What If She'd Gotten A Gravel Bike?

A few years ago, it seemed that the "buzz" in the bike world was about "gravel bikes".  

I can't say I've ever owned anything specifically designed as a "gravel bike".  I have, however, ridden all sorts of bikes--some my own, others not--on gravel.  Perhaps the bikes I pedaled most over pebbly surfaces were my mountain bikes and the one cyclo-cross bike (a VooDoo Wazoo) I ever owned.  I've also ridden road and touring bikes on such surfaces, usually as part of some other ride I was doing:  When you go on a loaded tour outside urban and suburban areas, you're bound to ride on gravel or dirt some time or another.  I even rode my racing bikes, with sew-up tires, on gravel--if not for long distances.

I suspect that most, if not all, of you have ridden on gravel with a bike that wasn't designed for the purpose.  And most of you were no worse for the experience than Gaynor Yancey was after running her brand-new "English Racer" into the rough stuff.

(I suspect Ms. Yancey isn't much older than I am:  I referred to the three-speed bike my grandfather gave me as an "English Racer", as most people did in those days!)

Just remember that you don't have a gravel bike!

She, like me, did not plan her plunge into the pebbles:  She encountered the crunchy stuff in the course of her ride.  But her foray didn't end so well because she wasn't as prepared as I was.  As she relates, she'd never before ridden a bike with "hand brakes".  So, when the paved street on which she'd ridden ended, she wasn't able to follow her mother's instructions to stop and walk her bike over the gravel path to her friend's house.  She was so distracted by her vision of showing off her new bike to her friend, she says, that she "forgot about the handbrakes."

She ended up with a knee full of gravel.  "And, on top of that, my beautiful new bike was hurt," she recalls.

Would things have been different if she'd gotten a "gravel bike" instead of an "English Racer" for her birthday?

A Columbia Folding Bike--From England?

I came of age as a cyclist during the '70's Bike Boom of North America.  Ten-speeds were the bikes of choice.  Of US bike manufacturers, only Schwinn had been producing derailleur-equipped bikes in the years before the boom.  Other manufacturers--such as Columbia, Murray and AMF--began to offer "lightweight" bikes made of flash-welded gaspipe tubing with derailleurs and hand brakes.  To be fair, Schwinn's "lightweights"--with the exceptions of the Paramount and Superior--were also tanks with derailleurs fitted to them.  

AMF Hercules three-speed, made in England

A similar scenario played out during the 1950s and 1960s.  While the number of adult cyclists--and the demand for adult bicycles--were nowhere near as great as that of the 1970s, both increased gradually during those two decades.  And American bike manufacturers were not ready to produce the bike requested by adults:  three speed "English racers".  None--not even Schwinn--had ever made such a bike.

Schwinn responded in the way they would to the demand for ten-speeds in the 1970s:  they fitted their heavy frames with Sturmey-Archer three-speed hubs and called those bikes "lightweights".  On the other hand, other American bike companies did something that would have, in an earlier decade, seemed unthinkable:  they imported bikes and re-badged them.  

So, English three-speed bikes were sold under the brands of AMF (Hercules), Huffy and other American companies.  Strip away their decals and they are indistinguishable from Raleigh, Rudge or other English three-speed bikes of the time.

Columbia was another American manufacturer who imported English three-speeds.  That fact leads me to believe that this Columbia might also have been made by one of those British manufacturers:

The tell-tale signs of a Raleigh folding bike are there:  the brakes, the Sturmey-Archer hub, the cottered crank (at least in the style seen on that bike).  But the frame doesn't look like any of the folding or "shopper" bikes Raleigh was making at the time.  The frames of most such machines had, in essence, a down tube but no top tube.  The reverse is true on the Columbia in the photos. I wonder how that affects the ride.

I watched the bike on eBay a few months ago. No, I didn't buy it!  I admit, I was tempted: It would have been an interesting project.  Apparently, not many of those bikes were made, and from what I could find, Columbia offered them in only one year:  1966.

Fifty years later, no bike like it--or, for that matter, the old English three-speed--is made today.  And, of the bike brands mentioned in this post, only two exist today:  Schwinn and Raleigh.  Both are owned by conglomerates and their bikes are made for them in China or Taiwan.  Which means, of course, that it's unlikely that any bike like the Columbia folder will be made any time soon.

As The Sun Sets On Newtown Creek, A Ross From The Land Of The Rising Sun

In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Manhattan Avenue--one of the neighborhood's main throughfares--dead-ends at Newtown Creek.  One recent year, the Environmental Protection Agency declared it the nation's most polluted body of water. (In other years, the Gowanus Canal has garnered that distinction.)  But when it doesn't win "the Prize", the Creek is almost always listed among the most polluted bodies of water in the nation.

Of course, I don't think about that when a late day ride takes me there and I take in the views.

There's a nature walk along the creek.  By its side, at the end of Manhattan Avenue, there's a green patch with a fence around it that's a popular place to lock--and, it seems, abandon--bicycles.

Sometimes the bikes left there are rather interesting in their own ways.  For instance, there was this Ross 3-speed:

Ross was known mainly for making "muscle" bikes like the Barracuda (which was intended to compete with the likes of the Schwinn Krate and Raleigh Chopper) and some of the early production mountain bikes.   Their factories were located in Rockaway Beach, NY and Allentown, PA, before production moved to Taiwan.

However, during the 1960s--on the eve of the North American Bike Boom--Ross imported three-speed bikes from Japan.  At that time, few Americans owned or rode bikes with derailleurs.  Thus, most adults who rode--and kids who wanted something lighter than the baloon-tired "bombers" made by Schwinn and other American companies--preferred three-speed bikes, which were called "English racers".

Most of those bikes were made by the likes of Dunelt, Sunbeam, Robin Hood and other companies--and, of course, Raleigh, which would later acquire most of those marques and all but monopolize the remaining market for that type of bicycle.

However, as demand grew, those old English manufacturers couldn't keep up.  Thus, bikes were imported from Japan. One of my first bikes--a Royce-Union--was one of those English-style Japanese three-speeds.   As you can see in the photos, bike-makers in the Land of the Rising Sun did everything they could to emulate, if only visually, the "English Racers" that were so popular in the US and elsewhere.

(When Centurion ten-speeds first came to these shores in 1969, they could very easily be mistaken for Raleigh Grand Prix machines of the same year--unless, of course, one noticed the SunTour or Shimano derailleurs, as well as a few other details.  At that time, most Raleighs came with Simplex or Huret derailleurs.)

Some Japanese bikes came with leather saddles, also made in Japan, that resembled the offerings of Brooks, Ideale and other British and European makers.  I don't know whether the bikes made for Ross came with them (I can find practically no information about the bikes), but somehow I doubt it.  Even if it came with a leather saddle, I doubt it would have been this one:

You probably think it's a beat-up Brooks B72:  the saddle that came with many British three-speeds.  It does indeed have the same looped under-carriage rails and saddlebag slots built into the saddle.  And the top is the same size, and has the same shape as the B72, with a couple of exceptions:

It is indeed a B18. The embossed floral pattern at the top is wearing down.  I don't know whether it's from use or abandonment.  Somehow I don't think it's an original-production B18 from the 1930s, worn as it is.  The design was resurrected about a decade ago, as classic-style ladies' city bikes became popular.  The curled front is designed to prevent a skirt from getting caught on the saddle.

Whatever the story, the saddle is a nice addition to the bike, though I think it deserves better than to have bird poop on it.  I have to wonder, though, how the bike rides with this bar and stem combination:

That extension of that stem must be about 120mm.  That makes the steering more sensitive.  And, of course, the bars increase leverage.  I would be curious to ride the bike just to see how a bike that's not made for quick cornering rides with touchy steering.  Maybe it's a good combination for riding in traffic.

Anyway, I hope the bike isn't abandoned.  It may not be anyone's idea of a "great" or "classic" bike.  But it certainly is practical (except for those bars!) and I am always glad to see a bike like it in circulation.  At least, I hope, it won't become part of the detritus in Newtown Creek!

Oil And Mud

On Charles Street in Greenwich Village--just a couple of pedal strokes from the Hudson River and the Greenway that rims it--there's a shop that calls itself the "Downtown Upright Bike Shop."  I guess I'd prefer that to a Downright Uptown Bike Shop, and I'm sure I'd like it better than a Frowntown Uptight Shop.

In any event, Hub Cycles is an interesting place.  With its open front, entering it is rather like walking into a flea market.  It's somehow appropriate--among the rows of "Dutch style" and "city" bikes from Biria, Linus and like companies, one finds the unexpected, such as this:

The red bike behind the Biria has an unusual combination of design and construction:  It looks as if someone crossed an English three-speed from the 1930's with an American baloon-tired bike from built by, say, Schwinn or Columbia during the same era.

As you can see, it has the "camelback" design common on the old Schwinns.  The curved top tube connects the head tube with the seat tube cluster. On diamond-shaped bikes,the seat stays would connect the cluster to the rear drop outs or fork ends.  However, on this bike, a pair parallel tubes arcs from the downtube, across the seat tube and down to the dropouts.

What's really oee is that the top tube is joined by lugs while the curved twin tubes are spot-welded.  I guess there really is no other way to join them.  Still, I was a bit surprised to see such a construction method on a British bike.

The bike, as it turns out, was made by Dunelt, one of the best-known manufacturers of classic English three-speeds.  (It, like many other makers of such bikes, was acquired by Tube Investments--the parent company of Raleigh--during the 1950's.)  The head badge and chainring bearing the manufacturer's name were present, as was a faded transfer or decal on the seat tube.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the bike is this:

The hole on the bottom bracket shell is meant for an oiler.  If that sounds familiar, you probably have a classic Sturmey-Archer multigear hub--or, perhaps, some old BSA or Chater Lea pedals, hubs or headsets.  Those components--and the bottom bracket in the shell of this bike--were not made to be greased.  Instead, the oil--which had to be applied regularly--served as both lubricant and cleanser, helping to flush grit out of the mechanism.  

Such designs make a lot of sense when you realize that bikes like the one in the photo were made to be ridden on dusty country lanes that frequently turned to mud developed ruts big enough to have their own representation in Parliament.  People who rode such bikes often were far from the nearest bicycle shop and did not have specialized bicycle tools.  So, bikes and parts were designed to need "tear downs" as infrequently as possible.

Generations of people who used such bikes as their main means of transportation as well as for recreational riding were accustomed to the notion that their Sturmey-Archer hubs needed a teaspoon of oil every month or every time they rode in heavy rain or other harsh weather.  

Americans, on the other hand, got out of the habit of depending on their bikes--or of adults riding bicycles at all.  So what was common knowledge in Britain and the rest of Europe was forgotten.  That, I believe, is the reason why so many Yanks end up with otherwise-good three-speed bikes on which the gears don't work:  Necessary maintenance, minimal as it was, went by the wayside.  

The good news is that Sturmey-Archer three-speed hubs made before the mid-1970's or thereabouts can usually be resurrected if the inner parts haven't corroded or rusted together entirely.  The bad news is that fewer and fewer mechanics know how to service those classic parts.

Anyway, in a rather perverse irony, the bike I saw today was equipped with a new-production Sturmey-Archer hub that doesn't need to be oiled.  That, to me, was more offensive than seeing the other replacements and modifications--including the hammered fenders, which I actually like on the Dunelt.

What's Your Idea Of A "City Bike"?

What is your idea of a "city bike"?

Some--including Grant Petersen of Rivendell--think that an old mountain bike with a good rack is, if not ideal, then at least the best possible.

Others, such as hipsters and some messengers would tell you that a fixed-gear bike is the only thing you should ride in the concrete canyons.  They would argue for the sheer simplicity of it.  A few would even go for a pure track bike with no brakes and a tight wheelbase, which makes them maneuverable.

Then there are those who want a plush bike to ride over sewer grates, potholes and all of the other hazards of the urban landscape.  Such riders--particularly those who do no other riding but their commutes--might opt for a hybrid or mountain bike with suspension in the front fork, and even in the rear.  Or they might ride cruisers or other fat-tired bikes.

There's also the English three-speed camp.  They are probably the most immune to fads:  Such riders will clatter along on their vintage Raleighs, Dunelts, Rudges and other machines from Albion.  Because they're immune to fads (at least in bikes), they never think of their mounts as "vintage," even if they those bikes were made before they were born.

Cousins, if you will, to the English three-speed crowd are the ones who like Dutch-style city bikes.  Some might also argue that these cyclists are variants of the comfort-bike crowd.  The difference is that, not only are the Dutch bikes built for comfort and durability, they also come with features that you may have never thought of having on your bike but "might come in handy", such as built-in locks and lighting.

And then there are those who like the speed and nimbleness of the road bike, but want a more upright riding position and a bit more style.  They're the ones who ride French-style city bikes and porteurs, which are based wholly or in part by the elegant machines made by constructeurs such as Rene Herse and Alex Singer.

Finally, there are the rat-rodders.  In other words, any bike that looks like it's been to hell and back is the right bike for the city.  Lots of cyclists here in New York follow that credo, which makes a lot of sense when you have to park your bike in high-theft areas.  The rat-rod can be just about any kind of bike; these days, the majority (at least here in New York) seem to be ten- or twelve-speeds from the '70's or '80's, or mountain bikes from the '90's.  Think of the guy (Yes, he's almost always a guy.) who delivers your supper from the Chinese restaurant or diner:  He probably brought your meal on a "rat-rod."

A variant on the rat-rodder is the urban cyclist who rides a Frankenbike.  You've seen them: the Specialized Rockhoppers with Schwinn Varsity rear wheels; the Peugeot ten-speeds with high-rise bars and forks in a color (and style) that clashes with everything else on the bike.

In the nearly three decades in which I've been riding in New York, and through the years I biked the boulevards of Paris---and while biking on trips to other large cities like London, Prague, Amsterdam and San Francisco, I have seen my notions of the "ideal" city bike evolve and change.  Sometimes I want comfort; other times, I want a bike that I can leave in urban combat zones as well as those areas--like the neighborhood around St. Mark's Place--to which thieves gravitate.  At times, I've craved speed and the ability to slice between parked cars and belching buses; at other times, I've worried about preserving dental work.  But I've always thought about what's practical for my errands, commutes and other ride-and-park activities like shopping.  And, of course, I've changed, and so has the city in which I live.

What's your ideal city bike?  Has your idea of it changed?  If so, how?

Is It English Or American?

Today, if someone has heard of AMF, he or she is most likely a bowler.  AMF remains one of the main manufacturers of pin-setting machines and other equipment used in kegling.

However, not so long ago (I say things like that to make myself feel young!), AMF was actually one of the world's largest bicycle manufacturers.  Around the same time, they also manufactured Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  But AMF bicycles never inspired the sort of loyalty that HD motorcycles have long enjoyed, and with good reason.   Most AMF bikes--which were sold under the "Roadmaster" name--were sold in department stores and were inferior even to other department-store brands like Murray and Columbia.

Roadmaster was a free-standing bike brand before AMF took them over in 1950.  A few years later, AMF would sell another line of bikes made for them in England--in Nottingham, no less.  You may well have seen one of those bikes, sold under the name "AMF-Hercules".  I saw a pretty fair number of them when I was growing up.

Those bikes bore all of the hallmarks of an English three-speed:  the same kind of lugged frame made from mild steel, the steel sidepull brakes, handlebars, stem and cottered cranks--and, most important, the same Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub.

In fact, if you stripped away the AMF-Hercules decals and badge, you'd probably think you were looking at a Raleigh, Rudge, Robin Hood or one of any number of other English three-speeds from that time.

However, the AMF-Hercules bikes differed in a few details from their Anglo peers.  It seems that AMF marketers thought that the bikes would sell only if they were given some of the same baroque flourishes found on American balloon-tired bikes (like the Schwinn Phantom and Hollywood) of the time, which in turned echoed the fulsomely-fendered and lushly-chromed cars of the time.

I mean, look at that chainguard.  Would any bike maker in Albion come up with something like that?  Or look at the two-toned seat and matching bag.  I don't recall seeing anything like those in the Brooks catalogues!

So...Was it an English bike trying to be American? Or was it an American bike in the body and soul of an English bike?

Excelsior!, Or The Case For Bike Baskets

The next time someone makes fun of you because your bike has a basket, show him or her this:

The bike is an English three-speed.  So you know that once it's freed from the snow, it'll work just like it did before the storm.  What that means is that, for one thing, the brakes won't work worth a damn if the rims are the least bit wet!


Still, I'd take that bike over some of the others I saw in and around the piles of snow around the Bel Aire Diner:

Some would see that photo as a good case for a mountain bike.  Chacun a son gout.  Or is it de gustos no hay escritos?


But not all fourteen of the bikes parked around the diner were so isolated:

There are normally at least a dozen or so bikes parked around the diner. Sometimes some of them serve as "donor" bikes for the others.  


The US Postal Service claims that they deliver through snow, sleet, hail and the dark of night.  With all due respect to them, I can safely say they have nothing on the delivery guys at Bel Aire diner.  And, of course, the Postal Service doesn't serve French toast any time of the day you want it!