Sorta Cutting Edge News

Well, the buzz from Interbike has subsided and breaking news in the bike business just isn’t breaking much at the moment. No new products or scandals to report. I do have a few interesting gems, though. For starters, Litespeed angers the animal-lovers front, Eddy Merckx loses 100 pounds and proves you’re never too old, Nokian Tires changes owners and gets all warm and fuzzy with earth-friendly tires. We’ve also got some news about one cyclist’s attempt to ease the impact of the war on Iraq.

LITESPEED PISSES OFF PETA

You may have heard this one already, but I still think it’s worth a spin. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recently handed out its annual Litterbox Awards and Litespeed Bicycles landed on the list. For those of you who aren’t eating Tofu Turkey and affixing “Fur Is Murder” stickers to the bumper of your Volvo, a bit of explanation may be in order.

The Litespeed ad that made angry people even angrier

PETA’s annual Litterbox Awards are intended to highlight advertisements that glorify inhumane treatment of animals. This year PETA singled out Nike, Five Star Ranges, Ford and Litespeed as the dubious finalists. Nike took home the overall prize for an ad which, according to PETA, glorifies dog fighting. Five Star Ranges provoked PETA’s ire with an ad showing headless turkey’s dancing toward an oven. Likewise, PETA missed the humor of Ford’s online ad, which showed a car killing a pigeon which lands on its hood. Finally, Litespeed was singled out for an advertisement which showed an opossum that had been run over by a bike. "Litespeed’s ad campaign needs to switch gears," noted PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "Until the company stops making light of cruelty to animals, reaching today’s compassionate consumers is going to be an uphill battle." Litespeed actually pulled the opossum ad back in March in response to criticism from the Humane Society. At the time, Herbert Krabel, Litespeed’s director of marketing wrote the Humane Society the following in an email: "As it said in the ad, no animal was hurt in the making of the ad, and it was also not our intent to insult any reader. I am especially sorry that an ad which was seen as humorous by several people, offended possibly an equal amount of other people."

Maybe I’m an insensitive jerk, but am I the only person who thinks that perhaps the folks at PETA are taking things a bit too seriously? I mean, I can understand objecting to an ad that glorifies dog fighting (if the ad did, in fact, do such a thing), but headless turkeys and a dead opossum? Are these really worth getting angry about?

I’m all-for treating animals with respect, but there are a few other things on my long “list of shit to be freaked out over” that take precedence. Let’s see, there’s that potential, worldwide smallpox epidemic; the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan, the Euro’s growing strength against the U.S. dollar, the rise of HMOs, the unfettered success of “reality TV” programs, the fact that three of the four original members of the Ramones are dead….I could go on and on. Clearly, I’m a fairly paranoid person, but even in the depths of my paranoia and general grumpiness, I can’t work up one iota of angst over a dancing turkey corpse or a digitally-engineered image of a dead opossum. Color me uncaring.

EDDY RIDES AGAIN I saw Eddy Merckx for the first time at Interbike a few years back. He was standing in front of the baggage turnstile in the Las Vegas airport and—this is what shocked me—the guy weighed 220 pounds if he weighed an ounce. No joke.

I guess that shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. After all, Merckx hadn’t raced since 1978. It had been more than 20 years since he last laid the pimp hand down on the world of cycling. Who can really blame a guy for adding a spare tire or two in that time? Still, when you’re raised and weaned on images of The Cannibal as the hands-down, baddest mofo to straddle a bike during the 20th century (for all you non-roadies out there, we’re talking about no fewer than 500 career race wins), it’s hard to accept the truth of The Cannibal as just another fat, gray guy waiting for his suitcase at the airport.

Thus, I was greatly heartened when I came across a posting on cyclingnews.com which revealed that Eddy Merckx, the competitor, is back among the living. Merckx recently competed on a triathlon relay team in Eilat, Israel (his teammates included German tri legend Lothar Leder and Chagi Pagirsky, the chairman of the Israel Triathlon Association).

Merckx’s transformation from Belgian Pilsbury Boy to lean, mean 60-year old racer, is inspiring. You can scroll on over to cyclingnews.com for the photos. How’d Merckx fare? While I can’t tell you where his team finished, I can report that Merckx pedaled the 40-kilometer course in just 75 minutes.

HEALTHY TIRES? Cyclists often pat themselves on the back for being an earth-friendly group of folks and, in truth, riding your bike is a whole lot better for mother earth than, say, opening the throttle on an SUV that gets a whomping 12 miles to the gallon. Still, we shouldn’t kid ourselves: cycling does, in fact, exact a toll on the environment. Strip mining and toxic tailings, for instance, are just part of a long and plenty-dirty process of extracting and refining materials like aluminum and titanium. I won’t bore you with the details, but rest assured, anodizing frames, and smelting ore generally isn’t done in the same factory where Oompa-Loompa’s produce chocolate teddy bears and rivers of cotton candy.

Grippy, durable and now cancer-free!

Thus, it’s refreshing when manufacturers in the bike business make an effort to decrease their impact on the environment. Finnish tire-maker Nokian recently announced that they are aiming to produce completely carcinogen-free tires by 2005. The company has spent a decade developing rubber compounds that do not contain carcinogenic high-aromatic oils (common in many tires).

Since when did tires pose a threat to the environment? Oh, since the glorious 1950s when science rode in on its white horse, just poised to save the world with loving armfuls of nukes, asbestos, DDT and all that. But I’m getting carried away here….Since the 1950s, tire manufacturers have used high-aromatic oils (which are by-products of oil refining) to their tire compounds.

The high-aromatic oils soften rubber and help manufacturers improve their tires’ wear resistance, grip characteristics and rolling resistance. The downside of using high-aromatic oils in tires is that these oils also contain polycyclic aromatic compounds which cause cancer. Bummer.

To make matters worse, high-aromatic oils are not chemically bound to the rubber and, once the tires are worn out and tossed into streams, ditches or your neighbor’s front yard, they eventually leach all their nastiness out into the environment.

Jeff Holt, man of many body piercings and Nokian USA’s spokesman, notes “While most other companies have switched to Third World production to escape environmental law, Nokian has been working on and has perfected a carcinogen-free tire," said Jeff Holt, Nokian USA's spokesman. "This technology will be used in all future tire manufacturing under the Nokian name"

By the way, news on the street is that Nokian just sold off their tire division for $4.8 million, to another Finnish rubber company (Suomen Rengastehdas Oy….you know, those crazy Mentos guys). Actually, the aforementioned company has nothing to do whatsoever with Mentos, the Fresh Maker, I just felt like saying that. The new owner has, however, been in the business of making rubber gadgets since 1898, and they are telling the world that they will carry on the Nokian brand without firing any of the 59 workers or taking the manufacturing over to Asia.

CYCLIST DOES HIS PART The nation is bitterly divided over the war in Iraq, but regardless of where you stand on the issue, I think most of us feel for the soldiers who have been injured in the fighting. One group from Long Island, New York (Soldier Ride) is raising money for soldiers from Long Island who’ve been severely wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan and other “hot spots”.

Chris Carney dips his tire into the Pacific Ocean after pedaling 4,200 miles and raising $500,000.00

Chris Carney, a cyclist and active member of Soldier Ride, recently completed a ride across America in an effort to raise funds for the injured soldiers. Carney left Montauk, New York on August 17, 2004 and pedaled the 4,200 miles to San Diego, raising $500,000 in the process. The Wounded Warrior Project (a similar organization that has teamed up with Soldier Ride) has a website (www.woundedwarriorproject.org) with photos and testimonials from soldiers who’ve sacrificed their bodies for this country. Regardless of how you feel about the war, I think it’s worth checking out. Sobering stuff.