Riding Off Into The Sunset--From A Singles' Ride

I have never been to any sort of event or function with the word "singles" in it.  Honestly, I have never felt any great urgency about meeting a potential date or mate.  Other people in my life, however, have felt such anxiety and have tried to get me to go to bars, parties, dinners, book clubs, lecture series,gallery openings, church "socials" and even bike rides for the unattached.  Or they've invited me to lunch or dinner and, when I arrived, they introduced me to some similarly solo friend or co-worker who would be "right" or "great" for me.

It seems that there aren't as many singles' events as there were in my youth, and singles' bars seem to have disappeared altogether.  The main cause, I suspect, is the all of the ways in which people can find each other online.   
So I wonder what people who met on singles' fora of the past tell their children, or other young people--most of whom, I suspect, have no concept of the sorts of things I'm describing.

I am thinking now, in particular, a woman whose story I came across recently.  Suzanne Travis, a California nurse, went on a singles' bicycle ride on--you guessed it--Valentine's Day.  

As she tells the story, she was, in addition to a nurse, an aspiring stand-up comedienne.   She went to the bike ride the way she went to other singles' events: expecting that not much would come of it besides material for her routines.  After all, how many jokes or monologues have you heard about successful relationships or people who lived "happily ever after."

From Out and About Singles

On the ride, she met a man she describes as "adorable."  And, of course, she invited him to her show.  One thing led to another and now they have been married for 27 years.

She still rides her bike.  And she tells her jokes--to her patients.  They are a "captive audience", she says.  Apparently, that's what she needs: "I found that I became a little less funny the happier I got."

Hmm...More happy=Less funny?  Could that be the reason why we haven't heard many stand-up routines about cycling?

An Honest-To-God Lincoln

During my childhood, yesterday--12 February--was a national holiday, commemorating the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

Now  "it's not a holiday unless your boss/city/state says it is," as one of my colleagues put it.  We have another holiday--Presidents' Day--on the third Monday of every February to replace Lincoln's and George Washington's (22 February)  Birthdays as shopping days, I mean days off, I mean holidays.

I can understand a holiday for George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt and maybe even John F. Kennedy. (I say "maybe" only because JFK was in office so briefly.)  But Millard Fillmore?  Benjamin Harrison? Andrew Johnson?  Richard Nixon?

Some jurisdictions and institutions (such as the college in which I teach) still observe Lincoln's Birthday on the second Monday of every February.  So, in the spirit of the holiday--and because no store, at this moment, is running a sale on anything I actually want or need--I am going to present a Lincoln bicycle.

Actually, it has nothing to do with "Honest Abe".  The "Royal" in the name tells us as much.  Somehow I think he'd roll in his grave if anyone connected him, even if only verbally, with monarchy.

"Royal Lincoln" is named for Lincolnshire, in the English Midlands. Today it survives mainly on tourism, as it has some of the UK's best-preserved Roman and Medieval structures, and on specialized high-tech industries.  But it was one of the areas in which the Industrial Revolution was born and remained a center of British industry at the time the bike--a model called "Stonebow"--was made (1908).

At first glance, it looks more like an old Dutch city bike than anything made in England.  Nothing wrong with that.  But the details distinguish it from other bikes.

For one thing, the paint and lug work are nicely done and have held up remarkably well. Then there is this:

Probably the only saddle that even remotely resembles it is the Brooks B18.   And those pedals:

The person who wrote the entry for the bike on the museum's website has not seen another bike from that marque, and little information is available on it.  Could it have been one of those "local" brands once found all over the UK and Europe that was absorbed by a larger company--or simply ceased production, say, during World War II?

What If He Hadn't Lost That Race?

A couple of days ago, we got a snowstorm that lived up to its advanced billing. Now it's raining, sleeting and snowing at the same time.  The way things are going, the streets will be turned from sledding runs to skating rinks.

The weather's got me to thinking about a story many of you know.   Back in 1927, a certain rider was leading a race in the Dolomites.  In those days, racers usually rode "flip-flop" rear hubs with a different-sized cog on each side.  The fellow was halfway up the notorious Croce d'Aune when he stopped to "flip" his wheel and access his lower gear.  

His fingers frozen, he couldn't loosen the wingnuts holding his wheel in place.  Supposedly, he muttered "Bisogna cambiar qualcossa de drio"--something has to change on the back of the bike--before he finally got the wheel loose.  Meantime, he lost time and his lead.

Now, I am sure this story, like most that are apocryphal, has been embellished or cleaned up, or both.  After all, any invention that changes the world (or the world of cycling, anyway) should have a good story behind it, right?

Well, that tale is widely accepted as the "creation myth", if you will, of the quick release lever.  The racer/inventor in question is, of course, one Tullio Campagnolo.

Not surprisingly, he was at work improving--you guessed it!--the wing nut before, as the folks at Classic Rendezvous so eloquently tell us, "an extremely bad winter" resulted in "Tullio's attention being shifted".

Was a pun intended with the world "shifted"? Signor Campagnolo is also noted, as we all know, for his derailleur designs.  If we can level a criticism against him, it might be that he never managed to make a really good wide-range touring derailleur that did not wholly or partially copy a Japanese design.  

The Gran Turismo is was, in the immortal words of Frank Berto, "Campy's Edsel":  utterly baroque and a functional failure. The first Rally derailleur was, essentially, a Shimano Crane GS built around a Campagnolo Record parallelogram with brass bushings.  (Some believed that Shimano was making it for Campy, but I doubt it.)  It shifted just like a Crane GS, which is to say better than any other European wide-range derailleur of the time, but not quite as well as anything SunTour was making.  

The second generation of Rally was just a Nuovo Record with a long cage.  I never used one, but from all accounts, it didn't shift as well as the first Rally. Moreover, the long cage strained the rest of the derailleur, which meant that the second-generation Rally didn't have the longevity for which Nuovo Records were renowned.  Current Campagnolo wide-range derailleurs are similar in geometry and overall design to those of Shimano.

The "Record Record", on the other hand, elongated the parallelogram in an attempt to avoid what some perceived as the fragility of long-cage derailleurs.  A parallelogram is indeed stronger than a cage, but I never had any long-cage derailleurs that failed as a result of the cage. (My experience includes several SunTour and Shimano models as well as the Huret Duopar and long-cage Jubilee and, for a brief time, a first-generation Rally.)

Here's one more interesting "What if?" component:

Before Campagnolo introduced his side-pull brake in the late 1960's, the Universal Super 51--and its later, shorter-armed iteration, the Super 68--were regarded as the best side-pull brakes.  As they were losing their share of the high-end market, Universal developed their "685", which pulled from both sides.

Supposedly, the force of the brakes squeezed rims the way a pair of vice-grips can crumple a beer can.  Also, the few who used those brakes didn't ride them for very long:  The calipers (the same material, thickness and basic design of the 68s) simply couldn't stand up to the extra torque.  But the final nail in the coffin for those brakes may have been the market:  There were very few sources for the needed "Siamesed" cables.

It's interesting to think of how bikes might be different if today's touring derailleurs and brakes were based on the designs of the "Record Record" and "685", respectively--or if Tullio Campagnolo hadn't such difficulty in loosening a pair of wing nuts during a winter race.

What Would You Eat If....

In this blog, I often talk about foods that I eat--and have eaten--before, during and after rides.

I got to thinking about that while reading something that appeared in my mailbox:  The Worst Foods To Eat In Every State.

Now, even for someone with my refined sensibilities (Yes, I typed that with a straight face!), such a title is "click bait". I am sure that Wil Fulton, the author of that article, or the editors of the "Thrillist" website know as much.

Of course, "worst" can be interpreted in all sorts of ways.  Mr. Fulton seemed to use the term to mean "whatever looks or sounds grossest to someone who's never eaten it before".  And, I have to admit, I probably would have to be stranded in North Dakota before I'd try lutefisk.  On the other hand, Illionois Gravy Bread doesn't sound any different from what I've eaten during, or at the end of, many a meal:  bread used as a sponge for gravy or meat drippings.  Nothing wrong with that.  But people actually have it delivered?

Anyway, I've eaten a few of the items in that article--yes, before, during and after bike rides.  Interestingly, even though I lived in Brooklyn until I was twelve--and have lived in New York City since I was twenty-five--I have eaten the Garbage Plate proper (Is that an oxymoron?) only twice in my life, both times during bike trips upstate.

This is what you eat during a ride in New Jersey

One food I often ate during rides, as well as devant and apres, is Pork Roll.  No one in my family, or I, had even heard of it while we were living in Brooklyn.  But, after we moved to New Jersey, it became a staple of our diets.  Of course, I didn't see it when I was living in France, but even after I moved to New York during the mid-80s, no one in the Big Apple seemed to know about it--or they thought it was something pornographic.

Now stores in this town are selling it.  I think people here were introduced to it a few months ago, when Dunkin' Donuts offered a "limited-time special" sandwich that included it. When I was living in The Garden State, I often had the "Jersey Classic"--a sandwich of pork roll, egg and cheese--at diners, coffee shops and roadside stands during rides.  

What does pork roll taste like?  Some might say it's a better version of Spam, or a milder version of their favorite ham.   It really tastes better than it sounds:  It's pork with a nice combination of sweet and mild spices with salt. 

Is it "healthy"?  Of course not!  (Well, as a "comfort food", perhaps it's good for your mental health.) But I have eaten all manner of pizzas and baked goods during rides, not to mention chili, burgers, tacos, take-out Chinese foods and such delicacies as the jambon-beurre.

By the way:  I have eaten scrapple, the Pennsylvania Dutch-country "mystery meat".  It's actually pretty good--though, I confess, I prefer good ol' Jersey Pork Roll.  Or jambon-beurre.

You're Definitely Not Square If You Use This Cage!

If you were riding before the 1990s, chances are that you used a water bottle cage that looked something like this:

You might still be carrying your libations in such a cage.  There's no reason why you shouldn't.  That you and other cyclists are still riding with such cages is a testimony to their design.

If you have been riding with such a cage for so long, you probably know its design was based on this:

Specialites TA Ref 215

Made by Specialites TA of France, it holds a distinction very few bicycle accessories--and only a few components--can claim:  It was the choice of racers, tourists, "rough stuff" and recreational riders alike.  Whether you pedaled your Cinelli in the peloton, your Herse over the hills or your Mercian through the moors, you used the TA Ref. 215 cage--or, later, the alloy 417. (The 215 was made from chromed steel.)  

Ref. 213

For a time, TA's Ref. 213 cage was also popular until handlebar-mounted cages fell out of favor.  And, in the 1970s, the single-clamp 216 became popular with cyclists whose frames didn't include brazed-on bosses for bottle cages.

Ref 216

I thought I knew the Specialties TA line well.  (After all, when you get to be my age, and cycle for as long as I've been riding, there are times when you think you've seen it all!)  But, in hunting for small parts and accessories for the Trek I'm building, I came across this:

Ref. 218

I have to admit that I have never seen one in person.  I tried to find more information about it, but all I could find was a listing on the Blackbird website.

The eBay listing describes the cage--Ref 218-- as having "an unusual rectangular shape."  Apparently, it was made to fit the Ref. 220 and 222 "randonneur" water bottles, which look like old-fashioned milk bottles rendered in blue anodized aluminum rather than glass. 



Ref. 222 (1 liter; Ref 220 was the .75 liter version)

Someone--Fred "Fritz" Kuhn of Kopp's Cycles, I believe--told me that TA stopped making aluminum bottles because they would oxidize on the inside and poison their users.  I wonder, though, what it was like to use bottles in that shape.  How easy or difficult were they to pull out, or push back in, the cage?

The seller says that modern Fiji water bottles fit into those cages nicely.  I'll take his/her word, though I generally don't buy Fiji, or any other water transported from the ends of the Earth.   I feel certain, however, that the 218 is bomb-proof, as all of the other TA cages were!

In Any Language, It's Just A Snow Day

Bonjour, Maman.  Comment ca-va?

Where are you calling from?  France?  Canada?

Oui.  Je suis sorti des Etats-Unis.

My mother doesn't speak French.  So she knows that when I say anything in the language, I am:  a.) recounting a conversation with one of my friends in France, b.) recalling some other encounter in a Francophone land or c.) playing a joke.

Today, she knew it was "c" but she confessed that, for a moment, I'd "flown the coop", if you will.  And, if I did, she probably wouldn't blame me, as she shares my disdain for the President whose name I dare not say.

Montreal sous la neige

Then, after telling her I am in Canada, I laughed.  "Well, not quite.  But the conditions at the moment aren't much different.

Yesterday afternoon, students e-mailed to ask whether my classes would be in session today.  My response, of course, was that they would be if the college were open.  I knew that snow had been predicted, but I didn't know that by mid-afternoon, the National Weather Service was predicting blizzard-like conditions.

Astoria under the weather

Last night, the decision was made to close the college, and the university of which it's a part, today.  And the snow is even more intense than what was predicted last night.  It's all the more amazing when one considers that yesterday afternoon, it was sunny and the temperature reached 17C (64F).  

How much is it snowing?  Even Citibike, this city's bike share program, shut down.

Citi BikeVerified account‏@CitiBikeNYC

System Alert: Due to heavy snow in the forecast, the Citi Bike system is currently closed. Stay tuned for updates on the system reopening.

• RETWEETS16
• LIKES12
• 

8:04 PM - 8 Feb 2017

4 replies16 retweets12 likes

 

 

Hmm...Maybe they have to allocate part of their budget for studded tires or tires with chains.

From A Late Night, Into The Mists

Last night, I stayed at work a bit later than I expected.  What that meant was, among other things, encountering less traffic than I usually see.

It also meant dealing with a change in the weather.  In the morning, I rode to work in a drizzle that occasionally turned into rain.  But, by the time night rolled around, a dense fog blanketed the city.

Normally, I can see the towers on the Queens spur of the RFK Memorial Bridge as soon as I make the turn from 132nd Street onto the Randall's Island Connector.  At that point, the entrance to the RFK Bridge lane is about 1 3/4 miles, or about 3 kilometers, away.  

Last night, though, I could not see the towers or cables until they were right in front of me--when I was in the lane.

When I reached the middle of the bridge, over the waters of Hell Gate (which I couldn't see), I looked back at the soccer field on the Randall's Island shore:

and ahead to the Queens side

My apartment is in there, somewhere!

The Limit: Whether Or Not You're Detected

In your travels, you have no doubt seen something like this:

Such speed limit detectors usually show your speed in amber lights, unless it is over the limit, in which case the number flashes in red.

Have you ever noticed that these devices sometimes register your speed when you are riding a bicycle--but sometimes they don't?

Those of you who are engineers (or simply more tech-savvy than I am) may be able to provide an explanation of why.  I have always surmised that it had something to do with the position of the speed detector:  The ones placed above the traffic lanes don't register bikes riding on the shoulder or even the far right side of the traffic lane.   Then again, I've seen detectors on the side of the street or road--and, in a couple of cases, right in the middle of a bike lane!--that did not track me.

An article in the IEEE Spectrum--the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers--may shed some light on why this is so.  

In it, Spectrum contributing editor Peter Fairley describes the advances made in detection systems used in robotic (self-driving) cars.  The best such systems could spot only 70 percent of cars just a few years ago.  Now that figure is nearly 90 percent.  Similar improvements in noticing pedestrians, and even birds and squirrels, have come.

In contrast, those same systems can detect a bicycle from 59 to 74 percent of the time.  While that is an improvement from a few years ago, the advancement doesn't come close to what has been accomplished in tracking other beings and objects.  

According to University of California-Berkeley research engineer Steven Shladover, "Bicycles are probably the most difficult detection problems autonomous vehicle systems face".  Down the coast, in UC's San Diego campus, visual computing expert Nuno Vasconcelos offers a possible explanation as to why:  "A car is basically a big block of stuff.  A bicycle has much less mass" and, he says, "there can be much more variation in appearance--there are more shapes and colors and people hang stuff on them."

Vasconcelos' explanation makes sense, as far as it goes.  In the article, however, Fairley posits that part of the problem is how those systems are "trained".  Actually, they "train themselves", if you will, by studying thousands of images in which known objects are labeled.  Most of the training, Fairley says, has concentrated on cars, with very little on bicycles.  

I will not address the question of whether robotic technology can or will replace human drivers:  Folks like the ones Fairley cites (or, for that matter, Fairley himself) can say far more about it than I can.  From what I've read, however, I believe I can surmise that self-driving technologies have a better chance of working on Interstates, Autobahns, Autoroutes or other high-speed, multi-lane highways where bicycles are seldom seen, or are banned outright. 

Likewise, detection technologies have a better chance of detecting speeders on such highways than they have of catching me riding my bike over the speed limit on city streets!

Riding With And Without Trigger

Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when I could hear the word "trigger" and not think about shifters.  For that matter, there was even a time when that word would not bring firearms to my mind.

The reason for that is that I was born a little too late to watch '50's TV shows and movies when they first ran.  I did, however, get a fairly steady diet of them in reruns.  It seemed that whenever you flipped the channels, you could find an episode of  "I Love Lucy" or "The Honeymooners".  Or "Lassie" or "Dragnet".  And, of course, there were the shows that continued to produce original episodes well into my childhood, and even on the eve of my puberty:  I am thinking now of "Perry Mason" and "Leave It To Beaver".

It also seemed impossible to escape from showings of  films like "The Ten Commandments" or "Ben Hur".  Another movie that, as I recall, often showed on the small screen was "Son of Paleface."

In the latter, one of the "stars" was a Palomino horse named--you guessed it--"Trigger".  Astride him in "Paleface", and in many other movies, was none other than Roy Rogers.  
Because he and his cinematic (and real-life) partner Dale Evans so often appeared with their equine companion, it's not easy to imagine either of them riding anything else. But, apparently, they did, every now and again, trade their spurs for pedals and hooves for wheels:

If You Had This, Would You Care About The Super Bowl?

Today is Super Bowl Sunday.

It's been years since I actually paid attention to what happens between commercials and performances by has-been entertainers--I mean, the game.  (That I haven't referred to it as The Game should tell you something.)

It's in Houston this year.  I have to admit it's been a while since I've been there, so it might be very different from my memories of it:  a city that seemed to be bigger than a few states and countries I've visited, hotter and more humid than the most brutal summer days in New York and with less mass transportation than on one block of the Big Apple.  In fact, it reminded me of the stereotype of LA in that everything was connected--by freeways.

Anyway, I see they have a bike share program, called B-cycle.    For the past week, shares have been free for those who reserved.  After the Super Bowl, it will offer "Bike Share Free Fridays" through February and March.

Now, if you could go for a ride and see this, why would you want to watch the performances--of the athletes or the entertainers?