Worth Its Weight In...

A few days ago, someone paid $5.2 million for a LeBron James trading card from his rookie year.  While I cannot understand paying that much money for a piece of cardboard, I am not surprised:  Basketball, more than any other team sport, focuses attention on individual stars.  And Le Bron James is arguably the brightest of the 21st Century, much as Michael Jordan, "Magic" Johnson and Julius "Dr. J" Erving were the luminaries of their times.

Of course, if someone can afford to spend that much money on a card, well, who am I to tell them they shouldn't?  I suppose that if I had that much money, I probably would--after I helped people I want to help--develop some collection or another.  And some people would wonder why in the world I was collecting whatever it was I was collecting.

If I were collecting bicycles...hmm...would I want classics?   Bikes from a particular country or region?  Genre?  Color?  Or would I concentrate on really obscure bikes, or ones that were not meant to be ridden?

In that last category might be this machine:

Photo by Lisa Powell, for the Springfield News-Sun

The color on the frame didn't come from a Krylon rattle-can. (Aside:  Graffiti artists don't like Krylon. Don't ask how I know that!)  In fact, it didn't come from any can or brush.  It is actual gold.  

To be exact, it's 14 karat gold plating on a chromed frame.  Very few bikes are chromed these days because it's expensive and some jurisdictions have made it all but impossible to do because of its environmental impact.  Also, if not done properly, it's worse than leaving the metal bare.

Even fewer bikes have ever been plated with gold.  For a time, some Campagnolo parts were available with gold plating; a few bike makers made special-edition machines--sometimes one-offs--with the shiny yellow stuff.  In 1972-73, Lambert of England offered its bike built from "aircraft tubing" with gold plating--for $259.95.  Soon afterward, the price of gold skyrocketed and Lambert discontinued those bikes--which, I am sure, are collector's items.

Most other gold-plated bikes were from makers at the very top end of the food chain.  Note that I said "most":  The bike in the photo is not anywhere near that level.

It is, in fact, a Huffy--the millionth bike produced by the company, on 13 May 1947.

The bike is on display in the Dayton Cyclery Building its namesake city's Carillon Park.  Other bikes in the museum pay homage to Miami Valley's history as a bicycle-making center.  Fabricators included a couple of young men who would parlay their knowledge and skills into another invention that would change the world.

Their names were Orville and Wilbur.  They used, not only the expertise in machinery they gleaned from building and repairing bikes, but what they learned about aerodynamics from different bike designs and riding positions. 

Hmm...I wonder what the Wright Brothers thought about Huffy bikes.  From what I've read, Huffy--known in those days as Huffman--bikes were actually respectable.

Another Fine Afternoon RIde

If I took a fine Spring ride the other day, yesterday's spin to Point Lookout would be my first summer ride of the year, sort of.

On Tuesday I began just after noon and got home from Connecticut in time for dinner.  The day began cloudy and chilly but sunlight--and warmth--broke through.  Yesterday, I began a bit before noon and rode through an afternoon when clear skies and bright sun brought the temperature up to 83F (28C), at least in the central parts of the city.

Most of my rides to Point Lookout, including the one I took yesterday, include crossing the Veterans Memorial Bridge. It spans Jamaica Bay and leads to the Rockaway Beach, a string of land barely a kilometer wide that separates the bay from the Atlantic Ocean. 

At this time of year, "mainland" Queens and Manhattan might bask in summery air, if for a day.  But the waters are just emerging from winter:  The ocean temperature at Rockaway Beach was 9C, or 48F, yesterday. The water temperature of Jamaica Bay probably wasn't much higher. That meant the air temperature dropped by about 15 degrees F, or seemed to, when I crossed the bridge and another couple of degrees when I reached the boardwalk.

Not that I minded.  The sun shone so brightly and other cyclists and strollers seemed to be in a good mood.  Also, the wind blew out of the northwest:  in my face for most of the way out, and at my back for most of the way back.

Today bouts of showers are punctuating a cloudy but still warm day.  I might try to sneak in a quick ride between spritzes.  But I'm happy that, for two days in a row, I managed to get in what would normally be, at this time of year, day rides in the space of an afternoon.

Colors Of An Afternoon Ride

 Yesterday I took advantage of the lengthening stretches of daylight:  I took another noon-to-dinner ride that didn't require the lights I brought with me.

As I did last Tuesday, I pedaled to Connecticut and back.  My ride started cloudy and chilly just before noon.  But, by the time I reached Greenwich, clouds opened and sunlight filtered through.  Along the way, cherry blossom, wisteria and lilac flowers seemed to burst with more color with every moment.  

Then there were the tulips on the Greenwich Common Memorial.

 They are in full bloom now.  So, of course, they are bursting with color.  This purple one isn't an "outsider" or as lonely as William Wordsworth's cloud:   Its hue, like the reds and yellows behind it,  seem to be fuller, and more intense, after a couple of hours of riding

Or were my perceptions influenced by the chocolate (Ghirardelli 92 percent) I munched?  I can't help but to believe that it--or Lindt's or, of course, craft dark chocolates--are drugs Dr. Hofmann himself would have envied!

What (And Who) Is This Law For, Anyway?

We shouldn't make a law we're not willing to use guns to enforce.

So opined Adam Sullivan of The Gazette, a newspaper and online publication based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He voiced this conclusion in a discussion of bicycle licensing laws.  Though he was dealing mainly with such regulations in Iowa, what brought him into the discussion was the viral video of Perth Amboy, New Jersey police officers stopping a group of kids who were popping wheelies while weaving in and out of traffic.  While one officer lectured the kids about bicycle safety, the cops used the boys' lack of bicycle licenses as a pretext for confiscating their bicycles and taking one boy--who is, ahem, African-American--into custody.

Sullivan called this--and what he deemed "outdated" bicycle licensing laws--government overreach, if not in so few words.  He makes the legitimate point that many Iowa cities once had mandatory bicycle licensing laws, and the system mainly served two purposes:  to give the police a chance to interact and "make nice" with kids and other community members when they registered their bikes, and to aid in the recovery and return of lost and stolen bicycles.

While those might be legitimate purposes, bicycle licensing, which is now mainly voluntary, no longer serves them.  Few, if any, stolen or lost bikes are returned to their original owners, in part because police departments, especially in larger cities and towns, don't place bike theft or loss high on their list of priorities.  Also, most bicycle licensing systems began during the 1950s and 1960s, when most Americans still thought, "bikes are for kids."  Today, many more bikes are ridden by--and the stolen from--adults.  So, there is less reason for cops to use bike-safety classes to build rapport with kids, or the larger community.

Also, people's attitudes toward cops, especially in cities, are very different, to say the least, from what they were a couple of generations ago.  So the bike-safety and community efforts would be seen as condescending by some and overreach, as Sullivan says, by others.

While Sullivan frames his argument against bike licensing laws--or any other regulations that can't be, or aren't being, enforced--in libertarian terms, I think his editorial also implies another question:  What, exactly is/are the purpose(s) of bicycle licensing regulations?  If almost no stolen or otherwise missing bikes, with or without tags, are returned to their owners, and meaningful efforts toward improving bicycling safety aren't made by police officers or others who understand cycling (or, better yet, are actually regular cyclists), what good is it to require tags?

Oh, and there is the issue of cost:  Perth Amboy bike licenses cost 50 cents. (How long ago was their law enacted?)  As Sullivan points out, most Iowa bike licenses cost around five dollars.  I have to wonder just how much money is actually collected, and how much it actually helps to make cycling safer.  While I think low-income people shouldn't have to pay for licenses, I also believe that those who can afford to pay more, should, if bicycle licensing programs are to serve any real purpose.

On the whole, I am in agreement with Sullivan on his main point:  Any law that isn't going to be enforced--or, worse, that will be enforced selectively, as it was in Perth Amboy-- shouldn't be on the books.  Ditto for any law that isn't used for the overall public good--or no longer has, or never had, a real purpose-- as is too often the case with laws related to bicycles and bicycling.

 

Balancing Their Needs

 A week ago, I wrote about the measure l'Assemblee Nationale approved.  It would give a 2500 Euro (almost 3000 USD) grant for an electric bicycle to anyone who turns in an old, highy-polluting car, which would be used for scrap.  

Although I dream, to this day, of people giving up, not only two wheels for four, but also petrol power for muscle juice, I understand why some people can't or won't ride bicycles that require their own input in order to move.  Some are elderly and frail; others have illnesses and disabilities--including balance issues.

Of course, that last problem is also a reason why someone wouldn't ride an electric or otherwise-assisted bicycle.  Jiaming Xiong and his colleagues at China's Beijing University recognized as much.  So, they created what they describe as a self-balancing electric bicycle.

What look like training wheels are attached to the rear stay.  It also looks like they're mounted just above ground level so that one of them touches when the bike wobbles, or is turned.

More important, and revolutionary, though are the gyroscopic sensors. They detect when the bike starts to lean and trigger it to steer into the direction of the potential fall in order to stabilize the bike.  

Another benefit I can see is that it's less cumbersome than an adult tricycle. (Are there electric or motorized adult trikes?)  It would take up less space and, perhaps most important, would probably be more maneuverable and visible in traffic.

If there are positive side-effects to the pandemic, one of them just might be efforts to make bicycling, in whatever form, more inclusive and practical for more people.  This self-balancing electric bike, like the French scheme, are two examples of that.

Who And What Can It Carry?

Two questions for today:

1.  What do you carry on your bicycle?

2.  How many people can, or should, ride it at one time?

 

Seeing Myself, Seeing Themselves In Alex

 Last month, I wrote two posts--"The Unbearable Whiteness of Cycling" and "Our Bodies, Our Bikes"--in which I describe how some people are discouraged from bicycling because they don't see themselves represented in images of cycling and cyclists.  Too often, ads and other media show only certain types of people astride bikes.  Usually, they are young and Caucasian--and thin, especially if they are female.  By implication, the folks depicted in those images are, or seem to be, middle-to-upper class professionals or living on trust funds.

And they all seem to fit cultural notions of gender and sexuality as well as they fit the "lifestyle" apparel they wear.  The women might be fit, even somewhat muscular, but they always fit into  standards of femininity and attractiveness of their milieu.  The men likewise fit into their society's ideas of masculinity.  Nowhere does one find any hit of gender non-conformity or "queerness."

In those posts, I also mentioned that I nearly gave up cycling when I started my gender-affirmation process because while I saw dudes on bikes who looked something like the guy named Nick I was--and images of men like that--I didn't see many of middle-aged women and, although I had mental images of the woman I wanted to be, I really had no idea of what I'd actually become, other than a woman named Justine, and whether she would be anything like any of the few women I saw on bikes.  

That, after I spent much of my life cycling--and some of my youth participating in other sports--in an attempt to fit into those notions of masculinity (and heterosexuality) represented, not only in bike-related ads and art, but in the general culture.  And, I must say that I fit in, at least somewhat:  I got respect in my circles of bike riders and other athletes as well as from teachers and professors.  Sometimes I was teased for not bragging about sexual conquests of girls or women, but the taunts could be taken only so far when the taunters and teasers saw me beside a woman.

Now, I've been talking about seeing myself, or one's self in images of cycling and cyclists.  While I am referring to visual and graphic ones, I am not referring only to them:  I know how much all of us--gay, straight, trans, cis, male, female, White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific/Alaskan Native, rich, poor, or whatever--need to hear our stories echoed, or at least paralleled, in the ones told in books, magazines and newspapers, or on websites, radio, television, film or podcasts.

Alex Showerman in the White Mountains of New Hampshire

That is why I had a brief catharsis in reading about Alex Showerman.  As much as she excelled as a cyclist, as well as in other sports and in school,  "I was not experiencing the world as I wanted to, and the world didn't see me as I wanted to be seen."  This sense of isolation and alienation led to depression, which she tried to numb with alcohol.

In 2015, she began seeing a gender therapist to make sense of who she is.  Last July,  on a bike trip in New Hampshire with two of her closest friends, she "came out" for the first time.  She never felt so free, she said:  She finally could ride just for the love of riding rather than to "outrun her shadows," as a Bicycling article put it, or to pound herself into maleness, as I tried to do.

I am happy that she has begun to live as her true self a decade and a half earlier in her life than I did in mine--and that she realizes that life includes cycling.  She might become the cyclist in an image in which some young trans girl or boy--or other gender or sexual non-conformist--sees him-, her- or them-self for the first time.

Cycling While Black, I Mean, Without A License

You've probably seen them:  groups of kids, almost always boys, weaving their bikes in and out of traffic lanes, veering across center lines and riding as close as they can to oncoming cars.  Sometimes, they're popping wheelies as they're zigging and zagging along the pavement.

When I see such groups, if I can catch the gaze of one of their members, I might yell, "Be careful, OK" or simply give them what I believe is a concerned but nonjudgmental look.  Kids need to be kids and, truth be told, I did more than a few stupid and dangerous things.  But I want them to be able to look back and reflect on, well, the stupid and dangerous things they got away with doing.

If cops are going to deal with them, they should stop to the kids and talk to them.  They might continue what they were doing as soon as the cops are out of sight, but I think the cops should at least make them think.  Ticketing--or, worse, arresting--them on bogus charges probably will accomplish nothing more than to make them more distrustful of authority, and defiant, than they already are.

Especially if the charge is one that has never been levied in the history of the kids' community.  

That is what happened last week in Perth Amboy, New Jersey--a city connected to Staten Island, New York by the Outerbridge Crossing.  I occasionally ride through it as I'm pedaling to other parts of New Jersey and I rode in and through it fairly often when I was a student at Rutgers.

Then, the majority of Perth Amboy residents were poor or working-class Hispanics, and there was a sizable Black community.  In that sense, it hasn't changed, save for which Hispanic and Black people live there.  Also not changed is the relationship between the people and the ones who police them.

An already high tension level has ratcheted up during the past year, in the wake of George Floyd's murder and other crimes and misdeeds by police officers against non-white people.  Things could have reached a breaking point--and might, still--after videos surfaced of the police confiscating the bikes and handcuffing one of the boys--who happens to be African American.

The charge--riding while black, I mean, without a bicycle license. I'd love to know when was the last time, before last week, that law was enforced.

 

Afternoon Nourishment

Over the past week or two, clouds have blanketed, and rain has fallen on, this part of the world more often than the sun has shone.  But the days have grown noticeably longer:  Every day, it seems, the sun sets a few minutes later.

That means I can start early in the afternoon and still get a decent ride in.  On Monday, I rambled along local streets and roads to the North Shore and central Queens to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.  

The cherry blossoms were, well, not quite blossoms, not yet.  But the buds were visibly more open than they were over the weekend: open enough that I could envision the pink canopy the grove will soon provide.

I deliberately used the word "provide" because such sensual spectacles are sustenance for me:  They sustain me on my journey and the journey.

The following day, I didn't see cherry blossoms after I pedaled a few miles from my apartment.  I pedaled north and east, across the RFK Bridge into the Bronx and Westchester--into Connecticut.  I realize now that the difference in latitude, however slight, may have been enough to make a difference in the blooms:  Festivals in Washington, DC and much of Japan happen early in April (or even late March) because their trees, at a more southerly latitude, are exposed to the necessary sunlight, and therefore bloom, earlier.

I did, however, enjoy a snack or late light lunch*, depending on how you look at it, by a bed of tulips:

The soldiers, sailors and flyers commemorated at the Greenwich Memorial aren't buried there. Throughout my life, as I've become increasingly anti-war, I have become more pro-veteran.  Maybe I still have the hope that one day, whether or not it happens during my lifetime, no one else will have to do what they did--and that beauty can flourish in the ruins.

All right, enough faux-profound commentary.  It was great to start after noon and finish a 145 kilometer ride well before dark--and to chow down on some Italian American soul food--baked ziti and salad--after feeding my apartment mate.**

*--A quarter of a whole wheat baguette with Brad's peanut butter and Bonne Maman preserves--cherry on half, wild blueberry on the other half.

**--I always feed Marlee before I feed myself.  I got into the habit of feeding my cat(s) first years ago, with my first feline companion.

  

Debris Causes Fatal Bike Crash

One of the least-acknowledged hazards to cyclists is debris.

Once, I flatted when I ran over a metal strip used to bind bundles of lumber or bricks together for shipping to construction sites.  Work crews were leaving them on sidewalks and in streets until the city cracked down on them.  My tire was punctured near Tompkins Square Park; I fixed it in part because I wasn't takin' no stinkin' subway home when I could pedal.  Also, I might've been too poor to take the train!

I can joke about it now, but I'd heard of cyclists who suffered more serious accidents, resulting in serious injuries, as a result of running over those straps.  I've also heard of riders who crashed as a result of other kinds of debris or from sharp bumps that result from cement dripping from trucks and drying.  

As a result of my experiences, and of the stories I've heard, I occasionally clean up the section of bike lane that runs by my apartment, and pick up potentially-hazardous objects I find.  I like to think I'm helping to make conditions safer, and to prevent an accident.

Bill Woodard, about to embark on his last bike ride, 13 April 2021.  

Like the one that befell Bill Woodard in St. George, Utah.  Shortly before 11 am last Tuesday, responders were dispatched to Woodard, who lay on the side of Route 7.  He'd been riding with longtime friend and riding partner Gordon MacFarlane when he rode over a piece of metal that lodged into the spokes of his front wheel.  

The object that caused the crash.

Apparently, MacFarlane didn't hear it and assumed his friend was rolling behind him until a vehicle pulled up alongside him. Its driver yelled to him that a cyclist was lying on the side of the road.  He turned around and headed back to find ambulance crew members performing CPR on Woodard.

They--and MacFarlane--at first assumed that Woodard, who was 75 years old, suffered a heart attack or other medical issue.  But, it seems that anything they'd done would've been to no avail:  His neck was broken and he incurred serious head trauma.  Since Woodard never regained consciousness after falling, he couldn't tell anyone what happened, and the cause of his accident wasn't surmised until the object that lodged in his spokes was found.  

Kevin Kitchen, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Transportation, confirmed that debris is a "serious problem" in area roads and "much of the debris" the maintenance force finds "appears to have come from loads consisting of construction materials."

There is another little-acknowledged problem--much of the debris that is hazardous to cyclists, and to the general public, is a result of construction, especially in places like southern Utah that are experiencing construction booms.