After the heavy talk and something like introspection going on here lately, I thought it was high-time for some meaningless pander to my demographic. I’ll also be packing up my family soon for relocation to Portland, and I plan to make the trip with wife, dog, and cat safely stowed inside the car and my three kids inside kennels strapped to the roof. No doubt the same “nurture nazis” who think it shows a deficiency of moral character to “Romney” the family dog will cry foul here as well “Oh, you drove three thousand miles with your kids screaming on the roof,” I can hear the parenting critiques now, “How could you do that? What’s wrong with you?” and blah, blah, and really how can you explain the necessity of this without meeting my kids, shown here uploading the source code to Norton Anti-Virus 2006 to The Pirate Bay?

No one puts baby in a corner, Symantec.

Or here, protesting what I was serving for dinner?

So to preempt the inevitable criticism, here is my official act of pandering: bicycle riders are so great!

Last Thursday in Chicago, Eric Puetz witnessed a mugging while riding to work at his bike shop, then stalked and pounced on a mugger. Quoth Puetz, “”The real thing that made this possible was the bike. I think we should nominate this bike as the hero.” A Redline Conquest? Abso-freakin-lutely! Redline’s been making badass, affordable ‘cross bikes for a long time now, and it’s about time somebody used on for crime fighting.

"Guilty as charged But damn it, it ain't right There's someone else controlling me."

No word on the quality of the dismount that took down young Lars UlrichLarry Bostic, the assailant, but I’d like to imagine it looked like the complete opposite of this.

And then there was last Monday’s story of Kevin Pratt, the cyclist who jumped into the Willamette river in my soon to be home of Portland to rescue a developmentally disabled man who’d misjudged the degree of difficulty involved in swimming out to a dock. Just a great story.

And the heroes in both cases. Bicycle riders. Just remember who brought you all this positive awesomeness when I need some of you as character witnesses.