The Provocations of Biking

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.

Discoveries made possible by person-powered wheeled vehicles
Compiled by D.L.N Travasco, AIR staff

Bicycling presents both an opportunity and a source for insights into human anatomy, physiology and, in a variety of ways, psychology. Here are several published reports on what might be called bicycle science.

Biking 1
Bicyclist’s Vulva: Observational Study,” (link NSFW) Luc Baeyens, British Medical Journal, vol. 325, July 20, 2002, pp. 138-9. The author is at Brugmann University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium.

Biking 2
Bicyclist’s Nipples,” B. Powell, Journal of  the  American  Medical  Association, vol. 249, 1983, p. 2457.

Biking 3
Effects of Altering Cycling Technique on Gluteus Medius Syndrome,” B.N. Green, C.D. Johnson, and A. Maloney, Journal of Manipulative  and Physiological Therapeutics, vol. 22, no. 2, February 1999, pp. 108-13. The authors, who are at  the Palmer College of Chiropractic West, San Jose, California, report that:

A  24-year-old  male amateur  cyclist  had numbness  and  tingling localized to a small region on the superior portion of the right buttock.... The cyclist had received chiropractic adjustments 2 days before the onset of the symptoms. One week earlier, the patient began riding a new bicycle with different gearing than his previous one.... Repetitive strain of the patient’s gluteus medius muscle as a result of poor cycling technique appeared to be the cause here.

Biking 4
Familial Idiopathic Priapism in a 48-Year-Old Man: Self-Treatment Through Bicycling,” F. Sommer, S.  Nazari, T. Klotz and U. Engelmann, BJU International, vol. 89, 2002, p. 791. (Thanks to Peter Melvoin for bringing this to our attention.) The authors are at University Medical Centre of Cologne, Germany.

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This article is republished with permission from the September-October 2005 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can purchase back issues of the magazine or subscribe to receive future issues, in printed or in ebook form. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift! Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.


Comments (0)

Ahh National Attention. For the record, I don’t care who was right, but take your loud kids out of the restaurant! Common Sense - Common Courtesy. As for Darla, I give her both sympathy and empathy and would eat at Marcy's anytime.
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My peeve are the parents who tell their kid they are going to do something and then don't follow through. I was in a store and a kid's in a cart and the mother was pushing it around the store. The kid was screaming and crying because - who knows? - but the mother said, over and over, "If you don't stop being naughty we are going to leave." This went on for 15 minutes. The kid still carried on with it's tantrum and the mother kept repeating her line. I was one lane over and finally piped up: "Leave! Honor your promise!" Well, she didn't but she was mighty mad at me. sheesh
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I'm not sure you can lump all noisy kids together. To me, there's a world of difference between sharing a restaurant with a child that's tired, or upset or whatever but is being tended to to the best of the parents' ability, as opposed to a noisy brat with parents who couldn't give a damn.
Both ours were generally OK, but they had their moments, but we were always trying to deal with the problem - and generally succeeded.
Compare that to parents who just ignore bad behavior and I hope you'll see they ain't the same and shouldn't be treated the same.
Yes - the effect on people around you could be the same, but only if they're interested in surface rather than cause.
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I am conflicted about this. On the one hand, I hate noisy kids, especially those who are just spoiled brats. On the other hand, I have a three year old daughter with ASD and she may suddenly throw a fit for no reason. We can usually calm her down but it takes a minute or two, which can be one to two minutes of absolute screaming. When we can't calm her down, I usually take her out of the restaurant and window shop for a bit (dads are in-charge of girls, moms with boys, is the rule right?).

When she's ready to come back to the restaurant, I look forward to cold food and everyone else has eaten theirs. =\
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Our oldest son was just horrible when we tried to eat out when he was around 2. We just didn't, ate home or used a drive-in or take out. He finally outgrew it and none of our 3 other children were a problem.
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I was just lucky. I had read up on how to deal with kids in public, and was ready with all kinds of plans. Then both my kids were always really good in restaurants. I guess they liked the food too much! My youngest even wanted to be a waitress for a couple of years because all waitresses were happy to see her.
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I must be in the minority when I say noisy kids just don't bother me. I mean I guess there's somewhat of a limit, like when a child is screaming just for the fun of it in a movie theater or some place like that and the parent is completely ignoring them. But even then it barely irks me, especially if the child is very young. Kids make noise, and I'm fine with that.
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Parents behaving poorly is not a new thing. I remember working in a restaurant many years ago. People with children often just didn't care. It seems that coming to a restaurant turns a switch off in their brains - suddenly, they're not at home, and the kids can run wild, throw tantrums, and create disgusting messes for the staff to clean up after they've left. I think parents may just be used to tuning it out or maybe they're really inconsiderate. Sometimes, they have no control, but that's where they have to learn how to control it. It doesn't matter why a child goes into screaming fits. It's a parent's responsibility to control it or stay at home.
In this case, the owner should have acted with more decorum, and politely told the family to tend to the child or leave. I can't really blame her for her response, but no yelling.
These parents were clueless as to how annoying their kid was, and will probably continue to inflict their dear child's tantrums with no remorse on other undeserving restaurant patrons.
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