If you are of a certain age (i.e., my age), you recall the early years of Saturday Night Live. Some of the most memorable moments came during some of the shows-within-the-show.
One such show was "What If?", which took zany, absurd takes on historical figures and events. One episode featured Superman landing in Nazi Germany instead of Kansas; another had Napoleon fighting the Battle of Waterloo with a B 52 bomber. Perhaps the most famous episode of all was the "What If Eleanor Roosevelt Could Fly?" sketch.
That got me to thinking: What if the Wright Brothers couldn't--or didn't--fly?
Or what if they had stuck to their original occupations as bike mechanics and designers?
I found this propellered bike on Strangefunkidz.com, but couldn't find any other information about it. I'd love to know how it was built and how much it was ridden--or whether it's still intact!
When my family moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey, I found myself taking turns at a new chore: mowing the lawn.
Frankly, I thought lawns were the stupidest things in the world: the grass grew, and you cut it every couple of weeks. You couldn't eat, drink, smoke or do much of anything else with it. And, if the weather stayed dry enough for long enough to lie on the grass, it was too coarse and wiry.
But, to tell you the truth, what I hated most about lawn-mowing was that I had to do it on Saturdays, when I could have been doing all sorts of other things--like riding my bike.
Maybe I would have been a more obedient and less cranky kid had I had one of these:
I can honestly say that I've ridden more bikes than most people will ever try. I've mounted steel, carbon, titanium and aluminum bikes--and, yes, one made of wood. Most of the bikes I've owned are/were high-quality steel ones; the others were aluminum. That said, the only material besides steel (preferably Reynolds, but Columbus, Ishiwata, Vitus and Tange are also fine) I'd consider for one of my "good" bikes--let alone a custom build--is titanium.
For all of the bikes I've ridden, I must say I now realize that the range of handlebar styles I've ridden is fairly narrow. I never rode or owned "ape hanger" or "trekker" bars, and I've had only limited experience with aero or "bullhorn" bars.
I've also never ridden bars like the ones Chris Kulczyki posted on his Velo Orange blog the other day:
I love Chris and VO. In fact, I use several VO products. But, for all of his love for traditional randonneur bikes made by constructeurs, I always suspected he had a secret liking of the bizarre. After all, he and I are about the same age and can recall when being an adult cyclist--let alone one with the sort of tastes we share, at least to some degree--made us minorities, perhaps even geeks.
When I use the later term, I don't mean to be derogatory in any way. I mean simply someone who cares deeply about something that's not considered part of the mainstream. Being transgendered makes me one almost by definition. So does my love of poetry and interest in foreign films. So, some would argue, does the fact that I have been part of the academic world.
Anyway, seeing Chris' latest post got me to type "weird handlebars" in Google. Some of the results are, not surprisingly, interesting and bizarre, even entertaining.
So far, this winter hasn't brought much snow up this way. However, we still have a couple of months to go. You never know what can happen.
That's the reason why you never know whether you'll need this bike:
The fellow who posted the photo uses the bike to train for triathlons. Seriously, he does triathlons and lives in Minnesota. Maybe he's using that rear wheel to grind the grain he'll use to make one of his training foods.
Once again, I cut through Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on my way home from work. It was the site of the 1964-65 World's Fair, for which its iconic Unisphere was built. Nearly three decades later, Men In Black was filmed there.
A German tourist I met in the park reminded me of that. In fact, he said, it was from watching Men In Black that he first learned about the borough of Queens. I was reminded of the time three young Germans approached me near the West Fourth Street subway station in Greenwich Village. They asked me how to get to the South Bronx. They wanted to go there because they had recently seen Fort Apache, The South Bronx. I tried, to no avail, to dissuade them from going.
But I didn't have to do anything like that for the youngish man from Munich I met today. He remarked on the wonderful light of this afternoon turning into this evening in that park as I took this photo:
All of the light has seemed different since my moonlight ride on the wee hours of Saturday morning and the "Super Full Moon" that rose that evening. Plus, it seems--even more than other full moons I've seen--to have brought some strange sights my way.
I encountered one of them in the bike rack at work:
I wondered whether that vestige of a downtube was there only to support the front derailleur. There seems to be no other rationale for it. Maybe it was conceived by someone who believes that we have heads so that we'll have someplace to put our helmets.
Or maybe it was designed by the same person whose bike was attached to a fire hydrant by the longest chain made of 3/4" thick case-hardened links I ever saw. I doubt anyone could have cut that chain, at least not with the sort of tools bike thieves carry with them. But it didn't take someone with a PhD in quantum mechanics to figure out that he could lift that bike and chain over the hydrant and into the back of his van. (I didn't see the theft. I just know that professional thieves, at least at that time, used vans. So, that bike's owner and I assumed that scenario played out.)
The sad thing is that faux seat tube isn't even the worst piece of bike design I've ever seen. Actually, I've seen a lot of things much worse than that. You tend to come across them when you work in a bike shop for a while.
Maybe the designers of that bike and the owner of the bike that got stolen from a fire hydrant could have blamed the moon--even if it wasn't the Super Full Moon.
And that friendly German tourist and I can blame it for the photos we took in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
