Another Schwinn Criss-Crosses My Life

A couple of days ago, I wrote about my first Bianchi, a.k.a. The Bike I Lost At CBGB.

As I mentioned, it had become my commuter during my first year of graduate school.  Now I'm going to tell you about the bike that replaced it--as my commuter, anyway.

As old-school English three-speeds were out of production, and European (or European-style) city bikes were unavailable in the US, the bike I bought was probably about as suited to urban commuting as any new bike one could buy at the time.

The 1992 Schwinn Criss-Cross, in its own way, was brilliant.  It came with a good-quality lugged chrome-moly steel frame. That made it a tough little bike that was still fairly nimble. While it wouldn't handle like a racing bike with sew-up tires (I owned and raced on one at the time; a post on it is coming.), I had little trouble dodging and weaving through traffic on it, even when it was loaded.  

The components that came with them weren't fancy, but they weren't junk, either:  They all functioned as well as I needed and stood up to the thrashing they took on a daily basis.  (Being young and full of testosterone, I was harder on bikes than I am now.)  The only parts I changed were the tires and tubes.  The original tires were 700C knobby tires, which I rode through the winter. However, as the bike saw most of its miles on pavement, the noise and added resistance of the tires could be annoying when there was no snow or ice. So, in the spring, I replaced them with a pair of the best urban commuting and touring tires ever made: the Avocet Cross.

Back in those days, Cyclo-Cross bikes were almost as rare as Dutch-style city bikes in the US.  So, when the tire in question came out--and, for the matter, the bike about which I'm writing--most American cyclists understood "cross" to mean a hybrid bike, or anything related to it.

The Avocet Cross tires, like the Schwinn Criss-Cross bike, suited that kind of riding very well.  What made the Avocet Cross one of the most innovative tires ever made was its "inverted" tread.  In other words, it was a grooved rather than a ribbed or studded tire. Therefore, it offered traction that was almost as good as a studded tire but with a lot less rolling resistance.  Even more important, at least for urban commuting, its rounded edges offered the kind of cornering afforded by good road tires.  

Plus, they seemed to be more resistant to punctures than other tires I've ridden.  It may have been because the tread area was thicker, so that the grooves could be cut into it.  Others suggested that the tread pattern kept at least some debris from working its way into the tread.  

Anyway, the bike served me nicely as a commuter for a bit more than a year.  Then, one day, I was running an errand in Midtown when I stopped at a traffic light near Grand Central Station. An Australian tourist came up to me and complimented the bike.   He said that a magazine--I don't recall whether it was Bicycling! or some other--reviewed it very favorably, and he wanted one to bring back with him.  However, none of the shops he checked had it. 


I took the subway home that day.  However, after paying my fare, I was left with the cost of the bike, the accessories, the tires and another $50.  Considering that I'd ridden the bike for a year, that wasn't half-bad, I thought.

A Love Letter To An Old Friend

About four weeks ago, I wrote about the first anniversary of Charlie's death.

He was sweet, adorable and smart, and accompanied me through some of most intense and, sometimes, wonderful times in my life.  

Charlie came into my life on this date in 2006.  My friend Mildred rescued him a few months earlier from an area of metal fabrication shops.  There are a few houses among them; still, the area is usually deserted after dark.  That's why people--and I use that term quite loosely--dump animals there.

Millie told me that as soon as Charlie saw her, he scampered toward her.   That meant, of course, that he was not a feral cat; he must have had a home only recently.  The vet said as much, and determined that he was about six to seven years old.  

She wanted to keep him, but she had other cats in her house and yard.  I said I would take him as soon as I was ready.  She didn't rush me; she understood why I couldn't take him right away.

He is the reason why.  You might be thinking that he looks like Charlie.  In fact, he is Charlie--just not the same one I've been talking about.

The cat in the photo--let's call him Charlie I--had been in my life for nearly fifteen years, from the time he was a kitten.  Only members of my family and a few friends have had, or had, more years with me.  

In addition to being adorable and sweet, he was smart and, it seemed, prescient.  You know he's intelligent from that photo:  He's in front of an Oxford English Dictionary.  Some people might believe that he read more of it than I did!

Another way I knew he was smart was the way he looked the camera.  He seemed to realize that I was photographing him, but he also seemed to know that it was simply impossible for anyone--even  yours truly!--to take a bad photo of him.

When I first met him, he was with the other kittens in his litter.  He half-walked, half-waddled to me on his little legs and looked into my eyes.  Somehow, he seemed to know all about me, and that he was going home with me.  I didn't even have to make the decision.

What's even more interesting, though, is that he preferred women to men and girls to boys.  Whenever I talked with a woman on the phone, he was at my side.  When a woman came into my apartment, he simply had to meet her.  And he and Tammy got along famously.

Someone suggested that he acted as he did the first time I met him because he knew that I'm a woman, even though I was still deep into my boy-drag phase!  For a few months, around the time Charlie I was a year old, I shared my apartment with a fellow graduate student.  Late one afternoon, Charlie I made a beeline for the door as I turned the key.  My roommate joked, "Charlie, Mommy's home!"

So, Charlie I was with me for that part of my life, through graduate school and a few jobs, in five different apartments (including the one in which I lived with Tammy) and, most important of all, through my last, desperate attempts to live as a man and the beginning of my life as Justine.

Now, you may be wondering why I named Charlie II Charlie.  The truth is, he was already so named when I brought him home.  Millie had given him that name and I didn't want to change it.  And, even though Charle II had a slightly different personality from Charlie I, he was sweet and loving. He was, not a clone of, or replacement for, Charlie I, but a continuation of him.  Sometimes I think it's exactly what I needed.

Celeste, Rescued: My First Bianchi

Yesterday I wrote about a "rescued" bike.  Today I'm going to tell you about another one.  The difference is that the one I'm going to describe today is one I rescued.

It's also the first of four Bianchis I've owned in my life.  This is an old-fashioned made-in-Italy bike.  I'm not sure of the exact model, but I know that it was probably made in the 1970's or early 1980's, as the frame was made of Columbus "Aelle" tubing.  If I recall correctly, the dropouts, headset and seatpost were all made by Gipiemme, an Italian company that was influenced by, or copied outright, Campagnolo's desgins.  The name, interestingly, is the phonetic Italian pronunciation of GPM which, if I'm not mistaken, was the monogram of the company's founder.

The headset and seatpost were the only items that were on the frame when I got it from Toga Bicycle Shop near LIncoln Center.  I was friendly with one of the mechanics, a salesperson and with the owner, Len Preheim, to the extent that one could be friendly with him.  They were cleaning out the store's basement and unearthed the frame, which I got in a trade for, let's just say, something non-bike related.

I was glad that the seatpost came with the bike, as it was one of those non-standard diameter.  The headset worked after an overhaul; even if it hadn't, it wouldn't have been difficult to replace.  

Anyway, this became a "parts-bin bike."  By the time I got the frame, I had a pretty fair-sized trove of parts, most of which I stripped from bikes I had at one time or another.  

In its original iteration, the bike was intended as an entry-to-mid-level road bike.  Being made of Aelle tubing, the least expensive frame material Columbus made at the time, It was a bit heavier than the higher-level Bianchi road bikes.  So, perhaps, it wasn't quite as quick as a Columbus SL frame (of which I've owned two:  the Trek 930 and a bike I'll write about in the near future).  However, it gave a pretty stable and fairly nimble ride.

As you can see, I fitted a rear carrier to the BIanchi.  I rode the bike to and from work, and to classes during my first year and a half of graduate school.  I also took it on a couple of weekend trips in which I packed a change of clothes, a book or two, my camera and a couple of other items.

Although I rather liked the bike, it was too big for me: I think it was a 58 cm (about 23.5") frame, as measured from the center of the bottom bracket to the center of the top tube.  I normally ride a 55-56 cm, depending on the design of the frame.  

It size exacerbated another problem I had with that bike, and other road bikes I rode before I went for a custom bike: The top tube was pretty long.  That meant using a stem with a shorter extension than I might have otherwise used, which blunted the bike's handling. Later, I would try to solve the problem by going to smaller frame sizes (53-54 cm) and using a longer seat post.  When I did that, I missed the stability and the fullness of pedal stroke I could achieve with the slightly larger frames.

Anyway, I apologize for not having a better photo of the bike.  When I got it, the paint was in rough shape, though still unmistakably "Celeste".  

Because of its less-than-ideal fit, I was going to sell the bike.  However, someone got it for free when I parked it outside CBGB.  Hmm, maybe if I'd told Joey Ramone, he'd've done a song about it.