers. Euro-norm issue reflectors front and rear (though they may be an international norm these days), which argues against it being the product of a deranged bike builder, so I’m going to guess that it has a back-pedal brake, or even a fixed hub.

    1. Good point. Actually it doesn’t look very roadworthy to me, more like a kiddies backyard bike (and the colour reinforces that).

      I’m not at all sure it would be legal on a road in NZ without brakes both ends. Even assuming it has a back-pedal brake, that’s quite dangerous and pretty ineffective on a downhill or slippery surface, its main effect being to put you into a sideways skid. After which you fall off.

      And a fixed hub is NO substitute for a back brake, you *cannot* react fast enough to retard the bike with the pedals.

      cr

      1. The only time I’ve used a back-pedal brake was on a rental bike in a German park – and thank you to the staff for informing me of the brake. I figured out what it was and how it worked quickly enough, but it was a surprise – I’d just assumed that the single brake lever acted equally on front and rear. I can’t say that I liked the system, but it seemed perfectly usable, once I’d figured it out.
        On the subject of bike technology – I was very 50:50 about getting a bike with disc brakes about 4 years ago. Very good investment – keeping the brake surfaces away from the muck and slime of the road surface really does improve braking performance – to the point that the tyres slip. “Newton takes over.”

        1. I wasn’t doubting the efficacy of a back=pedal brake as such – though I have no experience of them. What I was doubting was the efficacy of a back-brake-only. Considering the very high centre of gravity of a bicycle, and consequent weight transfer, I doubt whether a back brake can manage more than say 25% of braking effort before locking up into a skid.

          cr

          1. Yes! We used to love skidding to a stop as kids (all the cheap kid bikes had the back-pedal brakes when I was growing up.)

          2. Hmmm, Well I certainly know the counter-intuitive fact that most of your braking effort is / should be focussed on your leading wheel.
            On a bone-shaker of a city bike, intended for touristing around a bike-friendly city, I found the BP brake perfectly adequate. Confusing to start with, but adequate.

          3. Gently touristing around a flattish city like Amsterdam* it would be quite OK. I would think in a steep city like, say, San Francisco* or Wellington, NZ, you would sooner or later find yourself going down a steep hill on a slippery road with an obstruction at the bottom and with back brake only, things would be pretty hairy.

            *Never been to either, I’m going from the pictures

            cr

  16. When there’s coffee “to go” then you need to put it somewhere when you are with the bike, unless you mean that one cannot have coffee “to go” when one is with a bike. But why exactly?

  17. Well, I dunno about those alternative cookies.

    But I gotta beef with health food cookies.

    I love cookies. No. I really, love cookies.
    If there is a place that sells good chocolate chip cookies anywhere within 10 miles, they will be mine.

    Over the years I’ve tried various “healthy” cookies – living in a health nut, tree-hugging area of Toronto affords me many such opportunities.

    Not one single time has a “healthy cookie” ever been anything other than a disaster.
    Every single one came with enthusiastic recommendations from the proprietors or servers “Oh, they don’t have X or Y ingredients, or are gluten free or whatever, but they are Soooo Gooood!”

    All of them taste like variations on colored baking soda, or just…not cookie tasting.

    Bah. Begone. I will be fooled never again.

    (I know, I know, someone reading this is thinking: “I have a GREAT recipe for healthy cookies..”)

    1. The chocolate meringue cookies at Whole Foods are pretty damn good and pretty low-fat. Very chocolatey. But I agree with you overall. Except for meringue, good cookies need a ton of butter and real flour and real chocolate. None of this carob crap.

      1. Regarding chocolate, I’m with you! I have never been able to understand the argument that carob is superior since it grows on trees… Where does chocolate grow? Insofar as I am aware it also grows on trees.
        As for health, even the nutritionists seem to be starting to recant and say that butter is not so evil after all.

        1. LOL – why did our parents never say “D’ya think chocolate grows on trees??”

        2. Chestnut Blight grows on trees, Dutch Elm Disease grows on trees, mistletoe grows on trees…

      2. Oh god, carob. I learned early on to avoid any cookie with
        that imposter ingredient.

  18. “An Oreo, for instance, could be considered an “alternative” cookie if you’re a Brit.”

    I think you mean biscuit.

  19. Wrt the drink holder, it reminds me a funny: I used to jog but the ice kept bouncing out of the glass/cup.

    Of course what would be really useful on a bike is an ashtray.

  20. “Why someone would need a cup of liquid on their bicycle defies me.”

    Picture this: it’s Sunday morning and you have a special someone staying over. You want a real coffee to make the morning even more perfect so you jump on your bike and cycle down to you favourite cafe to pick up a couple of steaming hot caps made just right.

    Oh wait! You really need a double balanced cup holder for that. Well at least you might be able to cycle home with one hand on the handlebars and one coffee in the other.

  21. I almost hate to admit this:

    One of my pet peeves is when they put Starbucks into all the local Safeways (West Coast Supermarket) and then purchased shopping carts with cup holders. You see these people pushing their carts with their lattes safely ensconced in its round wire rack. I dislike Starbucks and I dislike basket cup holders.

    So, this week I got 3 coupons for a free cup of Starbucks coffees at Safeway on my phone app. Now, I dislike Starbucks, because they have put every coffee house I’ve ever liked out of business by opening up next door. Total assholes about it. On the other hand, I love free stuff. Today, I found myself pushing my cart down the aisle with a macchiato in the cart cup holder. Luckily my friends didn’t see me. I’m going back tomorrow for another free cup and a free pastry. I have no scruples.

    1. Haha. I hate it when the love of a deal, ruins your stance on something. Don’t be too hard on yourself, most of us can’t resist the siren call of free stuff; that’s how I got so many pens, I have nowhere to store them.

      1. I rationalized it by convincing myself that by taking their product for free and never buying anything, I hurt their business somehow.

    2. As long as you weren’t texting with the other hand while pushing the cart with your belly you’re forgiven-lol

  22. There are two water bottle cages on the frame of my road bike, and if I’m going to ride for an hour or more, I’ll use both of them. It’s hot here most of the time. It takes a little practice to get used to reaching for, removing, and drinking from the water bottle while on the bike. I also have a pouch for energy gels etc. velcroed to the frame of the bike. I’m not real keen on the idea of reaching for a banana shoved into the back of a cycling jersey while on the bike, so I’ll go for the easy stuff to refuel. If you train for triathlons, it’s pretty obvious that you’re not going to be able to drink or eat while swimming, so you’ve got to hydrate and refuel while you’re on the bike.

    The biggest problem I have with the hipster lavender bike above is that it looks ridiculously uncomfortable to ride, at least from the photo. There appears to be a big drop from the seat to the handlebar grips, and the distance from seat to handlebars is too long, if indeed it’s a woman’s bike. Most women are proportionately shorter in the torso, with longer leg length, than are men. Sorry, the difference in build is not a social construct, either.

  23. Random House’s 6th definition (and 3rd adjectival definition) of alternative is
    “employing or following nontraditional or unconventional ideas, methods, etc.; existing outside the establishment:
    an alternative newspaper; alternative lifestyles.” which seems to be what this is about.
    They suggest “alternate” is just as good.”

    A cup holder on a bicycle is a disastrous idea. Water bottles on long treks such as when mountain biking make sense, but one could just as easily carry them in one’s backpack.

  25. When I was a lad in England, a popular description of something totally useless was ‘as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle’. Perhaps this is almost there.

  26. In my 30s and lycra-clad, I rode a couple of thousand kilometers in training on my lightweight road bike (singles [racing tyres], tiniest bell I could find, no mudguards).
    Now, about to enter my 7th decade, I ride a recumbent trike mainly on shared footpaths/cycleways. It’s got a rear mudguard, comfortable mesh seat (like a garden chair), disc brakes, kiddies’ bike bell (loud, pink with flowers), kiddies’ bike horn (in case the bell fails and I clean up a similarly aging pedestrian), a mobile phone pouch and a drink bottle holder.
    Oh yes, and a bike computer: how fast, how far. Top speed to date = 55.9km/hr. I can’t resist a good downhill run.
    Considering adding a sunshade but that might make cracking the 56km/hr too hard.

  27. again, am noticing that the volume of comments goes WAY UP when the subject is physics or molecular biology.

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