The Burn Without The Climb

Tomorrow or some time after, I'll tell you about the ride I did today.  It's another 100K ride, though to a different destination from the one I did the other day.

So, in three days, I've probably done more riding-for-the-sake-of-riding than I'd done a couple of months.  My legs have been holding up surprisingly well.  Maybe I had more "money in the bank", as an old riding partner used to say, than I realized.  

Whatever fatigue I've felt has come from all of the sun I've absorbed on my skin.  Even though I've used lots of sunscreen, I now see--and feel--redness on skin that had been the color of Wonder bread for weeks.

All right, so that last description was a bit of an exaggeration.  Still, I feel as if the past few days have been a new beginning, at least in terms of my cycling--and writing. Yes, I've been doing some of the latter, and it's not related (at least not obviously so) to this or my other blog.

The only complaint I have is the one I have about cycling here generally:  It's flat.  Now, it's probably the reason I've been able to do the rides I've done with relative ease. But to really get back into shape, I'll have to start going vertical.  And about the only climbs around here are the bridge ramps. Even places with "hill" in their names don't require much more of a change in elevation than the floor of one place in which I lived during my youth.

Speaking of my youth:  Yes, I did a fair amount of climbing on my bike.  In fact, during my last two tours in France, I pedaled up a few of the fabled Tour de France climbs.  One day I will write about them, after I sift through my photos and journals of those rides, the most recent of which I did in 2001.

But for now, I'll share this wry image about the difficulty of such climbs:

From Imgkid

Of the peaks mentioned, I have done all except Port de Bales.  Perhaps one day I will do them again, or find others.

Happy Easter From The Florida "Bunny"

So...Yesterday I was feeling good about doing my first 100K ride of the year and, in the process, getting more sunshine in one day than I'd seen in the previous three months.

Today I rode about half as much.  I probably would have had a shorter ride in any event because I started later and had to get back earlier than I did yesterday.  But today I made a point of not venturing very far because I was riding in and out of showers that threatened to turn into one of those Florida downpours that bears more resemblance to Niagara Falls than to most other storms you've seen.  At least, that's what the weather forecasters promised us.

And we did get one, about an hour after I got back--and just minutes after seeing someone who probably weathered it all quite well:

Can you imagine if we had necks like that?  It would definitely put chiropractors out of business!
 

Actually, he's the Florida Easter Bunny. a.k.a. the Great Egret.

Have a great holiday!

Back In The Sunshine--And Heat

Like everyone else in northeastern US, I've been complaining about The Winter That Won't Go Away.  It hasn't been the snowiest or coldest season, but it's been so gray and dreary, and the snow and ice cover were all but constant from the beginning of the new year until a couple of weeks ago.

Mind you, I don't mind cold or snow.  I like changing seasons.  I don't want endless winter more than I want any other endless season.

So guess where I am now?  You guessed it:  in a place that has a couple fewer seasons than New York.

  

Yes, I'm in Florida again, having come just as the weather was starting to warm up (or, at least,turn more springlike) at home.  

Bicycle tubes at the Trailhead Beach 'n' Bike Gallery, Palm Coast, FL

I'm glad to see Mom and Dad again.  And today I got on the old beach cruiser they keep here for me and kept on pedaling, into the wind, up Route A1A.   I could feel some of the dust flying off and the cobwebs breaking away from my muscles.  And the sun grew warmer--and, I would discover, more intense on my skin.

The result?  I pedaled 51 km (31.5 miles), encountering almost no traffic and, before my destination for the day, my only obstacle--lions .

I had to get past them to enter the historic downtown area of St. Augustine.  Surprisingly, those lions don't chase cyclists.  At least, they didn't chase me.  Maybe they know I love cats.

And they stood aside as I crossed their bridge to leave the city and pedal another 51 km back to Mom and Dad's house.  The 102 km I covered today made it my longest ride of the year, so far.

After fighting the wind on the way up, my feet were practically pedaling automatically on the way back.  That, in spite of tiring about halfway back. 

In June 1964, Andrew Young, then one of Martin Luther King Jr's senior field organizers, led a march through the old part of St. Augustine. He and the other marchers were beaten as they tried to cross to Plaza de la Constitution. One month later, the Civil Rights Act was passed.

I realized why:  I felt that glow I feel on my skin whenever I've just gotten more sun than I've had in weeks and months.  Not only did I spend a few hours in uninterrupted sunlight (except for a couple of brief incursions into St. Augustine landmarks and shops), I was wearing far less--shorts and a tank top--than I've worn in months.  And, as this ride reminded me, the sun is a good deal more intense here than it is in New York.

But I feel my body, my spirit opened again.  That, and something I wrote on the plane on the way down, help me to feel as if I am returning to normal in the good ways.  I'm ready to say "I'm back", though perhaps without the Austrian accent. 

Will They Still Be Riding When They're 64?

We all get older. Some of us get old.  Of course, when we're young, most of us don't think about that:  We simply cannot imagine ourselves not going on as we are.

I got to thinking about that again, ironically, while riding along the waterfront from my neighborhood into Long Island City, Greenpoint and Williamsburg, a.k.a. Hipster Hook. Hipsters are, of course, young by definition.  At least, that's how I understand them to be.  That begs the question of whether one can "age out" of hipsterdom.  (I recall how the hippies used to say young people shouldn't trust anyone over 30.)  What do hipsters become when they're, say, old enough to be President?  Or do they move to other hipster enclaves and lie about their age?

More important (at least in relation to this blog!), will they continue riding their fixed-gear bicycles?  And, if they do (or if they ride any bikes at all), will they still want "deep V" aerodynamic rims in rainbow colors?

I can just picture some hipster retirement community in 40 years. Maybe residents will be riding machines like this:

From Trikes and (odd) Bikes

To tell you the truth, I like it, though I don't feel ready to ride a trike just yet. (Knock on my Phil Woods!)

Crazy In Chicago

Since I'm posting this on the day after April Fools' Day, This it is not a joke.  But some of the bikes you will see in it will seem like pranks.

As we all know, Schwinn was based in Chicago for a century.  At the time it started building bikes, in the mid-1890s, about six dozen other bicycle manufacturers were making their wares in the Windy City.

Most, of course, did not survive beyond the first decade of the 20th Century.  Still, Schwinn was big enough, and enough smaller companies remained, to ensure that the city on the shore of Lake Michigan would retain its status as one of the centers of the American bicycle industry.

And it's one of the places where adult cycling actually survived, at least to some degree, during the Dark Ages of cycling in the US:  roughly the two decades following World War II.

Maybe it has to do with the water (Lake Michigan?  The Chicago River?  The Canal?):  During the 1940s, a lot of "crazy bikes" were built there by ostensibly sentient grown-ups.  

I don't know whether to have respect or to ridicule Art Rothman, who designed this one:

 

He's riding in the top position. Perhaps not surprisingly, he broke three ribs while learning how to ride it.  Perhaps he recuperated on this Joe Steinlauf-designed bike-bed:

 



Once he got it going, I'm sure he got further on it than anyone who rode this machine:


 

Just in case you run into any gangsters (It's Chicago, after all!), make sure you have this:

 


Thirteen shotguns, two revolvers, six bayonets and a flare gun.  They covered all possibilities, didn't they?


Now here's what we needed this past winter:

 

So You Wanna Have The Lightest Bike On The Block...

So...You missed your opportunity to ride Gunter Mai's 2.96 kilogram Lightbike.  You hadn't heard about it. Or you did,  but couldn't find his website.  Or you did, but can't read German.  Or you couldn't afford it. (I didn't ask.  You know what they say:  If you have to ask, you can't afford it.)  Or you had some other commitment.

Well, don't feel bad.  You didn't miss your opportunity to ride the world's lightest bike after all. As we speak, a new, revolutionary velocipedic machine is being made from the lightest material known to humankind.

 

How light is it?   Try 100 times lighter than Styrofoam (you know, that stuff in your helmet).  And it's stronger than carbon-fiber, beryllium or any other metal that's every been used to make a bike or part on which you've spent your hard-earned money.

What is that wonder metal?, you ask.  It's a nickel-phosphorus alloy.  Even more important, though, it's drawn into tubes one-hundreth the breadth of a human hair and woven into a latticework that can withstand enormous stresses.

No one has said when a bike made from this material will be ready to ride, but here is a prototype.


To learn more about it, click here.

Bicycles And The Eiffel Tower

On this date in 1889, the Eiffel Tower opened to the public.

Probably no other manmade structure in the world has served as a backdrop for as many bicycles and cyclists as that most iconic of buildings.  Made to serve as the entrance of that year's Exposition, it was, ironically, slated to be torn down once the fair ended.  And many criticis couldn't wait:  They complained that it interrupted the Paris skyline.



There are a number of reasons why la Tour and two wheels are so linked in people's imaginations.  One, of course, is that cycling, almost from its very beginnings, has been a seemingly inextricable part of French culture.  Another is that the tower is so associated with romance, like people and couples wending and sashaying along rues diffuse eclaires, in the City of Light and in les pays.

Also, it's difficult to separate the history of bicycles themselves from that of the Eiffel Tower.  When its construction began in 1887, the "safety bicycle", with a chain-driven rear wheel and a front of equal size or smaller, had been on the market a couple of years.  With it, ridership grew by leaps and bounds--and, for the first time, significant numbers of women were riding--because, as its name indicates, it was safer to ride than the high-wheelers that had mainly been toys for strong young men.  And, in 1888, while the la Tour was going up, John Boyd Dunlop introduced his pneumatic tire, which would further improve the rideabilty of bicycles.



Now, I am neither an engineer nor a scientist, so take what I'm about to say for what it's worth.  I think that another parallel between the development of two-wheelers and the tower is that both taught subsequent inventors and researchers much about the possibilities of metal construction.  Contrary to what most people believe (as I did, until I learned otherwise!), the Eiffel Tower and most bicycles of the time were not made of steel.  Although steel had been around for milennia, methods for making it in large quantities had only recently been developed.  Thus, it was expensive and nobody really knew how to use it in construction.

Thus, the Tower and bikes were made of iron--wrought in the case of the former and cast for bikes.  Monsieur Eiffel's team figured out that the structure they conceived would be best built by placing them at angles to each other.  Around the same time, bicycle frames were evolving into something like the shapes so familiar to us today, as different bike-builders experimented with different placements of, and ways of joining, frame members.

As heavy as wrought iron is, it's still much lighter than stone, the most popular material for large structures at that time, and for centuries before.  And the cast iron used for bicycles (which were sometimes made by blacksmiths) was sturdier than the wood that had been used to make bikes.  While iron bikes were heavier, they paved the road (so to speak) for steel bikes, which could be made much lighter because the fact that the material is stronger means that less of it can be used to achieve the necessary strength.

Of course, the work of Eiffel's team made the creation of other large metal structures, just as the new safety bicycle opened up other possiblities in bicycle (as well as other vehicular) design and construction.  That meant that, while the Eiffel Tower was the world's tallest manmade structure on the day it opened, it would hold that distinction for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930.  Likewise, the construction methods developed for iron bikes, along with pneumatic tires, made it possible to develop, not only better bicycles, but also automobiles and aircraft.

So, if you find yourself thinking about the Eiffel Towers and bicycles together, just remember that they are linked, not only in romantic images, but also in history and technology.

Knowing that, it seems fitting that the Bikeffel Tower was built in Breckenridge, Colorado from recycled bike parts:

Defining The Season

What's the difference between a late winter and an early spring ride?

Since it's not yet April Fool's Day, this is not a joke.  However, you are free to leave humorous comments.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it's been Spring--at least officially--for a bit more than a week.  Some places have had the kind of weather we normally associate with spring for days, or even weeks.  Other places, like Florida, have already had summer-like (at least by the standards of NYC) conditions, if only for a day here and a day there.  On the other hand, there are places like northern New England, much of Canada and the Rockies, where snow still covers the ground.

So what, exactly, makes a ride early spring rather than late winter?  One factor might be the amount of daylight:  There's noticeably more of it than there was even a week or two ago.  And, since Daylight Savings Time began three weeks ago, that daylight (sometimes a gray pallor) lasts to 19h (7:00 pm) or even later.  Of course, the day has begun later, but soon we will have early dawns to go with our late dusks.

That's a fair measure of the seasons.  But the further north one goes in this hemisphere, the more daylight there is.  (Conversely,there is less of it during the fall and winter.) And some of those places are even more packed in snow and ice than this area was after even a series of snowstorms.  For those who are accustomed to such conditions and have studded tires, that might not be such an important factor.  But even such cyclists--some, anyway--do not ride in such conditions.

That brings me to yet another factor in differentiating the seasons:  The number of fellow riders you see on the road or trail. When I rode to Rockaway Beach three weeks ago, I didn't see any other cyclists. Ditto for the ride I took through the Bronx and Westchester a week after that.  But yesterday, I saw dozens of other riders on the bike path that wends its way along the Brooklyn waterfront.  Then again, once I got to the cobblestoned streets around Bush Terminal--deserted on a Sunday--I had them all to myself.  If I go there in a couple of weeks, I'll probably see other riders, though not nearly as many as one encounters on the Kent Street path.

By that standard, the ride I took yesterday was definitely Early Spring, even if the temperature barely broke the freezing mark and the wind whipped against our jackets.

Post #3000: Celebrating With An Allegro

Between this and my other blog, this is my 3000th post.  

I started this blog nearly five years ago, in June 2010.  My other blog, Transwoman Times, started nearly two years before that.  While TT has about 200 more posts, I have been more active on this one since I've started it.

I'm going to celebrate with an Allegro.  Well, yeah, I mean a musical piece by Bach. After all, I was listening to a classical music program before I went out riding.  But I also mean a derauilleur SunTour made, possibly because I saw one.

 

It's not the most refined piece they ever made.  But it wasn't meant to be. Like its predecessor, the Honor, it was cheap, sturdy and worked well.  That is enough to make most people as happy as the word "allegro" sounds.

Ah, SunTour:  Of all bike component companies no longer in business (at least in the US; in Europe there is a company called SR-SunTour which seems to share only the name), it's probably the one I miss most.

Taking Cycling To Heart In Dixie

As Portland goes, so goes....Alabama?

April Fool's Day is on Wednesday, but I'm not putting in an early joke here.  You read the first sentence of this post right:  Some folks in Alabama are doing something folks in the Rosebud City--and Quebec--have been doing for some time.

Since you're reading this blog, you've figured out it's bike-related.  Indeed it is:  Today, the first Alabama Statewide Bicycle Summit brought together bicycle transportation and recreation groups, engineers, builders, planners--and state tourism representatives.

Cyclists in the  Selma 50 ride, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of  the march Martin Luther King Jr. led to Montgomery.  Photo by Mickey Welsh.

Yes, those reps were discussing bicycle tourism in the Heart of Dixie.  Now, I've never been there, but I'm told--even by people whose politics are well to the left of mine (Yes, there are such people!) that much of the state is quite lovely.  The few Alabamans I've met seemed like lovely people and, like neighboring Florida, it has warmer weather for longer parts of the year than most other states.

But those state tourism folks have figured out something their counterparts in Oregon and La Belle Province have learned:  making their state bike-friendly can be good for business.   A few years ago, Portland-based activist/writer/cyclist Elly Blue pointed out that 78 percent of visitors to Portland said the city's bicycle-friendly reputation played a part in their decision to travel there.  And, of course, numerous localities reap economic benefits from large, well-publicized rides such as the Five Boro Bike Tour in my hometown of New York.

So...Will it be long before we see a peloton whistling Dixie on their way through Sweet Home Alabama?