I've done a few rides on Helene. Actually, they felt more like gliding: The frame is nearly as responsive as Arielle and Tosca, my other two Mercians, but is also comfortable without feeling too cushy.
However, there are two small changes I need to make. The Guidonnet (Contraty to popular rumor, they're not what Snooki would ride--if indeed she cycled.) brake levers and the bar-end shifters aren't quite to my liking.
The brake levers actually don't allow me to use the Porteur bars in the way I'd hoped. The clamp doesn't allow for the use of the forward part of the bar--at least, not for someone with hands like mine. And, the swept-back part of the bar I like is in a nether-world between the brake and shift levers: I can reach neither easily. And, finally, using the bar-end shifters has turned out to be more awkward than I anticipated.
Please understand that I am not making judgments on the quality or design of the Guidonnet levers or the bar-end shifter (an old Sun Tour ratcheted Bar-Con). They simply aren't suitable for the way the bike is configured or the way I fit and ride it.
So, I've just ordered a pair of Silver Tektro inverse levers from Velo Orange. I have a feeling those will work better for me, and will still fit in with Helene's aesthetic. And, since they won't allow for the use of a bar-end shifter, I'm going to try a down-tube shifter. Reaching it from the porteur bar doesn't seem like it would be much more difficult than accessing Arielle's downtube shifters from the "hooks" on her drop bars. I really would like to avoid using a shifter mounted on top of the handlebar (a "thumb" shifter) because, it seems, they would rob me of one or two hand positions that I like.
Well, there's one thing I've learned: When you get to a certain age and make changes, some things fit differently (if they still fit!) . But when you have, essentially, the sort of ride--or life--these minor changes are like little adventures and learning experiences.
I have this stainless steel floral chainguard designed by Toronto-based artist/designer Suzanne Carlsen and made in Canada. I'd planned to use it on Helene, my new Miss Mercian. But I couldn't because it wouldn't fit properly with the combination of bottom bracket and chainwheel I installed.
I thought about hanging the chainguard on my wall. Instead, I've decided to offer it as a prize in this contest.
So, you ask, what's involved in this contest? Just three questions. The first person who answers correctly wins the chainguard.
You probably know about Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel. Well, one of Duchamp's contemporaries used two parts of a bicycle to create a sculpture of part of an animal.
So, tell me: What work am I describing? Who created it? And, what bicycle parts were used to make it?
One caveat about the chainguard: The bracket that mounts the guard to the bottom bracket is included. However, the clip used to hold the rear of it on the seat- or chain- stay is missing. It is a common "P"-clamp, which you can find in a bicycle, hardware or boating supply store.
Ah, Helene really is a romantic after all:
What started out as a late-afternoon/early-evening ride turned into a moonlight cruise by Sheepshead Bay.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Brooklyn (no, Park Slope and North Williamsburg don't count), Sheepshead Bay is an inlet of the sea at the southern end of the borough. On one side of it are the eponymous neighborhood, a part of which ended up in the above photo. On the side from which I took the photo is a neighborhood called Manhattan Beach. The Bay itself is named after a fish that, if I recall correctly, was native only to the bay.
Anyway...the ride down there was one of the more interesting local rides I've done. Actually, it wasn't so much a ride as it was a light show.
I took this photo looking down a side street from Lee Avenue in one of the non-hipster areas of Williamsburg. Lee Avenue is probably about as close to a stetl as one can find in this country in 2010.
Many of the stores, like this one, don't have signs in English. And, I happened to be pedaling down this street on the first full day of Rosh Hashanna, just as when Hasidic families were leaving shul and walking to their homes, or those of extended family members.
Although the sky was overcast, the light seemed, well, light. Perhaps it had to do with the colors of those clouds: more blue than gray. That made them seem more like waves in the sea than bearers of storms.
Somehow, in my imagination, I always imagine preternaturally clear Prussian blue skies of la belle epoque giving way to graying inter-war skies and, finally, to those ominous iron gray curtains of clouds that preceded the long night that settled over the old stetls.
Now, before I start to sound like a really bad cross between Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (Only in Russia after the Berlin Wall fell could he have been chosen to host a talk show!) and Elie Weisel (whom I both like and respect as a writer and person), I'm going to get back to the topic at hand: riding, and what and where the ride brings me.
I feel as if riding these last couple of days has been about following light (if not The Light, whatever that is) as it radiates from some unexpected sources. As thick as the clouds have been, they did not seem heavy and have never threatened rain. And they have allowed at least a reflection of the hour's light
Or, more precisely, where the light has led me:
