I Went On A Perfect Bike Ride And All I Brought Back Was This Picture

A day off from work.  Barely a cloud in the sky.  Warm, but not overly so.

Sounds like a great time to ride, right?

And ride I did.  On Arielle.  The ride was even breezier than the day.  In fact, at times, it seemed just as easy when I was riding into the breeze as when it blew at  my back.



I did a metric century (105 km, or 65 miles, to be exact) and was no worse for it.  In fact, I felt even more invigorated at the end of it.  The only reason I didn't ride longer, or take another ride, is that I have a couple of things to take care of tonight to prepare for my participation in Pride Weekend events.

So where's the rub, you ask?   Surely you don't read this blog for conflict-free stories (Is that an oxymoron?) and happy endings, now, do you?



All right, there was one slight problem.  Along Rockaway or Coney Island Beach, I wanted to take some photos of Arielle with the Ruth Works bags and new handlebar tape.  When I stopped at a spot along the reconstructed Rockaway boardwalk where I thought the light was particularly nice, I turned on the camera.  Actually, it didn't turn on:  The battery was dead!



I think I accidentally turned it on the last time I put it away.  I have another battery that I keep in the charger and when I switch batteries, I put the depleted one in the charger.  Unfortunately, the charged battery and charger were in my apartment!

So I took only this photo with my cell phone.  It's not bad, given the phone and my skills. But I couldn't capture the kind of detail I'd hoped to have in new photos I would have used to update the blog.  Oh well.

Which Mercian Should He Ride Today?

It wouldn't surprise you too much to know that one of the blogs on my reading list is Mercian Cycles'.

People are amazed when they find out that I have four Mercians.  My usual response usually goes something like, "I'm the luckiest girl in the world."

(All right, now you know where my priorities lie!)

I figured that there are other people who have more Mercians than I do, but I don't know any personally.  I'd like to meet them--or look at their collection, anyway!

One such person--or, more appropriately, his bikes--are the subject of today's post on the Mercian Cycles blog.

A fellow named Kyle--who goes by the nom de blog "Retrogrouch"--has just restored a 1980 Strada Speciale with period-correct parts, including a first-generation SunTour Cyclone derailleur, Simplex retrofriction levers, milled Sugino Mighty cranks with "drillium" chainrings and Campagnolo Nuovo Tipo hubs.  This Strada Speciale, he says, is his eighth Mercian.

His collection includes vintage as well as modern models--and a modern bike with vintage Campagnolo parts that looks like a vintage bike.  They're all lovely bikes, so it's hard to decide which I liked best.

If you've been following my blog, though, you can probably understand why I like his 2008 Strada Speciale track bike:



or his 2012 Vincitore, built as an urban/path bike:



or, for that matter, his second Mercian, a 1979 "Classic":



I'd love to know how Kyle decides which bike to ride.

A Ride To Point Lookout And A Father's Day Mystery, Almost

Today I broke a promise to myself and rode to Point Lookout.  It's not that I have anything against PL or the ride; i just figured traffic would be heavy on the way to the beach on a warm, sunny Father's Day.

Well, there was some traffic going over the bridges from Broad Channel to the Rockaways and Rockaway Beach to Atlantic Beach.  But it wasn't as bad as I expected.  I guess people had backyard barbeques (I saw a fair number of those) or celebrated in other ways.

It's interesting to see couples , usually middle-aged or older, who raised kids who've moved out.  I guess once a parent, always a parent.  I often see such couples on Mother's Day as well:  On that day or Father's Day, it's common for one spouse to take the other out for lunch or dinner.

I wondered if one such couple was at Point Lookout when I got there:

For a moment, I didn't see anyone else, let alone a couple who might've worn those shoes.  Could they have wandered out into the water only to for one of them to have a heart attack, or a memory lapse?

Fortunately, I saw them walking on a sandbar.  No kid was anywhere in sight.  

An Ideal Ride, Almost

Many cyclists have their own, very particular definitions of the "perfect" conditions for a bike ride.

Me, I don't have one scenario for the ideal ride.  Rather, I have a few different visions of the best conditions for a day of pedaling.

One of them came true today.  The temperature was neither too warm nor too cool:  For most of my ride, they hovered between 21 and 25C (70 to 77F).  They started as the former and rose to the latter before dropping back as I approached the Atlantic shoreline.  Further inland, the temperature rose to 30C (86F), according to the weather reports I saw. But I was spared that.

But even more important were the sky and light.  The sun shone, mostly through a filter of puffy clouds that did not threaten rain.  So I enjoyed the benefit of bright light without having the sun beating directly on me as it did during my Somerville ride on Memorial Day.

Plus, I encountered relatively light traffic.  I figured I would, which is one of the reasons I decided to do another Point Lookout ride today.  Tomorrow, the weather is expected to be the same, maybe a degree or two warmer.  Because it will be a Saturday, throngs of people will flock to anyplace with a beach.  But today I didn't have to be around them:  Long stretches of sun, sand and waves were almost entirely mine!

The only "smudge", if you will, in this picture was the wind.  It's not that I'm wind-adverse.  Rather, I found myself riding with the wind on the way out, but I had to buck it on the way back.  Like most cyclists, I prefer the opposite.  But I won't complain:  Everything else, including Tosca, was Ideal.  And any day I can ride is a blessing.

One Person's Trash Is Another Person's...Honjo? LeFol?

I used to know people who never bought furniture or electronic equipment:  They furnished their rooms, apartments or even houses—and made music, phone calls, designs and algorithms—with stuff people left curbside for sanitation workers to pick up.  I still know someone, a musician and bike mechanic (If he’s reading this, he knows who he is!), who has never purchased a power tool or even a vacuum cleaner:  He has refurbished stuff other people discarded.  He even owns a couple of bikes acquired that way. I, too, have had such bikes in my life.

Maybe it’s because most of my acquaintances and I are well into middle age that I no longer hear of people filling their living spaces with beds, couches or even desks or cupboards other people no longer wanted or needed.  Perhaps young people are still doing such things and I just need to make younger friends.  Or it may be that concerns over bedbugs and contagious diseases have stopped people from constructing their living spaces from the flotsam of other people’s lives.

I admit it’s been a while since I’ve done anything like that.  In fact, when I see piles of furniture and books, or bags of clothes or concatenations of toasters, blenders, food processors, microwave ovens, stereo equipment, light fixtures and framed prints relegated to the edge of the gutter at the beginning or end of a month (when people move out), I almost never stop even to take a look.  For now, I don’t want any living being besides Max or Marley to take up residence in my apartment unless he or she is helping me to pay the rent or is a partner in a recreational (not procreational!) activity with me.

The other day, I rode by an apartment full of stuff without the apartment abandoned in front of a recently-built waterfront condo building on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg.  I wouldn’t be writing about it if I hadn’t noticed something from the corner of my eye and checked it out.

It’s not every day that someone leaves behind a pair of hammered aluminum fenders with a randonneur-style rack. It would be serendipitous (Is that an actual word?) enough if they were from Velo Orange.  But I knew, as soon as I picked them up that at least the fenders aren’t.  

The pattern on them consists of hexagons that are more sharply defined than the polygons on the VO fenders:

I doubted then, as I do now, that they’re original LeFol or other vintage French fenders.  But could they be Honjos?  The pattern matches.  And, even more interestingly, they are 43 mm wide, the same as Honjos, whereas my VOs are 45 mm.  (VO also makes 35mm hammered fenders.) 

But I didn’t see any sort of markers to indicate their provenance.  I’ve seen a couple of pairs of Honjos before, but I can’t recall whether they had any decals or emblems on them.  I also don’t know whether some other company is making fenders that look so much like Honjos.  It’s not inconceivable:  After all, how could Honjo claim a patent infringement when its own fenders replicate 50- or 60-year-old French designs?

Anyway, the fenders are in excellent shape.  There’s a little bit of dirt on the underside, which shows they were ridden, but not much.  There are a couple of indentations where the fenders were fitted between fork blades or seat stays.  They were drilled for some frame that had threaded fitments in the fork crown and underneath the seatstay bridge, as Helene (my newer Miss Mercian) has.  The holes don’t seem gouged or otherwise enlarged and have no cracks or other stresses around them. So, if I wanted to use the fenders on Helene, fitting the front should be no problem, but the hole in the rear might not line up with the fitting on the rear bridge. 

Of course, I could plug that hole and use the fender with a bracket—on Helene or Vera.  But the rack is not meant to be used with panniers or loads of more than a couple of kilos—both of which I sometimes carry on Vera.

Before I try anything, I want to ascertain that these fenders are actually from Honjo (or LeFol?!) and not some knock-offs that would be a downgrade, quality-wise, from my Velo Orange fenders.  

Looking Out

Yesterday was the sort of warm late spring day that lets you know summer is near.   It wasn't as oppressive as last Monday, when I rode to Somerville, but the wind and sun necessitated hydration.

I'll spare you all the cliches about water being everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

It's called Point Lookout because, well, people look out.  So do birds:  There was one standing on the sandbar out just past the waves.  Do they ever think about whether it's a beautiful or terrible day? Do they think beauty is subjective?

All right:  I wasn't tired enough to think of silly questions like those when I got to PL. It was an invigorating, but not exhausting ride out there and back.  That has at least something to do with Arielle:

Even in this cell-phone photo, you can see why she likes going to Point Lookout:  something about the air and light there bring out her natural glow.