So It's my Birthday and yesterday's Douche Bag

I am not a big birthday person. I don't usually parade around weeks or months in advance telling people the day is coming up so they can prepare. This used to be because of a sort of selfish reason. I figured if people didn't remember my birthday then it balanced the universe when I didn't take the time to remember theirs. Now, with the most wonderful invention of facebook and about 99.9% of my friends being members, this is no longer really a factor because facebook does all the reminding for me. Facebook tells me it's your birthday, I send you a wall post.

But, today's not your birthday, unless of course it is, in which, happy birthday, but mostly it's my birthday. And if I could have any one thing on my birthday it would be a pass that lets me say whatever I want and there'd be no long term repercussions for anything that may come out of my mouth. Think about it. All those times that someone says something so incredibly stupid and you want to point out their idoicy but can't because of silly social norms and the need to be tolerant. F-bomb that! Just one day of the year you can say whatever is on your mind with no filter what so ever. This would be a reason to get excited about a birthday.

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On a completely different note, yesterday I joined up with the Sunday group ride I have been doing for a while. It's really mellow as there are a lot of very new people to bikes coming out. As we were standing around I noticed that some douche bag had rolled up with his Cervelo P3C ($6000 bike) with a full zipp disc rear wheel and 909 up front ($3000 wheelset). Anybody who rides knows why this is insane, but if you don't allow me to point out the ways:

1) This guy is clearly a tri-geek. He will have NO bike handling skills and will probably try and live in his aero bars during the ride and will inevitably kill someone.
2) Disc wheels are essentially sails on the bike of your bike. Really fast if there is no wind, but if there is even the slightest amount of wind coming from any direction except directly head on, you get pushed all over the place. They don't allow disc wheels at the Hawaii Ironman due to the strong winds literally throwing cyclist and bike off the road in the lava fields. If you have never ridden a bike in the bay area, allow me to inform you it's almost always windy here. Yesterday was really windy. If this guy had been out all by himself on completely deserted roads maybe getting pushed around would have been ok. But, to be out in a group where you'll always be around other people, borderline retarded.
3) Did you notice how much these wheels cost when I wrote it earlier? $3,000! What sort of a rich douche bag are you that you are ok with some other fool taking you out and destroying your wheels in the process? And I got news for you buddy. When people crash people on bikes, insurance doesn't take the cost and in most cases, you repair damages yourself. It's an inherent risk of riding. So, show up to group rides on crap your ok with being destroyed.

This isn't the first time we've had some fool show up to one of these rides on an insanely expensive bike with insanely expensive wheels and have no clue how much of an idiot they are. I like to think of myself as an educator so I usually find the owner of the bike and ask them questions that point out the moronic nature of riding those wheels for fun. They usually get really uncomfortable and decide they don't like me. This response is great as they never want to ride with me ever again and they also don't show back up on those wheels.

Yesterday I took a different approach. As I poured coffee I shouted across the group to a buddy of mine to ask whose bike that was. I then asked very loudly if he thought that was safe. His response, because he's nicer than me, was to shrug his shoulders and make a face that indicated no. Luckily douche bag went with the very slow group, which meant he was riding with people on hybrids and mountain bikes. Which seems a bike ironic.

If I knew how to upload pictures from my camera phone I would so that all 5 (readership is improving!) of you reading this could see the exact bike I'm talking about. But, since I can't, you'll have to settle with the closest thing I could google.



Ignore the power meter. He hasn't bought one of those yet.