In my haste, I announced the Meh-roica Bike Pageant without first running it past my legal team:Despite their repeated entreaties:Now theres a very serious risk I could be sued for trademark infringement by the Roica people:Though as I understand it, in order to prove trademark infringement you need to show that theres confusion in the marketplace, and in this case I think claiming consumers are confused between their material and my contest would be a bit of ahold on, its comingStretch.But if they do come after me anyway I will blind them with this:That is a rather exquisite contest submission from The Land Of Mandatory Bicycle Helmets. (No, not New Zealand, the other one.)Also, as I mentioned, the deadline for submissions is 12:00pm EST on October 16th, but then someone pointed out that 12:00pm EST is actually 1:00pm DST, which I didnt even think about, and which would open up a legal loophole for submissions that are an hour late (at least according to my attorneys)and if that wasnt confusing enough, every year they say were finally getting rid of daylight savings anyway, but it never happens, and then you have other countries that dont have daylight savings, or they do have it but change the clocks on different days, and so forth. So no wonder the worlds such a big mess. Clearly we should just get rid of daylight savings, and clocks, and the concept of time altogether. Instead we could simply track time the natural way, by following the sun and the moon and our menstrual cycles, and maybe then everyone would stop fighting and love each other. In the meantime, two seconds of popular search engine jockeying indicates to avoid confusion youre just supposed to specify ET, but that itself seems confusing, so lets just say that when its non on October 16th here in New York thats when submission window closes. (Thats chronological noon, and not solar noon.) And if youre unsure just consult a popular search engine:Whew!Talk about cognitive load!That was almost as hard as working a front derailleur.But theres more to cycling than just Meh-roica bikes. Theres also JBARA* bikes. Recently I shared this one:*[Just Buy A Rivendell Already]And on the same popular online auction site I came across this:Its not a JBARA bike, obviously, but it is a fascinating glimpse into the sellers mind:WontTake two seconds to flip up the bars.WillTake the time to stage the bicycle by perching it upon a leather couchLook, Im not one of those commonists who tells time by womens menstrual cycles. I think people should be able to engage freely in the buying and selling of goods with minimal government interference. At the same time, everything about this screams I wound up with a dead guys bike and have no idea what it is or how it works, and I cant help wondering if maybe in such cases these bicycles should be appropriated and reassigned. I mean I guess its possible Im wrong, but a glimpse at the sellers other items does not suggest this person is a cycling enthusiast, as none of them have anything to do with bikes, or each other:Though I could use some new grips for my pistol, since I used mine to free a stuck quill stem bolt and they fell off:Just kidding.I dont actually own a gun. However, I may get one, because society is about to collapse. I know this because we have officially reached the Gravel/Cyclocross Inversion Point, which is a sure sign that chaos is imminent:Okay, long before there were gravel bikes, or mountain bikes, or any of that stuff, there used to be this sport called cyclocross. Basically people rode around on mud and grass and had to dismount their bikes in order to jump over obstacles and stuff. For many years, cyclocross in most places was like nine people standing around in a field talking about how this sport was massively popular in Belgium. But then in the aughts it started getting popular everywhere, and every bike company started offering an off-the-rack cyclocross bike, and more and more people started riding these bikes on unpaved roads and dirt trails and stuff. I dont have to remind you what kind of bike the winner of the very first Dirty Kanza rode, do I?No I dont, but I guess I did anyway.Then the whole riding-bikes-on-dirt-roads became a thing unto itself, and everyone started making special bikes just for that. At first people called this gravel, but vowels are almost as mentally taxing as front derailleurs, so they shortened it to GRVL. Then people forgot all about cylocrossthough according to the articles headline, theyre now remembering again, and all you need in order to take part is agravel bike.So there it is. Gravel is now the gateway to cyclocross, which was once the gateway to gravel. And theres your Gravel/Cyclocross Inversion Point.By the way, one reason for the early-aughts cyclocross boom was its fun and friendly atmosphere:Cheering on the race, with the help of a continental lager it is a CX race after all I was taken by just how fun and friendly it looked, with a few of the competitors even thanking us for the support as they went round. It was far from the intimidating event that it could have been, that the world of road racing certainly seems to me, hill-climbing is similarly open. People just turn up with a bike they are prepared to ride off-road on, pay the fee (which in this case was 25), learn the course, and race for under an hour. The risks are low, especially the muddier it is. There are no open roads, no cars, its fun, and unless youre battling at the front, its unlikely to be overly competitive. At least thats how it seemed to me. There are technical bits, but nothing insurmountable, especially at the beginning of the season; then the worse the weather gets, the more the chaos mounts too.Though I must say that in this part of the world that was not my experience. Thats not to say it wasnt fun or that people werent friendly, because it was and they were. However, in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region people came to cyclocross races toyou know, race. And they did, toodare I say quite seriously. You really didnt find this sort of thing:Maybe part of the reason GRVL caught on was that people forgot cyclocross was actually supposed to be a competitive sport and not goofy all the time so they had to create grueling 200-mile rides in order to escape the Irony Crew.Speaking of cyclocross, though Ive mostly de-fanged and borderline JBARA-ed it, the Farbman is the very quintessence of the pre-GRVL New England/Mid-Atlantic cyclocross era:Most recently, I changed the saddle and seatpost, which I recently acquired through some shady backroom dealing:Obviously few components are more subjective than saddles, but I happen to like this particular model, and with the change the bike has finally obtained a level of comfort that is so profound its almost disconcertingplus, the two-bolt seatpost is sufficiently robust for the remounts Ill never do, since the chances of my ever cyclocrossing again are vanishingly small.Or, to put it another wayTAINT in the cards: