ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Annual No Pants Subway Ride hits cities around world

NEW YORK

Subway riders in New York City and other places around the world got an eyeful when their fellow transit users stripped down to their underwear.

The annual No Pants Subway Ride took place Jan. 8.

The event is organized by the Improv Everywhere comedy collective. It started in 2002 in New York with seven participants.

Organizers say pants-less subway rides were scheduled to take place this year in dozens of cities around the world. Philadelphia’s version is sponsored by a laundry delivery service.

Participants are told to get on trains and act as they normally would and are given an assigned point to take off their pants. They’re asked to keep a straight face and respond matter-of-factly to anyone who asks them if they’re cold.

500 Muscovites brave intense cold for bike ride

MOSCOW

For hundreds of Muscovites, the fact that the temperature had plunged to 17 degrees below zero was no reason to avoid going for a group bicycle ride.

About 500 cyclists, many equipped with fur hats and other nonstandard gear, had a ride of about five miles along the Moscow River on Jan. 8 as the capital shivered through a fierce cold snap. That was the last of Russia’s winter holiday period that stretches from New Year’s through Orthodox Christmas.

The roundtrip ride from a residential area to the Kremlin was the second annual iteration of a winter ride aimed at demonstrating that bicycles can be year-round transport. The popularity of cycling in Moscow has soared in recent years as city authorities improve paths for two-wheelers to navigate the notoriously traffic-choked city.

A moo-ving rescue: Stranded cow winched across frozen pond

MONMOUTH, Ore.

A cow stranded on ice in western Oregon experienced what might be called a moo-ving rescue.

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office got a report Jan. 6 about a cow that had ventured onto a frozen pond, fallen and couldn’t get back up.

A deputy sheriff, the cow’s owner and a friend of the owner rushed to the rescue. The sheriff’s office says the owner used some lassoing skills to get a rope around the cow from shore.

Video shows the bovine being steadily winched across the ice on its belly, safely reaching shore, and then moseying back toward the barn.

Sheriff Mark Garton said Monday the cow is doing just fine.

Associated Press