No Longer A Prologue To The Automobile

When you get to be my age, the beginning of a new year becomes as much a time for reflecting on how things have changed during your life as for thinking about the time ahead.

I was reminded of that upon seeing this photo:

During my childhood, bike-makers often tried to emulate motorcycles and automobiles.  The irony is that the less race-worthy the bicycle, the its maker tried to evoke racing motorcycles or cars in the paint, graphics and other details of the bike.

One classic example of what I mean is the Raleigh Chopper:

The "spoiler" on the rear, the racing stripe on the seat and the lines of the frame--as well as the front wheel that's smaller than the rear--were taken from customized racing motorcycles that were popular for about a quarter-century after World War II.

Raleigh's machine, though, was a kind of "mixed metaphor", if you will.  While it was supposed to appeal to teenage boys' yearnings for the kinds of motorcycles they saw in movies like Easy Rider, this detail comes straight from the "muscle cars" of that era:

Could the size and location of that lever have anything to do with the decline in birth rates among baby boomers?

A decade or two before Raleigh started making "Choppers", Schwinn, Columbia and other American bicycle manufacturers built lights and horns into fake gas tanks attached to the tube.  

1934 Schwinn AeroCycle in the Longmont (CO) Museum and Cultural Center

It seemed that the main purpose of those "tanks" was to hold the batteries (usually 4 "D" cells) required to power the light and horn.  I'll admit, though, that on some bikes--like the Schwinn "AeroCycle" in the photo--they looked stylish, and even beautiful.

The reason why bikes, particularly those intended for boys, were styled after cars and motorcycles is that, in those days, bicycles were seen as stepping-stones to motorized vehicles.  When teenagers got their drivers' licenses, they passed their bikes on to younger siblings or other kids--or else the bikes were discarded.  

That view of bicycles started to change around the time I was entering my teen years.  While many of my peers would abandon cycling for years, or even forever, after getting their licenses, others started to see the bicycle as something other than a pre-motorcycle or pre-automobile.  They continued to ride, if less regularly, after they began to drive.  And, of course, many would bring their bicycles with them to the colleges they attended, as cycling is often more convenient than driving on and around campuses.

Also, by that time, adults were starting to take up cycling.  A few went as far as to live car-free lives.  Such riders were, of course, not interested in bicycles that looked (and, in some cases, rode) like motorcycles or cars without engines.  Some were not interested in aesthetics at all, while others (including yours truly) would come to appreciate the cleaner and more elegant lines of lightweight bicycles.  

Now I see that those old cruisers and Choppers have become "hip" in certain circles, and that Schwinn, Raleigh and other companies are making modern replicas of them.  However, people--even pre-teen boys--don't view them in quite the same way as kids in my time saw the originals of those bikes.  Somehow I don't think kids today see themselves as "graduating" to an automobile from one of those bikes; if anything, I guess that they see it as a cool toy or accessory, or as their means of transportation.  And they know that they can choose to continue riding bicycles as adults.  Almost none of my peers thought that way when I was a child.  I don't think I did, either.

A New Bike For The New Year

On my first foray outside my apartment this year, I saw a bike I'd never before seen:

On first glance, it seems like a typical European city bike.  But a few interesting details caught my eye.

The "strings" of the skirt guard are in a color meant, I think, to match the frame, which is a fairly muted shade of chartreuse.  However, the color brightened, almost to the point of being a neon shade, in those strands.

Could it be that this green bike is solar?  

The hub is a three-speed coaster brake model from, I believe, Sachs.  That company's coaster brake hub is now, of course, manufactured by Velosteel in the Czech Republic.  

Now, I'm going to test your knowledge of old European city bikes.  Can you guess what this is?

Here's a hint:

On the fork is a light or generator bracket commonly found on European city bikes as well as some of the old English three-speeds.  The hole with the black plug on the down tube is a conduit for a wire.  I'm guessing that a generator mounted on the fork bracket and the wire ran inside the frame to a taillight.   Said generator and tail light are absent:  The bike's owner had a modern " blinky" attached to the rear and a modern battery-powered headlight attached to the handlebar.

According to the head badge and a label on the seat tube, this bike was manufactured in West Germany--which, of course, automatically makes it at least two decades old.  I wonder, though, whether "Air Wing" was a bike brand intended for the German market, or whether it was meant for English-speaking countries.  If the latter were the case, it would be very interesting, as few bikes like it found their way to the US--or, I imagine, England or Australia.

What The End Of This Year Means For Me

From Leica 1956.

In recent years, it's seemed that the ending of the year has more or less coincided with the beginning of winter.  There have been exceptions, of course, such as the winter-that-barely-was a year ago.  But in my recent memory, in this part of the world, the death of a year, if you will, has mirrored the death of so much else.

At least cycling has been a constant in most years.  One of the exceptions came three years ago, when I was recuperating from surgery.  But, in most winters, whatever cycling I'm able to do makes the weeks and months of barren, wizened trees and old people in old, sometimes frayed coats that have survived other seasons seem like people and things encountered on a journey rather than signals of death.

And although I did no Grand Tours or any other monumental rides, I am happy and thankful for the cycling I have done.  For reasons I haven't discussed, and won't discuss, on this blog (After all, they''re not reasons why you come to this blog!), the past year has been difficult for me.  Some might say that I was coming down, finally, from the euphoria I experienced after making a change I'd wanted for as long as I can remember.  Maybe they're right.  But cycling has not merely masked the pain or discontent I've felt; it has always helped me to see that conditions such as those are (or, at least, need) not be permanent.

So has keeping this blog.  That makes sense when you realize that writing has been, along with cycling, one of the enduring passions of my life.  The fact that I continue to do both shows me the necessity of living in the moment as well as the foolishness of living for it, or of believing that every moment will be an extension of the present, or even the past.  So, while I know that I have been in better physical condition--and that I have written things that some people would say are better than anything I've written on this blog, or during the past year, as long as I keep on pedaling and writing, I know that there can be change.  I take that back: There will always be change. What riding and writing show me is that One kind of change or another (save, perhaps, for getting older) is not inevitable; while I may not ever regain the form I had in my youth, I can always improve my conditioning and, perhaps, do different kinds of riding from what I did in those days.  I may not conquer mountains again because I may not need to.  But there will always be a journey, and all I can do is to keep on pedaling and writing, and do whatever goes along with them.

N.B.:  Check out Leica 1956, where I found the photo I've included in this post.