Perhaps the fall is inevitable, which is exactly the reason some people live as if it will never happen to them.
Sometimes I think that is one of the messages of The Great Gatsby. Though the novel was written, and take place, in the 1920s, a line from Prince is fitting: party like it's 1999.
I got to thinking about Gatsby and what the fall means today because, while riding, I saw this:
and this:
along the North Shore, from Queens into Long Island and back.
You know the old riddle: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, perhaps someone posed a parallel question: If trees lose their leaves and nobody sees it, will the fall come?
Jay Gatsby, having grown up on a farm and aspired to the high life, probably never looked at a tree once he left the farm. I doubt any of the other characters in that novel looked at very many trees or gave much thought to the changing of the season, whether in nature or their lives.
But fall comes to their North Shore playgrounds, just as it comes everywhere else. For me, it made for a lovely, pleasant ride, one in which I didn't mind that I was pedaling into, or getting sideswiped by, brisk winds, or that as I rode along the water, the temperature dropped (or seemed to drop) to levels for which I wasn't dressed.
Today it was Vera's turn to enjoy the season. She was dressed for the occasion. Then again, she always looks right for the ride. So do my other Mercians.
They have no reason to fear the fall. Nor do I.
Around this time every year, two of my uncles took hunting trips. They and some of their buddies would drive upstate, usually to the Catskills, in pursuit of deer or whatever else they could shoot. Sometimes they went with bows and arrows; on other trips, they brought rifles. I would learn that hunting season was delineated not only by the prey (deer, bear, moose) but also weapons (bow or gun).
On a few occasions, they said they'd "bagged" a "big one" but couldn't bring it home. (Sounds like a "fish story", doesn't it?) But I recall one other time they actually brought back a deer carcass and we ate a lot of venison (which I liked) that fall and winter. Another time, they brought back the antlers. To this day, I choose to believe that they actually let their buddies take the rest of the animal: Being the city kid I was (and am), I wouldn't have known whether they bought their "pointers" in some gift shop.
Although it's something I could never do myself, I have always had respect for hunting. Some of that, of course, ,may simply have been a result of my love for my uncles-- one of whom is my godfather and my only still-living uncle. If nothing else, I came to see that someone who shoots an animal is very, very unlikely to turn his gun on a human being. Also, I learned that the chase requires self-discipline and a respect for the animal whose trail you are following. Finally, I have come to realize that a certain amount of hunting is actually necessary, as the animals' natural predators are all but gone in many areas. Even though the thought of shooting an animal does not appeal to me, I would rather that some animals were shot by sports people than to see many, many more starve and freeze to death during the winter.
Still, I smile on those rare occasions when I see a set of antlers tied to a roof rack. Honestly, I still couldn't tell you whether they were actually hunted by the vehicle's driver or passengers, or whether they came from some store.
I probably wouldn't care whether or not they were real if they were transported this way:
I mean, really, how can you not respect someone who cycles to the hunting grounds and brings back his or her "trophy" on two wheels? ;-)
Today is Veterans' Day here in the USA. In other countries, today is Armistice Day.
While I think veterans, especially those who are disabled, should never want for anything, I think this day--or Memorial Day--should not be a day to celebrate war with chest-thumping displays of nationalistic grandiosity. (Nor should it be simply another orgy of shopping, as too many other "holidays" have become.) Rather, I think such days should be occasions to remember who and what we've lost in wars, and ways we can prevent it.
That said, I'm going to talk about the contribution one of the most respected companies in cycling made to a war effort.
I wrote about said company in yesterday's blog post. Specifically, I wrote about a frame tube set it produced for a few years--and one it made for decades.
That company, Reynolds, still makes some of the most esteemed tubing, which is used by some of the world's best bicycle builders. My post focused on "708", which it made for a few years and was a descendant of its most iconic product: 531 tubing, which won 24 out of 25 Tours de France after World War II and was used to build high-quality bikes for just about every type of riding and rider for half a century.
As much as it pains me to say this, Reynolds 531 tubing, like many other advances in technology, resulted from military research and development. The company said as much.
Reynolds began manufacturing nails in Birmingham, England in 1841. It thrived in this business but its leaders saw the potential in bicycle fitments, especially after James Starley's "safety" bicycle (with two equally-sized wheels) helped to popularize cycling in the 1880s.
Its reputation was burnished during the cycling boom of the 1890s, when Reynolds was one of the first companies to make seamless tubing and, not long after, patented the first butted tubing. The latter development, of course, revolutionized bicycle design because making the ends of the tubes--where most of the stress concentrated--thicker, the walls could be made thinner toward the middle of the tube. This resulted in frames that were lighter and more resilient than ones that had been made before. To this day, high-quality frames made from steel, aluminum or titanium have butted tubes.
Reynolds double-butted tubing was such an advancement over other steel tubing available at the time that during World War I, the company was called upon to equip the armed forces. Its first contracts were for military bicycles and motorcycles, but by 1916, Reynolds tubing was being used for aircraft used in the war.
Aeronautical engineering is, almost by definition, a quest for making things as light and strong as possible. Those early airplanes had such thin wings and shells because, given the materials of the time, they had to be constructed that way in order for them to be light enough to loft into the air. Engineers and designers soon realized that they couldn't make those parts thinner without running the risk that they would break apart at the slightest crosswind or impact. So, the emphasis shifted toward making materials stronger.
That is how Reynolds, and other companies, began to experiment with alloys of steel. It was known that adding certain elements to the metal strengthened it, which meant that less could be used to achieve the same strength. By the 1930s, Reynolds upon a particularly good combination consisting of maganese, molybdenum and other elements, in a ratio of approximately five to three to one. Now you know why it's called Reynolds 531.
During World War II, production of frame tubes was suspended, as Reynolds was once again called upon to make aircraft parts. After the war ended, 531 production resumed and the "miracle metal" was used in aircraft components, race car chasis and, most famously, bicycles.
Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic in highlighting the fact that Reynolds' technologies had their root in war efforts. I guess I could see it as an example of "beating swords into ploughshares." That makes it easier to enjoy the ride of my Mercians!
