No, The Chinese Aren't Responsible For Climate Change. I Am: I Took A Ride Today!

It was spring-- almost summer, really--until I crossed the bridge.

In past years, I have noticed a seasonal change when I rode across the Cross Bay Veterans' Memorial Bridge.  To be specific, when I'd be riding through Broad Channel--a shoestring of land dangling from the "mainland' of Queens--the temperature is about 20 to 22 degrees Celsius (68 to 72F) and I would feel the sun against my face.  That is, until I reached the Bridge, which spans Jamaica Bay.  While riding up the ramp to the bridge, the wind would whip waves on the water and I would feel the cold through whatever I was wearing.  By the time I got to the Rockaways--another shoestring of land, this one splayed between the Bay and the Atlantic Ocean--the temperature would have fallen to about 10 degrees C (50F) but it would feel much colder.

I usually experience such momentary climate change in early or mid-April, when the ocean water might be about 8 degrees C (45F).  But I had such an experience today.  It was 64F (17C) when I left my apartment just before noon; the temperature would climb another few degrees by the time I reached Broad Channel.  But, as I crossed the bridge, I was glad I'd brought an "extra" layer with me. (Is something "extra" when you end up needing it?)  A thermometer in Rockaway Beach read 50F, but the wind--which I didn't notice until then--blew the cold from the very depths of the ocean.  According to at least one source, the water was 41F (just over 5C) today.  During the next few weeks, that temperature will fall by another couple of degrees to its seasonal low, which it reaches at the beginning of Spring.

I imagine that the water at Point Lookout, my destination today, was a little warmer, if only by a degree or two.  Knowing that, I understand why down is such an effective insulator!

Anyway, I had a great ride:  I saw a few other cyclists and joggers along the boardwalk and on the streets of Long Beach.  As best as I could tell, they weren't wearing down.

His Stance On Discs

Nearly two years ago, a driver in China narrowly missed death when a runaway circular saw blade impaled the front of his car.

I was reminded of that today after reading about what happened to Owain Doull.

The Sky Team rider crashed with one kilometre remaining in the opening stage of the Abu Dabhi Tour.  Normally, that wouldn't elicit much attention--riders crash during races all the time.  What is causing controversy, though, is an injury he suffered and, more important, what he believes to be the cause.

When he was being treated for road rash on his back side, he pointed to his foot and showed a cut that was visible through a tear in his sock.  

It's unusual, to say the least, for  riders to incur that sort of cut on their feet.  Even if they are wearing flip-flops, they are unlikely to incur more than some scrapes, painful as those wounds may be. 

So what could have cut through Doull's shoe and caused such a wound?  He says that it was the rotor of a disc brake.  "If anything, I've come off lucky here," he said.  "If that'd been my leg, it would have cut straight through it, for sure."

In other words, by a dint of fate, he narrowly avoided--at the very least--the kind of injury Francisco Ventoso suffered last year in the Paris-Roubaix race.  The directeur sportif of Movistar, Ventoso's team, said "The cut was so deep you could see the tibia."

That mishap led to a temporary ban on disc brakes in the peloton, which was recently lifted "on a trial basis" according to the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale.  Disc brakes were allowed on the condition that the rotors' edges were rounded off. Marcel Kittel, the only rider using disc brakes in the Abu Dabhi tour, was using rounded Shimano rotors after insisting he wouldn't use technology otherwise.

Doull was asked whether he has a stance on disc brakes.  "I do now," he said.  "In my opinion, unless there are covers on those things, they're pretty lethal."

Others have expressed the opinion that "everybody or nobody" should use them in a race.  Whatever one thinks of disc brakes (I have never used them myself, and probably won't unless some compelling reason presents itself.), I think it's fair to ask why Kittel or anyone else saw the need to use them in pancake-flat Abu Dabhi.

Rubber Matches Leather?

Almost two years ago, I wrote about one of the funniest listings I've ever seen on eBay, or anywhere.  It expresses the seller's loathing for the saddle he or she was trying to sell:  a Brooks Cambium C15.

Now, I am not going to offer an opinion on it, or the C17, as I have never tried either.  I probably won't (unless someone offers me one for free), as I am satisfied with the Brooks saddles I have (Professionals and B17s) and don't want to change.

The idea behind Cambium saddles is, however, intriguing--and not new.  For one thing, Cambiums are certainly not the first saddles to come with canvas tops, though, when they were introduced a couple of years ago, they might have been the first such saddles in half a century or so.

More important, however, is what lies underneath that cloth covering:  a vulcanized rubber base.  That, too, is something that most cyclists who aren't collecting Social Security haven't seen before.  Rubber in a bike seat?  

Turns out, it was once fairly common, or at least not unusual. (Fifty shades of equivocation?)  I was reminded of that when I came across this:

Cyclists of a certain age will recall the name Wolber.  Until the '80's or thereabouts, it was the chief rival of Michelin in the world of bicycle tires.  In fact, to many cyclists, Wolber was even more highly regarded, as they made a more extensive line of tubular tires, which included one of the nicest pairs of tubulars I ever owned and rode. (I can't remember the model name.)  They also improved upon Michelin's "Elan", widely considered to be the first high-performance clincher.

So it's fair to assume that Wolber knew a thing or two about making things from rubber.  The saddle in the above photo was made by Ideale, the premiere French saddle-maker, from a "skin" Wolber fabricated.  The undercarriage appears to be the one used on the Ideale B6, which is remarkably similar to the Brooks B72:  the saddle that came with many classic English three-speed bikes.

A B6/B72 with a rubber top actually makes sense, at least in theory, for commuters and others who ride or park their bikes in the rain.  I wonder how long those saddles lasted.


Perhaps it's not surprising that another leading bicycle-tire maker of the time also made bicycle saddles, or at least the tops for them:

I don't know whether Dunlop made the carriages for their saddles, or whether--as  is apparently the case with Wolber saddles--they were made by a company that made leather saddles.  

Interestingly, Raleigh bicycles came with Dunlop tires, which were considered to be the finest quality (Riders did everything they could to extend the life of those tires!), until Dunlop stopped making bicycle tires in the late 1960s. To my knowledge, however, those same Raleigh bicycles were not equipped with Dunlop saddles:  Instead, they came with B72s or other Brooks models.  

Like the Cambiums, the Wolber/Ideale and Dunlop saddles were constructed of a rubber base layer topped with cloth that was treated with a rubber compound for waterproofing. The Cambium looks more cloth-like than the others--a conscious decision, I am sure, on the company's part.  The Wolber/Ideale has a textured appearance that makes me think of a cross between carbon fiber and leather, while the Dunlop looks like leather, at least from a few feet away.

Although Dunlop hasn't made bicycle tires in nearly half a century, they continue to make tires for motorized vehicles as well as other rubber products.  In the late '80s, Wolber absorbed Super Champion, then the best rim-maker in France (or anywhere else) with the exception of Mavic. (For a few years, Super Champion rims were marketed under the Wolber name.)  Then, a few years later, Michelin took over Wolber!

Did This Idea Ever Fly?

We have all felt, at least once, that we were "flying" while riding our bicycles.

In a sense, it always feels that way because we're not surrounded by walls or sheets of steel.  More often, though, when we say that we were, or felt as if we were, "flying", we mean that the ride was fast and effortless:  We were feeling good and spinning our gears while the wind pushed at our backs.

Most of us don't mean that we were literally aloft.  However, a few cyclists have gotten their wheels off the ground.  And I'm not talking about the kid on E.T.!

Nearly half a century before one of the world's favorite movies came out, a French inventor came up with this:

In the November 1936 issue of Popular Science, it was described thusly:

PROPELLER DRIVES NOVEL BICYCLE

A whirling, three-bladed propeller provides the motive power for a bicycle of odd design recently exhibited in Paris by a French inventor. Mounted at the front, the propeller is attached to a driving rod in a gear box supported over the front wheel by a metal frame. The gear mechanism is connected by a chain to the conventional bicycle sprocket wheel, which is pedaled in the usual manner. An extremely high gear ratio, it is said, enables the cyclist to drive the propeller at high speed. A hand lever is used to operate a rear-wheel brake, as in ordinary European bicycles.

As a cyclist who came of age during the 1970s--in the twilight of that decade's Bike Boom--I find the last sentence particularly fascinating.  I'm guessing that in 1936, most Americans had never seen or ridden a bike with a hand brake:  Most American bikes at that time were made for kids and had coaster brakes.  

I wonder whether that bike got off the ground, literally and figuratively.

Presidents, Pedals And Pets

Here in the US, it's Presidents' Day.  

When I was growing up, we used to have two Presidential holidays in February--Lincoln's Birthday on the 12th and Washington's on th 22nd.  Somewhere along the way, the government decided to consolidate the two observances into one, which would be on the third Monday in February.  At the same time, some other traditional holidays, such as Memorial Day, also became Monday fetes.

Now, if you've been reading my recent posts, you know what I think about the current President, whose name I dare not speak!  I must say, though, that it's ironic that the most anti-bike President we've had in a long time (perhaps in all of history) is also the only one ever to have sponsored a bike race.  That is how, for two years, the Tour DuPont--at that time, the most important race in the US--became the Tour de Trump.

In past posts, I wrote about, and included photos of, presidents (including a couple in other countries) riding bikes.  One of my favorites is of Jimmy Carter three decades after leaving the White House, and looking younger than he did then.  I also liked the one of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, his politics notwithstanding, and of former candidate Mitt Romney on his bike while doing Mormon missionary work in France.

Back when I was working for American Youth Hostels, I read somewhere--a biography, perhaps?--that Franklin D Roosevelt cycled "all over Europe" during his youth, freqeuently staying in hostels.  As a child and young man, he frequently took trips there, as someone of his social and economic status was wont to do.  If I recall correctly, his early trips were made, not surprisingly, with his parents and other family members, while as a teenager he went with his tutor, who also enjoyed cycling.

I also seem to recall that one or both of them were arrested in Germany for eating cherries they picked on a roadside, and that they committed a few other misdeeds.  I have read, elsewhere, that he was a fun-loving young man who skated along the surface of life.

Anyway, I tried to find a photo of FDR on a bike.  I couldn't, but I found this, by artist Mike Joos:

By the way, today is also National Love Your Pet Day.  This is the first time I've heard of the holiday.  I wonder whether it's held on a fixed date, as nearly all holidays were when I was a kid, or whether it's a "movable feast" and it just happened to fall on President's Day.

I know one thing:  I'd rather spend time with Max or Marlee than just about any President!

Into The Hole

Today I rode to a hole.  No, I didn't go to the Grand Canyon.

All right.  I rode to a ghost town.  And, yes, I stayed in the cofines of New York City.

Mind you, it wasn't my destination:  I didn't have one for today.  I just felt like riding and after an overcast morning turned into a sunny and unseasonably warm afternoon.  I rode Vera, my green Mercian mixte, with no particular itinerary in mind.  I just pedaled forward and turned whenever it looked interesting or I simply got tired of the street or lane I was riding.

I briefly covered a part of yesterday's ride:  through Howard Beach and Beach Channel, the latter of which is partly contained in the Gateway National Recreation Area.  Vera gave me a couple of brief encounters with the ocean, but the bodies of water I saw, mainly, were ones that open into the Atlantic--namely Jamaica Bay and Starrett Creek.

And this:

As we've all been told, immigrants of my grandparents' generation were lured to America by rumors that the streets were "paved with gold".  Well, there is a street under that puddle, or whatever you want to call it, made of emerald.  All right, that's a bit of an exaggeration.   But the street is called Emerald Street.  A block away is another venue called Ruby Street; nearby thoroughfares are Amber and Sapphire Streets.  

In a perverse irony, these "jewel" streets comprise a neighborhood--if it might be called that--commonly called "The Hole."  It's easy to see why:  the land drops about five meters from the grade of Linden Boulevard--which itself lies below sea level.  According to some reports, that puddle lies 30 feet (9 meters) below sea level.

In another twist, the nearest building that has any connection to the rest of the world is about 50 meters away but seems to have its back turned to it: a psychotherapy center.  And, across Linden Boulevard--a.k.a. New York State Route 27--from it is the Lindenwood Diner, where travelers to and from JFK Airport and truckers to and from all points imaginable stop for burgers, shakes and such.

To give you an idea of how desolate--or, at least, how far removed from the rest of the city--The Hole is, no one seems to know whether it's in Brooklyn or Queens.  Perhaps it's a separate borough?  It certainly seems to exist in another time, if not jurisdiction.

That puddle in the photo might've been a result of the snow we had last week.  But, from what I hear, there's almost always an unnatural wetland there.  The Hole is, to my knowledge, the only part of New York City that doesn't have sewers--people use septic tanks and drains--because the land is too close to the water table.  

That geographic feature is probably a reason why it most likely shares agrarian past with the neighboring Brooklyn community of East New York.  In the late 19th Century, Brooklyn was--believe it or not--the second-largest (after southern New Jersey) vegetable-producing area in the US.  No doubt some of the folks living there--off the grid--are growing tomatoes or cabbages or other vegetables in patches of sod surrounded by rubble-strewn or weed-grown lots.  Most of the houses are abandoned; the people who call the area home are living in trailers, campers or trucks--with or without wheels.

The Federation of Black Cowboys stabled their horses in The Hole (and a few Cowboys lived there) until about a decade ago, when the city housing authority chased them out in order to erect middle-class housing that, to date, hasn't been built. In 2004, bodies of Mafia figures were found there, confirming longstanding rumors that the area was a mob dumping ground.  

Anyway, I have a rule when I ride:  If I can't see the bottom of any body of water I won't ride through it, unless there's no other way.  Not even if I'm riding a bike with full fenders, as I was today!

The Best Place In The World For Ducks

I didn't see any other cyclists.  But I wasn't the only one who went to Point Lookout today. 

I mean, who wouldn't have wanted to be outside on a day like today?  Skies were clear and the temperature reached 15C (60F).  

Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear, was also happy to be out for the ride, even if she got spattered with mud and wet sand.  Most of the snow from last week's storm was gone, but the sand and road salt weren't.  At least, with only one gear, she's easy to clean--though I think I might ride one of my bikes with fenders tomorrow.  Still, it was great to spin that gear again!

I was stretching my legs, and they were spreading their wings.  A woman with two small boys watched them.  "I've never seen so many ducks here," she marvelled.

"Nor have I."

Then the older kid--about four or five years old, with eyes as bright as the sky--chimed in.  "They're here because it's the best place in the world for ducks.  Isn't that right, Mommy?"

She said nothing.  He turned to me.

"Lady, don't you think they're here because it's the best place in the world for ducks?"

"Why else would they be here?"

"So this really is the best place in the world for ducks."

I nodded.  "Do you know what makes this the best place in the world for ducks?"

He shook his head.  His mother gazed at me.

"Here there are a lot of things they like to eat."

He gazed at me, fascinated.  She looked puzzled.

"Well...Don't you like to go where there are good things to eat?"

"Yes, ma'am.  What do they like to eat?"

"Clams, oysters, you know, the creatures with shells on them. The ducks love those.  And seaweed, too."

Now, for all I know, I may have given him nothing but misinformation.  But I figure he's no worse-informed than anyone is after one of our current President's press conferences.

What did I just say?  Hmm...It's probably a good thing I've never been a parent!

When They Tried To Bar Major Taylor

This month--February--is Black History Month here in the US.

Mention "black cyclists" and one of the first names that comes to mind is "Major Taylor".

He was the first African-American athlete to win the world championship of any sport.  (Canadian bantamweight boxer George Dixon was the first black athlete to accomplish that feat.)  Although he was one of the most famous and admired athletes in the world, the "Worcester Whirlwind" was not insulated from racism.

The Worcester Whirlwind, circa 1900. From wikipedia.

The city from which Taylor's nickname was derived--Worcester, Massachusetts--was one of the centers of the Abolitionist movement.  Even so, not everyone there welcomed him with open arms.  When he bought a house in the well-to-do Columbus Park enclave, alarmed white neighbors tried to buy it back from him.

Even if you're the best in the world, you can't stop fools from being foolish.

Even so, life was better for him in Worcester--and in the rest of the Northeast--than it was elsewhere in the US.  While he won pretty much every race and award that could be won in his home region, he could not advance his career unless he won in other parts of the country. Two things conspired against him:  One, owners and promoters of races and tracks in the South banned him--and all other black cyclists--outright. Second, in 1894, just as Taylor's career was in ascendancy, the League of American Wheelmen--then the governing body of bicycle racing--voted to ban blacks.  Some have speculated that the ban was specifically aimed at Taylor, who, even at the age of 17, was beating his white challengers, some of whom were far more experienced than he was.

(The LAW is now known as the League of American Bicyclists.)

That ban, of course, closed other doors for him.  There were, however, a number of races--mostly in the Northeast--that allowed him to compete.  And, of course, he went to Canada:  In 1899, he won the World Championship for the one-mile sprint in Montreal.  

(Interesting aside:  In 1946, Jackie Robinson played for the Montreal Royals, which was the top minor-league team of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Fans in Montreal embraced him, as they did Taylor half a century earlier.)  

But even in the relative tolerance of his home region, Taylor encountered hostility.  He was often denied lodgings and food on account of his color, and white racers turned into pure-and-simple thugs when riding against him: One opponent hauled him off his bike and choked him into unconsciousness.

In the racial atmosphere of that time, the only way Taylor could advance his career was by racing in Europe.  He, in fact, had a number of offers to participate in races and join teams, especially in France.  He was grateful for the opportunities but would not accept them at first:   In Europe, many races were held on Sunday, as they are now.  Taylor had become a devout Baptist after his mother's death and would not race on the Sabbath.

Some of the offers he received were lucrative, to say the least.  When pleas and urgings from prominent African-Americans as well as cycling fans had no effect on him, black newspaper editors of the time published what we would now call "fake news"--saying that his religious scruples had been conquered by Mammon--or editorials speculating that such a thing would happen.

Of course, it didn't.  Finally, in 1901, a French team offered him a contract that specified he wouldn't have to race on Sunday.  He accepted, and before he even mounted a bicycle on the other side of the Atlantic, he was treated to a hero's welcome. 

An American in Paris.

Europeans were as impressed with his dignity and grace as they were with his athletic prowess.  He did much to help improve the level of European racing, not only by his presence, but also by mentoring young racers.  Here is one account of such tutoring, from his autobiography:

  I recall that on my first trip to Europe in 1901 I saw a French youth, whose name was Poulain, ride in an amateur event at Nantes, France. He was very awkward as he rode about the track, but something about him caught my eye, and I became interested in him at once. At the close of the race I made several suggestions to him, adjusting his pedals, and handle bars, and giving him some advice on how to train. I stressed clean living upon him, and told him in conclusion that if he trained carefully and lived a clean life, I would predict that some day he would beat all the amateurs of Europe and the professionals as well.

  When I returned to France in 1908 this same Poulain, who in the meantime had won the amateur and professional championships of France, defeated me in a special match race. Imagine my surprise at the conclusion of this event when my conqueror told me who he was. The laugh certainly was on me. I did manage to bring him into camp, however, after I reached by best form.

"The laugh was certainly on me." How could they not love someone with such an attitude?  Unfortunately, not everyone in his home country felt the same way.

Ice Bikes For Parkinson's In The City Of Light

Sometimes it's hard to believe we're in the same state.

I'm talking about New York City--my hometown--and Buffalo.

While The Big Apple is known for its Bright Lights on Broadway, the Queen City of the Great Lakes was once called--without irony or sarcasm--America's City of Light.

That was the image it tried to portray at the Pan-American Exposition it hosted  in 1901.  At that time, Buffalo was the nation's eighth-largest city, just edging out San Francisco and well ahead of Pittsburgh and Washington DC.  Two decades earlier, it had become the nation's first electrified city; the city fathers wanted to use the Expostion to show that the Nickel City was ready to take its position as an industrial powerhouse to rival Birmingham or Manchester, a center of commerce like London or New York and a mecca of beacon of culture akin to Paris. (The Exposition featured a dazzling display of electrically-illuminated buildings called "The City of Light".) 

"The City of Light":  The Pan American Exhibition, Buffalo, 1901

Well, a number of things conspired against Buffalo becoming a world-class city.  The first was the Exposition itself:  For all of its dazzling displays, it was also widely panned for exhibits that were, frankly, hokey or simply racist and imperialist. (Yes, people levelled such charges even in those decidedly-less-PC times!)  Also, on the night of 6 July, a powerful thunderstorm knocked out transmission lines and flooded the power station as well as other cities.  In other words, the biggest attraction of the Exposition--its electricity--was short-circuited by an electrical storm!

But the "nail in the coffin", so to speak, was the assassination of President William McKinley on the Fairgrounds.  The Exposition ended a few weeks later and most of its structures were quickly razed.  Today there is scarcely a trace of the fair.  On the other hand, the Unisphere, fountains and other monuments of the 1964-65 and 1939-40 Worlds' Fairs in New York have been preserved.

Today, Buffalo seems to be known for two things:  spicy chicken wings and weather--specifically, winter weather.  Even as New York City winters become less winter-like by the year, Buffalo never seems to escape the months between Halloween and Easter without at least a couple of major snowstorms.  And, as cold as the waters of the East and Hudson Rivers may be, they rarely form ice, and then only along the edges.  At the other end of the Empire State, Lakes Erie and Ontario, which are really inland freshwater seas with their own tidal systems, routinely freeze over.

That last climatic characteristic has actually been a blessing for some.  I'm not talking about ice fishermen.  Rather, I'm referring to a group of people you might not expect:  sufferers of Parkinson's Disease.

How's that?, you ask.  Well, since this is a cycling blog, you probably have surmised that it has something to do with bicycles.  And it does.

For the past three years, the National Parkinson Foundation of Western New York has held ice bike events at Canalside.  "Bicycling has been discovered to be very, very good therapy for Parkinsons," says Chris Jamele of NPFWNY.  He explains that cycling provides the low-impact exercise people with Parkinson's need.  But riding an ice bike has one distinctive advantage, he adds:  It's very difficult to tip over.

Hmm...There's a bit of technology to be developed: A bicycle like the ice bike that can be ridden on other kinds of surfaces.  That would be an innovation as revolutionary as any shown in the Pan-American Exhibit!  Could ice bikes make Buffalo rise again?

We'll Miss Chris!

F. Scott Fitzgerald opened his short story Rich Boy with what has become one of the most misquoted lines:  "Let me tell you about the very rich.  They are different from you and me."

Well, not many people people in the bike business are among the very rich.  In fact, a joke I heard from people in the industry goes like this:  "You can end up with a small fortune in this business.  How?  Start with a big one!"

Don't get me wrong:  Some people have done very well for themselves, whether by opening a bike shop that offers the right things in the right place at the right time, or by being distributors or importers.  But whatever money one makes in the two-wheeled trade does not come easily:  Running a bike shop entails long hours (especially during cycling season) and the overhead costs are high.

So, the people who choose to go into the bike business are different, if not from you and me, then at least from people who go into other industries or professions.  I am thinking now of a shop in which I worked for a time:  One of the partners was a fellow who spent years working in shops, mainly as a mechanic, and decided that he wanted to open one of his own.  The other was a retired Wall Streeter who, after a couple of years, was unhappy that his investment didn't yield a bigger and faster return.  He didn't realize that such was the nature of bike shops, and the bike industry in general.

Of course, that former Wall Street denizen's motivation for opening a bike shop was entirely different from that of his partner.  He was not entering the world of cycling; rather, he thought he saw another business opportunity.  I can't really fault him for that:  All of his years on "The Street" conditioned him to think that way, if he hadn't already had such a mindset.  On the other hand, the mechanic genuinely loved bicycles and cycling. (I know: I raced against and rode with him.)  As some might say, cycling was "in his blood".

Chris, with his son.  From the Velo Orange blog.

Another such person, I believe, is Chris Kulczycki.  Many of you know him as the founder of Velo Orange.  As he often said, VO began with a "part time gig" after selling another business he'd started.  He brought it in some bike parts and accessories, mainly for touring and randonneuring, from Europe and Japan.  Some of those items had not been made in decades and, in some cases, the companies that made them hadn't been in business for as long.  

Then, of course, he started to have parts and accessories made after the designs of those vintage items.  The result of his work, and a few other like-minded people, is that we have more choices about the kinds of bikes we ride, and about the way they look, than we did fifteen or twenty-five years ago.  Gone is the tyranny of the racing bike/mountain bike binary that dictated most of what was made and sold during the 1980's and 1990's.  We also are free of the dictate that everything must look like carbon weave or be finished in black.  (Isn't it ironic that the most expensive bikes had such a palette decades after Henry Ford said that customers could get the Model T--the first car for the masses--"in any color as long as it's black".)

In other words, Chris not only has a passion for cycling, he also has a particular love of particular kinds of cycling (and bikes) that were all but unknown to most Americans when he started Velo Orange.  And it has paid off, for us and for him.  

As for him:  It's paid well enough that he's retired, after selling the company.  All I can do is hope that he and Annette enjoy their retirement, which they have certainly earned!  And that his cancer doesn't return.