Yesterday a commenter asked:Dont you get charged an exorbitant amount if you dont dock your citi bike?Are criminals just ripping them out of docks and dumping them or what?Well, the answer is yes:Actually, I suppose I should qualify that, as I dont know whether they literally rip the bikes out of the docks or use a craftier method in order to extricate them. Or maybe they just wait for unexpecting customers to un-dock the bikes legitimately and then just conk them on the head like in the cartoons. Regardless, however they do it, there are Citi Bike carcasses all over the place around hereplus all the ones that have been hastily spraypainted and reappropriated from the fleet for personal use. Then of course theres the battery black market:I've been told by Police sources that some migrants gangs are stealing batteries out of electric citibikes and other rental bikes .Looks like they might have some battery scam going on now . Viral News NYC (@ViralNewsNYC) August 24, 2024I dont mention this to imply bike share is bad, or to impugn a specific group of people, or anything like thatnot to but cars the situation, but you find abandoned, pilfered, and defiled cars all over the place too:Not sure where this was taken, but certainly when you roll out for a morning ride in New York youll invariably pass at least one wheel-less car on crushed milk crates and a few piles of broken glass left behind from all those break-ins that take place in the wee hours.Still, theres a certain poignancy to an abused Citi Bike in that its a symbol of what happens when urban idealism collides with reality. Meanwhile, few things could be further from that reality than the rarefied world of custom bicycles. It used to be that when you looked at bike show porn most of the bikes were steel, but judging from all the photos coming out of the recent MADE show in Portland it seems like titanium is taking over:Im not sure what the point is of an aero titanium road bike:I mean no offense to the builders or anything like that, but if you want the sort of aero wireless battery bike everyones riding nowadays that seems like the ideal use case (ugh I hate that term) for Le Fibre de Crabon.But titanium does seem to be having a moment it hasnt experienced since back in the last century when Litespeed and Merlin reigned supreme, perhaps precisely because the crabon has become so ubiquitous it has lost its cachet. Even State got a lot of attention recently when it introduced a budget titanium bike, and it quickly sold out:I guess The Kids Today never heard of Habanero, who have been offering budget titanium since the days of Usenet.Then there are those bikes that take crabon and titanium and split the difference:Ive got a new bike arriving at any moment (Im sitting next to the buzzer as I type this waiting for UPS), and I probably should send the LeMond back to Classic Cycle, though every time I head out for a farewell ride I cant bring myself to box it up, and instead find myself making some sort of improvement to it. For example, most recently I wrapped the bars in red tape:Previously the tops of the bar had been naked:And theyre considerably more comfortable now that theyre wearing sleeves:Im also using traditional wheels with a Shimano-fied Campagnolo hub:And speaking of Shimano, while I remain a friction-shifting apologist, Im beginning to think 9-speed Shimano Dura-Ace may be the apotheosis of indexed road bike drivetrains:Since receiving the bike Ive also gone through not onebut two crabon cranks:Until Paul decided to shut me up once and for all by sending me something utterly reliable:I also received the bike with a 28mm tire in the rear and a 25mm tire in the front, and there was so little clearance out back the tire was rubbing on climbs:So I put the 25mm in the back and the 28mm up front:Problem solved.So theres the six-month update on the LeMond nobody asked for:Youre welcome.Now wheres that UPS guy?