So the other day I posted about fellow aging bike Internet personality Lucas Brunelle, and then yesterday the YouTubes served me this:
Oh, Lucas.
Lucas, Lucas, Lucas.
First of all, with all due respect, from one aging rider to another, you’re like 75 years old. What the hell are you doing with your levers?
Look, I get it, narrow bars and turned-in levers are currently fashionable among roadies. But don’t try to copy the kids. You’re old enough to know that from about 1998 to like 2010 or thereabouts, road racing handlebar setups actually made sense–you used bars that were a centimeter or two wider than what people were riding in the downtube shifter days, which gave you extra stability and leverage. And of course you oriented your levers more or less parallel to each other and not all cockeyed like Señor Hacer de Manos here:
Now everyone’s riding teeny bars and turning their levers in. Fine. Again, if the kiddies want to do that because it makes them slightly more aero whatever then good for them. But for chrissakes, you’re a great grandfather! Do you shrink the font size on your e-reader as you get older? No you do not! Then why would you intentionally make your bike more difficult to ride? So you can lay it down making a completely ordinary left-hand turn on a suburban road?
Why the hell is the godfather of outlaw cycling videos, who has chased some of the world’s craziest cyclists through some of the world’s craziest streets, wiping out at the entrance to an outdoor furniture store on a solo ride?
I mean sure, they do have everything you need for your outdoor living area, but still:
And fine, there was a little bit of gravel:
But that would not have been a problem if only he’d been riding an age-appropriate bicycle instead of this…thing:
Seriously, levers aside, an 86 year-old man should not have a saddle-to-bar drop like that. Everyone knows that the lower your balls hang the higher your bars should be. Good grief Lucas, you should be tracking the rate of increase of your scranus-to-testicle differential closely at your age and raising your bars inversely, I thought this common knowledge!
Why do you think Ol’ Man Branson switched to flat bars?
[Branson’s hang so low he gets road rash on his scrotum.]
Sadly Lucas is not listening to the universe, which is telling him in no uncertain terms to Just Buy A Rivendell Already. Instead he tries to turn his crash into a teaching moment and gives the world’s worst lesson in turning, cutting heedlessly across two lanes of traffic:
Why does he initiate his left turns from the far right side of the road instead of moving over to the left first?
Was he just riding along when he was suddenly overcome by an intense desire for a new patio dining set?
Seems to me he should be getting in on the Platypus presale instead.