Black Cyclone Coming

There are a number of athletes I admire for their accomplishments in their sports.  But there is a much smaller number whom I respect equally, or even more, as human beings.  They include Jackie Robinson, Billie Jean King, Muhammad Ali, Colin Kaerpernick, Simone Biles--and Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor.

Some day, I'm sure, a documentary or biopic will be made about Ms. Biles.  Films have already been made from the triumphs and struggles of Robinson and Ali.  Five years ago, "Battle of the Sexes" focused on King's 1973 match--which she won--against Bobby Riggs.  While it was a good film, I think it also helped to reinforce the tendency to think of Ms. King only in terms of that, and not on, not only of the way she dominated her game as Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams would later on, but also of her advocacy for women and LGBTQ folks. 

But, to my knowledge, Major Taylor hasn't received cinematic canonization.  One reason for that may be that there isn't anybody alive who saw him ride or can even remember how he dominated bike racing to the same degree as the other athletes I've mentioned towered over their sports.  Thus, most people who aren't familiar with the history of cycling or African Americans don't realize that he was the first African American champion of any sport half a century before Robinson set foot on a Major League baseball field.

Clement Virgo (l) and "Major" Taylor

It seems that situation is about to change.  Canadian director Clement Virgo, who also helmed feature films "Rude" and "Lie With Me" as well as the six-part miniseries "The Book of Negroes," has been tapped to direct "Black Cyclone."  The title comes from one of the more flattering nicknames given to Taylor. (As a black man in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, he also was called names that I, someone who isn't exactly profanity-adverse, won't repeat.)  John Howard, a three-time Olympic and four-time U.S. Road Champion cyclist (who also set a land speed record that stood for a decade) will serve as a consultant on the project.

Production is set to begin next year.   

A Monument Befitting A Giant

 Yesterday I mentioned a monument to a pioneer of his sport and the struggle for civil rights.  Today I came across a story about a new monument to Robinson’s sporting and historical grandfather, if you will.

As readers of this blog—and those with even a cursory knowledge of cycling history—know, Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor was not only the first Black World Champion cyclist; he was also the first African-American champion in any sport. 

(George Dixon, the African Canadian who won the bantamweight boxing title in 1892, was the first Black champion of any sport. Interestingly, Taylor first won his title in Montréal.)

While Major Taylor is most often associated with Worcester, Massachusetts, where he lived much of his adult life, and New York, Paris and other places where he achieved his victories, he was born and raised In Indianapolis—where, I suspect, few people have been aware of him.

Until now, that is.  As part of the city’s bicentennial celebration, its Arts Council commissioned a “Bicentennial Legends” mural series. (If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I love murals!) The latest is a five-story homage to Major Taylor.

His great-granddaughter Karen Brown Donovan attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony last week, along with 1984 Olympic sprint medalist Nelson Vails, pro cyclists Justin Williams and Rashaan Bahati, and mural artist Shawn Michael Warren.

125 Years After Major Taylor, She’s A Milestone

 The Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche has become one of the premier women’s bike races. Since its first edition in 2003, èlite cyclists and teams have used its long climbs in the Alpes Maritimes and high-octane sprints in the Rhône and Ardèche valleys as late-season preparation for the World Championships, held in late September.  The race has also served as a window to up-and-coming riders and teams.

That is why it’s significant that Ayesha McGowan is making her debut in this year’s edition of the race, which begins today.  For years, she has ridden for teams of the Liv brand in the US.  On 1 August, she was promoted to Liv’s top-tier racing team, which competes internationally.

Understandably, for McGowan, “there will be tears of joy” because “the hard work is now paying off.” Last year, Cyclingnews  named her to its Power List of the 50 Most Influential People in cycling.

She was named to that list for, not only her cycling accomplishments, but also her advocacy for more diversity in the sport’s brands, organizations, teams, events and media.  If I were her, I might be crying other kinds of tears for having the need to call for more inclusion, a century and a quarter after Major Taylor won the World Championship and was acknowledged (if at times grudgingly or even with hostility) as the world’s greatest cyclist.

Audrey McElmury Made Them Possible

Today is International Women's Day.

To mark the occasion, I am going to talk about Audrey McElmury.

In one of my early posts, I wrote about Nancy Burghart. She won eight US National Championships during the 1960s. That brought her international press attention in the days before 24-hour news cycles and when the US was seen as, at best, a cycling backwater by the sports' powers in Europe and Japan.

I mention Burghart here because you might say that Audrey McElmury picked up where Burghart left off--and carried the torch to the great generation of American female cyclists that included "Miji" Reoch, Sue Novara, Sheila Young, Connie Carpenter and Rebecca Twigg.

In 1969, the year that Burghart won her final national championship, McElmury rode the World Championships in Brno, Czechoslavakia (now the Czeh Republic).  In the previous year's World Championships, held in Rome, she finished fifth in a road race that ended in a sprint.  Around the same time, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslavakia to suppress the "Prague Spring."  The 1969 World Championships would run on the anniversary of the day the tanks barreled down the streets of the Czech capital.

That day, McElmury rode both the road and track races.  She came in seventh in the 3000-meter pursuit race.  Later that day, she rode the 62-kilometer road race on her road bike, made by Johnny Berry in Manchester, UK.  She would recall the race this way:

The pavement was somewhat chewed up from the tank treads.  The course was one that suited my riding: I was good in the hills* and time-trialed well.m On about the third lap, it started pouring buckets.  On the fourth lap, I got away on the hill by about 15 seconds, but I fell down while putting on the brakes in a corner on the descent.  The pack caught me as I got up.  The rain was chilly enough that I didn't feel the full effect of my bruised hip, and the rain exaggerated the amount of blood from a cut on my elbow.  I chased the pack with an ambulance following me to see if I was all right.

Being the tough customer she was, McElmury gained on the rest of the pack during the last lap and pulled ahead on the last hill.  She finished that race one minute and ten seconds ahead of the runner-up, Bernadette Swinnerton of the UK.

Audrey McElmury on the podium in Czechoslavakia, 1969.

McElmury's victory gave her the gold medal--and World Championship--for the road race.  In winning, she became the first American World Champion in cycling since Frank Kramer took the professional sprint race in 1912--31 years before McElmury was born.  In fact, it was the first road racing world championship victory, ever, by any American of any gender.  

To say that her triumph was unexpected was an understatement.  The awards ceremony had to be delayed by half an hour as officials searched for a recording of the Star Spangled Banner to play. She returned home to the same indifference she, and other cyclists, had previously met in the US.   A reporter, who apparently knew nothing about cycling, wanted to know more about the anniversary of the Russian invasion than her championship.

That indifference toward cyclists was compounded by the fact that she was a woman in a male-dominated sport.  She had to pay all of her own expenses--about $10,000--to compete in Brno.  The American cycling federation claimed that it didn't have enough money to pay for her, or the other two women accompanied her, because the dues they paid amounted to so little.  

Audrey McElmury's Johnny Berry bike.

On the other hand, her victory was celebrated in Europe.  For one thing, there was a culture of cycling and a fanbase for racing that simply didn't exist in the US at that time, so Europeans appreciated her determination, courage and skill.  And the Czechs, after their experiences, cheered for Americans in the races and were more than enthusiastic about McElmury.  They booed the Russians who won other events.  

She would be recruited by the Italian team, for whom she would ride and later coach.  Upon returning to the US, she still couldn't get her expenses covered, even though she showed she could hold her own with the top American men in the criterium circuit. 

After a 1974 crash, McElmury retired from racing and, with her husband Michael Levonas, coahed cyclists and tri-athletes in Southern California before working in hotel and food service management in the western US.  She died in Bozeman, Montana on 26 March 2013, at age 70.  In 1989, she was enshrined in the United States Biycling Hall of Fame.

So, for International Women's Day, I have taken the opportunity to celebrate Audrey McElmury, who helped to usher in the generation of Americans who would dominate the world of women's bicycle racing--and, I would argue, paved the way for American men like Greg LeMond, who would garner far more attention--and money.

*-Having cycled in and around Prague, I can attest that there are hills in that part of the world !

Mavic: Yellow Blues

Once upon a time, a "dream" bike would be outfitted with Campagnolo Nuovo or Super Record components.  I finally did get my dream after a few years of riding, a bunch of part-time jobs on the side and a few skipped meals.  

In those days, Campagnolo didn't make rims.  At least, no hoops bore the Campy's logo. (I have heard, from various sources, that the rims Campagnolo would offer later were actually made by FIR.)  So, you chose from a number of other manufacturers.  Super Champion of France was popular in the day; in fact, my first "nice" wheels bore their rims.  So were Rigida, Nisi, Fiamme and Weinmann.  But most of us agreed that the "name" brand for rims was Mavic.  I rode their jantes on my first all-Campy bike--and most of the bikes I've ridden since.

During the '80's and '90's, Mavic was a veritable juggernaut in the world of rims and wheels, much as Shimano was (and, arguably, still is) among other bicycle componentry.  They produced the best tubulars and developed the first lightweight clincher that, combined with Michelin's Elan tire, could rival the weight and performance of tubulars.  A decade or so later, they developed some of the first really good rims for the then-nascent sport of mountain biking.

To this day, Mavic is best-known for its rims and wheels.  But it also produced some really nice componentry.  Its 451 brakes are believed, by some, to be the finest single-pivot sidepulls ever made. (Actually, Dia Compe made them for Mavic, who designed them.)  They are certainly among the most beautiful.  And, interestingly enough, Mavic's first products in 1889 were mudguards (fenders to us Yanks).

Mavic has contributed to the world of cycling, not only through its technical innovations and quality manufacturing, but also through its support of various teams throughout the years--and its neutral technical support of the Tour de France.  Their support cars and bikes are yellow, like the comany's label--and the Tour de France leader's jersey.

Sadly, however, reports from Agence-Presse France say that Mavic has been placed into receivership by a commercial court in Grenoble, near the company's Annecy, France, base.  "Receivership" is initiated by creditors or banks that believe a company cannot pay its debts.  This differs from "administration," which can be initiated by a company's directors.  The result of "receivership" is that the company is taken over by a court-appointed "reciever" who controls the assets and tries to keep the company out of liquidation.

As much as I like Mavic's rims and some of their other stuff, I'll admit that if I were more of a weight weenie, I'll admit that they're no longer the "go-to" they were, say, twenty or even ten years ago.  Some of that drop in prestige has to do with other companies making stuff that's lighter or just sexier.  So, it's not a surprise that Mavic's sales have not kept pace in recent years.

The real problem for Mavic, though, seems to be that nobody seems to know who actually knows it. Solomon, best known for ski equipment, bought Mavic in the mid-90's; a few years later, Adidas bought Solomon.  Amer Sport, a Finnish group,  would later become the main shareholder of Mavic.  Amer removed Mavic from its accounts in 2018 and sold the company to Regent LP, a California investment fund, last July.

So, the employees of Mavic, who are unionized, believed that their company was in the hands of Regent.  But, for some reason, they were not informed that the sale didn't go through and Mavic was instead acquired by a Delaware-based entity called M Sports International LLC, which has no links to Regent--and practically no traces on the Internet.

This sounds like the makings of a mystery novel.  The thing about novels (and plays) is that if they're great to read or watch, you should be happy that you don't have to live them.  The employees of Mavic want to know what their future is.  So do many of us who use their products.

A Motor City Gets A Bicycle Mayor

It's no surprise that cities like Amsterdam and Paris have "Bicycle Mayors."  But what if, say, Detroit were to select such a person?

Turns out, the equivalent of that has happened in England.  Adam Tranter, who runs a public relations and marketing agency, has just been appointed as the first Bicycle Mayor of Coventry, often referred to as Britain's "Motor City."

Adam Tratner

Interestingly, during the 1950s, Great Britain was the second-largest producer of automobiles (after the US) and the largest exporter of cars.  But the decline of Coventry, and the British automotive industry, mirrors that of its American counterpart and Detroit:  more innovative and higher-quality machines, competitively priced, began to enter both countries from France, Germany and Japan from the 1960s through the 1980's, at the same time the perceived (and sometimes actual) quality of domestically-produced vehicles plummeted.   The British decline was exacerbated by the introduction of low-priced cars from Eastern Europe and Asian countries not named Japan.

Ironically, both Coventry and Detroit were centers of their countries' bicycle industry:  In fact, many developments--including the "safety" bicycle, with two wheels of equal size driven by chain and sprocket gearing--come from the Midlands area around Coventry.

 The fact that both countries were incubators, if not cradles, of their nations' bicycle industry is one of the reasons why they became automotive centers:  Just as Henry Ford and other pioneers of the American automobile began as bicycle mechanics or designers, British bicycle designers transitioned into motorcycles and cars. 

A further irony is that as the automobile manufacturing disappeared, both cities actually became more auto-dependent:  According to one survey, 64 percent of all trips to work or school in Coventry were made by car, as opposed to 3 percent by bicycle.  One of Mr. Tratner's jobs, in his voluntary position, will be to get more feet away from gas pedals and onto bicycle pedals.  

Perhaps one day Coventry will return to its "roots," if you will.  Could Detroit go the same way.

The Only Way You Can Pin Down A World-Class Rider

A few cyclists who are even more dedicated (to what, I don’t know) than I am, or are simply more Retro-grouchy than one of my favorite bloggers, has a pair of wheels with wooden rims.

Once upon a time, such wheels were de rigueur.  After all, wood is light (at least compared to metal), strong and resilient.  All racers used them until Mavic developed alloy rims.  While road riders embraced this new development, track racers used wooden rims until they were banned for competition during the 1950s.

Why were wooden rims banished from the velodrome?

Well, when an metal wheel is crashed, it bends or crumples.  But a wood rim is likely to shatter. That is made all the more likely because on track wheels, the spokes are tuned to a higher tension, and the tires are pumped to higher pressures, than on road bikes.  

The result of an “exlpoding” wooden rim was often a cloud of wooden shards that could shush-kebab riders or spectators.

Decades after the ban on wooden rims, many velodromes have wood surfaces. Nobody anticipated such hazards from them—until now.

Lorenzo Gobbo suffered a previously unheard-of mishap.  Apparently, when he went down, his pedal scraped up a half-meter length of the track that ended up in his back—and pierced  his  lung

He is expected to make a full recovery.  But  you have to wonder: how many other cyclists  have come out of a race looking as if they’d  been attacked by an  by an archer?

Where Have We Gone In The Last 130 Years?

I have to admit, once or twice...well, okay, maybe three or four times...I've attended concerts, readings, plays, lectures or other events because I liked the advertisement for it.

Now tell me you wouldn't attend a lecture after seeing a photo like this.  Of course, it combines topics as close to my hearts as my Mercians:  cycling, history, women's history and gender identity.  Tessa Hull, who gave the lecture, didn't come to her topic--summed up in the lecture's title, "Women, Trans and Femme Riders in Early Cycling History"--through a women's or gender studies program.  Instead, she encountered it while on her own journey, literally:  She's cycled alone from Southern California to Maine and in Alaska, Cuba, Ghana and Mexico.  She said that, wherever she went, people were generous, but she heard the same warning:  "You know, a woman can't travel alone."

Well, I know that's not true!  And so did some women in the late 19th Century, during the first "Bike Boom."  Although there probably are more women cycling now than then, she believes that the culture around women and bikes has retrogressed in some ways. In the old bicycle ads, she explains, "you see packs of women riding bicycles, and women riding on the front of tandems," none of which is "really a norm now."  She feels we are "trying to get back to where we were in the 1890s " and warns, "[I]f you don't keep pushing for the advancement of culture, things can quietly digress."

I have to admit, even I--who, if I do say so myself, knows a thing or two about the history of women and cycling--was surprised to see women attired as they are in the photo. And they have rather athletic builds.  These days, it seems that most women in bike ads are there to entice men and look as if their limbs would break if they actually tried to pedal.

I'd Join Their Club If...

Most bicycle clubs I've seen have just one requirement for membership:  Pay your dues.  That sounds worse than it actually is.  Let's say you're in such a club and something comes up in your life that keeps you from riding with the club for, say, a few months.  Well, if you can keep up your membership, at least you can stay in touch with fellow riders--and partake of whatever benefits the club might offer, such as discounts at local bike shops.

Then there are clubs that have other requirements for membership, such as age or gender.  Others--usually racing clubs--want riders who can keep up with everybody else in the group.  

Sometimes these bars to entry are placed to keep the club focused, whether by interest or simply people's level of comfort with one or another.  I've heard of a few clubs that simply want to stay small (or, at least, no bigger than X number of riders) for whatever purpose(s).

But there is one cycling club in London that limits its size for a possibly unique reason, which has to do with its name.

The Pickwick Bicycle Club, founded in 1870, is said to be the oldest continuously-operating bicycle club in the world.  In following a custom that was fairly common in England at the time, the Pickwick wasn't just a group of cyclists; it was also a sort of literary club.  Specifically, its members were dedicated to a particular work by a writer who died in the same month the club held its first luncheon.

The club's name is "Pickwick", as in "Papers".  Because he died just as the club started--a year after the velocipede appeared in London--Charles Dickens probably didn't ride a bicycle.  Characters in the "Pickwick Papers", or any other Dickens story, didn't, either.  At the time the club held its first rides, however, he was at the peak of his popularity:  Clubs and other organizations existed solely for the purpose of public or group readings of his works.  And, it just happened that the sorts of people drawn to those groups--mainly middle-to-upper-class city dwellers--were also the same sorts of people who took up the then-new sport of cycling.

Pickwick Bicycle Club riders at Hampton Court, 1877

The Pickwick Club's membership has always been limited to about 200.  If you want to join, they won't quiz you on the PP or any other Dickens work.  It does, however, take a certain amount of knowledge of the Dickens oeuvre to pull off something the club requires:  that you become one of the novel's characters.  At least, in club circles, you have to be known by that character's name.

As you can tell by the number of club members, there were a lot of characters--mostly peripheral, but in the book nonetheless.  That is because Pickwick Papers was originally a serial that was later assembled into a book.  Every novel, however--even one as sprawling as War and Peace or Les Miserables--has a finite number of characters.  So, even at 200 members, Pickwick is a fraction of the size of other clubs I've seen, and of which I've been a part.

Can you imagine if bicycle clubs today limited their memberships to the number of characters in a novel--or a TV show or movie?  I must admit that, even though I didn't like Batman Forever, I would join any cycling club--hey, any club at all--that would allow me to be Dr. Chase Meridian, even if I wouldn't look as good doing it as Nicole Kidman did!

P.S. Even if I were a famous racer or writer, or someone influential in the cycling industry, I couldn't join The Pickwick Club:  It's still a men-only affair!

He Played In Peoria--And The World

If you had any doubts that I spent much of my youth reading the wrong kinds of books, I will dispel them now.

Horatio Alger is one of those writers who, it seems, everyone has heard of but no one (at least no one living today) has read.  Although "Horatio Alger story" has become, justifiably, a synonym for "rags-to-riches tale", some of his works are interesting, if not for the quality of the writing, then for the window it offers into the customs and mores of his time.

For example, the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?" had its origin in Five Hundred Dollars, or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret, Alger's 1890 novel.  In it, a group of actors on tour say, "We shall be playing in Peoria" and "We shall play at Peoria."  This meant they were going to play, not only in the north-central Illinois city, but in front of a prototypical American audience.  

Alger's novel came out just as vaudeville was becoming popular in the US.   Travelling vaudevillians appropriated Alger's phrase and, when they used it, meant that they were on the road to success--which, in turn, gave rise to the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?"

Does this mean that Peoria audiences are really tough?  Or does it mean that because it's so representative of "middle America" (whatever that means today) that if it can "play in Peoria", it can play anywhere?

I would tend to believe the latter--or, at least, that it would have been the case in Alger's and the vaudevillians' time.  And vaudevillians weren't the only ones who could gauge their chances of success by how they "played in Peoria."  

Lake View Park--now the site of the Komatsu plant--was once an important, if not the major, stop on the American bicycle racing circuit.  Its half-mile track made and broke cycling careers in the 1890s, the heyday of American bike racing.

One of the folks who became a star in Lake View did so by defeating Tom Butler.  Although only cycling historians know his name today, the rider who defeated him has not been forgotten, for a variety of reasons.

That cyclist "put up a lot of numbers that would be hard to achieve today on a modern bike," according to Tim Beeney.  The Bike Peoria board member and longtime advocate added that this cyclist was "one of the highest-paid in the world at the time he competed."  And, like the ambitious vaudevillians of history as well as Alger's novel, this cyclist found fame throughout America, and the world, after his exploits in Peoria.

The cyclist in question is none other than Marshall "Major" Taylor.  The only athletes I've seen in my lifetime who may have dominated their sports in their time to the degree that Taylor did in his were Eddy Mercx, Martina Navratilova, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan and Serena Williams.

One thing that makes Taylor's accomplishments all the more impressive is the obstacles he faced.  Sometimes he would come to an American city and not be allowed to eat in a restaurant, stay in a hotel--or even to compete in the race that was the reason for his coming to that city! He faced hostility, not only from spectators, but also from fellow racers, who believed that he should not be allowed to compete in--let alone dominate--"their" sport.  He wasn't even allowed to join the League of American Wheelmen!

(I think now of the hate mail and even death threats Henry Aaron received in the 1970s when he was in pursuit of Babe Ruth's career home run record.  He still gets them. I also recall how, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were on track to break the single-season home run record, many people wanted McGwire to finish with the new record.)

More than a century after his victories--and 85 years after his death--it seems that Major Taylor is getting some renewed recognition.  This past Saturday, Peoria-area bicycle clubs paid homage to him 140 years after his birth.  And, earlier this year, cognac maker Hennessy had a TV ad featuring Major.



That ad campaign makes perfect sense when you realize that he was most revered in France, where he went to race in the early 1900s--after he played in Peoria.

And, I suppose you could say he was a sort of Horatio Alger story in that he grew up poor but became very wealthy from his cycling.  Unfortunately, his story didn't have a Horatio Alger ending:  After a series of bad business investments, he died penniless.  

Still, though, he played--and made it, at least for a time--in Peoria, and the world.

Keep Moving--On A Divvy, Manta-Ray or Featherstone

Some motorists see us as invaders, or as over-indulged, when we "take" "their" roadway and parking spaces simply by exercising the rights we have--let alone when bike lanes are built. 

Others, though, simply are baffled by us.  They are unaccustomed to seeing us, mainly because few, if any, Americans living today can recall a time when bicycles and cyclists were major presences in their cities or towns.  They certainly can't recall a time when bicycles were important parts of their community's culture and economy.

In some places, such a time really wasn't so long ago.  Detroit, Boston, New York and a few other cities had vibrant, if small, cycling communities during the "Dark Ages" of US bicycling:  roughly the two decades or so following World War II.  Also, a few colleges and universities, including Princeton and the US Military Academy (West Point) had very competitive cycling teams.

There are, however, a few more communities in which bicycles as well as bicycling were an important part of the history and culture, and even the economy.  One such place was Shelby, Ohio.  So was a much larger city about 500 kilometers west:  Chicago.

Mention the "Windy City" and, in regards to cycling, a certain name enters people's minds.  Hint: It starts with an "S".  If you grew up in the US, there's a good chance you rode--or had--one of their bikes. And, if you became an active rider or simply an enthusiast, you might have bought one of their top-of-the line bikes.

I'm talking, of course, about Schwinn, which manufactured bikes on the city's West Side for nearly a century.  But in 1900, it was just one of 30 bicycle manufacturers making its wares along Lake Street!  Perhaps not surprisingly, the "Second City" was also home to one of the most intense racing scenes, and vibrant cycle cultures, to be found anywhere in the US, or even the world.

While much of the current bicycle culture in American cities began with young, educated and affluent people--and is frankly consumeristic--Chicago's cycling culture thrived, then survived to the degree that it did, largely because of its industrial, working-class roots and immigrant (particularly German) communities.  This story is  one that the Chicago Design Museum tells with "Keep Moving:  Designing Chicago's Bicycle Culture," an exhibit it recently opened.

The Museum places a Divvy (from the city's bike-share program) alongside a Schwinn Manta-Ray and an 1891 Featherstone-- believed to be the first US bike offered with pneumatic tires--and other bikes that were made, or had some other significant connection to, Chicago.  There is also memorabilia related to the bikes, including material from Carter Harrison's successful campaign to become the city's mayor.

So why is Carter Harrison's important in the story of cycling in Chicago?  Well, to demonstrate his athletic bona fides, he wore his Century pin--signifying that he'd done a 100-mile bike ride--on his chest while riding his single-speed bike.  

And to think that a certain presidential candidate ridiculed a Secretary of State for falling off his bicycle! Hmm...Would El Cheeto Grande have won Harrison's election?

Holy V, Jubilee!

In October 1964, Tetsuo Maeda filed a patent application in Japan for what would become, in my opinion, one of the two or three most important derailleur innovations in history.

It was the brainchild of his chief designer, Nobui Ozaki.  He was no doubt trying to make a derailleur that was easier to shift and shifted more accurately than the ones available at that time.  Did he realize that it would influence derailleur design for the next half-century?  Did Maeda, the owner of the company that employed Ozaki, know that for two decades, other derailleur manufacturers would wait, with bated breath, for his patent to run out?

Well, both of those scenarios came true.  You see, the patent Maeda filed in his home country--and a month later in the US--would cover a design still used today, in one form or another, on any rear derailleur that has even a pretense of quality.

I am talking about the SunTour Gran-Prix.  Over the next few years, SunTour would refine its design.  For one thing, it would replace its original single-spring design (The same spring that operates the parallelogram also tensions the chain cage.) with separate springs for each function.  And steel parts would be replaced by alloy ones, which in turn would become more sculpted and rounded.

The result was that the 1964 Gran Prix

would evolve into the first "V" derailleur in 1968.

I would put one of those on one of my bikes.  I mean, how can you not love a derailleur with those pivot bolts?

Of course, the V was further refined and became the V Luxe.  One thing I find interesting about the V and V Luxe is that they were lighter than most derailleurs made at the time--or even today.  

The V, according to Michael Sweatman of Disrealigears, weighed 218 grams.  That is only 13 grams (less than half an ounce) more than another influential derailleur that came out exactly 50 years ago

yes, the Campagnolo Nuovo Record--which, of course,was a refinement of the earlier Record and its progenitor, the first Gran Sport parallelogram rear derailleur.

For comparison's sake, the 1968 SunTour V weighs almost exactly the same as a Shimano Ultegra 6400 (introduced in 1988), 6401 (1992) or 6500 (1998)--or the Dura Ace 7402 (made from 1989 to 1996), all of which are in the 210 to 220 gram range. Later DA rear derailleurs (the 7700 series onward) shed 10 to 15 grams--and that with the use of a titanium upper pivot bolts!

The funny thing is that no matter how light a component is, someone wants it even lighter.  So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to find this

I mean, how much weight did those holes take out of that "V" derailleur? 

I guess I shouldn't be too critical, though.  After all, not only was the Campy NR drilled out--or, sometimes, slotted in its parallelogram--so was the lightest rear derailleur of them all:

In case you were wondering:  The Huret Jubilee weighed 145 grams--before anyone touched it with a drill, mill or lathe!

Oregon Handmade Show Cancelled: Will Portland Remain "Bicycle City?"

In January, I wrote about an Ohio town that was best known for the bicycle company that, from 1925 to 1953, manufactured its wares right in its center.  The Shelby Bicycle Historical Society was recently formed to commemorate the role bicycle-manufacturing played in Shelby, about 150 kilometers southwest of Cleveland.

Other communities have been defined by bicycle manufacturing.  Although Raleigh is associated with Nottingham, the center of the British bicycle industry was Birmingham, where a company bearing its name--Birmingham Small Arms, or BSA--made the most sought-after componentry in the peloton, as well as some fine racing bikes.  

Likewise, for most of the 20th Century, the nexus of France's bicycle industry was St. Etienne, a gritty industrial city about 50 kilometers from Lyon.  Many editions of the Tour de France have included a stage that began, ended or passed through the city, and a French rider winning such a stage is a point of pride for the nation.

For much of the time Birmingham and St. Etienne dominated their respective country's bicycle industries, a certain bike-maker was a major employer on the South Side of Chicago.  I am referring to Schwinn which, as Sheldon Brown pointed out, was the only American brand with even a pretense of quality during the "Dark Ages" of cycling in the US.

Chicago, Birmingham, Saint Etienne and Shelby all had their heydays as centers of bicycle (and, in the cases of Birmingham and Saint Etienne, component) making.  But, like empires, those enterprises fell.  Cheaper imports, mainly from Asia, are often blamed (less so for Shelby than the others).  But the biggest reasons for their demise are their failures to keep up with changes in demand as well as innovations.  Schwinn, like other companies, sponsored racing teams, but limited their efforts almost entirely to the US, until it was too late.  So, the Paramount line, begun in 1938, was, by the 1960s, a dinosaur (its fine craftsmanship notwithstanding) compared to racing bikes from Europe.

More recently, the US city most commonly associated with bike-making has been Portland, Oregon.  One difference, however, is that in the Rosebud City's bike-building scene has more closely paralleled its "craft" beer milieu than it has reflected trends and practices in mass-production bicycles.  During Portland's frame-building heyday, from about 2005 to 2010, it was claimed that over a hundred builders practiced their craft in a city of about 600,000 residents.  

It was during that time that the Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show began as an annual event in 2007.  Builders enthusiastically set up booths to show their creations to ever-appreciative audiences.  How much those exhibits translate into orders is, however, a topic of debate:  Many people go to "ooh" and "aah" at frames they will never be able to afford, or simply don't feel a need to order, their fine artistry not withstanding.  

Framebuilder Joseph Ahearne at the 2017 Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show

The phenomena I've described are being blamed for the cancellation of this year's show.  Some builders said it simply wasn't worth the time and money it took to, not only create and set up an exhibit, but to actually get to the show.  Portland and Oregon are more spread out than, say, San Francisco or any number of East Coast cities one can name. That means it's harder to entice people to attend when an event is scheduled to be  held in an out-of-the-way place, as this year's show was.

But other factors were chipping away at enthusiasm for the show.  One is that more people are buying bikes and equipment online.  Another, though, is the builders themselves:  Some have had to scale down their operations, move or simply leave the business altogether.  While the bicycle industry is trending larger--think bigger conglomerates selling more and more merchandise at lower prices--builders who make their frames by hand work in the opposite direction:  They sell less, and for higher prices.

What that means is that in spite of the high price tags for such frames, most builders don't get rich.  In fact, many barely make a living at all.  All it takes is a major rent increase in their workspace to put them out of business:  Building bikes requires a lot of space, and if builders are forced out of their loft or wherever they're working, they have can have a very difficult time finding a comparable amount of space for a rent they can afford.  

Especially if the city is gentrifying, as Portland is.  The things that made it so appealing--its roots as a blue-collar town, its scenery and its edgy arts and social scene--are attracting trust fund kids and other people with money.  It's more or less what happened to places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is now just as expensive as Manhattan but now manages to be as much a theme park as Las Vegas but with all of the character of Davenport, Iowa.

Now, I've never been to Portland, so I can't say whether it's becoming as dispiriting as Williamsburg is to me now.  (A few years ago, I felt differently.)  But from what I'm reading, the city sorts of folks depicted in "Portlandia" are changing their careers or lifestyles, or moving out.  So are the kinds of unique and unusual businesses--including custom frame building--associated with the city?

Could it be that Portland is ceding its place as the bicycle capital of the United States?  If it is, perhaps the change was inevitable: Small, labor-intensive enterprises with niche audiences generally don't last when the real estate becomes expensive.  How many bike shops, craft beer breweries, fabric weavers or tatoo artists are on 57th Street in Manhattan?

When Nutley Ruled The (Cycling) World

Even during mountain biking's peak of popularity--about a quarter-century ago--most mountain bikes never saw a trail or dirt, let alone a mountain.

These days, something similar might be said about track bikes.  If someone is obsessed with building a bike that's NJS-compliant, chances are that it will never go anywhere near a velodrome.

It's just as ironic that as track or fixed-gear bikes have grown in popularity, interest in track racing, as a participant or spectator sport, doesn't seem to be on the rise.  Most fans, at least here in the US, seem to focus their attention on major road races like the Tour, Giro and Vuelta.

Time was, though, when track racing was more popular than any other sport in the 'States, with the possible exception of baseball.  In fact, the top cyclists earned even more money than guys who could hit or throw spheres of stitched horsehide.

There are few remnants of that time because, for one thing, most of the great riders of that time have passed on.  Also, most of the venues in which they rode are gone.

One of them was located about a morning's ride--half an hour on a ferry and two on a bike--from my apartment.  In its day, it hosted some of the best cyclists of the day--including Alfred Letourneur, the French rider who set speed records on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as local heroes like Charlie Jaeger and Frank Kramer.

Jaeger and Kramer hailed from Newark, then a major cycling center.  After that city's velodrome closed in 1930, a businessman and cycling enthusiast from neighboring East Orange tried to keep the torch burning, if you will, and built a new velodrome on the site of a former quarry.

Joseph Miele's track, the Nutley Velodrome, opened on 4 June 1933.  Twelve thousand fans turned out that day to see Letourneur and Jaeger, as well as other star riders like Italy's Giovanni Manera, Belgian Gerard Debaets, Franz Deulberg of Germany and Brooklyn's own Paul Croley.

For two years, Nutley was "an international dateline," according to Michael Gabriele, whose book, The Golden Age of Bicycle Racing in New Jersey was published in 2011.  "All the wire services covered the events," he explained.

But around 1936 or 1937, the popularity of six-day and other track races declined, and the velodrome was used for boxing matches, midget car racing and other sports.  The venue's last event was held on 15 September 1940, and it was demolished in 1942.

A few months before the Nutley Velodrome's last event, another event was held that would continue New Jersey's status as one of cycling's US centers:  the Tour of Somerville.  For decades, it was the single most prestigious bike race in America, and one of the few that attracted riders from abroad.  It also ignited the popularity of the criterium, which continues to be the most popular type of cycling race.

Though the Nutley Velodrome, which opened 85 years ago next month, lasted less than a decade, it still holds an important place in American cycling.  Nutley provided thrills for thousands of people, but in recent years the city has done more to calm people down:  Until 2013, it hosted the US headquarters of Hoffman-Laroche, where Valium and Librium were developed. 

A Rim, Maybe. A Whole Wheel...

Mavic introduced its alloy rims in 1920.  Until then, cyclists had two choices in rim material--steel or wood.  Most, of course, opted for the latter because it is much lighter.  

Interestingly, alloy rims were banned from the Tour de France until 1934, when Antonin Magne rode a pair of Mavics that were painted in wood colors.  His secret wasn't revealed, of course, until after he won the race.  Then, Mavic duraluminum rims became a staple of the peloton.  

As alloy rims became lighter and more durable, other riders, from road racers to tourists, used them because they worked better and lasted longer than wood rims when used with caliper brakes.  Track racers, however, don't use brakes and continued to ride wood rims until the 1950s, when they were banned because they tended to shatter--sending splinters flying hither and thither--when crashed.  Such mishaps were all the more likely on track wheels, which are tensioned tighter and ridden with the highest-pressure tires.

I have ridden wooden rims and enjoyed their resilient yet responsive ride.  I had to wonder, though, how much of that "feel" had to do with the tubular tires that were glued to the rims. (You pretty much have to ride tubulars if you ride wooden rims!)  I would never buy them, though, because just about all of my riding these days (even on my fixed gear) is done with brakes and because wooden rims have to be treated with more TLC than metal or carbon-fiber rims.

One thing I haven't seen is a whole wheel made of wood.  That is, until I came across this:

Did This Idea Ever Fly?

We have all felt, at least once, that we were "flying" while riding our bicycles.

In a sense, it always feels that way because we're not surrounded by walls or sheets of steel.  More often, though, when we say that we were, or felt as if we were, "flying", we mean that the ride was fast and effortless:  We were feeling good and spinning our gears while the wind pushed at our backs.

Most of us don't mean that we were literally aloft.  However, a few cyclists have gotten their wheels off the ground.  And I'm not talking about the kid on E.T.!

Nearly half a century before one of the world's favorite movies came out, a French inventor came up with this:

In the November 1936 issue of Popular Science, it was described thusly:

PROPELLER DRIVES NOVEL BICYCLE

A whirling, three-bladed propeller provides the motive power for a bicycle of odd design recently exhibited in Paris by a French inventor. Mounted at the front, the propeller is attached to a driving rod in a gear box supported over the front wheel by a metal frame. The gear mechanism is connected by a chain to the conventional bicycle sprocket wheel, which is pedaled in the usual manner. An extremely high gear ratio, it is said, enables the cyclist to drive the propeller at high speed. A hand lever is used to operate a rear-wheel brake, as in ordinary European bicycles.

As a cyclist who came of age during the 1970s--in the twilight of that decade's Bike Boom--I find the last sentence particularly fascinating.  I'm guessing that in 1936, most Americans had never seen or ridden a bike with a hand brake:  Most American bikes at that time were made for kids and had coaster brakes.  

I wonder whether that bike got off the ground, literally and figuratively.