Contest below!

Regulars readers of Cyclelicious know I have no skill for humor. I thoroughly enjoy Bike Snob NYC, however. A couple of copycats have popped up who try to copy his formula for humor, including my own computer scripted Autosnob experiment.

A couple of people have asked me how the Autosnob works. Like any computer program, it follows a formula, and I follow the formula perfected in the Bike Snob’s “Worst of Craigslist” posts. If you want to create your own Bike Snob franchise blog, here’s how you, too, can gain fame, fortune, and interviews with Bicycling magazine and big name bike blogs.

Write the preamble. This is an introductory paragraph or three setting up the overall theme of the post. Bike Snob makes effective use of metaphors and similes. For the Autosnob, I grabbed the text from various “worst similes” websites. Here are some freebies:

• Visiting Craigslist is like the required community service you did cleaning the homeless shelter bathrooms.
• Craigslist is like the trailer trash of bike want ads. Let’s make another visit to the trash heap.
• This Craigslist bike ad is like Def Leppard on a bad hair day, except just like Def Leppard, every day is bad hair day on Craigslist.
• Reading Craigslist bike ads hurts just the way your tongue hurts after you staple it to the wall.

You get the idea.

Select your Craigslist ad. The best ads are ones with photos, so select your city or region and search for “fixie,” limiting your search to the title text and posts with photos. You might also want to set a minimum price to weed out the small trash (like old broken pedals) that people peddle on Craigslist. Here’s an example of this search.

I’ve selected this ad for you to experiment with in the comments. It’s an ugly 25 year old bike with missing parts, junky cell phone photos, and a ridiculous price.

The owner is also obviously clueless: “just got a new bike. this one’s too big for me(i’m almost 5’10”). it’s almost 33″ stand over hi. it’s probably from the ’90s. i’m not too sure. it’s a fuji del rey. it’s set up with a fix gear cog. i have a free wheel for it. i also have a smaller front chain ring for it. i even have the old deraillers and gear shifters if you want to turn it back to a bike with gears. i have drop bars or bullhorns that i chopped from drop bars. i have one or two brakes and levers for it.”

Mock the ad. But do it with cleverness and style and pop culture references. The obvious things to mock on this bike are the missing saddle, “33 inch stand over hi,” “one or two brakes” (He’s not sure? At least he spelled it right), $225 for a bike that sold for $300 new in 1983, and what looks like a Polaroid as a spoke card. You can probably do something clever with the color — BSNYC likes to find similarly colored objects for his Craigslist finds. This color reminds me of eggplant, but people pictures are funnier. It takes more work, but a photo of a has-been celebrity in a purple outfit would work well here. Here’s the best of both worlds: A has-been celebrity who looks like an eggplant!

Obligatory mentions. If the bike is a Pista, be sure to mention the Pista-dex. For any recent fixie, be sure to compare the price against a new bike’s MSRP. If the handlebar is partially wrapped, you must mention the “dog erection” look of the bar.

Colorful euphemisms. I’m a fan of BSNYC’s euphemisms. For example: “I loudly admonished him for having Oedipal tendencies.”

Try your best! Write a snobby review of the Fuji Del Rey linked to above. Put your “Worst Of” review as a comment here or in your own blog (be sure I can find it). A panel of celebrity judges (TBD) will determine the best ad among the entries. The winner gets a $20 Amazon gift card. The usual rules apply: I need your valid email address if you’re the selected winner, and this contest must be legal in your area. Contest deadline is next Wednesday, December 5 at 6:30 p.m. U.S. Pacific Standard Time.

Check it out — bike hacker Bruce Ingle created a two chain fixed gear bike from leftovers, spare parts, and aftermarket modifications.

Of this bike, Sheldon Brown writes, “Disclaimer: This is a highly-advanced hack! Do not attempt it unless you have great confidence in your metalworking and mechanical ability. This article assumes that you are already very familiar with the inner workings of Sturmey-Archer AW 3-speed hubs. If you have any questions that you can’t figure out the answer to from this article, you’re not ready for this!”

Read the details and see more photos of this “bichain fixed/free bicycle drive system” at Sheldon Brown’s website of wonderful things.

BikeBiz is calling it a case of putting his foot in his mouth, but if bike retail in the UK is anything like the USA, maybe Raleigh UK managing director Mark Gouldthorp’s recent comments should serve as a wake up call and opportunity for improvement. Instead, the UK bike retail industry group shot back at Gouldthorp noting that nearly 80% of bikes sold in the UK are through the independent retail channel.

Gouldthorp recently was quoted in the Guardian newspaper saying, ““Independent retailing in the UK is a shambles. It is real Steptoe and Son (the UK inspiration for the US “Sanford and Son” show) stuff. If you want to imagine the typical independent bike dealer, he is 50-60, highly cynical, miserable, moaning, scruffy. That’s my customer.”

In spite of Gouldthorp’s apparent views on his retailers, Raleigh UK is profitable and growing in sales. Read more at Bike Biz.

LED turn indicators for bicycles. A UK design company has created a set of front and rear bicycle lights with integrated turn signals. The Bicygnals indicator bicycle lights feature a 5 LED white light for a front light with 8 orange LED turn signals and a 3 LED rear light with 6 orange LEDs for the rear turn signals. A switch on the handlebar-mounted front unit activates both front and rear turn indicators via wireless communication.

This light is available from UK distributors for about £40, which works out to about US$80. Some of the online shops will ship to the USA for another $20 or so, with shipping from these online retailers also available elsewhere worldwide.

For product and buying information, visit Bicygnals. I know Sue (who published a bike haiku today has been looking for something like this. These run over $100 including shipping, so I think I’ll stick with hand signals for now.

I’m trying to find the website for a new bicycle built around an infinitely variable drive system. I vaguely recall seeing something about it, something that I noticed only in passing. The reason I ask for help is because I simply cannot find it, and my increasingly porous memory doesn’t help at all.

We were talking about electric cars at work today, and someone mentioned this drive system as a better alternative to an automotive automatic transmission.

Google to invest tens of millions in renewable energy. “RE < C” effort to make renewable energy cheaper than coal.

Google today announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as RE<C, will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies. RE<C is hiring engineers and energy experts to lead its research and development work, which will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas. In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy. As part of its capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.

“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers,” said Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products. “We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal.”

Page added, “There has been tremendous work already on renewable energy. Technologies have been developed that can mature into industries capable of providing electricity cheaper than coal. Solar thermal technology, for example, provides a very plausible path to providing renewable energy cheaper than coal. We are also very interested in further developing other technologies that have potential to be cost-competitive and green. We are aware of several promising technologies, and believe there are many more out there.”

Page continued, “With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward. Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades.” (One gigawatt can power a city the size of San Francisco.)

“If we meet this goal,” said Page, “and large-scale renewable deployments are cheaper than coal, the world will have the option to meet a substantial portion of electricity needs from renewable sources and significantly reduce carbon emissions. We expect this would be a good business for us as well.”

Coal is the primary power source for many around the world, supplying 40% of the world’s electricity. The greenhouse gases it produces are one of our greatest environmental challenges. Making electricity produced from renewable energy cheaper than coal would be a key part of reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions.

“Cheap renewable energy is not only critical for the environment but also vital for economic development in many places where there is limited affordable energy of any kind,” added Sergey Brin, Google Co-founder and President of Technology.

Strategic Investments and Grants

“Lots of groups are doing great work trying to produce inexpensive renewable energy. We want to add something that moves these efforts toward even cheaper technologies a bit more quickly. Usual investment criteria may not deliver the super low-cost, clean, renewable energy soon enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said Dr. Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, “Google.org’s hope is that by funding research on promising technologies, investing in promising new companies, and doing a lot of R&D ourselves, we may help spark a green electricity revolution that will deliver breakthrough technologies priced lower than coal.”

Working with RE<C, Google.org will make strategic investments and grants that demonstrate a path toward producing energy at an unsubsidized cost below that of coal-fired power plants. Google will work with a variety of organizations in the renewable energy field, including companies, R&D laboratories, and universities.