Energy Crisis

Category: Humour

From the Front page of the New York Times **

September 10 2006 - Ottawa man solves World energy crisis!



François Côté (File Photo: shown at left) bon vivant, genius and all around swell guy, attended a press conference via a video feed from an undisclosed location today*.

Mr. Côté was accepting the Nobel Prize for Science along with the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian prize and a the Pulitzer prize for Swell Writing.

When asked how he came up with the Bigger Than The One In Front energy principle Mr. Côté showed his typical humility by saying:

a) It was nothing really and…
b) I had the tire.

Mr. Côté went on to describe how, one day, he decided to see what would happen if one had a tire at the rear of a bicycle that was bigger than the one in the front. “Wouldn't this sucker just run by itself?” he wondered.

Eyeing his wife’s smaller bicycle he took her front tire and replaced his bicycle’s front tire with her smaller tire.

“The effect was instantaneous” exclaimed Mr. Côté “the bike just took off on its own power”.

“It was downhill from that point on” Mr. Côté winked at his self-effacing comment.

“The rest happened very quickly. I first let some air out of the front tires of my car but that didn’t work because of added friction. It wasn’t long before I had my small donut spare tire and my neighbour’s spare (which he kindly lent me for the experiment) in the front of the car and off I went running with the engine turned off.”


When asked if he will miss the gas powered engine Mr. Côté who lives in Eastern Canada could only say “Well, I’ll miss freezing my ass off standing at the gas pump filling the gas tank in winter”. “Come to think of it I won’t miss the gas tank. Don’t need that anymore either!” he chuckled.

As sometimes happens with these things, not everyone is happy. Naysayers claim that Mr. Côté just lucked in despite faulty reasoning. Others postulate that Mr. Côté accidentally put a smaller tire in the front of the bike in the ground breaking discovery. To which Mr. Côté, with his Oscar Wilde rapier wit, could only offer - “Pftttt!!!”



*Mr. Côté who lives with his wife Rita and their cat Maggie-May is currently in hidding due to threats from certain members of OPEC.



Note: OK. So this story did not appear on the front pages of the New York Times, Sheesh!