420 On 419

 Today is Cannabis Day.  According to at least one story, this date was chosen because "420" is police parlance for "pot smoking in progress." (With weed becoming legal in many state, this will become an interesting bit of history.)  Another account says that it this date comes from Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35":  Multiply those numbers and you get 420.  Ohh-kaay.  Some have also tied it to the fact that it's Adolf Hitler's birthday, though what he has to do with it is beyond me.

The most plausible explanation I've found is that it started with a group of Marin County high-schoolers who met at 4:20 in the afternoon on this date (or some fine day) in 1971 to "toke."  If that's true, today would mark the 50th anniversary of that historic encounter.

I have to wonder whether this "holiday" will grow or decline in importance now that "weed" is being legalized or decriminalized in one jurisdiction after another.  

One reason I mention 420, though, is its possible connection to another "chemical" holiday--one that is connected to a bicycle ride and about which I was remiss in not mentioning!

On 19 April 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, often called the father of psychedelic medicine, took (dropped) lysergic acid diethylamide--at 4:20 pm--and went for a bike ride.  This might be the reason why the experiences--which, for some, resemble an almost-cinematic evolution of sensual stimuli-- that ensue from dropping acid are called a "trip."

From Double Blind

Believe it or not, it didn't become illegal to possess LSD in the United States until 24 October 1968.  But 19 April didn't become a holiday, if an unofficial one, until 1985, so it couldn't be called "Acid Day" without attracting the attention of authorities. You're a lot more likely to get busted for dropping than for toking:  For the latter, the gendarmes, depending on where and what race you are, might look the other way.  Thus did 19 April become World Bicycle Day.

As for Hofmann himself:  He described his experiences in rather vivid detail.  And he lived to be 102.  Maybe it had something to do with his bike-riding.

Dragons, Rescues And Purple Tulips

An early spring weekend of riding turned out to be a slalom:  I wove my way between bouts of rain and threats of rain, and among momentoes to death and loss and life's renewal.

First, to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, the home of the Unisphere.  If you haven't been there, you saw it in "Men In Black."  I rode a route that took me through the park because I wanted to see the cherry blossoms.  The ceremony the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens holds was canceled this year, as it was last year.  It's still a great place to see the blooms because of the walks and paths lined with the trees, and the variety of cherry blossoms grown at the Gardens.  But those of us in the know will tell you that if you want to walk through a pink canopy without the throngs of selfie-takers, there's no better place in this city than FM-CP.

I think I might've been a bit early--or the trees might be blooming a bit later than they did last year:  The buds, lovely as they are, do not burst with color in the same way.  Like all buds, however, they are a visual reminder of hope and the future.  So, I can look forward to going back in a few days--I hope.

I did, however, see "Leo."

During the past few years, an inordinately high number of trees have toppled in this city's parks and on its streets.  Part of the reason is that once-in-a-century storms are striking every ten, five or even fewer years.  Another, as a park ranger told me, is that many trees are old and have been decaying from within for years.  

So, contrary to a rumor I may have just started, there isn't a dragon named Leo who knocks the trees down.  Maybe he's kept at bay by coolers of--Gatorade?  beer?--left for him!

My riding took me into Manhattan, the whole length of the island and beyond.  At its base, Battery Park--where you get the ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island--there's a memorial to members of the Merchant Marine who were wounded or killed in World War II.

According to the inscription, the sculptor was inspired by a photo.  I don't doubt it, but if said sculptor could also have claimed inspiration from something else:

I mean, can you imagine what the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would look like had someone besides Pope Julius commissioned--or Michelangelo (one of my artistic heroes) painted it.  

(Fun fact: Michelangelo didn't want to do the ceiling.  He was at work on other projects and insisted he was primarily a sculptor rather than a painter.  During the course of working on it, he wrote poems, tinged with sarcasm, about his displeasure at working on the fresco.)

Another irreverent thought occurs to me:  Both Michelangelo's fresco and the sea sculpture can be seen as Rorsach tests of a sort:  When you see one hand reaching out to another, do you think the stronger one should grasp the other and pull the other up?  Or do you think the person being to whom the hand is being extended should learn to fend for himself?  Will the guy in the water start to swim and, if he doesn't, does he deserve help?  

At one time such a test would have classified me one way, and now it would reveal me in a different way.  All I'll say is that my days of writing editorials for libertarian publications are long past!

Anyway, near the monument is a cafe for tourists.  I must say that I was impressed with the garden around it:

With a setting like that, the cafe could serve sludge from the water and people would enjoy it!  Me, I enjoyed my weekend of riding, even if it wasn't high-mileage.

The Real Reason "Safeties" Won Out?

 Let me tell you what I think of bicycling.  It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.  I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.

Those words were uttered by Susan B. Anthony.  It's no coincidence, I think, that the women's suffrage moment gained momentum during America's first "Bike Boom," in the 1890s and early 1900s.  Both developments followed the development of the "safety bicycle," with two wheels of equal or nearly-equal size and the rear propelled by a chain-and-sprocket drive.

OK, I'll try to say this without sounding sexist.  I think that the safety bicycle encouraged women to take up riding for two reasons.  One is that is that it's easier to ride a "safety" in the clothes women wore in those days. (I'm not sure how they could mount 60-inch wheels in hoopskirts.)  The other is that women are, on average, smaller than men and would--even if they were wearing lycra tights (which, of course, weren't available at the time) thus have more difficulty in getting aboard a high-wheeler.  

Plus, "safeties" just make more sense--like letting people vote, regardless of their gender.

 

From The Voiture A Petrol To La Velo Electrique

Over the past couple of decades, the Dutch and Danes have gotten things mostly right when it comes to everyday cycling.  Note that I said "mostly":  As I noted a few days ago, the author of "Bicycle Dutch" encountered a newly-constructed bicycle viaduct that, as it turns out, isn't very practical--and, possibly, not very safe--for cyclists. 

Still, the Netherlands, like Denmark, does better than most countries in making the bicycle a practical transportation alternative.  So does France. While the French aren't yet on par with their northern neighbors, cycling infrastructure and regulations are much better thought-out than what we have in the US or other countries.

And French planners are dealing with a reality that I, in my youthful arrogance, would not acknowledge until recently:  Not everyone will forsake four wheels for two, or one pedal for two--or, more important, petrol for muscle.

Some, of course, just don't want to exert themselves physically.  But others, particularly those who are elderly or have disabilites (or whose bodies are giving out on them for other reasons), can't.   So how do you get them to give up their cars--which tend to be older and less fuel-efficient because, well, such people also tend to be poorer than those who can afford a Prius or Tesla.

Acting on that realization, l'Assemblee Nationale--France's equivalent to the US House of Representatives or the UK's House of Commons--has just approved a measure that would give people the chance to hand over their old, exhaust-belching voitures for scrap.  In return, they'd receive a 2500 Euro (2975 USD at current exchange rates) grant to buy an electric bicycle.  

The measure is an amendment to a climate bill passing through Parliament that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in by 40 percent from 1990 levels in 2030.  If the measure is adopted, France would become the first country in the world to offer people the chance to trade in their old cars for electric bicycles.  Perhaps most important of all, it is a recognition that "the solution is not to make cars greener, but simply to reduce their number," according to Olivier Schneider of the Federation Francaise des Usagers de la Bicyclette (FUB), an organization dedicated to everyday cycling.

Piercing Its Facade

This post will do something that, to my knowledge, few if any other pieces of writing have done:  mention an early bicycle suspension system and a French ladies' utility bicycle from the 1960s or 1970s.

That wasn't my original intention, but in the admittedly-cursory research I did, the two topics became entangled.

How did I start on this path (pun intended)? Well, a few days ago I saw this

parked around the corner from my apartment.

At first glance, it looks like any number of French ladies' utility/city bikes of its time:  The swept-down top lateral tubes lend it a grace most "beast" bikes don't have.   That detail distinguihes somewhat from the mixte bikes that made their way to the US during the 1970s Bike Boom.  Those bikes--like the Peugeot UO8 mixte--had straight twin lateral tubes.  As a result, bikes like the U08 had slightly tighter geometry than bikes like the one in this post, which gave them a somewhat sprightlier ride.

You can still find plenty of bikes like the one in my photos parked on Paris streets and all over France:  they were, and still are, for many French women what classic British three-speeds were for generations of women riding to work, the marketplace or the park in much of the Anglophone world.

But I knew, right away, something was odd about this bike.  One give-away was the "Belle de Paris" decal on the downtube:  I mean, if you saw that in a movie, you'd think it was a joke.  No French bike maker would have given such a name to a bike it planned to sell in France--or to anyone who knows anything about French bikes!

(I think now of the car Renault sold as "Le Car" in the US.  Even if you don't know or care about anything French, you just had to roll up your eyes on seeing that!)

Another odd thing about the bike is the brand name:  Pierce-Arrow.  As far as I know, there never was a French bike-maker by that name.  And then there's this:

Some of the Motobecanes imported early in the US Bike Boom had fork crown caps stamped with the telltale "M" emblem.  Also, some bikes made by Motobecane and sold under other names--like Astra--bore it.

And, of course, Motobecane made many bikes like this one:  Of all French manufacturers, it's likely that only Peugeot made more.  So, I surmised--correctly, my research would confirm--that I was looking at a Motobecane rebadged as "Pierce-Arrow".

So what of Pierce-Arrow?

Anyone who knows anything about the history of luxury automobiles knows the name.  Heck, even I knew about them!  Before World War II, they had a cache on par with the revered names of today like Rolls-Royce and Mercedes Benz.  And, like most other auto manufacturers of the time--and a few that survive today (think of Peugeot and Ford)--Pierce-Arrow was a bicycle-maker before it manufactured cars (and, in Pierce's and Peugeot's case, motorcycles).  And, in another interesting parallel with Peugeot, Pierce began as an industrial company that manufactured a variety of items (Yes, that peppermill was made by the same company that made the PX-10!) before venturing into wheeled goods.

George N. Pierce started his company in Buffalo, NY in 1872.  In 1890, at the dawn of the first "Bike Boom," Pierce produced its first bicycles.  They quickly developed a reputation for quality and elegance as well as elegance.  As per the latter, the company offered one of the early "ladies'" models of safety bicycle, with a graceful tube that swept down from the head tube.  

Seamless joint. From 1897 Pierce Bicycle catalogue.

As for technical innovations, they contributed two that would influence later bicycle develpment.  According to their 1897 catalogue, their frames had seamless joints achieved by "fittings inside one tube and shaped to fit snugly around the opposite tube."  This can be seen as a predecessor of both lugged and fillet-brazed joints:  the joining methods used to this day on most high-quality steel frames.  

Pierce Cushion Frame, 1901

The other?  One of the earliest frame suspension systems.  In 1898, their Cushion Frame line featured a shock absorber on the post connecting the rear axle to the seat pillar.  Hmm...I think I saw something like that on a few mountain bikes--in 1998, or thereabouts!

Anyway, Pierce continued to make bicycles until 1918, when the Emblem Manufacturing company in the nearby community of Angola acquired them.  Emblem continued to produce bicycles until 1940--ironically, two years after Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company ceased to exist.

Now, from what I've gleaned, the company's bicycles were never called Pierce-Arrow.  That appelation was reserved for cars. Bicycles and motorcycles were always called "Pierce."  The Pierce-Arrow name, however, would be conflated with Pierce bicycles--possibly because of the arrow in Pierce's emblem.  In the years after the last Pierce bicycles were made, at least one distributor sold bicycles rebadged as "Pierce-Arrow."  To my knowledge, no bicycle manufacturer ever made a "Pierce Arrow" line of bikes:  That label was a creation of the distributor/importer, just as "Nishiki," "Azuki," "Centurion," "Shogun" and "Univega" were.  (Although those bikes were made in Japan, you can't buy one with any of those names in the Land of the Rising Sun.)  Apparently, the distributor was banking on the residual cache of the "Pierce Arrow" name.

Don't you just love the fender details?  I think Velo Orange's "Facette" fenders were inspired by these, or something like them.

So...whoever bought the bike I saw parked in my neighborhood may have thought he or she was getting some connection to a classic car.  Instead, he or she got something like what a madame would have pedaled to school, work, the market or to her relatives in the next village or arrondissement.  

Il A Demissione Pour Gagner (He Quit In Order To Win)

 What do Dave Cowens, Rebecca Twigg,  Lance Armstrong and Theo Nonnez have in common?

Because you're reading this blog, you certainly know about Lance and probably have heard of Rebecca.  Unless you're a basketball fan (which is practically synonymous with being a New Yorker of my generation), you might not know about Dave Cowens.

As for Monsieur Nonnez--well, you might not know anything about him (except that he's French) unless you avidly follow bike racing.

OK...So what do they share?  No, not needles, Lance's revelation notwithstanding.  They all did something almost nobody expected of them:  They walked away from their careers as world-class (or, in Nonnez's case, potentially world-class) athletes.

Dave Cowens was perhaps the greatest "undersized" (Where else but in the NBA is 6'9" "small"?) center in the history of the game.  As a New Yorker, I am not a fan of the team for which he played most of his career--the Boston Celtics.  I am enough of a basketball fan, however, to respect him:  He simply never seemed to play a bad game.

In the middle of the 1976-77 season--just a few months removed from his team's most recent championship--he took a leave of absence "for personal reasons."  There was no contract dispute or feud with a coach or team management:  He simply needed to, as we might say today, re-set.  The term "burnout" wasn't yet in wide use, but if you read accounts of that time, it's pretty clear that's what he was suffering.

So it was for Rebecca Twigg a decade later.  Three years after winning a silver Olympic medal in the road race, she crashed--literally and metaphorically.  A misaligned rear wheel led to a mishap in which she was lucky to emerge with a broken thumb and mild concussion.  At the time, she said she was tired of waking up early, regardless of the weather, and pushing her body to its limits.  She took time to complete degrees and start a new career in information technology before deciding she needed to be on her bike again.  And she did so in a rather big way, winning another Olympic medal in Barcelona in 1992.

(Unfortuantely, she "crashed" again and has been homeless for the past few years.)

Now, I know it's not fashionable to talk about Lance without bashing him, but here goes:  He, of course, quit racing for two years after his cancer diagnosis.  But, before he confessed to Oprah, he talked about how he considered retiring after his fifth Tour de France win.  Had he not "juiced," he would have been, in at least one sense, in elite company:  Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain reached that magic milestone. (They all won other races, including the Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a Esapana, some of the "classics," and various other cycling events, so even if Lance didn't have his wins vacated, I don't believe he wouldn't have been in their class.)  He spoke of something similar to what Twigg described:  He was tired of a life that revolved around training.  Few people outside the sport realize what a singular, solitary existence bike racing is.

That's what Theo Nonnez learned.  What he also said is, in essence, that if you realize that you're not willing to give up literally everything else in your life--including relationships and the foods most other people eat--you probably won't reach the heights of the folks I've mentioned.  You really have to want to be a champion more than anything else--possibly life itself--in order to keep yourself so motivated.

My previous sentence may well explain why Cowens took his leave, Armstrong almost quit and Twigg did, for a time.  I think it might also explain why she "crashed" in life:  After pursuing something so single-mindedly, and not having another suitable outlet for your adrenaline (IT?), it's easy to burn out on life, if you will.

Again, in my unfashionable all-but-defense of Lance, I think it might explain why some athletes cheat:  When you compete against someone who's spent his or her life pursuing the same goal you've devoted your life to pursuing, and the difference between you and that person is a second, or a stroke of bad luck (an accident, say), the temptation to grasp at any possible advantage, however illegal or unethical it may be, is great.

Theo Nonnez

I think Theo Nonnez may have seen these possibilties.  What he did say is that he realized, even after winning a junior championship, cycling wasn't the right career choice for him, and that he was pursuing it in part because of the hopes and expectations of people around him. Je me suis mis a pleurer sur le velo--"I began to cry on the bicycle"--he reports in the tweet announcing his retirement.  He has not announced concrete plans, but says he wants to help others.

If all of that is true--and I can't find any reason to doubt him-- Theo Nonnez is wise beyond his 21 years.  Best of all, he's still young enough to come back if he changes his mind a few months or a year from now. (He shouldn't wait too long, though:   An athlete's career is brief!)  Whatever he does, he's already a winner, and I wish him well.

What They Brought, What I Took Away

Yesterday I pedaled out to the Brooklyn Army Terminal, better known today as a terminal for the ferries to downtown Manhattan and the Rockaways.

BAT has also been a vaccination site--which is the reason I rode there.  I got my second jab; the first went well, so I figured I wouldn't have any problem riding there or back.

I didn't.  I did, however, enjoy a beautiful early Spring afternoon.  I still find it ironic to be riding a bike for enjoyment in a place where men like my uncles and grandfather did difficult and often dangerous work.

And they weren't going there to look at the Statue of Liberty, the passing boats or the lower Manhattan skyline.  The latter looked very different in those days--which included my early childhood.  The Twin Towers that came tumbling down after the 9.11 attacks had yet to be built.  They may not have even been conceived, any more than the promenade or cafes were--or the notion that the piers would ever be used for anything other than unloading loading and unloading the ships that came and went, and the flatbed railroad cars that connected them to the factories were still other men (and some women) did other kinds of hard and dangerous work.

And to think--getting jabbed with a needle was the most pain I experienced on this waterfront, where so many others endured so much more, and ocean waves lapped against ships with cabins soaked within by their sweat, the blood of some and the tears of others.  

I rode, my wheels seemingly lofted by the sun and wind.

Speed, From The Comfort of Your Sofa

In my post about the death of Prince Philip, I mentioned that he particpiated in one of the few genres of cycling in which I've never tried:  bicycle polo.

Now I'm going to talk about one of the few kinds of bicycles I've never tried:  the recumbent.

The "safety" bicycle, with two wheels of equal (or nearly so) size and a gear-and-chain drivetrain appeared in the late 1880s.  Earlier bicycles--the high-wheelers often called "penny farthings"--had a front wheel much larger than the rear.  The crank and pedals attached directly to the front wheel, so how high or low a gear you rode depended on the size of the wheel.  Typical front wheels were 60 to 70 inches in diameter, which meant for a rather precarious perch in the saddle.  The "safety" bicycle was a contrast to such machines.

Charles Challand's "Normal"

But not everyone liked the bent-over position of those early "safety" bicycles.  So, Charles Challand, a Geneva professor, created the "normal" bicycle--so called because it allowed the rider to pedal in a "normal" position.

Around the same time, Irving Wales of Rhode Island applied for a patent on a similar bicycle.  His bike, however, had an added feature:  a hand drive similar to the one on a rowing machine.  Though augmenting pedal power could make for a faster ride, hand power never really caught on.

Other tinkerers would experiment with other features, which re-appear from time to time on modern recumbents:  An Italian recumbent had a steering wheel instead of handlebars; an English machine had a 16 inch front wheel and short wheelbase, rather like a time trial or triathlon bike.  A long-wheelbase recumbent from France, possibly made by Peugeot, had a 26-inch rear wheel and 22-inch front, with a front end resembling that of a diamond-frame safety bike.  But the handlebars were where the saddle of a safety would have been; bridle rods linked them to the steerer (headset). 

That long-wheelbase recumbent might have been the most conspicuous example of what recumbent bike designers have tried to achieve:  a smooth, stable ride from the comfort of your sofa.

Paul Jaray's "Sofa" bicycle

Speaking of which:  In 1921, Austrian aeronautical engineer Paul Jaray created the "sofa" bicycle.  In addition to its seating arrangement, it boasted another unique feature:  treadle drive.  On his first stereotype, Jaray connected the treadles to the rear wheel by steel cables with return springs.  

In a later version, a cable from the left treadle lever wound several times around a left drum on the rear hub, then onto a horizontal pulley, and then onto a right drum.  After several more winds, the cable connected to the right treadle lever.  This might seem complicated, but it did away with the "dead center" problem of the first stereotype.

Over the years, other cyclists, engineers, inventors and tinkerers experimented with different recumbent designs.  Two developments, though, halted the machines' evolution for a few decades.  The first came in 1934, when the UCI published a new definition of racing bikes that, some said, was crafted specifically to exclude recumbents, which were being ridden to record times and distances.  The second was World War II.  

Still, the recumbent never quite faded away.  There seems to be renewed interest in them, and they're being reconfigured with modern materials and componentry.  One rarely, if ever, sees recumbents here in New York or in other large cities, I believe, because of their (and their riders') lack of visibility in traffic.  But I intend to ride a "sofa" one day.

Even The Dutch Take A Wrong Turn Sometimes

Which of these statements is true?

A. The Netherlands gets it right when it comes to cycling infrastructure.

B.  Justine Valinotti is a direct descendent of Christopher Columbus and inherited his sense of direction.

Actually, neither is completely true--or false.  I can't claim lineage (as far as I know, anyway) to the guy who didn't "discover" America, but my navigational skills are on par with his.  It's a good thing I have a sense of adventure!

As for the Netherlands:  Much of the world sees it as a cycling paradise.  Indeed, there are more bikes than people, and its system of bike lanes and other structures are, well, a system, more or less:  They actually make cycling a real transportation alternative, at least in the cities.

That said, even Dutch planners get it wrong sometimes.  Mark Wagenbuur reminds us of this in a recent post on his blog, Bicycle Dutch.

Once or twice a year, he rents a bike at the Venlo train station and rides to his in-laws in Grubbenvorst.  In times past, his route was perhaps not the most scenic, but was pretty direct--and, from his direction, relatively safe for cycling.  Four years ago, however, the local government built a viaduct for cyclists that was ostensibly safe and convenient for cyclists.

The problem, from Mr. Wagenbuur's point of view, was that one of the roads he took on earlier trips was closed to cyclists--and the viaduct was designed, in part, to bypass that road. It forces cyclists to take a slightly longer--but considerably more complicated--route.

The blue line is Mark Wagenbuur's current route.  The horizontal blue segment is the viaduct.  His old route is in green.  In red are possible connections that could make his route more straighforward. From Bicycle Dutch.

He admits that the additional distance isn't much--it adds only 36 seconds to his trip--but the detours and other turns are exasperating.  I guess he's a bit like me in that way:  I don't mind taking a longer route, whether it's for a commute or a fun ride.  If I'm trying to get to a particular place (e.g., work or a doctor's appointment) at a particular time, though, I prefer to minimize my chances of taking a wrong turn.

As I've said in other posts, merely building bike lanes isn't going to convert people from four wheels to two.  Those lanes have to be planned in order to provide safe, convenient and practical routes for cyclists.  That happens more often in European countries, like the Netherlands, than in the United States.  But, since Dutch planners are people (and may not realize that folks like me are navigationally-challenged), every once in a while they make missteps--like the viaduct Mark Wagenbuur described.

Infinite Monkeys And Bicycles

Folks in midlife--like yours truly (!)--understand that computers and the Internet can't cause anything that hasn't happened before.  All they can do is to make something happen faster and spread wider.

That means all manner of crackpot notions from the tinfoil hat crowd were circulating well before the Altair came along.  One I recall from my tender young years goes something like this:  Give an infinite number of monkeys and infinite number of typewriters and, eventually, Hamlet or Macbeth or the complete works of Shakespeare (depending on who was telling the story) would emerge.

Hmm...If we put an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of bicycles....

From Trademark Art