What's He Protecting?

The moment anyone with power uses the word "protect", I reach for my trusty frame pump.  Not only does it get my tires up to pressure in a pinch, it's great for swatting away stray dogs and other threats and nuisances.

You see, I've come to realize that any powerful person who thinks he or she can "protect" anyone or anything he or she hasn't met is delusional or lying.

And so it is with El Cheeto Grande.   He's passed another round of tariffs because he's, once again, got his knickers in a twist over China.  

Of course, the tariffs will not "protect" American industries because...well, they don't exist anymore, if indeed they ever did.  

(Besides, all you have to do is look at Smoot-Hawley to realize that tariffs almost never have their intended consequences.  But that would be the subject of, not just another post, but another blog--or a book!)

To wit:  Back in the Clinton administration, I tried to put together an all-American bike.  Of course, I did it on paper.  Frames and forks weren't hard to find, though they were almost always more expensive than imports.  Ditto for the Chris King headset, as great as it is. Yankee-made handlebars, stems and seatposts were available, but they were mainly "boutique" items.  

The other components, on the other hand, were a lot more difficult to find.  Sun was making its rims, and Wheelsmith its spokes, in the USA.  And there were a number of small companies fabricating hubs here in the USA, such as Phil Wood and Chris King.  They, of course, cost far more than even Dura Ace or Record stuff, but at least they kept my exercise going.

That is, until I tried to find tires.  To my knowledge, none have been made here since Carlisle ceased production, apparently some time in the early '80's.  Goodyear, Firestone and other rubber companies had exited the non-motorized trade long before that.

OK, I thought:  The tires are just one part (or two components, depending on how you look at it.). Surely, I could make the rest of the bike into a Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Then I tried to put together a drivetrain.  Mind you, this was during the days when it seemed every 25-year-old in California or Colorado who had access to a lathe was turning out lightweight (and very expensive) cranksets and derailleurs in a rainbow of colors.  I thought cassettes would be my next hurdle but, as it turned out, some company--in Massachusetts, I think--was making titanium bits--including cassettes.  

Eight speeds were the standard at that time.  If you remember anything about Shimano's 8-speed equipment, you knew that not everything was interchangeable between gruppos.  Namely, a Dura Ace hub would take only Dura Ace cassettes--not Ultegra, 105 or any other.  Turned out, the titanium cassette was made only for Dura Ace--which, I supposed, made sense, given what Dura Ace and titanium equipment cost.

(Aside:  Shimano's 9-speed stuff was interchangeable.  So Dura Ace hubs could take Ultegra cassettes, which weighed a bit more but cost about half as much.  And the standard 9-speed Dura Ace cassette was made of titanium, which pre-empted aftermarket stuff.)

But there were no chains made stateside.  Back in the day, the baloon-tired coaster brake bikes had American chains; however, as far as I know, no derailleur-compatible chain has ever been made here.  Nor were any pedals, save for the rubber-block variety found on said wide-tire "bombers".

Oh--and there were no American-made saddles.

Today it would be even more difficult to put together an all- (or even mostly-) American machine.  And almost very few bike accessories are made here.  Yet they are all subject to tariffs.

And it's all but impossible to find some items made anywhere besides China.  Almost anything electronic--lights, computers and the like--come from Cathay.  

So do helmets.  Interestingly, they have been exempted from tariffs.  It's ironic when you realize that one of the rationales for the tariffs is to protect against intellectual property theft--and nearly all helmets are designed in the US!

Of course, bicycles are far from the only things to be affected by the tariffs.  I'm not sure I'd want to be a farmer who raises corn, soybeans or hogs right about now.  But I have yet to hear anyone explain how any job or industry will be "protected" in this country.  

Blame It On The Bike!

During my youth, I did lots of strange, stupid and forbidden things that I tried to smooth over with implausible explanations to parents, teachers, professors, supervisors, lovers and other people.  Probably even a cop or two.

I might have even said something like this:

Now, whether the cop believed me, I won't say--mainly, because you know the answer.  All I know is that when I woke up, I wasn't in jail.  But I sure had a headache--and a bike to fix!

Speed Weaponry?

One of the best things about getting older is that the statute of limitations expires.

At least, it's expired for anything I did in my youth.  Now, I wasn't a juvenile crime spree.  Most of my misdeeds, I would say, fall under the category of indiscretions rather than real, hard-core criminality.

Probably the most serious offense I committed was when I crossed the border from Quebec to Vermont more than three decades ago.  I was riding; when the border guard asked where I was going, I said "home".

"Where is that?"

"New York."

He waved me through. Perhaps he thought I was going to ride to Lake Champlain and take the ferry from the Vermont to the Empire State.  Little did he know I was on my way to the Big Apple.

Or what was inside my handlebars.  I'd heard that others had smuggled, uh, medicinal herbs in a similar fashion.  And, in those days, people used to cross the US-Canada border the way people cross the George Washington Bridge on any work day. If anything, I may have been questioned more than the average border-crosser because, not only way I riding a bike, I had long hair and a beard(!).

Of course, that trick wouldn't work today.  But, apparently, that doesn't stop people from trying a new version of it in a place where it has even less chance of working.

Last week, a Transportation Security Administration employee confiscated a disassembled gun someone tried to hide in the tires of a packed bicycle.  I guess the would-be smuggler thought the rubber would somehow render the gun parts and ammo invisible to scanners.   

Or maybe he or she was going to a race and packing heat in the tires is a new form of "mechanical doping".  For all I know, the reaction of the gun firing--even if accidentally--might make the bike go faster.  

Whatever the failed smuggler's motivation, the incident made me think of Zipp, which advertises its carbon fiber wheels, handlebars and other wares as "speed weaponry."

It's Not My Fault, I Think

Confession:  For a brief time in my life, I worked in market research.  

In those days, we didn't have what are now called "social media".  And only the computer geeks were using the computer networks that would later help to form the basis of the Internet.

So we did our work with paper and telephone surveys. The former were mailed or given to people, while the latter--then as now--reached people while they were eating dinner, or at some equally inconvenient time.

The money was decent.  So why did I leave it?  No, I didn't have any sort of existential crisis or moral pangs.  And I didn't get bored:  After all, in what other kind of work can you learn such interesting and useful facts as people's consumption habits?  At the time, interestingly, people in Puerto Rico bought more Cheez-Whiz and Hawaiians purchased more Spam per capita than anyone else in America.  And the average New Yorker--surprise, surprise--bought more Wonder bread than anyone else.

Egad!  Had I known that such data would be stuck in my cranium all of these years later, I would have quit even sooner than I did.  But I left market research, in part because I went and did other things that, I thought, were closer to my own talents (such as they are) and passions. The biggest reason, however, for moving on to other things was that I realized my MR job was the most profound waste of time in my life.  I still feel that way about it.

On that job, I learned that simply asking people questions wasn't the surest, best way to get accurate, much less truthful, information about people.  We all know that there are those loves, those passions, that dare not speak their names.  To this day, I don't know what led me--or anyone else with whom I worked--to believe that people would always tell us what they wanted, liked or felt.  Sometimes they wouldn't.  Sometimes they couldn't.

I found myself thinking about my MR experience after I heard the election results and the disbelief of the pollsters and pundits.  Surely, they told us, Trump hadn't a chance:  He was too vulgar, too sexist, too fill-in-the-blank.  He had no government experience; running a company or hosting a reality TV show isn't like presiding over a country.  As if people were thinking in such terms!

Their surveys and algorithms (Was that the theme music for a certain campaign in 2000?)  couldn't detect something I've noticed while riding my bike.  

From Regated

I wish I'd photographed the lines of "Trump" signs posted on front lawns along the Connecticut, Westchester and New Jersey streets I rode last Friday and Saturday.  Some of them stood next to signs calling for Hillary's incarceration.  

Through the past spring and summer, such signs sprouted, like fungi after a rainstorm, with increasing and alarming frequency, along my bike routes on Long Island and even in parts of this city, the bluest of the blue.   

Of course, being on the road, I saw plenty of "Trump/ Pence--Make America Great Again" bumper stickers.   And, let me tell you, they weren't all on pickup trucks:  I even saw one on a Prius, of all cars!   

But what if I'd presented some pollster or talking head with photos of Trump signs and bumper stickers, or other evidence of Trumpmania I observed?  Would they have paid any attention to me?  Somehow, I think they wouldn't have, any more than the market researcher I was would have listened to someone who actually spent time in clubs, dance halls and the like in order to determine what music people were listening to.  Or the store manager who can tell you what is selling and what isn't.  

So, even though I didn't take those photos or otherwise record the evidence of Trumpophilia I saw from my saddle, I guess I'm not responsible, after all, for his election.  Or so I'd like to believe.

Cycling, In Living Color

Time was when I wore nothing but black:  black leather, black lycra, black latex and black everything else.

Yes, I even had an all-black bike outfit before carbon fiber and the "stealth" look became so prevalent!

Now, understand that I was young and had just moved back to New York:  to the East Village, no less.  Even two of the three bikes I owned at that time were black. The Peugeot PX-10 was available only in white the year mine was made. Somehow that was overlooked in the circles in which I found myself.  Actually, I know how:  None of them were cyclists, and I'm not sure that any of them saw me on my bike.  And if they had, I'm not sure they would have noticed or recognized me:  Rare was the occasion on which we saw each other sober or in daylight.

Anyway, in my "black" period I was keeping a terrible, terrible secret.  No, it's not the one that became the subject of my other blog. Well, all right, I was keeping that secret, but that's not the one I meant. Nor was it that I'd voted for Reagan. (I didn't, but I later learned that some of them had, in secret.)  Or that I was having splendid relationships with my family:  My father and I were barely on speaking terms at that time.

My hidden vice, if you will, had to do with my tastes in art. Actually, the fact that I cared about art at all would have enraged some of my not-so-fellow-after-all travelers.   Some of them thought the whole idea of art was inherently bourgeois; at least one wore a T-shirt that read "I Hate Art."  (I thought she was talking about her ex until I learned otherwise.)

My dim, dark perversion was...my weakness for Jean-Honore Fragonard, which I retain to this day.  Yes, he represented every excess of the ancien regime.  When the Reign of Terror descended upon Paris, he fled and died, nearly forgotten, a decade and a half later.  Given the sort of person I was in my faux-punk days, I could have hated him for painting such subjects as the wife of a nobleman on a swing in her garden, much as I once hated writers like Henry James for their focus on high society.  (I've gotten over that!)  

So what attracted me to such paintings as "Blind Man's Bluff" and "The Stolen Kiss"?  All right, the title--and the none-too-thinly-veiled eroticism--of the latter.  But even more important, to me, were those colors.  Oh, those colors!  And the way he used them!  

(Hmm...Maybe I'm really a magpie in a human's body.)

So of course I had to get myself out to ride today.  No classes on a cool, fairly windy day when fall is just starting to tip toward winter.  The sun shining brightly.  And colors everywhere.  

I figured that if the red, orange and yellow leaves were so vibrant in my neighborhood, they must be blazing in other places--like, say, New England.  Or, more specifically, the part of it closest to me:  Connecticut.

So now you know where I rode today.  I pedaled into the wind most of the way up, which sharpened my senses, I think. (That, or the colors were even deeper than I thought they were!)  And Arielle, my Mercian Audax, felt even more lively than she usually does, which is saying something.

Call me shallow or trivial or--if you want to sound like someone who's trying to sound like he or she knows better--a sensualist who has never grown up.  And I won't, as long as I can do rides like the one I did today.  They just might keep me from fading back to black!

Is It A Junk Food? Or An Energy Bar? Or A Performance-Enhancing Substance?

Sometimes I give advice in topics about which I have absolutely no business advising anyone.  Sometimes I'm pressed into it:  Someone thinks I know something about some topic on which I'm about as well-versed as Hon. Dana Rohrabacher is on atmospheric science.  Other times, I think I know more about something than I actually do, or--believe it or not ;-)--lose sight of that (very thin!) line that separates my opinions from facts.

When people assume I know more than I actually do about something, they ask--and I give advice--about dating, family relationships, how to deal with co-workers and bosses, love, education, politics, fashion, careers or the existence of God(s).  When I think I know more than I actually do, I find myself giving advice about any and all of those topics, as well as health and almost any academic subject.  (I hope my department chair isn't reading this!)  And, of course, when I start conflating my opinions with knowledge, I start advising people about cycling equipment!

There is, however, at least one area in which I never have given, and do not plan to give, advice.  

Even when I was skinny and in excellent condition, I never presumed to tell any cyclist--or anyone else--what or how he or she should eat.  It's not for lack of knowledge:  I know, probably, as much as any layperson about nutrition--current notions as well as almost any from the past 40 years or so.  Nor is it from any noble desire to do good or not to do harm.  Rather, my reticence about proffering nutritional advice has more to do with the fact that I would have trouble doing such a thing with a straight face.

No matter what kind of advice I might give on the subject, I would be a hypocrite.  Even when my body-mass index was lower than my age, my diet would have appalled just about any nutritionist--whether of the orthodox, holistic or any other variety.  Not only did--do--I eat pretty much whatever I liked, whenever I wanted it, I gulped exactly the things we were told not to touch when riding, or ever.

Now, in my defense, I'll say that while I was on bike tours, I was more interested in sampling the local fare than I was in maintaining a regimen that would keep me at my maximum efficiency. (You would be, too, unless you were in a race!)  So, while in Europe, I downed lots of bread and cheese and dark chocolate--though, to be fair, I also ate plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables I picked up from roadside stands and farmers' markets.  

So..when I should have been gnawing on Power Bars or downing Energy Gels, I munched on jambon-beurre all over France.  In fact, one j-b I ate in a truck stop between Menton and Frejus--more than thirty years ago--remains one of the best sandwiches I've ever had.  Hey, if a place like that can elevate something with three ingredients--a demi-baguette, ham and butter--to an art-form, why in the world would you want a Clif Bar?

But my food choices while cycling have not always been even that elevated.  I was reminded of that today when, before starting a ride to Coney Island, I ate something I haven't had in a while:  Pop Tarts.

Yes, I admit it!  In fact, for a time, I never left for a ride without tucking one of those packets with two 'tarts into my jersey pocket or Camel Back. My riding buddies were doing the same, especially when rumbled up and down the trails in Vermont and upstate.

What made them so popular with our sub-segment of the mountain biking community in those days--about two decades ago--was the "rush" we got practically the second we swallowed a bite of one.  Especially from frosted brown-sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts:  I think they contained every kind of sugar ever concocted in a food processing plant!

Today I ate two cherry 'tarts'.  I was always partial to them, and to the blueberry and strawberry ones. Then again, it's hard to go wrong with any of those fruits.  But coming up with the brown-sugar cinnamon tarts was a real accomplishment.  As far as I know, neither the UCI nor the Olympic Committee has banned them!

I hear that now there's a whole-grain version.  Does that assuage your guilt?

It's About Time They Took Control Of Those People!

There was The Look.

It was knowing and hateful--with a healthy dose of fear mixed in.  The giver wanted to instill fear in the receiver. But the receiver had already done the same:  Something in his walk or demeanor said, "Don't F- with me."

I know it well because I was the intended recipient of The Look.  And I was getting it because I had wrapped myself in psychological barbed wire.  The person who gave me The Look wanted to sell me drugs or his or her body.  Or lure me into a "theatre"--or an alley. Or try to suck or force me into some other scheme or scam to part me with my money and leave me part of the sidewalk or pavement, at least for a moment.

What I have described was an experience of walking 42nd Street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to Times Square about thirty years ago.  That stretch of "The Deuce"--the street's nickname--was, of all New York City thoroughfares, the one in which a person had the best chance of being the victim of a crime.

Today Times Square has been turned into a cross between Disney World without the rides and a shopping mall.  Fresh-faced families flock to the same sorts of chain restaurants and stores they could find in their home counties--with higher prices.  And, instead of pimps, prostitutes and hoodlums, costumed street perfomers and "painted ladies" accost tourists and ply them for cash.  Some of those performers are even more aggressive than those old denizens of the demimonde I remember from my youth. 

At least, they seem more aggressive. Or, perhaps, they are because they can be to those fresh-faced families, who have no experience in walking by people they have never seen, and never will see again.  They do not have the ability to wrap themselves in psychological barbed wire and be unaffected by The Look.

Now the City Council is scheduled to vote on a measure to regulate those ersatz Batmans and Wonder Women, and all of the other costumed characters who terrorize Times Square.

I used to fancy myself a libertarian. Sometimes I still do.  But I know when regulation is necessary, or at least beneficial.  This is one of those times. I mean, do we want people running around the fashion capital of America looking like this?:

 

Hershey's, Naked

If I offered you something "naked" with a name you would normally associate with chocolate, would you:

• grin
• take out your camera, or
• report me?

Well, someone once offered me just what I've described.  I was younger and in better shape than I'm in now.  Perhaps that was the reason I was offered said item for free.

Now, one of the first things I teach young people is that if something is free, you should take it and figure out what to do with it later.  And, back when I was made an offer I couldn't refuse (well, I could've, but it would've taken more self-discipline than I had), I took it.  So if you are one of the young people to whom I've offered said advice, at least you know now that I'm not a hypocrite!

Anyway...nakedness and chocolate.  Believe it or not, those two qualities are associated with a bicycle component--which is what I was offered, and took! 

(Was this your idea of "bike porn"?)

That bike part was made by Hershey. If you are like me, when you hear that name, you probably think of the maker of Kisses and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (and, in the US, of Kit-Kats).  Or, perhaps, an actress who, for a time, was known as Barbara Seagull might come to mind.  Unless you were cycling during the '90's (when else?), however, you might not associate the name with componentry.

The decade was actually wonderful in all sorts of ways.  In the world of bike--especially mountain bike--parts, though, it was absolutely whacky.  As I've mentioned in other posts, it seemed that as if every 20-year-old in California whose father had a lathe was making bike parts and anodizing them in never-before-seen colors with names that made the ones given to shades of Opi nail polish seem like RGB codes.  I mean, Kooka and Topline cranks broke at inopportune moments (Does anything ever break at an opportune moment?) but you had to love the fact that you could ask for either with a 3D Ultra-Violet finish.

Now, I don't know whether Hershey Naked hubs were as fragile as those cranks.  Although I accepted the one I got for free, I never built or used it:  I traded it, I think--whether for something bike-related or not, I forget.  For one thing, I didn't need another wheel (especially a front) at the time.  For another, I was riding a set of wheels with similarly-constructed hubs from another maker and had a problem with them.

All of Hershey's hubs, including the Naked, were constructed with flanges bonded or pressed to a shaft.  In contrast, hubs from Campagnolo, Mavic, Shimano and other more traditional manufacturers are made with forged one-piece shells.  The Hershey Naked hub's shaft was made from some sort of clear plastic material that wasn't called plastic.  I guess it was supposed to save weight.  It did, of course, allow you to see the inner workings of the hub, just as the clear face of a "skeleton" watch reveals the gears and wheels behind the "hands" and numerals.

At the time I was gifted with the Hershey Naked hub, I was riding wheels with Nuke Proof hubs that, like the Hershey, consisted of aluminum flanges attached to  shafts.   The shafts on my Nuke Proofs were carbon fiber; they--like the Hersheys--were also available with titanium or alloy shafts. (To my knowledge, NP never offered a clear shaft.)

As I related in another post, the flanges of my Nuke Proofs actually detached from their shafts and collapsed toward the center of the hub.  Other cyclists I knew had similar experiences with those hubs, and others that were similarly constructed.  Now, for all I know, a Hershey hub--even a Nude version--might have fared better.  But I didn't want to take a chance.

I haven't thought about that Hershey hub in a long time.  Now I wonder whether the person who got it from me ever built it.  Since it was the '90's, I can imagine him--or someone--building it with "rainbow" spokes, and Velocity rims and alloy spoke nipples in colors (anti-freeze green, anyone?) that clashed with the 3D Ultra Violet finish of the hub flanges! 

Get Out Of My Way!

If you read the post I wrote yesterday, you might not believe what I'm about to say.

OK, here goes:  When I sluicing the glass and concrete canyons of Manhattan--delivering everything from the title for land on which towers would be built, pizza with anchovies and pineapple (it smelled even worse than it sounds!), an Andy Warhol print (to Judy Collins, no less!), payroll documents and little packages with their unwritten, unspoken "don't ask, don't tell" policies, if you know what I mean--cab, truck and limo drivers actually used to back or steer out of my way when they saw me coming. 

Then again, if you knew me in those days, you'd know I'm not exaggerating.  Heck, people used to cross the street when they saw me.  I was young, full of testosterone--and angry, about being full of testosterone as well as other things, real and imagined.

Being a bike messenger was probably the one job (OK, one of the two or three, perhaps) in which being young and angry--and stupid enough to believe that my anger was a sign of how smart and sensitive I was--served me well.  I was quick; I got lots of deliveries and tips and a few gifts.  And, oh yeah, a couple of dates:  I guess it has something to do with what you've heard about sex with crazy people.  (It's true.  The only problem is that, once the act is done, you have that crazy person to deal with.)  It's probably a good thing I was a bike messenger:  It's probably one of the few jobs in which I could physically channel my rage and not get myself into trouble--let alone get paid for it! 

Now, if you've been reading this blog--or if you know me--you know I'm not the badass I imagined myself to be--or, at least, tried to make people believe I was.  I know that and, honestly, I'm happy about it.  Everything in life--including bike riding--is better even if I don't have the physical strength I once did.

Still, I take pride in knowing this guy has nothing on the bike messenger I was back in the day:

From Engadget

 

Your Secret Is Safe With Me

Nearly every one of us has done something we won't admit--except, perhaps, under extreme duress-- to having done.

People have confided such misdeeds to me. Back when I was a Rutgers student and riding with the Central Jersey Bicycle Club, a ride leader about three times my age whispered to me that he voted for Richard Nixon.  One of my fellow students, who wanted to be the next Sir Kenneth Clarke, confided to me that he once paid full price for a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet--in hardcover, no less!  And a woman I dated tearfully related how, around the time she was entering puberty, she had a crush on David Cassidy, a.k.a. Keith Partridge.

Of course I assured them their secrets are safe with me.  I am not breaking my promise:  I am sure that none of them read this blog.  In fact, I know the Nixon voter never will, unless he can see it from that great bike path in the sky.

Now it's time for me to come clean.  No, I won't tell you about the things I've done behind closed doors:  Some things are best left to the imagination.  (I assure you, though, they were done only with consenting adults and no endangered species were harmed.)  I actually had a Members Only jacket--and copy of Spandau Ballet's True. (The latter was a gift--I swear!)  I also straddled the 80s trends of camouflage and neon colors:  When I wanted to look tough and macho, I did camo, but in my heart of hearts, I loved that neon pink, especially my Italian winter cycling jacket in that color. 

And I also--please, please don't tell anyone--wore something that looks even more ridiculous now than Duran Duran's hairdos: 

So you wore them, too?  OK, I promise not to tell.  I had a pair of those Oakley Factory Pilot goggles, circa 1985, in--you guessed it--neon pink. 

To be fair, they were more practical for cycling, in a number of ways, than traditional sunglasses.  For one thing, they had interchangeable lenses. So you could wear smoke-gray on sunny days, the amber lenses on cloudy days and clear ones at night.  Also, because they wrapped around the temples, they provided protection from wind and insects as well as sun.  (I really appreciated them the time I got caught in a sleet storm during a ride!)  Finally, they weren't as fragile as other sunglasses were.

But they seemed to cover the face of just about anyone who wore them. 

Now that's a strange combination:  Oakley Factory Pilots with a "leather hairnet".   But he needn't worry:  His secret is safe with me!  ;-)

 

Saturday Night's All Right For Cyclin'

How much cycling have you done on Saturday nights?

I believe that when most of us think of a "Saturday ride" or "weekend ride", we're not thinking about riding after dark.  Even if we're not going on a date, to a show or for the other things we normally associate with the middle of the weekend, we don't usually think of cycling.

Don't get me wrong:  I have cycled on Saturday nights.  However, it doesn't normally happen by design:  I'm out after dark on Saturday because of an emergency or because my ride lasted longer for some other reason I didn't foresee.  

And, I'll admit, in my youth I went for rides that ended in my (and, sometimes, my riding buddies') getting somewhat intoxicated.  Believe it or not, I was once pulled over for CWI (Cycling While Intoxicated)!  When I was at Rutgers, I'd gone to a party in Highland Park, on the other side of the Raritan River.  The cops claimed I was weaving and wobbling as I crossed the bridge from Highland Park back into New Brunswick.  I didn't get a fine, but somehow I managed to convince the cops that I'd get home intact.  I don't remember what happened after that.

Anyway...If someone asked me whether there's a part of the week during which I ride least, Saturday night might be my answer.

Not so for this young man in Slovenia:

From Bike Park Slovenia Blog

Perhaps the lyrics to a certain Elton John song were mis-translated into Slovenian!