(Subtitle: “Banach-Tarski! Banach-Tarski! Why isn’t this thing working?”)

You might (and I think should) have a right to be stupid. That doesn’t mean you should use it. I repeat myself: wear a helmet. Don’t be an idiot.

Also amusing this long after the fact: this is what the police report describes as “moderate damage to the frame”.

Also relevant: this, although the mangled sound track makes me want to do violence to the current state of copyright law that doubtless makes it hard to find an unaltered copy.

* I don’t really know that it can’t be repaired. Although when I was walking back from retrieving the bike from the Palo Alto police, I stopped by Palo Alto Bicycles just for giggles to ask if it would need a new frame. I’ll give you one guess at the answer. I’m unsure exactly what I’m going to do with the bike, or to replace it, just yet.

I’ve purchased groceries and household supplies at Safeway #705 in Mountain View on Shoreline intermittently for four years (regularly since March 2009). It’s the closest grocery store to my apartment and carries nearly all the groceries I need, so I rarely go elsewhere.

I travel primarily by bike, and I usually walk my bike inside with me when I buy groceries at Safeway #705. This is much more efficient if I’m only getting a handful of items, and I don’t have to worry about a wheel or a seat walking off. At all times of all days of the week, no employee has ever looked askance. (There are no automated checkout lines, so I always walk by a few employees when I pay.) I’ve never been asked to leave my bike outside.

Not until today.

Today I was told Safeway #705 doesn’t allow bikes inside it. I replied that I’d walked my bike in regularly, to no avail. So I went and locked up the bike, then returned to finish my little bit of shopping. (I was fortunate to have a lock, since I usually carry it to Safeway only when buying an especially large amount of groceries.)

I understand why a store might wish to forbid awkward, bulky bikes. (Still, they’re less bulky and much more maneuverable than carts.) But this makes Safeway #705 quite unusual for the area: no other grocery store has forbidden my bike. I have no reason but convenience to particularly visit Safeway #705. Other grocery stores as little as half a mile further away (even other Safeway stores!) have no problem with me taking my bike inside. Safeway #705 can exclude me, but I can retaliate: I can stop shopping there, and I can use this bully pulpit to tell others.

So in the future, Safeway #705, expect to see far less of me, and my money, than you have in the past. I may rarely show up when I especially need convenience (only if I have my lock), but you won’t be my default stop for groceries. I can suffer minor inconvenience to make my preference for bicycle flexibility known. Who knows? Maybe you’ll see light here; I wouldn’t bet on it, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

I suppose I should appreciate inexplicably being entered in your subscriber database since the May 2010 issue.

I suppose I should appreciate being sent glossy pages full of pictures of beautiful new cars. I do enjoy slick cars, after all (although to be honest, I’d take a classic car any day over something new). (Still, I much prefer to see the physical versions over mere pictures.)

But that doesn’t change the fact that I am perhaps the least likely person to ever succumb to the temptations posed most directly by the cars in your pages, or the accessories of all sorts advertised amongst them. I am a complete losing proposition for you: I don’t pay for your magazine, and I won’t pay your advertisers for it, either.

Maybe you think, because I’m in the 18-24 male demographic, the products in your pages will entice me. I think you will find few people so anomalous as me in that population. I don’t own a car (I bike), I rarely need a car (and on those occasions, borrowing or renting is significantly cheaper), and I don’t plan to own a car in the foreseeable future. And, for as long as I live in the Bay Area, that’s very unlikely to change.

I do appreciate your willingness to send me something for nothing. My office appreciates this, too. (Or at least it appreciates it no less than I do.)

But a friendly suggestion: if you really want to give someone a free subscription to your magazine, give it to someone who might actually read it.

(And in the unlikely event that someone decided to give me a subscription [presumably despite knowing just how little I care about cars] and I somehow missed the new-gift-subscription notice, I’m really sorry, but this magazine just isn’t for me: it’s complete deadweight loss. How about in the future we go do something fun together, mutually agreed upon, instead?)

~$40 well spent, as always. The person who rides a bike without a helmet just because he’s lazy is a fool.

Isn’t Bike to Work Day every day?

In passing I note that since the start of November when I started working after a post-graduation vacation I’ve poured exactly $0 in gasoline into the tank of my car. (Readers who suspect that this statement, in addition to being true, is vacuously true may be on to something!) How much did you spend doing the same over that time? Hmm, hmm? Also worth noting: my bike has a smaller carbon footprint than your hybrid.

One other note: this post was prerecorded because I’m currently attending Trail Days; I’ll be gone through May 19. Consequently, I probably won’t moderate any responding snarks 🙂 or other comments made by non-repeat commenters until then.