Why Did This Cat Cross The Road?

Marley is curled in my lap.  So, I feel almost guilty in writing this.

The other day, the breeze into which I’d pedaled to Point Lookout lapped against my back for my ride home.  Hardly a cloud besmudged the clear, bright sky that would soon blaze with the sunset.  Even the splintered, blistered houses that had weathered the harshest winter in decades just a year after Superstorm Sandy tore at them floated through my vision like images from a dream.

From a patch of cement and shrubs in front of one of those houses, a big black cat darted into my path.  If you are a cyclist, you have had hundreds, if not thousands, of such encounters with felines.  And, to the extent that I thought about it, I expected this one to be simply another.

If you are a cyclist, you also know that cats almost invariably run as close as they can to your front wheel, then cut at a sharp angle away from it. 

Note that I used the word “almost”.  The black cat (You can’t make this up!) wasn’t one of the invariables.  He/she actually ran straight into my front wheel, and glanced off it. 

My front wheel made a U-turn to my right.  The rest of the bike, and I, didn’t follow:  It stuttered and teetered on the pavement. I flung my left leg out.  But it did not stop me from tumbling into the back of a parked car.

The sky hadn’t yet grown dark, but I saw stars.  A gust of steel lashed against my side.  And the leg that couldn’t break my fall flung to the side and left my right calf to take a blow against the car’s bumper.

“Are you OK?  Are you OK?”  A young Caribbean-Indian woman ran toward me.  “Are you hurt?”  I couldn’t talk; I could just barely inhale without feeling a stab under my rib cage.  She pulled my water bottle out of its cage on my bike.  “Here, take a drink.”  I sucked at the nozzle; after I swallowed, my next breath came easier.  “How do you feel?”

“OK, I think.”

“Just take it easy.”

She crouched beside me while a man—her boyfriend or husband, I guessed—watched from a nearby porch.  He held a cell phone.  “Is she all right?” he yelled.

The woman and I both nodded.

“Where did the cat go?” I wondered.  “Does it belong to anybody here?”

“I don’t know”.

I think she saw my frustration.  “I hope it’s OK.”  I meant that, even though a part of me was damning it.  “Don’t worry about it,” she commanded.  “Can you get home all right.”

“Yeah, I think so.  Thanks.”

The bruises are just starting to appear.  But I’ve felt the pain, just under my rib cage, every time I’ve bent over to pick up something or feed my cats.  Hopefully, it’ll fade:  I want to ride, and I don’t want Marley or Max to go hungry!  At least, they’ll never run into my wheel.

Three Rings I'd Never Seen Before

While trolling eBay, I came across this:

You could be forgiven for thinking, "another French bike". From the style of the paint, decals and graphics, it looks similar to many Gallic velocipedes of the 1960's and 1970's.

From what I can see, it looks like the sort of bikes the British used to call "club racers".  Most of the components--like the Normandy hubs, Simplex derailleurs and shifters and Mafac brakes--are what one might find on many basic ten-speeds, like the Peugeot UO8, that were exported to the US during its "bike boom".  However,  it has a tighter wheelbase and angles than basic bike-boom ten-speeds like the Peugeot UO-8.   

On closer inspection (or, at least, as close as I can make from the photos), this one--from Beha, a name I'd never before seen--is a little better than most club racers.  For one thing, it's made from Vitus 172, a maganese molybdenum tubing of slightly thicker wall thickness (and, arguably, of somewhat lower quality) than Reynolds 531.  Most club racers were made of the same sort of carbon-steel tubing as what was found on the U-08 and other bikes like it.  Also, the Beha seems to have forged, rather than stamped, dropouts. 

Another thing this bike has in common with other club racers is its tubular tires and rims, the latter made by Mavic.  Racers often used wheels like the ones on this bike--basic hubs, nice rims--for training.  In the days before Michelin came out with its Elan tire (and, simultaneously, Mavic introduced its "E" rim), riding fast almost meant riding tubulars.

But the most interesting part of this bike--at least to me--is this:

When this bike was built, it seemed that every maker of cranksets made a cotterless model on which the chainring was attached with three bolts, rather than the four or five that are standards of nearly all modern cranksets.  It makes sense when you realize that nearly all cottered cranksets with double chainrings were of the three-bolt variety.  So, too, was the crankset many regard as the nicest ever made:  Rene Herse's own.

I don't know when Herse stopped making his. (Now the Colorado company calling itself "Rene Herse" offers a replica of it.)  But it seems that after Campagnolo turned its three-bolt Gran Sport into a five-bolt crank in the early 1980's or thereabouts, the three-bolt design disappeared until the Herse revival.

The crank on the Beha bike is from Specialtes TA, which also made the better-known "Cyclotouriste" crankset.  I always thought TA's three-bolt crank was the prettiest of the genre, which also included models from Stronglight, Nervar, Shimano (the original 600 crankset) and Sugino.  

The TA came as original equipment on a variety of bikes, including the Motobecane Grand Record (on which it was teamed with Campagnolo Nuovo Record derailleurs) and Raleigh Competition (with Huret Jubilee).  On those bikes, and others, the crank came with two chainrings.  I never saw it equipped with three rings--that is, until I came across the Beha. I'd really like to see it in person.

 

They're There When You Connect In Atlanta

There's an old joke in the South that goes something like this:  When you die, whether you go to Heaven or Hell, you'll connect in Atlanta to get there.

Anyone who's familiar with the joke knows that "Atlanta" refers to the city's airport, more formally known as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Having passed through that airport many times--but never having set foot in the city of Atlanta--I can understand why someone would make such a joke.  Any of the New York area airports--and any air terminal in which I've landed or from which I've departed in Europe--seems compact in comparison.  


Almost a quarter-million passengers pass through Hartsfield-Jackson on a typical day.  If they are making connections, as I have done every time I've been one of those passengers, they may have to walk as much as three kilometers to get from one flight to the next.  Sometimes, say when I have a two-hour layover, I welcome the stroll as a chance to stretch my legs.  But if my first flight is delayed, the shorter layover means a mad sprint--or a ride, with my fingers crossed, on the airport's internal rail system.

More difficult than their length, though, is the circuitousness of those hallways.  It's a bit surprising that an airport, where one expects modernity, hasn't adopted something like a grid system in its thoroughfares.  

But of course, you don't want to hear someone whine about the inconveniences of commuting.  So I'll tell you about the larger significance of everything I've mentioned, and the specific reasons why I'm talking about an airport in my bike blog.

Imagine trying to patrol a city, and to conduct rescues in it, without helicopters, motor vehicles or even horses.  That is the situation the Atlanta Fire and Rescue team faces every day in the airport.  AFR members found that they could not get to emergencies quickly enough on foot.

Now, since you're reading this blog, you may have guessed the solution they found to their dilemma:  Yes, they patrol the airport corridors on mountain bikes much like the ones police officers use in many cities, including New York.

I learned about AFR's airport bike squad only during my trip this week, when I saw two officers on bikes wending their way through throngs of tourists and business people, and a female AFR officer to whom they reported.

None of them wanted to be mentioned by name.  However, they take justifiable pride in their work.  "We attend to all kinds of emergencies," one of them explained.  "There are the things you expect, like trips and falls.  But sometimes there are more serious things, like people who forget or lose their medication."

"Or it's in their bags, on a flight going someone else," one of the others added.

The second officer also mentioned that they are trained in first aid and rescue procedures in case of fires or other emergencies.  He explained that they also receive special training in fitness, nutrition and bicycle handling and maintenance before being sent off to pedal through Hartsfield-Jackson's corridors.

One thing in which they didn't seem to need training, though, is hospitablility:  Even though they didn't want me to mention their names, they were very obliging and friendly.  I guess that goes along with being Southern, in a profession dedicated to helping people--and cyclists.