As you may have noticed, I've written fewer posts during the past week or so. You see, I've been under the weather. I thought I was coming down with the flu, and I expected the doctor to chastise me for not getting a flu shot. Turns out, I didn't have the flu: It was a low-grade upper respiratory infections. As its origins are viral, he couldn't give me an antibiotic.
I'm not coughing as much as I was a few days ago, but I've been feeling very tired. Good thing I have company:
It seems that when I made my bed this morning, I didn't notice that Max had crawled under the cover. As I was leaving, I found him lying where you see him now. He'd dozed off, and taking his picture woke him up.
When I go to bed, I think it will take a lot more than that to wake me up!
Now I'm going to talk about another "parts bin bike" I built and rode.
I got the Austro-Damiler "Team" frame in the photo in a trade for one of my last sets of tubular (sew-up) wheels. I don't recall which model it was, but I remember that it was made of Reynolds 531 tubing in the late 1970's.
As I understand, bicycles were sold under the "Austro-Daimler" name only in the United States. The company that made them was called Puch and marketed some bikes under their own name during the 1970's and 1980's. With a name like that, you know why they felt the need to come up with another for their higher-end bikes!
My A-D had what many now call "old-school" road geometry--73 degree head and seat angles, and a somewhat longer chainstay and wheelbase than what are found on today's racing bikes. Any number of racing bikes from the time had similar geometry: think of the Raleigh "International" or "Competition," Peugeot PX-10E (and its descendants), and other rides from makers like Gitane, Falcon, Frejus and Fuji. Racing bikes in those days were more versatile than they are now: It's not uncommon to see them used today as randonneuring or even touring bikes.
As a matter of fact, I took my A-D on a tour: In August of 1994, I pedaled from Paris to the sea near Bordeaux, and up the coast to Lacanau. As I stayed in hostels and pensiones throughout my trip, I didn't pack camping equipment except for a sleeping bag. Everything fit into a small set of panniers and a handlebar bag: I'd guess that I carried about 15 kilos with me. Still, the bike gave me a stable and comfortable ride. The top tube was a bit longer than I have on my custom frames, but I still was able to use a stem with a reasonable amount of horizontal extension. Thus, the steering was still pretty responsive, but not overly twitchy.
I probably would have that bike now, even after getting my Mercians, save for its unfortunate demise a few months after that tour. I was running an errand a few blocks from where I was living (in Park Slope) when, in order to dodge an opening taxicab door, I ran into a chuckhole that seemed not much smaller than a manhole cover. The areas of the top and downtube just behind the head lugs folded like accordions, but the sounds that came out of my mouth weren't as pleasing.
No, the man in the photo is not a French bicycle mechanic. And he's not truing the wheel. In fact, that wheel has remained in the stand, not having been touched by a spoke tool or cone wrench, for the past hundred years.
The man in the picture is indeed French, as his wheel most likely was. He is long dead, but the wheel didn't end up in the hands of some rich Japanese collector.
In fact, it's in Philadelphia. But, one hundred years ago, it was in New York. I've ridden from New York to Philadelphia, though not on that wheel.
All right: You may have already figured out (if you didn't already know) that the man in the photo is artist Marcel Duchamp. And his wheel was indeed a wheel, but it's listed in books and catalogues as a sculpture.
One hundred years ago yesterday, it stood among other sculptures, paintings and other objets d'art in the 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets in Manhattan. The building still functions as an armory and hosts various events, and is today surrounded by some of Baruch College's buildings.
On that date, the Armory Show (as it's commonly known) opened. Little more than two weeks earlier Grand Central Station began, the first travelers and commuters embarked and disembarked from trains at the new Grand Central Terminal, about a kilometer and a half uptown. It's an interesting turn of history because GCT is, arguably, the last great monument to the Gilded Age, while the Armory Show did as much as any event to move American notions of art, aesthetics and public space away from Gilded Age, and even classical, notions. Literally steps away from GCT is the Chrysler Building; between them and the Armory, the Empire State Building went up months after the Chrysler Building was completed. The Chrysler and ESB could hardly be more different from GSC or, for that matter, the Armory; neither of the latter two buildings could or would have been built in the wake of the Armory Show's influence.
So why, you may ask, am I writing about these events on a bike blog? Well, before the show, almost no American, artist or otherwise, would have thought to declare a bicycle wheel as a work of art. In fact, very few Americans would have thought bicycles to be appropriate subjects for art, let alone used bicycles or parts of bicycles as materials for works of art, as Picasso and others would later do.
So, the next time you make, sell, buy or wear a bracelet made from a bicycle chain or earrings made from spokes, remember that the Armory show helped to make them possible!
N.B.: Picasso's "bull" is in the Paris museum dedicated to his works. Duchamp's bicycle wheel is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
