An Ideal Ride, Almost

Many cyclists have their own, very particular definitions of the "perfect" conditions for a bike ride.

Me, I don't have one scenario for the ideal ride.  Rather, I have a few different visions of the best conditions for a day of pedaling.

One of them came true today.  The temperature was neither too warm nor too cool:  For most of my ride, they hovered between 21 and 25C (70 to 77F).  They started as the former and rose to the latter before dropping back as I approached the Atlantic shoreline.  Further inland, the temperature rose to 30C (86F), according to the weather reports I saw. But I was spared that.

But even more important were the sky and light.  The sun shone, mostly through a filter of puffy clouds that did not threaten rain.  So I enjoyed the benefit of bright light without having the sun beating directly on me as it did during my Somerville ride on Memorial Day.

Plus, I encountered relatively light traffic.  I figured I would, which is one of the reasons I decided to do another Point Lookout ride today.  Tomorrow, the weather is expected to be the same, maybe a degree or two warmer.  Because it will be a Saturday, throngs of people will flock to anyplace with a beach.  But today I didn't have to be around them:  Long stretches of sun, sand and waves were almost entirely mine!

The only "smudge", if you will, in this picture was the wind.  It's not that I'm wind-adverse.  Rather, I found myself riding with the wind on the way out, but I had to buck it on the way back.  Like most cyclists, I prefer the opposite.  But I won't complain:  Everything else, including Tosca, was Ideal.  And any day I can ride is a blessing.

One Person's Trash Is Another Person's...Honjo? LeFol?

I used to know people who never bought furniture or electronic equipment:  They furnished their rooms, apartments or even houses—and made music, phone calls, designs and algorithms—with stuff people left curbside for sanitation workers to pick up.  I still know someone, a musician and bike mechanic (If he’s reading this, he knows who he is!), who has never purchased a power tool or even a vacuum cleaner:  He has refurbished stuff other people discarded.  He even owns a couple of bikes acquired that way. I, too, have had such bikes in my life.

Maybe it’s because most of my acquaintances and I are well into middle age that I no longer hear of people filling their living spaces with beds, couches or even desks or cupboards other people no longer wanted or needed.  Perhaps young people are still doing such things and I just need to make younger friends.  Or it may be that concerns over bedbugs and contagious diseases have stopped people from constructing their living spaces from the flotsam of other people’s lives.

I admit it’s been a while since I’ve done anything like that.  In fact, when I see piles of furniture and books, or bags of clothes or concatenations of toasters, blenders, food processors, microwave ovens, stereo equipment, light fixtures and framed prints relegated to the edge of the gutter at the beginning or end of a month (when people move out), I almost never stop even to take a look.  For now, I don’t want any living being besides Max or Marley to take up residence in my apartment unless he or she is helping me to pay the rent or is a partner in a recreational (not procreational!) activity with me.

The other day, I rode by an apartment full of stuff without the apartment abandoned in front of a recently-built waterfront condo building on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg.  I wouldn’t be writing about it if I hadn’t noticed something from the corner of my eye and checked it out.

It’s not every day that someone leaves behind a pair of hammered aluminum fenders with a randonneur-style rack. It would be serendipitous (Is that an actual word?) enough if they were from Velo Orange.  But I knew, as soon as I picked them up that at least the fenders aren’t.  

The pattern on them consists of hexagons that are more sharply defined than the polygons on the VO fenders:

I doubted then, as I do now, that they’re original LeFol or other vintage French fenders.  But could they be Honjos?  The pattern matches.  And, even more interestingly, they are 43 mm wide, the same as Honjos, whereas my VOs are 45 mm.  (VO also makes 35mm hammered fenders.) 

But I didn’t see any sort of markers to indicate their provenance.  I’ve seen a couple of pairs of Honjos before, but I can’t recall whether they had any decals or emblems on them.  I also don’t know whether some other company is making fenders that look so much like Honjos.  It’s not inconceivable:  After all, how could Honjo claim a patent infringement when its own fenders replicate 50- or 60-year-old French designs?

Anyway, the fenders are in excellent shape.  There’s a little bit of dirt on the underside, which shows they were ridden, but not much.  There are a couple of indentations where the fenders were fitted between fork blades or seat stays.  They were drilled for some frame that had threaded fitments in the fork crown and underneath the seatstay bridge, as Helene (my newer Miss Mercian) has.  The holes don’t seem gouged or otherwise enlarged and have no cracks or other stresses around them. So, if I wanted to use the fenders on Helene, fitting the front should be no problem, but the hole in the rear might not line up with the fitting on the rear bridge. 

Of course, I could plug that hole and use the fender with a bracket—on Helene or Vera.  But the rack is not meant to be used with panniers or loads of more than a couple of kilos—both of which I sometimes carry on Vera.

Before I try anything, I want to ascertain that these fenders are actually from Honjo (or LeFol?!) and not some knock-offs that would be a downgrade, quality-wise, from my Velo Orange fenders.  

Crochet!

I have to admit:  I've always enjoyed seeing the work of Cristo. You know, the guy who wrapped the Pont Neuf, Reichstag and other public spaces.  For some time, Jeanne-Claude has been his partner in crime, so to speak. Whichever of them is responsible for what part of their work, I'm happy.

I'm still waiting for them to do one thing, though:  wrap a bicycle.  Maybe that of a Tour de France winner or an Olympic medalist.  While they're at it, they can wrap the Alpe d'Huez or one of the other major Tour climbs.

For now, though, I'll enjoy the work of New York artist Olek: