The Life Of Carbon

Yesterday, I paid a visit to Bicycle Habitat in Soho.  Hal Ruzal is one of the mechanics I go to when I don’t have the time or tools—or am too lazy—to build or fix something.  As he was fixing another customer’s bike, I noticed a bike in his work station.

 

“Wow! That’s a really early Trek carbon fiber bike.”

He nodded.  “It’s hardly been ridden at all,” he said.

The bike certainly didn’t look any older than it did the day it rolled out of the showroom in 1990 or thereabouts.  That’s not to say it’s timeless:  While it looked new, it was certainly dated.

Although I was never tempted to buy one, I rather admired them back in the day.  They were sleek, almost elegant, in a high-tech sort of way, with purple lettering and graphics on a graphite-grey frame.
 

Aside from the color combination, the bike had an almost-classic look because its frame tubes were more or less the same diameter as those on steel frames.  Also, it had the slender joints found on classic frames, although it didn’t have the nice lugwork one finds on the best European and Japanese frames—or even the bikes Trek was building before they started making carbon frames.  

At least the frame, unlike too many of today’s frames, didn’t seem to have been built my melting frame tubes together in a microwave oven.  Then again, the way the bike is built might be the reason why so few of them are seen today—or that the one I saw  has survived as long as it has only because it hasn’t been ridden very much.

Hal reiterated something he and others “in the know” have said before:  Carbon-fiber bikes aren’t made to last.  Then again, the same thing can be said about most super-light aftermarket equipment:  something I learned from experience.  As I mentioned in another post, a hub with aluminum flanges bonded to a carbon fiber body collapsed one day while I was riding a smooth road.  I also broke a carbon fiber handlebar, and other riders I knew destroyed expensive lightweight CNC-machined parts as well as stuff made from carbon fiber.

Yet there are people who will—as I did in my youth—ride, or simply buy, such stuff “because the pros use it”.  While those carbon-fiber bars or magnesium wheels (or, ahem, non-round chainrings) might actually give some racer an edge in a World Cup event, said racer doesn’t have to buy, install, fix or replace it.  These days, the stuff sponsors give to top-level pros is intended only for one season; the following year, they get new bikes and parts.  And their teams’ mechanics keep everything running for them.

(Now I am thinking about Miguel Indurain, who won the Tour de France five times during the 1990s.  After he retired, he went shopping for a bike.  He all but fell over when he saw the price tag on a machine like the one he rode: During his two decades as a professional cyclist, he never had to buy a bike or any of the kit he wore.)

From what Hal and others have told me, things haven’t changed.  Yes, today’s bikes are lighter, and probably stiffer (if not stronger) than those of the past.  But carbon fiber frames and parts don’t last any longer than they did in those days—unless, like the Trek I saw the other day, it isn’t ridden.

Your Secret Is Safe With Me

Nearly every one of us has done something we won't admit--except, perhaps, under extreme duress-- to having done.

People have confided such misdeeds to me. Back when I was a Rutgers student and riding with the Central Jersey Bicycle Club, a ride leader about three times my age whispered to me that he voted for Richard Nixon.  One of my fellow students, who wanted to be the next Sir Kenneth Clarke, confided to me that he once paid full price for a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet--in hardcover, no less!  And a woman I dated tearfully related how, around the time she was entering puberty, she had a crush on David Cassidy, a.k.a. Keith Partridge.

Of course I assured them their secrets are safe with me.  I am not breaking my promise:  I am sure that none of them read this blog.  In fact, I know the Nixon voter never will, unless he can see it from that great bike path in the sky.

Now it's time for me to come clean.  No, I won't tell you about the things I've done behind closed doors:  Some things are best left to the imagination.  (I assure you, though, they were done only with consenting adults and no endangered species were harmed.)  I actually had a Members Only jacket--and copy of Spandau Ballet's True. (The latter was a gift--I swear!)  I also straddled the 80s trends of camouflage and neon colors:  When I wanted to look tough and macho, I did camo, but in my heart of hearts, I loved that neon pink, especially my Italian winter cycling jacket in that color. 

And I also--please, please don't tell anyone--wore something that looks even more ridiculous now than Duran Duran's hairdos: 

So you wore them, too?  OK, I promise not to tell.  I had a pair of those Oakley Factory Pilot goggles, circa 1985, in--you guessed it--neon pink. 

To be fair, they were more practical for cycling, in a number of ways, than traditional sunglasses.  For one thing, they had interchangeable lenses. So you could wear smoke-gray on sunny days, the amber lenses on cloudy days and clear ones at night.  Also, because they wrapped around the temples, they provided protection from wind and insects as well as sun.  (I really appreciated them the time I got caught in a sleet storm during a ride!)  Finally, they weren't as fragile as other sunglasses were.

But they seemed to cover the face of just about anyone who wore them. 

Now that's a strange combination:  Oakley Factory Pilots with a "leather hairnet".   But he needn't worry:  His secret is safe with me!  ;-)

 

They Have Been Done; They Will Be Done Again

Who made the first dual-suspension folding bike?

No, it wasn't Dahon.   Nor was it Montague.  Even Moulton's double-shock folder has antecedents.

We may not ever know for sure who made the very first bike of this type.  I did find out, though,that one was made 100 years ago by a company that's still making bikes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was developed for use in war.  Some of the earliest foldable or collapsible bikes were made for soldiers to carry on their backs. Some, like the one I'm about to mention, even had mounts for guns or rifles.

In 1915, all of the major European powers were embroiled in World War I.  Some of the best-known developments of that conflict are the machine gun (which is said to have inspired the ratcheting freewheel) and chemical weaponry.  It may also have spawned bicycles with suspension and some of the earliest foldable bikes.

Bianchi Dual-Suspension Folding Bike, 1915

A bike that could both bounce and fold was created for the Italian Army by--you guessed it--Bianchi.  The company claims that it was the first of its type.  That may well be true, but it's always difficult to say that anything was a "first" in cycling because so many designs simply disappeared without a trace only to be resurrected, sometimes by "inventors" who had no idea of their previous existence.

Still, I don't think folks at Bianchi are stretching the truth very much, if at all, when they say the dual-suspension folding bike they created for the Italian Army in 1915 was the first of its kind. There don't seem to be any records of bikes with dual suspension or folding bikes much before that date. Also, it's hard to imagine that the technology of the 19th Century--in bikes as well as manufacturing techniques--could have made suspended or folding bikes practical or widely available much before that date.

Whether or not it was the first bike of its kind, it's yet another example of how this passage from Ecclesiastes applies to the bicycle world:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. 

She Rides In Australia

A friend expressed consternation that today I cycled to Connecticut alone,  something I've done before.

I have also done that ride, and others, with friends.  But, she says, she wonders how I can ride alone.  

She is about a decade and a half older than I am and has not ridden a bike since she was a teenager.  That was typical for the place and time in which she grew up.  She says she'd thought about riding again but had difficulty finding other riders, particularly female ones.

"And the roads are so dangerous.  Don't you worry?"

I explained, as I've explained before, that I am careful but that cycling, while it has its risks, is really no more dangerous than any number of other things people do.  "To tell you the truth, I feel less safe crossing some streets--especially Queens and Northern Boulevards--as a pedestrian than I feel when I'm biking," I elaborated.

Her fear is a common one. In fact, a recent study shows that it's the main reason why women don't ride bikes.  To address that fear or reality, depending on one's point of view, Cycling Australia has initiated the "She Rides" program to get women to take to the same roads men ride every weekend.

Participation Coordinator Alex Bright said that while most women cycled as children, getting them back in the saddle as adults had been difficult.  In the hope of encouraging more women to ride, "We wanted to create a program that connected them with like minded women to help them get going and riding," she explained. "We wanted to provide a way to support women to get on their bikes because a lot of women feel unsafe on the road."

Members of a She Rides group in Parramatta, New South Wales

That program includes an eight-week course that now operates in 46 locations throughout Australia.  Charlene Bordley has coached three She Rides programs and says that while physical fitness is a benefit of riding, "it's also about mental fitness."  Riding for the first time in their adult lives--or, in some cases, for the first time in their lives, "is freedom for some people," she said.

Bordley, Bright and others involved with the program are doing something right:  Ninety percent of the women who have participated say they are more likely to ride on bike lanes or quiet roads than when they started, while 78 percent are more likely to ride busy streets.  

Manju Prajesh is one of those participants.  Even today, she still can't believe she now has the confidence to ride on the road.  "We have totally lost our fear," she says.

 

Saturday Sillies: What If Charlton Heston Had Ridden A Bicycle In "The Ten Commandments"?

I have always known that we, as cyclists, can change the world around us. 

We all know about the ecological effects:  If we get to work or school, or take joyrides, on our bikes, we don’t use the gasoline and other resources used by, or cause the pollution made by, automobiles.  We also know about the health benefits:  The exercise of pedaling makes our bodies stronger and the emotional release of being on a bike makes us saner. (Notice that I used the comparative rather than the absolute form of the word “sane”.) 

I believe many of you also know that we can also be agents of peace.  Although we can be competitive with each other and get angry with motorists who cut us off or pedestrians who step into our paths while they’re texting someone, for the most part, we’re calmer than most other people.  That, I believe, has to influence the people around us in one way or another.

That got me to thinking about how my riding, or cycling generally, might have influenced the drivers of these vehicles I encountered on my ride today:

Did I have the kind of influence Charlton Hestonhad in The Ten Commandments?  Am I such a powerful cyclist that I can cause two cars to part and let me pass?

Or, could it be that the police officer and taxi driver were so in awe of a woman in late middle age riding her bike—and passing a guy half her age—that they stopped dead?

Perhaps my riding so roiled their competitive juices or stimulated their production of testosterone (Wouldn’t that be ironic?) that they stopped each other in each other’s tracks?  On the other hand, something about me might have caused each of them to recognize something about each other and meet each other in the wilderness of Randall’s Island? 

Hmm…Maybe they, in the tedium and stress of their jobs, they were simply seeing so struck by seeing someone happy—positively giddy, like a lovestruck teenaged girl—that they simply had to stop?

And, dear reader, I’m still feeling giddy.  I’m not sure of why:  The ride, while pleasant and invigorating, was not exceptional.  I did nothing exceptional before or after the ride and I ate foods that, while both healthy and tasty, had no mind-altering chemicals of which I’m aware.

If you’re giddy, how can you not change the world around you—or, at least, some part or some people in it?

Giddyup!  I’m going to keep on riding.  Maybe I’ll stop some more traffic.

(As I type this, the Beatles’ Hey Jude is playing on the radio. Somehow that seems exactly right.)

Riding In Dry Heat To The Sea--And An Old "Friend"

In my youth, one of the things I did when I was trying to figure out--or, perhaps, avoid--whatever it was I was supposed to be doing was to teach English in a language institute near the UN.  

In every lesson, I would give students at least one tip on "how to sound like an American".  One--as I've mentioned in another post--is never to call the largest city in California "Los Angeles".  To us 'Murikuns, it's "L.A."

Another one of my tips was to talk about the weather.  Americans are always talking about it, I'd tell them, and that's one of the easiest ways to talk with an American--and learn everyday English.

In that vein, I'm going to say something about the weather, as I did yesterday.  It was hot today, though not quite as oppressive as the last couple of days.  But there was a huge difference:  very low humidity.  Those of you who live and ride in places like "L.A." or Arizona are probably accustomed to such conditions.  But here in the NYC Metro Area--indeed, on most of the East Coast--heat=humidity, at least most of the time.

It's weird, at least for me, to ride in 90 degree F (32C) weather without sweating. I take that back:  the body sweats, but it doesn't drip.  Rather, the beads of sweat evaporate before you can see or feel them on the surface of your skin.  Meantime, you're sucking down water or your favorite color of Gatorade or whatever your preferred libation is for bike riding.

In some way, I guess it makes sense that I'd ride to the ocean on a day like this. Specifically, I pedaled to Point Lookout:  into the wind to Rockaway Beach, balancing the wind on my right side to the Point and on my left side back to Rockaway and, finally, with the wind at my back from Rockaway Beach.

The tide was in, so the sandbars and many of the rocks I've seen on previous rides were submerged.  However, I did get a glimpse of an old friend:


He's at the center of the photo.  Look closely and you can see--no, not Jaws

but the Point Lookout Orca!

I hadn't seen him in a while. Whatever he (somehow I think he's male) is, he deserves the same respect accorded other mysterious aquatic and amphibious creatures like the Loch Ness Monster.  I think he prefers that to being compared to Pac-Man:

Hmm...Could the inventor of that iconic video game have been working from some Jungian archetype?  Could that person have had the Point Lookout Orca in his or her subconscious without realizing it?

Whatever Point Lookout Orca is, he's never chased me.  I guess I'm not as tasty as the crustaceans and bivalves he can find in those waters.  After all, who ever paid $100 for a plate of me?  Orca, on the other hand, gets to eat what's served in the city's most expensive restaurants--for free.

And I get to have a great ride without breaking a sweat.  It all works out sometimes.

Riding Through Five-Minute Monsoons

The sky is an iron-gray pall.   Every hour or so, curtains of rain fall from it for about five minutes.  Then it disappears, as if it were merely a hologram and once again the gray sky looms for another hour.

If you happen to be outside when the rain falls, you will get soaked.  Then, when the rain stops, you will ride or walk around sheathed by your wet clothes--if, of course, you didn't have rain gear.

I think now of times I made deliveries on days like this when I was a messenger.  The funny thing was that I could walk into some of the swankest buildings and stuffiest offices, soaked to my skin, and people in suits that cost more than I made in a month didn't blink an eye.  Sometimes they would even offer me a cup of coffee.  

(Once, when I made a delivery at the Pierre Hotel, someone--a manager, I presume--offered me lunch.  I took him up on it and promised that if I ever needed to stay in a hotel in New York, I would not consider any other.  I don't think he held me to it.)

I pedaled and delivered in the most soaking of downpours, against winds magnified in the concrete canyons of Wall Street and Midtown, and with needles of sleet stinging my face. And, yes, in the snow.

But I had nothing on these folks in Mumbai, India:

For that matter, I don't think the US Postal Service does, either. Nor did the US Postal Team:

Those guys were in Indonesia. Isn't it funny that the folks in the background, under an umbrella, don't seem as submerged as the guys on bikes.

When rain comes suddenly and you don't have rain gear, you can do one of three things:  You can wait it out.  You can ride it and get wet.  Or you can improvise:

Today I took a brief ride and packed my foldable rain slicker.  And, yes, I rode through two five-minute monsoons.

It's So Hot....

How hot is it today?

From Terrapics

It's so hot that carbon fiber frames are melting into pools of chain lube.

La Mise en Abîme .  Installation by Romain Crelier.

It's so hot that lycra jerseys are turning into all of the colors of Gatorade.

I don't know about you, but I choose my Gatorade by color:  They all taste the same to me.

Can the weather get hot enough to make everything taste like Gatorade?  Hmm...I'm not so sure I'd want to find out.


 

Going In Circles From Ovals To Rectangles

When I heard that Chris Froome won this year's Tour de France with an elliptical chainring, I thought of the immortal words of Yogi Berra, "It's deja vu all over again!"

There was something of a minor fad for them when I first became a dedicated cyclist, in the mid-1970s.  At that point, I think there were so few experienced cyclists (at least here in the US) that people were willing to try just about anything.  Sometimes that worked for the better, as with the case of SunTour derailleurs.  (I don't know anyone who went back to Simplex or Huret derailleurs after trying SunTour.)  In other cases, the new product didn't work well or, as in the case of elliptical chainrings, most riders didn't notice any difference.



Durham "Camel" chainring, circa 1975. Photo by Chuck Kichline.

Interestingly, oval-shaped rings enjoyed something of a renaissance a decade later, when Shimano resurrected the idea in its Biopace chainrings. It shape wasn't as exaggerated as that of the "Camel" ring in the above photo, but it looked noticeably different from round rings. It seemed that most people who rode them were in the then-emerging field of mountain or off-road riding.  Shimano offered Biopace road rings, but they weren't nearly as popular as the mountain versions.  The reason for that is, I believe, that mountain riding, being a relatively new sport, had younger riders who weren't as fixed in their habits as the older road cyclists and cyclotourists--who seemed to be a dying breed, at least here in the US, by the late 1980s.   Also, as someone explained to me at one of the trade shows, mountain riders tended to rely more on raw power than road cyclists, who prized a smooth, symmetrical stroke more. 

Shimano Biopace --loved and hated by more cyclists (who may or may not have used them)  than, possibly, any other chainring-- on 1985 Ritchey Annapurna.  From Mombat.org

Whether that person's theory holds any water, I'll never know.  I have never used any chainring that wasn't round--except for a couple of times when I fell or crashed and turned my chainring into a taco or a crepe, depending on whether I was on my Dakota or my Motobecane.  Let me tell you, neither of those shapes does much for your pedaling efficiency!

Given this history, I was skeptical when I heard that Froome rode an oval chainring.  I didn't doubt that he rode it:  Riders on professional teams usually ride whatever their sponsors give them, and I suspected that whoever made the ring kicked some money into Team SKY.  That suspicion turned out to be correct, though the identity of the sponsor--and his product--were not quite what I expected.

Turns out, Jean-Louis Talo invented the Osymetric rings Froome and some of his teammates were riding.  The mechanical engineer, who hails from Menton (right next to the Italian border), developed his design in 1993 and has been trying to convince riders and teams to use it ever since.  Bradley Wiggins won the 2012 Tour with an Osymetric ring, and Froome won the following year's Tour with an "O".  After that, orders flooded into Talo's Nice-based Biosquat S.R.L., especially from the UK (no surprise, as Wiggins and Froome are British) and China. 

Chris Froome's bike. 

Now, some of those orders surely came from folks who had more money than cycling skill and want to ride whatever Tour winners ride. But others no doubt came from racers who are looking for an edge.  According to some riders, Talo isn't blowing smoke when he says that his rings are actually very different from other non-round chainrings like the Rotor rings--as well as Shimano's BioPace and earlier elliptical chainrings.

Whether or not Talo's creation actually imparts an advantage, it does seem different in at least one way.  Although much of the press has called it "oval" or "elliptical", it actually looks--to me, anyway--more like a rectangle with rounded corners.  Perhaps that is helpful to certain kinds of cyclists--like Froome, who pedals at a faster pace uphill than most people can maintain on flats or downhills.

Osymetric chainring on Dura-Ace crank.  No, it's not Froome's bike--or Sir Wiggo's.

Whatever its advantages, I can't help but to think of one disadvantage Osymetrics share with other non-round rings:  compromised front shifting.  Although I never rode BioPace or other elliptical rings myself, I set up and adjusted bikes with them.  With round chainrings, you set up the front derailleur so that the outer cage is a couple of millimeters above the teeth on the largest chainring.  But doing so on the ellipsis or "corner" of a chainring means that the gap between the cage and other parts of the ring is wider, which can cause mis-shifts as well as other problems.

Then again, most riders don't shift as frequently on the front as on the rear, and usually make front shifts while pedaling at lower RPMs than when making rear shifts. Plus, mechanics for SKY and other teams have probably worked out compromises of one kind or another.

If there is to be a vogue for Osymetric or other non-round rings, it will be interesting to see how long it lasts.  While it seems that Froome and other SKY team cyclists will continue riding them, Sir Bradley Wiggins has gone back to riding round chainrings.

Now, which do you prefer:  Equipment that used by someone who won the Tour de France--or someone who was knighted?  Whose guitar would you rather have: Jimi Hendrix's or Sir Eric Clapton's? 

They've Gotta Start 'Em Young

Yesterday, Chris Froome won the Tour de France two years after he won it for the first time.  He deserves all of the accolades he receives.  Anyone who can finish the Tour is at least a world-class rider; anyone who can win it is among the sport’s greats.  And when a cyclist wins the Tour more than once, it’s hard not to compare him with the sport’s immortals.




He is 30  years old.  When Bradley Wiggins won three years ago, he was 32.  And, even though Lance Armstrong’s wins have been vacated, I will include him in this comparison:  He was a few weeks short of 28 when he wore the maillot jaune in Paris for the first time.

Now, every woman of a certain age has said, “Age is just a number!”  (I’m guilty as charged!)  In some contexts, it’s true.  However, the age at which a cyclist wins his first Tour—or, for that matter, at which he or she achieves his or her first victories or high placements—seems to have a lot to do with whether said cyclists becomes one of the dominant riders of an era—or of the history of the sport.

I couldn’t help but to notice that Bernard Hinault was 23 when he won his first Tour in 1978.  Eddy Mercx’s first victory in the race came at age 24 in 1969.  Other cyclists won major stage races and classics when they were in their early 20’s, and were winning (or at least finishing among the top riders) in professional and amateur races before that.

 

Eddy Mercx in 1969

 

Actually, riders like Mercx, Hinault, Coppi and other greats from the past were competing in lots of races at such early ages.  (As great as they were, they won about one out of every five races they entered during their careers.)  That gave them the opportunity to learn how to ride a variety of different races.  When they won, it helped them to build their reputations, which would lead to contracts with major teams that had the resources to help them elevate their riding.

 

By the time Coppi, Jacques Anquetil Mercx and Hinault won their first major races, they had already entered more races than most, if not any, of today’s riders will participate in during their entire careers.  And, as I’ve said in my earlier post, in riding (and sometimes winning) a variety of races, they developed a range of skills—mental as well as physical—on which they could draw throughout their careers.  As a writer, I liken them to a writer who reads and writes in a variety of different genres when he or she is young and develops a diverse repertoire before entering the apex of his or her career.

Bernard Hinault in 1978

To be fair, cyclists today can’t be blamed for starting later than their counterparts in earlier generations.  When Anquetil and even Hinault were competing, it wasn’t unusual for a young man to leave school at 14 or 16, depending on which country he called home, and start working.  Part of the reason was that jobs and apprenticeships were available; another reason was that those young men were working to help support their families, whether in a factory or on the farm.

Cyclists of the past usually came from the class of young men I’ve just described:  one that is disappearing.  Young people in western European countries, like their counterparts in North America and Asia, are staying in school longer.  Given that few colleges and universities have cycling programs, many would-be racers find it difficult to keep up their training—especially in the absence of support from a team or club—at the same time they’re studying.

That means that cyclists aren’t starting or resuming their careers until they’re just about the age at which Hinault and Mercx won the Tour for the first time.  They therefore have fewer years in which to compete, let alone amass victories, never mind to test their mettle in a variety of different kinds of races.  Mercx retired from the sport at 33, which is actually fairly late for an elite cyclists.  At that time, he’d been racing professionally for 17 years: more than half of his life.  (In contrast, Froome didn't turn professional until he was 22.)Few, if any, of today’s cyclists will have such long careers—and thus less of an opportunity to become the dominant rider Mercx was.