Happy Judeo-Christian Rebirthing Ceremony Season!
[Not AI, if you can believe it.]
Whether you’re applying color to chicken eggs or repeatedly dipping your finger in wine or just invoking some half-remembered religious ceremony from your childhood as an excuse to leave work early, may you go richly forth bathed in the glory of the Lord, covered in matzoh crumbs, and anointed with PAAS® Easter egg dye.
And yes, PAAS® egg decorating kits are the Easter equivalent of this:
Both are sold in places like Target, both are purchased in the spring (the PAAS® kit for the Easter eggs, the Schwinn kit for that first ride on the hybrid that sits in the garage all year), and both are used exactly once and then consigned to a junk drawer somewhere and forgotten about, since most Americans ride their bikes about as often as they color Easter eggs. So you buy another one the following spring, thus continuing the endless cycle of laziness that keeps both these venerable brand names alive.
A-meh.
Of course, the very best way to celebrate the season is to ride a bicycle–or, failing that, watch other people ride bicycles on cobblestones. Granted, some people think all this is boring thanks to Tadej Pogačar:
Though in complete fairness professional cycling was already pretty boring.
Just don’t tell the Belgians!
Not only do they love cycling, but they even love Pogačar, despite his utter lack of being Belgian:
When Tadej Pogačar won the Tour of Flanders for the first time in 2023, Jeroen Mahieu could not hold back his emotions as he watched from the Oude Kwaremont, the centerpiece of the race.
“I cried tears of happiness,” Mahieu says. “It was a big party afterwards.”
The 40-year-old electronics factory worker is not just a fan, but the founder of the Pogiboys, one of the larger fan clubs that dot his cycling-crazy home nation.
Who wouldn’t want to spend Easter Sunday on a bus full of Pogiboys?
Want a cap? An annual subscription is only twenty-five (25) Socialist Life Credits:
An annual subscription to the Pogiboys costs €25 ($28; £21), with members receiving a membership card and a casquette-style cycling cap. Money received is put back into the fan club, which also supports the Tadej Pogačar Foundation.
Just be careful when typing out the name, because it seems like you’re only a typo or two from subscribing to some kind of porn site.
Speaking of endless cycles, mountain bikes have officially become gravel bikes…or gravel bikes have officially become mountain bikes…or something, though they really shouldn’t publish these sorts of reviews on April 1st, since I honestly can’t tell if they’re real or not:
Either way, I will say the one thing I’ve learned from riding an Industry Standard Gravelling Appliance is that the morphing of mountain bikes and gravel bikes into a single “grountain bike” is truly inevitable, since ISGAs are not really great on the road, especially with knobby-ish low-pressure tires. So you’re constantly tempted to take them further and further into the woods. For example, lately every time I’m on the ISGA I seem to wind up on the forbidding Trails Behind The Mall, even though I had no intention of going there when I left the house:
The ISGA works pretty well there, too, though most normal people who lack my particular combination of finesse and obstinacy would probably conclude the bike would be even better with a suspension fork. So before you know it your gravel bike is what 20 years ago we used to call a “29er,” only with drop bars…which is not a bad thing, since what they’re calling “mountain bikes” now aren’t really even bicycles. And this, the functional useful mountain bike has been…resurrected.
The true lesson of the season is that things have a way of working themselves out.