Inventing shit and saving the world.

A reader sent me the following email this morning:

Dear PooBah,

I've got a kick-ass Swedish video that you HAVE to see.  It's from Sweden.
Check it out and let me know what you think.

Jorgen


I joke.  Actually, I wish that was the video he sent me.  The actual video Jorgen sent me was the following, entitled "The Invisible Bicycle Helmet."

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.  Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin have created an invention that....well, only its mother (or mothers in this case) could truly love.  In a nut shell, these women astutely sensed the need to completely redesign the bicycle helmet because:

1) "Bicycle helmets have always looked the same"
2) "It would be revolutionary"
3) They're "going to save the world"
4) To "become millionaires" and lastly
5) To try to achieve more comfort...

Regarding this last point, one of the creators explains,

"I always thought bike helmets were extremely uncomfortable."

...despite being apparently unfazed by the discomfort of wearing these:



Continues Anna, or maybe its Terese (I don't know which is which)....regarding conventional bike helmets...

"They're so bulky, like a hard mushroom on your head."

Was it just me - or did anyone else pick up on some awkward silence after Terese (or Anna) said, "like a hard mushroom on your head."  Moving on....

The women thus set out on a 7 year, 10 million dollar journey to design the world's first 'Invisible Helmet'.  According to the video they first "studied bicycle accidents and compared them to normal biking."  (For me, biking accidents are synonymous with normal biking - but that's why I'm nursing a fucked up shoulder incurred from just trying to pedal to work one morning.  I digress.) 

The inventors justify their mission:

"Cars are so yesterday. Bikes are the future."

As you can see, the girls are riding their bikes amongst a sea of cars (which shall henceforth be called "yesterday-mobiles" ) apparently helmetless.  Or ARE they?  Clever girls...

They get to work on their project in one of those refurbished warehouses with open-air office settings and whiteboards where everyone gets to interact and share ideas freely, probably pausing frequently to get in Nerf gun fights with their bosses and then have breakout sessions...

The women are wisely retrospective, and take time to marvel at what they've been able to achieve despite the fact they have breasts and ovaries.

"People wonder how girls could invent anything this technical."

Wow.  Ladies, I was wondering exactly the same thing!  Considering the historically poor math skills on standardized tests, tendencies to cry easily and the inability to safely commute to work one week of every month for fear of being mauled by bears attracted to your menstrual blood, it's a wonder the project has only taken seven years to complete!  But as we are carefully informed, the key ingredient to an orderly workplace is "getting a rooster," which must be Swedish slang for "hiring a female secretary to wear short skirts, make coffee and take memos."

"Get a rooster, and there will be order!"

So, so true.  The last thing anyone wants is a bunch of cocks running around the coop, smacking their hard mushrooms on people's heads.

At this point, it is finally time for the payoff.  Ladies, show us your Invisible Helmets...

Woah, whoa - hang on there sister!  Sure, I don't see a helmet on your head, but what's with the stiff shirtless turtleneck you are zipping on there?  It looks like someone ripped the collar off of a puffy ski-coat.  I don't get how that's going to....

Poof!

Oh I get it now!  It's like a Go-Go-Gadget inflatable raft....only for you head!

I know that some of you out there may be scoffing at this idea because a) it's not invisible, b) wearing a 5 pound collar made of nylon fabric, with accelerometer and sodium azide/postassium nitrate canisters around your neck looks potentially more uncomfortable than a 250 gram styrofoam lid, c) turtlenecks are so.....yesterday (kind of like cars) d) it was designed by feeble-minded girls.  But I disagree and have already ordered a couple.  Sure, I'm a little worried about premature inflation when I eat shit going over the first set of barriers racing cross this season - but after that, my noggin is going to be living the sweet life for the rest of the race, tucked away safely in its own personal blimp-crib, while yours is going to look like a giant, swollen, uncomfortable, hard mushroom.

And as much as I am going to love using this little gem, I have to warn these women that this isn't the first time someone has tried to re-invent an everyday necessity so that it wouldn't have to be there to uncomfortably nag at you when you didn't want it to, but rather could be summoned with a simple puff of air should the "need" arise...

Thus, I've engaged in my own entrepreneurial spirit and have taken the liberty of combining the two ideas.  Now you can kill two birds with one stone and have your inflatable companion ride your bike with you while simultaneously protecting your head!

And it didn't even cost me 10 million dollars.  

The kids are allright (the Canadian ones, at least)

On Monday, I reported on my experience riding in the New Belgium Urban Assault Ride in St. Louis, and I posted a photograph of two adults engaged in a post-ride adult-themed game.

I went on to make a little joke about how there were kids observing this game and how they might learn a thing or two.  Well, the mother of the observing child (whom I highlighted with an obnoxious green arrow) wrote in Monday to let me know that she was, in fact, "the happy recipient in the red shirt."  I would like to take this moment to applaud her sportsmanship, her readership and most importantly, her mothership, which was just about to be boarded as I took the photo...

And speaking of little kids, an interesting article has just been published in the journal entitled Injury Prevention which studied the effects of bicycle helmet laws in Canada on helmet use and bicycle ridership. 

The researchers found that both young cyclists as well as adults are significantly more likely to wear helmets as the comprehensiveness of helmet legislation increases, but that such legislation does not decrease ridership.  What interested me most about this article was the fact that when non-age specific laws (typically geared for riders under 18) were implemented, helmet use still went up in younger cyclists, thus suggesting that older cyclists serve as role models for the younger crowd.  Or  does this just suggest that youthful Canadians are more obedient of their parents?  Well, from my years of watching Degrassi Junior High, I seriously doubt it.....those kids were a bunch of hellraisers!

"But Alex, what aboot your helmet?"

If there is another thing that the Canadians are doing well in addition to wearing their helmets and obeying their elders, it's winning their time trials.  Svein Tuft appears to be coming in to form for the forthcoming Canadian road races as he demonstrated with a nice win in this week's Eneco Tour prologue in the Netherlands, yesterday.

This performance rounded out a good week for the Garmin boys with Tyler Farrar taking his second consecutive Vattenfall Cyclassics and Dan Martin winning the Tour of Poland.  Much like last year, Garmin seems to have decided to peak in the silly season of road racing.

Speaking of sillyness, I have really been trying not to comment on the ongoing Armstrong/USPostal investigation, despite the number of cycling blogs that are.  I am attempting to ascribe to somethng my father once told me, which is that opinions are like assholes in that everyone has one, and very rarely do you take interest in someone elses (unless of course you are a proctologist, or a blogger).  That said, with opinions (and assholes) weighing in on the debate of "did he" or "didn't he"  I thought some kind of a metric to measure public opinion on the matter might be interesting.  Thus, I uncovered two sites on Facebook thanks to the Cozy Beehive blog which may provide some assistance.  The first is entitled, "Petition to Drop the Federal Investigation of Lance Armstrong" and comes complete with a photo of LA in the maillot jaune carrying an American flag in Paris....

...and the second is called "Petition to Investigate Lance Armstrong For Fraud" with a photoshopped image of LA snuggled up next to a syringe:

If we look at the number of "People who like this" on each Facebook page, the numbers reflect that the individuals interested in dropping the investigation are beating those petitioning to investigate LA for fraud 108 to 3.  Obviously, trying to determine how the general public feels about this topic by following the number of Facebook Fans is statistically flawed, but more importantly, irrelevant, as is likely, the entire investigation.  I suspect people will fall into one of two camps:  Those that will support him regardless of the investigations' conclusions, and those that won't, again, regardless of the results.  And looky there, just like an asshole, I offered up my opinion.  If I were Canadian, I would have probably listened to my father better and kept my mouth shut aboot the whole thing.

Helmets: Unnecessary accessibility

We spoke yesterday about the fact that "looking good" and "being good" is not the same thing.  But, at least all things considered as such still look good.  That's something, at least.  But far too frequently, there are those items which neither look good nor serve a purposeful function, and one has to question if necessity is really the mother of invention....But no doubt, these things are born out of the attempt to make their use more accessible.

Take this series of photos of a new bike helmet a reader sent me:

I have no idea from whence this came, and therefore I give myself the right to do some promotional marketing for it.  As you can see, it appears to be a collapsible helmet.  With a couple of quick motions, our young female cyclist draws the banana-shaped object from her purse and pops it open to reveal a helmet-esque device, which she then dons, lickety-split.  With such foldable headgear, the great dilemma of having to suffer the indignity of hearing the phrase, "Is that a bicycle helmet in your purse, or are you just happy to see me?" is solved.  Of course the greater dilemmas that result are that #1) should this young lass fall on her noggin while riding this piece of origami, she's likely to bust her skull, and #2) the deep red color of this particular melon-lid, paired with her pink shirt makes this woman look like a penis.

But I think the penis has probably served as the natural design inspiration for this helmet:  Shrink it down when not in use, puff it up when it's business time.  And apparently there is a desire for such things as I also stumbled upon this one. Called the 'Tattoo', this, too, is a helmet which is able to be flaccid-ized for transport purposes, and then assembles into a rigid shape once the need arises....aka business time.

Unlike the Penis helmet, the Tattoo doesn't make this cyclist appear phallic, but does make her look a little like that hot chick from the 80's anime cartoon, G-Force: Battle of the Planets......

Ok, maybe not that much....

But if not looking  like the one-eyed wrestler while wearing your helmet is of dire concern, then you should take a look at Ecouterre.com's line of bicycle head gear.  They are so supersensitive of the penile-associated helmet appearance that the gallery of their products is actually titled: 

"Finally! Bike Helmets That Don't Make You Look Like a Dork!"

Unfortunately, they follow that up with this photograph, and all credibility is lost.

And these other fine examples don't help their cause.

Of obvious importance here, is that any bicycle helmet purchased and worn, should meet the minimum safety requirements set forth by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  Not wearing a bicycle helmet can lead to brain damage or worse.  As a public service announcement, I've included a video below that demonstrates the kind of debilitating brain injury that can result from NOT wearing a helmet and the effect this may have on cycling abilities.  WARNING:  This video contains graphic material which may not be suitable for everyone.

Sad, I know.  Don't let this happen to you.....

Pedal on!