At The End Of The Day In The Middle Of Spring

What could have been better than this:  a late-afternoon ride on a perfect Spring day?

It's the sort of thing that can make you happy to, well, be.  Scrims of cloud swirled around the bright sun.  Breezes puffed petals from flowers that have bloomed for a few days and, at times, gusted and rippled the water around my ride.

My little adventure took me to the Coney Island pier.

From there, I pedaled along the ocean and New York Bay under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

The only thing that wasn't almost perfect was this last photo.  But that was my fault.  I'm including it anyway because even though the saddle and part of the handlebars were cut off, Tosca still looks great, as she always does.

Spell Check Special Ed

Once upon a loong time ago, I thought about becoming a medievalist.  I always found that period of history interesting, but I realized that I would have to learn about seven or eight more languages (of which about two or three are spoken by living people),  If nothing else, I might have finally understood a concept I was taught, but never quite understood, when I was in Catholic school:  that eternal life.  I probably would have needed it, and more, to learn everything I needed to know in order to become a medievalist.

Anyway, I was reminded of that when I saw this sign:

Could the person who made it have been a medievalist, or tried to become one?  Theese puppyes cuytes I do lyke wel.  

Hmm...How would The Canterbury Tales have been different if Chaucer had Spell Check?

While pondering that question, I came across this:

Maybe the bike couldn't decide whether it was a Specialized or a Bottechia?  Or, perhaps, a Boteycheya?

Now I'm thinking of one o my riding buddies from my off-road riding days.  He didn't add a "C: to his Specialized.  Instead, he removed the "iz",    

He took the meaning of "Special Ed" quite literally and wore it as a badge of honor.  Or honorye?

Un Mirage, Aujourd'hui Et Hier

If you entered the world of cycling during the 1970's, as I did, you recall certain iconic bikes.  They're not necessarily the high-end ones:  You most likely would have been riding one of those if you had become a cyclist earlier or were wealthy.  I'm thinking, instead, of bikes like the Peugeot U-08, Raleigh Grand Prix and Super Course, Fuji S-10s and Nishiki Olympic and International.  They were the bikes on which many of us learned about cycling:  that is to say, when we went from being kids who banged around on bikes to adolescents and young adults who commuted, trained, raced, toured or were messengers astride two wheels.

Another bike of that genre was the Motobecane Mirage.  I was reminded of that yesterday, when I saw one parked.

Of course, a Mirage from my youth would not have looked like that:  For one thing, red on black, seemingly ubiquitous today, was not quite as common a color scheme.  Even more to the point, one of those old Mirages would not have built in China, or this way:

No, those old bikes would not have had their aluminum frame tubes joined by cobbly welds.  Instead, like most bikes of any quality made at that time, their steel tubes would have been fitted and brazed into lugs.

The result would have been something like this specimen from around 1981:

From Mr. Martin's Website

Like earlier Mirages, this one is constructed from high-carbon steel tubes and lugs.  Though it's one step above entry-level, it had workmanship, a finish and ride better than other bikes in its category. 

Motobecane is said to be the first European bike-maker to equip new bikes with Japanese drivetrain components like the SunTour derailleurs and Sakae Ringyo crankset you see on this bike.  Those components--especially the derailleurs--were significant improvements over the gear found on earlier iterations of the Mirage:

The derailleurs are Huret Allvit:  the same ones found on many entry-level European bikes during the Bike Boom era.  (Schwinn equipped several of its models with rebadged versions of the same derailleurs.) While as advanced when it was introduced in 1958 as the first personal computers were two decades later, they became anachronisms just as quickly.  So did the steel cottered crankse after Japanese companies like Sakae Ringyo (a.k.a. SR) came out with relatively low-priced cotterless cranksets around the same time SunTour introduced its VGT rear derailleur, of which many are still in use nearly two decades after SunTour stopped making derailleurs.

Now, some components on the new black Mirage I saw yesterday are certainly vast improvements over (though not as attractive as) the stuff on the green Mirage--and, some would argue, on the blue one. And even if the new machine is a good rider, somehow I will never be able to see it as a Mirage from my youth. (Pun intended!)

P.S.  I actually owned and rode a Mirage--which was my commuter/beater--for about two years.  It was like the green one in the photo, except that mine was black with purple seat tube and head panels.  I loved the way it looked, and rode.  Sadly, like several of my commuter/beaters, I crashed it.  Or, more precisely, I rode it into one of the deepest potholes in the history of paved roads and cracked the top and seat tubes just behind the head lugs.

Daisy Bell

It's May.  Finally, the weather finally says "Spring is here!"  And, some would say, love is in the air.

With that in mind, I simply could not resist posting this recording of "Daisy Bell" (a.k.a. "Bicycle Built For Two"), as sung by Pat Phillips:

The Syntax Of Traffic Regulation

Sometimes I have to wonder what, exactly, this city's Department of Transportation is trying to accomplish?  Are they trying to make this city more or less "bike friendly", whatever that means?  More specifically, are they trying to encourage or discourage bicycle commuting?  Or do they want to do both?

I mean, they decide they don't want us to use certain bridges or walkways--I think.  At least, that's the message--the literal one, anyway--I get from this sign:

So why am I so uncertain as to the DOT's intentions?  Well, for one thing, the sign was placed in a spot most cyclists (or pedestrians, for that matter) won't see:  in the corner of a retaining wall that takes a sharp turn away from the path of pedestrians and cyclists.  It almost makes me think someone in the DOT was ordered, but didn't want, to put up the sign.

What makes the intentions of the sign even less clear, though, is that the sign imposes another, seemingly unrelated, prohibition against taking pictures.

Or does it?  Take a look at the last line:

"Use of cameras prohibited and strictly enforced."  As I understand, "prohibited" means "not allowed" or "barred".  But I take "strictly enforced" to mean that people will be compelled or forced to use cameras. 

Now, I'll admit that my knowledge of some things is a bit rusty.  So maybe I've forgotten the part of some class in which the instructor explained how something can be forbidden and mandatory at the same time.

Or it may be that, as an acquaintance suggested, that I've been teaching so long that I know English grammar too well for my own good--or my own sanity, at any rate. Or, at least, I know so much that it interferes with my bike riding.

For the record, the issue in the sign is not one of grammar:  It's one of syntax.

Whatever that sign was trying to say, I may or may not have been in violation:  I took the photo with my cell phone, not a camera.

Bike Season Budding Under Cherry Blossoms

Today's rain felt more like it was driven from November than something that fell from a late April sky.  And the temeperature reached only 8C (45F).

But the cold gray dampness might have made the cherry blossoms, which finally began to bloom during the past few days, all the more vibrant.  Their fresh pink flowers are always a sign, at least for me, that it really is spring.  And that, of course, usually means a nice atmosphere as well as backdrop for cycling.

And wouldn't you know it?  I came across this:

From Elm City Commuter

And this:

In an eBay listing

I hope that, in spite of the fact that I've done so much less cycling this year than I'd done by this time in other years, this cycle season, and I, are about to bloom.

Que votre route soit couverte de petales de fleurs de cerisier.

If You Find It, Is It Still Abandoned?

Believe it or not, there was actually a time in my life when I wanted to be an archaeologist.  Of course, all I knew about the profession came from watching National Geographic shows; shortly thereafter, a similarly naive longing to be an oceanographer or marine biologist was fueled by seeing Jacques Cousteau's adventures on television.

As for the archaeology fantasy:  I had visions of finding people, animals and artifacts frozen in a particular moment when a storm or avalanche struck, smoke choked, a tide engulfed or an advancing glacier encased, them.

What if I were to find a bicycle abandoned or forgotten in a particular moment?  Would I find it in the remains of an ancient house, dump or street?  In an alley, perhaps?

 

Monkey, Longhorn Or Ape Hanger

One of my favorite non-bike blogs is Old Picture of the Day.  Sometimes the images are worth looking at purely for aesthetic reasons; almost all of the others are interesting in some aspect of life, past or present, they reveal.

In each post, a (usually brief) comment accompanies the photo.  Those are worth reading because they convey "PJM"'s deep appreciation--and, sometimes, personal connections--to the photographs he collects and displays.

His post today included this photo, along with a reminisce about his own childhood bike, which was very similar to the one in the picture:

One thing I found interesting about the responses he got to his post is how they described the handlebars.  I have heard to bars like the ones in the photo referred to as "Longhorn" bars (even though I grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey!)  and the bars on bikes like the Schwinn Sting Ray and Raleigh Chopper (the ones with "banana seats")as "Ape Hangers".  But one commenter heard them referred to as "monkey" bars".  What's really funny, to me, is that some of the adults I knew during the  '70's "Bike Boom" referred to the those funny-looking dropped handlebars on those newfangled ten-speeds as "monkey bars"--meaning, I presume, that only a monkey could ride them.

 

Shoehorned

Does your gym offer amenities like this?

Joined At The Lugs?

Before you know it, Spring will come...

Oh, right, it is Spring now.  I guess it's a month late:  We've got March winds, but it's April.  I guess we'll get the showers in May and the flowers in June.

And what about the weddings?  Will they be in July?

Not that I'm planning on having one.  For now, I'm still living by Carrie Bradshaw's maxim, "Friends don't let friends get married."  Sometimes people give the best advice before they break it!  

Anyway, I not only don't plan on getting married, I haven't been invited to a wedding.  Not that I'm complaining.

But if I have to go to a ceremony, I wouldn't mind being summoned to it by this:

From Kristen Archer

Apparently, the bride-to-be designed this invitation herself.  She even had a bicycle-themed bridal shower!

I can think of one couple in particular for whom the invitation would have been most appropriate:

They are, of course, Harriet Fell and the much-missed Sheldon Brown.