Here's something I can't believe I missed.
Six years ago, Scientific American's blog reported on a study about helmet-wearing. According to British researcher and cyclist Ian Walker, motorists give a wider berth to helmetless (Is that a real word?) cyclists than to those of us who don hard shells.
How did he come to this conclusion? He attached ultrasonic sensors to his bike and allowed 2300 motorists to overtake him as he pedaled in and around Bath. His data indicated that drivers passed 3.35 inches closer to him when he wore his helmet than they did when he was bareheaded.
He also conducted another experiment: On some of his rides, he wore a wig of long brown locks to make him look like a woman from behind. When motorists thought Ian was Lana, they gave him an average of 2.2 more inches to ride, he said.
His findings are interesting, to say the least. Now, I have no experience in conducting experiments like his. But I have to wonder just how good his data actually is. After all, he was the only test subject. So, I have to wonder whether other factors might have influenced the way motorists passed him on the road.
From all of my experience of cycling, I honestly don't know whether wearing a helmet influences the amount of room motorists give me. Then again, about the only times I notice how much of a berth I'm granted are when the cars are close enough to scrape the crocheted back off my glove.
As for the male-female thing: Most mototrists may well be giving me more room than I got when I was Nick. But, every once in a while, some male driver pulls up close to me and whistles, makes a comment like "Nice legs!" or finds some other way to annoy me.
In spite of Walker's findings, or any others, I'll most likely continue to wear my helmet. While it may cause drivers to ride closer to me, I want to have it on if I'm in an accident. Once, when I flipped over (through no fault of any motorist), my helmet broke in two but I emerged with nothing more than a few scratches on my left arm and leg. Another time, a tiny Vietnamese truck driver flung his door into me, causing me to do an unintentional cartwheel on my head. I came out of that with a sprained wrist.
Spend enough time in New York City, and you're sure to see some "Frankenbikes". Such machines have been modified to serve some purpose for which they weren't built. So, an old racer becomes someone's "pedal taxi" by changing the dropped bars and clipless pedals to flat versions of both, wider tires and, in some cases, clip-on fenders and lights. Sometimes such bikes, which could have originally had anywhere from 10 to 20 speeds, are converted to single-speed or fixed-gear use.
Old mountain bikes might undergo similar treatment. The difference is that these bikes' tires are often swapped for narrower ones or slicks (rather than the knobbier treads found on mountain bikes).
Other "Frankenbikes" include ones in which one frame is stacked on top of the other, or "parts bin specials", in which a bike is assembled, basically, from whatever is lying around.
Today I spotted an interesting version of the latter kind of bike:
I wish I could have gotten a better angle on it. At first glance, it didn't seem so unusual. However, in passing it, I noticed this:
It's not the first time I've seen side-pull caliper brakes on a bike made, as most mountain bikes were until a few years ago, for cantilever or V-brakes. Still, they look pretty strange (a least to me) on a front fork with suspension. It was then that I realized that 700 C (road diameter) wheels were substituted for the original 26" mountain bike wheels. The brake would not have been long enough to reach the rim of the smaller-diameter mountain bike wheel:
The same thing was done on the rear. As I looked closer, I saw that the crankset had also been changed.
What's interesting is that the crankset and brakes more than likely came from the same bike, most likely a mid-to-upper level Japanese road bike of the late 1970's or early 1980's. The brakes were Gran Compes, which were a Japanese near-copy of Campagnolo's Record brakes. And the crankset was forged by Sakae Ringyo, known in bike circles as SR.
That they ended up on what appears to be a Barracuda A2B from 1995 or thereabouts is a story I'd like to follow. Moreover, they ended up on that bike with a current Quando wheelset, yet the rear derailleur is a Shimano of later vintage than the bike.
Barracuda bikes had a meteoric "career", if you will. Two lifelong friends from Grand Rapids, MI founded the brand in 1992 in the mountain biking hotbed of Durango, CO. After the business and its race team were well-established, manufacturing was moved to Taiwan, as was typical at that time.
The bikes had a loyal "cult" following, like many iconic mountain bike and component makers of the 1990's. But those companies--often started, like Barracuda, by a couple of guys who liked to ride or a twenty-something in California whose father had a lathe and a drill press--often were run on unsound business practices. In an odd way, this story parallels the dot-com boom and bust that followed it by a few years.
Also, some smaller mountain bike and component makers of that time were done in by warranty claims or, in a few cases, litigation when a product was faulty. It only took one or a few such cases to sink some of the smaller manufacturers, especially the ones that were operating out of someone's father's garage.
Late in 1995, in spite of positive reviews of their bikes, Barracuda was hemorrhaging money. At the end of that year, Ross Bicycles bought the company. While they didn't change that year's models considerably, the ones that rolled off the assembly lines in the brand's later years bore almost no resemblance to the ones that had become virtual legends among a small group of mountain bikers. By the end of the decade, Barracuda production had stopped.
Ironically, Ross--which was headquartered in Rockaway Beach, Queens--actually made a bike called the "Barracuda" during the 1960's and 1970's. It was a small-wheeled bike with a stick shifter on the frame, similar in many ways to the Raleigh "Chopper" or the Schwinn "Krate" series. So, one might say that the "Barracuda" I saw today was a Frankenbike even before anybody altered it!
The bike-share program here in New York has just passed its first week. Of course, it's too early to render verdicts on it, although that hasn't stopped anyone--whether a proponent or opponent of the program--from doing so. The other day, I wrote about Dorothy Rabinowitz's hysterical editorial; yesterday, the Daily News harped on the fact that a couple of bicycles lost their pedals and a few kiosks (out of hundreds) didn't accept would-be riders' credit cards.
On the other hand, even though I'm glad that the program is finally up and running (two years after its planned launch), I still think it's too early to pronounce the program is a success. For one thing, as a Time article points out, it's more expensive than its counterparts in Paris and London. In those cities, a day pass costs about what a single ride on the Metro or Underground costs; one day on a Citibike in the Big Apple will cost you about what five subway or bus trips would cost. And, if you don't check into one of the kiosks within 30 minutes (or 45 minutes if you buy the lifetime pass), it's even more expensive.
The rules I've just described, as well as the cost, limit the usefulness of the program for commuters as well as its desirability for tourists and recreational riders. Even if you're a very fast rider, it's difficult to "explore" on the bike, let alone reach the more far-flung corners of the city, within those time limits. As all of the kiosks are in Manhattan south of 59th Street and in the Brooklyn neighborhoods closest to Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island are out of reach. (The ferry ride alone to or from Staten Island takes about twenty minutes.) So are Harlem and Coney Island.
Perhaps these limitations on tourists and recreational riders wouldn't be of such concern if the bike share program were intended to be a supplement to the mass-transit system. That might work in Paris, as no place in the City of Light is more than 500 meters (about 3/10 of a mile, or six blocks) from a Metro station and the buses are efficient. It might even work in London: Although it's more spread out than Paris, its Underground branches through the city. On the other hand, not only is New York bigger than those cities; it also has subway lines that are more clustered together in certain parts of the city, leaving other parts without service. (Parts of eastern Queens and southeastern Brooklyn are seven to ten kilometers, or four to six miles, from the nearest subway station.) Worse yet, the buses--especially the ones that run cross-town in Manhattan--are notoriously slow.
So, perhaps, the City's Transportation Department and Citi Bank, the program's sponsor, need to be clearer about the intended purpose(s) of the Bike Share program and structure policies and rates accordingly. And, as I've mentioned in a previous post, it would help if New York were truly made a more bike-friendly environment.
