Hold Onto Your Seats

Airlines are always trying to stuff as many passengers as possible into every flight.

So it shouldn't come as any surprise that they want to find ways to cram more seats into every plane.  Barring any sudden changes in human evolutions or American diets, seats can be shrunk only so much before no one can sit in them.

Back in December, European aircraft maker Airbus filed a patent for a new kind of seat:

A bicycle seat on planes?  Hmm.  I wonder if there are options for the kind of bicycle seat--racing, touring, cruiser, "Bummer" or whatever--a passenger might like.

An even better idea might be to install pods that can take  bicycle seats of the passengers' choice, including the passengers' own. I mean, if I want to ride my Brooks B17 or someone else wants to spend a flight perched on an '80's Concor, Ideale 90 Speciale Competition,  Terry Butterfly or Dimension Noseless saddle, why shouldn't we have that choice? 

Of course, if the airlines did that, they'd find an excuse to charge even higher fares. Or they actually implement an idea Ryanair had a few years ago.

What Didn't Stop Him, And What Kept Him Going

A man riding his bicycle strikes a barbed-wire fence and flipped over his handlebars.

Ouch!

According to police officers who pursued him, he continued his flight on foot.

I'm having a very difficult time imagining how the man managed not to entangle himself in the barbed wire if he flipped over his bars when he crashed into the fence.  

And I'm having only a slightly less difficult time envisioning someone who took such a tumble--whether or not he was impaled with the barbed wire--getting up and running away.


Maybe I'm just a wimp with a low pain threshold.  Or, maybe the man's ability to endure suffering is explained by what the cops found beside his bike:  a box of prescription pills.  After they used a TASER on him, they also found a marijuana pipe in his pocket and a small amount of marijuana in an undisclosed location.

 

He's quite the character:  A warrants check showed that he was wanted for possession of a controlled substance, injury to a child and bond forfeiture related to his failure to comply with a sex-offender registration law.

Hmm...Maybe the pot and pills weren't the only reason why he got up and ran after crashing the bicycle into a barbed wire fence and flipping over the bars.

From what I see in the photo, the bike doesn't look any the worse for the experience.

Photo Shoots (Or, Da Pikshas)

Now I can stop kicking myself for toting a camera with a dead battery on an otherwise-perfect ride.

Since then, I've done some more riding, with and without my cameras, on all of my bikes.  Amidst all of that pedal-churning and wheel-spinning (in the rest of my life as well as on my cycling), I managed to take some photos of Arielle and Tosca with their new (sorta) looks.

First, here's Arielle with the RuthWorks SF Brevet bag and wedge:

A little closer, now:

Now for some details:

To the rear:

In the middle:

Back to the front:

Tosca, being ever the diva (with a name like that, why wouldn't she be?), wants equal time.  She deserves it:

Putting one foot (wheel or bag, anyway) forward:

Since I am a woman now, I can show her rear without being accused of sexism:

Here's what makes her go:

And an accessory she and Arielle both love:

And a little detail she reveals to those who are nice to her: