Who knew? I mean seriously, who would even have thought of it?

and here’s a link to the page of a similar machine (spec is a little different I’d guess, but it’s made by the same people in China).

The chief advantage of such a machine is comfort – no strain on shoulders and back, and most of all your arse – and the downside is slightly reduced speed compared to a normal two-wheeler (also known as a DF – diamond frame – or wedgie). Given that I’m not that fast anyway I don’t mind the slowdown, and the point at which it’s most noticeable, uphill, is compensated for by the fact that you can stop when you want without falling over! The guy who sold it to me (at a service station late last night, but it’s legit, honest) said that it’s very easy to go slowly, because it’s so comfy you start daydreaming and taking it easy without noticing. So basically a wheeled couch then; I’ll see if I can rig up a mount for our portable DVD player.

Checkout the front chainring on that thing. I doubt I could stay upright on that – it would be hard work to keep up with someone walking alongside you without your legs disappearing in a blur.

In theory you could make a carb+protein drink by taking something like a trout and running it through a blender with some orange juice. This would probably taste better than Accelerade.

…

I did try to come up with a scenario where I’d voluntarily choose to drink Accelerade and I think I’ve come up with it. I imagine a super hot day. I’ve just ridden the Issaquah Alps 100K loop four times without taking a drink. I stagger home, open the fridge and see two bottles. One contains Accelerade and one contains goat urine. In that instance, I would slam down the Accelerade.

I’d save the goat urine to wash the taste of Accelerade out of my mouth.

Why am I whining on about this? Well I just wanted to caution you about medical advice. Since starting my shoulder has hurt almost constantly, and am seriously considering a return to the doctor. On the upside I’ll be able to fulfill a lifelong ambition by holding my arm in the air and saying “Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this”.

All that’s a little more trouble than I care for (on my few longer rides I’ve tended to favour cookies at the aide stations and m&ms in between), so you can imagine how pleased I was to discover a way of constantly micro-dosing with protein, a method that requires literally nothing from the rider. All that is required is to cycle past a nature reserve in the run-up to dusk with your mouth open, and you’ll find enough micro-packets of protein to keep you fully fueled until you throw up or fall off in revulsion.

Clearly, then, cycling is so riddled with drug abuse it’s a wonder that, um, the riders don’t end up in an amusing situation linked to taking too many drugs, like when somebody eats so much garlic it’s a wonder they don’t speak French.**

Well, not so clearly. Cycling has perhaps the most stringent testing for athletes in the world – Rasmussen has been fired not for taking drugs, but for not making it sufficiently well known where he was so that he could be tested – and as a result it’s finding more cheats than other sports. Imagine if baseball were subject to compulsory drug tests for the winning team after every victory, or if you could visit a strongman during the off-season. Cycling undoubtedly has a problem, but it’s the fact that it is taking that problem so seriously that makes it so prominent.

The press at the moment is going nuts over the disaster that is this year’s Tour, with such prominent riders and teams being ejected. I think it’s a good thing; it’s hard to imagine a clearer way of saying “If you cheat, we’ll catch you, and you’ll be finished”. If the same thing happens in 2-3 years time that would be a disaster, but this cleaning house exercise is a good thing, not a bad one.

*Note for US readers – France is a small country in Yurp whose inhabitants are perhaps best known for being called ‘cheese-eating surrender-monkeys’ in The Simpsons. They also have a bike race.

**Oh, they eat garlic, too.

Every bicycle imported into the UK (there, I gave away what country I’m talking about) has a 14% import duty applied. This isn’t a protectionist measure, because we don’t have a domestic bike industry of any size. What’s left of the glory days is a number of specialist frame builders who are in competition with each other, but not with imported bikes built in bulk. It isn’t a general revenue raising measure, because any number of items have little or no duty applied; in duty terms, for example, it’s cheaper to play Pro Cycling Manager (0%) on your PSP (2.2%) than to actually go cycling (the aforementioned 14%). What it is, is that most pernicious of government actions – a tax that once served a purpose (back when we had a domestic bike industry) but now serves as an unnoticed source of revenue and creator of admin jobs.

Well no more, I cry lustily, no more! I’ve taken the ultimate step that every brave citizen in a democracy must do when pushed to breaking point – I’ve signed an official online petition complaining about the situation. What happens with these petitions, briefly, is that the petition eventually closes, a flunky for the PM’s office tosses off a dismissive response thanking us for our input and explaining that as a result of our feedback nothing is going to change, and we work on our flexibility to make sure we can reach our ankles with both hands.

In this case, though, I’m really curious about what that response will be. This tax (‘duty’ is a weasel-word) actively harms the government’s stated aims, in all the areas I mentioned above, and is demonstrably unfair to boot. So what could be the defense? I’m guessing something along the lines of “part of a complex network of revenue streams, can’t pick on one aspect in isolation, upcoming review of import costs, European constraints, thanks for your comment”.