Spinning A Good Ride

When I first got serious about cycling, nearly half a century ago(!), the question was:  Reynolds 531 or Columbus SL?  Sometimes Vitus 971 was included, and within a few years,Tange and Ishiwata (The latter was seriously underrated, in my opinion!) would become part of the discussion.

Later, cyclists argued about whether to ride frames made of aluminum, titanium, carbon fiber--or steel. When serious cyclists said "steel," of course, they didn't mean the gaspipe-grade stuff used on bikes sold in big-box stores:  They were referring to Reynolds, Columbus and Tange (though in new configurations), Dedaccai and other makers.

Today, I am going to settle the question about frame materials, for once and for all.  Or, to be exact, someone more famous (and therefore more of an expert) than me--will give us the answer we've all been waiting for:

By Mike Joos

She-roes On Wheels

I grew up at the tail end of a generation in which boys (of all ages) venerated comic-book superheroes.  We had the Green Hornet, Captain America, Spiderman, the Hulk and, of course, Superman, among others.


As I recall, the only female superhero was Wonder Woman.  There was Batgirl, but I never thought of her as a hero (heroine) because she always seemed subordinate to Batman, and even Robin.


Now, I could tell you that the dearth of girls with superpowers is the reason why I never was never a fan of the superhero genre.  I didn't hate it, mind you:  I just never could care about it.


(By the way, that's more or less the way I feel about science fiction and fantasy.  It's not that I think of them as inferior genres:  I simply never could, for whatever reasons, immerse myself in them.)


Still, I have to wonder how my life might have been different had I grown up seeing something like this:







She's the creation of Thought You Knew founder Alexis Finch.  The lissome lass (!) in the drawing appeared in TyK's Bicycle Pinup Calendar fo 2012.


Ms. Finch says Thought You Knew is a "knee-jerk reaction to the lack of strong women as cycling role models in Chicago.  She explains she was "tired of leaving my sexuality at the door to get taken seriously in bike shops" and "frustrated at seeing so many women sitting on the sidelines at bike events".


For that alone, Ms. Finch sounds like a hero for me!