8 Years Already!

So why am I posting a picture of an 8 year old girl?

From Thanks, Mail Carrier

Well, she looks really cute on that bike. But she is relevant to this blog.  Better yet, she has something in common with it.

What?, you ask.

Midlife Cycling turns 8 years old today.   I wrote my first post on 2 June 2010.  I'm still "at it," 2567 posts later.  And I'll keep it up as long as I enjoy it.  Since I've never stopped loving cycling or writing, I don't think I'll lose the pleasure I've found in this blog and you, my audience.

So what has changed?  Writers are the worst judges of their own work, but I'm guessing that this blog has developed a "voice", whatever it may be.  In the beginning, I was probably making some effort to imitate other bike blogs I'd read, especially ones written by women. (I'm thinking particularly of Lovely Bicycle.) But I am a very different sort of woman, and cyclist, so I realized that I could do no more or less than follow my own instincts and inclinations.  Sometimes I write about my own trips or bikes; other times I write about other people's rides and machines; still other times I veer into topics that don't have much of a relationship to cycling.  Others will judge the results, but I am happy to be writing this blog and that others are reading it.

Aside from the blog itself, some other things in my life have changed since I started.  For one thing, I now have four bikes I didn't have back then:  Dee-Lilah, my new Mercian Vincitore Special; Vera, the twin-tube Miss Mercian mixte I bought about a year after I started this blog; Josephine, the Trek 412 estate-sale find and Martie, the Fuji Allegro that's become my commuter/errand bike.  And I no longer have Helene, the Miss Mercian I bought not long after I started this blog, and the two Schwinn LeTours I acquired and used as commuter/errand bikes.

Oh, and I now have one cat, Marlee, who wasn't even born when I wrote that first post.  Sadly, Charlie and Max, my feline buddies back then, are gone.  

On a happier note:  I have taken, in addition to hundreds of day rides, trips abroad which have included cycling: Prague, Paris (twice), Italy (Rome and Florence) and Montreal.  And I've been to Florida a number of times to visit my parents but also to enjoy some warm-weather riding in the middle of winter.  

I don't know what changes and adventures lie ahead.  All I know is that you'll read about them here!

Starstruck? No, A Moonshock!

Bicycle suspension--at least in forms we would recognize today--first started to appear, mainly on mountain bikes, a bit more than a quarter-century ago.

Those early attempts to make bikes more stable as their riders bounced them over rocks and rumbled along singletrack consisted of hinged handlebar stems with springs in them, seatposts that were like pogo sticks and "telescoping" forks.  That latter system--first popularized by Rock Shox--would become one of the standard ways of suspending bikes.  The other--suspension built into the rear of the frame--would come a few years later.

Most riders at the time thought all of those attempts to absorb shock were new innovations.  Of course, they weren't old enough to have been reading American Bicycling (the forerunner of Bicycling) when it featured Dan Henry's homemade suspension system on his French constructeur bike.  And, at the time, even I (a professor who's supposed to know everything, ha-ha) didn't realize that bicycles have been built with suspension for almost as long as bicycles have been built.  What is the pneumatic tire--one of the most important technological innovations of all time--but one of the first, and one of the most enduring, forms of suspension?

Even with such knowledge, I was a little surprised to come across this 1975 Redline Moonshock BMX bike:

Only five or six bikes like this one were ever made, according to the Classic Cycles website. In the then-nascent sport of BMX racing, bikes were designed to consciously emulate their motorized counterparts.  That makes sense when you realize that, at the time, most BMXers were pubescent boys who, like lots of other kids, pretended they were on motorcycles or in racing cars as they plowed along paths and jumped ramps and mounds.  

Note the year:  1975.  Schwinn had ended production of their "Krate" series, which probably best exemplified "muscle" bikes that echoed the "muscle" cars of that era.  If those bikes weren't at least partially responsible for the birth of BMX, it's still not merely a coincidence that kids started "revving" bikes with slick fat tires and "banana" seats during that time.  

It was also during that time--at least, according to the accounts I've read and heard--that Tom Ritchey, Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze and their friends were bombing down Northern California fire trails in Schwinn baloon-tired bikes made before they were born. 

Why do I mention that?  Well, the first problem that most of those proto-mountain bikers discovered had to do with one of Newton's laws--best expressed (at least for mathematically-challenged people like me) by a Blood Sweat and Tears lyric.  What goes up must come down--but what comes down can't always be brought back up, especially if it weighs 60 pounds and has only one gear.  So, according to lore, in 1975 (or thereabouts), Gary Fisher outfitted one of those balloon-tired bombers with derailleurs and multiple gears.

Apparently, some BMX bike designers thought absorbing shock to make the bike steadier was a greater priority.  Mountain bike designers wouldn't come to the same conclusion for another decade and a half.

Not surprisingly, the Moonshock BMX bike shared a couple of unfortunate traits with early suspended mountain bikes.  They were slow, basically for the same reasons.  For one thing, they were heavy--although, in fairness, the Moonshock had the greater weight penalty because of its tanklike gussetted steel frame, wide rims and tires.  (By the time mountain bike suspension was developed, relatively light frames, tires and rims were available.)  But, more important, the springiness of both kinds of bikes absorbed much of their riders' energies.  Thus, the few kids who rode the Mongoose, much like mountain bikers nearly a generation later, found ways to lock out their suspension systems.  That left them riding almost-rigid bikes that were several pounds heavier than their non-suspended counterparts.

It seems that the idea of suspension on mountain bikes died with the production of the Moonshock, or not long after.  Apparently, BMX riders felt that it was more important for their bikes to withstand the pounding they would take.  And, because BMX frames and wheels are smaller than their mountain or road counterparts, it's possible to use relatively thick gauges of steel, with reinforcements, and end up with a bike that isn't terribly heavy.

On the other hand, it's all but impossible to buy a new mountain bike (or any made in the past fifteen years or so) that doesn't have suspension in the front fork, rear triangle or both.  Best of all, many new systems seem to have some way of locking them out--or regulating the firmess or softness of the ride--built into them.  And a typical suspension fork of today is a good deal lighter than the Rock Shox Judy fork--top-of-the-line in its time--I rode on my old Bontrager Race Lite.

My First Piece Of Jewelry: The Huret Jubilee Derailleur

When you get to be my age, you realize that had you saved the stuff you wore in your youth, you could sell it today as "vintage."  It seems that some people are trying to do the same thing with bike parts.  I find myself shouting things they don't teach you in French 101 whenever a Craigslist or eBay listing refers to a Simplex Prestige derailleur as "rare" or "vintage."

Whenever I see that testament to French plastic technology--or the Campagnolo Gran Turismo with its scimitar-like cage or the Huret Luxe Super Touring, which looked like a disjointed crane's neck made from steel plates--I think, "They don't make them like that anymore--Thank God!"  If those things are "vintage", I'm all for the present and the future

But there are a few no-longer-made components that can be called "vintage" without making me wince.  Such parts are, of course, sought out by collectors or even still used on everyday riders.  Such parts were not only "good for their time" but still are valid today because they have some feature or another that today's stuff lacks.

Sometimes that factor is aesthetic.  Let's face it:  Most bikes and parts from the past look better than almost anything made by anyone besides a custom builder or small-scale manufacturer today.  I admit that there are some things I own and ride for that reason alone.  But some of those same bikes and parts--and others--are designed in ways that are more practical or versatile, or simply "made better", than what you can buy today.

And, believe it or not, some old parts are actually lighter. A case in point is the Huret Jubilee rear derailleur.

I actually owned and rode two--a short-cage and a long-cage version-- for a number of years.  I raced, toured and even did some "rough stuff" on them.  And I even took a tumble or two on them.

My short-cage Jubilee adorned my Cannondale racing bike for a few months.  Then it graced my Colnago Arabesque--on which I raced and trained and did a number of long rides--for another half-dozen years.  I rode the long-cage version for a couple of years on a Bianchi that I turned into a light tourer, then on my Miyata 912.

On all of those bikes I shifted the Jubilee with what is, to my mind, the best non-indexed lever ever made: the Simplex retrofriction.  And I had the "teardrop" version--to my eye, the prettiest shift lever in history--on the Cannondale and Colnago. 

With those levers, the Jubilee shifted quite well, especially given the standards of the time.  It wasn't quite as easy or accurate as the SunTour Cyclone (or, for that matter, anything in SunTour's "V" series).  But I actually preferred the Jubilee to any other manufacturer's (besides SunTour's) top-of-the-line derailleur.  For one thing, it shifted as well--or, at least, not noticeably worse than--the Campagnolo Record series, Simplex LJ or Shimano Crane.  To be more precise, the Jubilee shifted about as quickly and perhaps a bit more accurately, and definitely more smoothly, than any of those mechanisms.

I bought my first (short-cage) Jubilee from Frank Chrinko, the proprietor of Highland Park Cyclery, where I worked for a time.  He thought well of them (and used the Success, Huret's other high-end derailleur) and said he hadn't noticed any problems among the (admittedly few) customers who used them.  On the other hand, I heard horror stories about how if you looked at it the wrong way, it would explode into a million little pieces.  Such fears, I found, were greatly exaggerated: Both of my Jubilees survived falls and continued to work as well as they had been working.

I think that Jubilees lasted longer than many people expected precisely because they were so minimalist:  There weren't as many ways it could be struck or snagged.  That is the reason why, interestingly, a few early mountain bikers and some cyclo-cross riders used it.

The Jubilee also holds the distinction of being one of the few rear derailleurs that was completely disassemblable for cleaning and maintenance.  Huret actually offered spare parts, though they weren't easy to find (at least in the US).  I'll admit that, once disassembled, it wasn't the easiest thing to put back together, especially if you didn't have a diagram (which was even harder to find than the spare parts).  

So how did the Jubilee get its name?  Huret was founded in 1920 and in 1970 decided to celebrate by creating the lightest derailleur ever made.  They succeeded--the short-cage version weighed only 140 grams (the long-cage version weighed 157).  Ironically, the later "drillium" version was five grams heavier!

The Jubilee was first introduced in 1972 (the same year as the Simplex Super LJ and SunTour VGT) and found its way to the US a couple of years later.  The Motobecane Grand Jubile came equipped with it and other high-quality French components; so did the Raleigh Competition.  In 1974-5, Raleigh's two-steps-up-from-entry-level Super Course, with a frame that had straight-gauge Reynolds 531 in its main tubes, came with a version of the Jubilee that fitted to the non-forged dropout with a "claw" hanger.  From what I heard in bike shops at the time, Raleigh was trying to offer the lightest bicycle available at its price point (about $175 at the time), and the Jubilee shaved those few grams that gave the bike its edge over whatever the next-lightest bike was in its price category.

Sachs took over Huret in the early 1980s and continued to produce the Jubilee until the end of the decade.  Later versions bore the Sachs-Huret logo, and later simply "Sachs", in the black-and-gold badge that sported the Huret name in the familiar cursive lettering for so long.

Late in the 1980s, Sachs (which had also taken over French component makers Maillard and Sedis) became part of SRAM.  It seems that around that time, the Jubilee was discontinued as all of the SRAM-Sachs derailleurs were modeled after the Shimano models with slant paralellogram bodies and two sprung pivots.