What do you get if you take a Dutch-style city bike with a "loop" frame, turn it upside down, move the chainstay (made of bar stock) about three inches above the bottom bracket and add a spring suspension on the front?
Well, I have never asked that question until now. Actually, I didn't ask it: I came up with it when I saw the (or an) answer.
It sounds kind of like I was playing Jeopardy. Can you imagine if they offered one of those bikes as a prize?
Joey Ruiter of Grand Rapids, Michigan designed the Growler City Bike after taking a Growler from a local pub and designing a bicycle--a cafe racer, specifically--around it.
The Growler features fat 29 inch tires, a Monarch springer front end, a two-speed internally-geared "kickback" hub , disc brakes and--the most important feature of all ;-)--a holder for a half-gallon jug ("growler") of beer.
Somehow I get the feeling I would actually like that bike. Does the Brooks Flyer (Or is it a B67?) saddle come as standard equipment on it?
The past few mornings, I've been going to work early to get a few things done before students and others come around.
That's meant riding in the dark. Living in an urban area, I don't experience true darkness very often: The city always flickers with ambient light from street lamps, skyscrapers, bridges and such. Still, a lot of familiar sights are rendered invisible, especially in a foggy, misty pre-dawn like the one that surrounded me today:
Over the East River at Hell Gate, the world drifts or streams by, or suspends itself in points of reflection on those currents, all of them forms of light.
Sometimes I feel as if I navigate better by following those points and streams than by looking at signs and maps (or GPS devices)!
I can still remember when it was a big deal to see a Mercedes-Benz or BMW, much less a Porsche, on the road--at least here in the US. I think I saw maybe two Jaguars before I turned thirty.
The joke was that you had to be really rich to drive a "Jag"--or to call it that--because you couldn't own just one. The other was in the garage, especially after a rainy day.
One of my brothers told me that. Back in the day, he fixed them, and other luxury cars, in a garage that catered to all manner of high-income (and high-maintenance) customers. He privately laughed at folks who spent $50,000 (probably $150,000-$200,000 in today's dollars) for "a car that doesn't start in the rain". Garages that serviced "Jags" used to get death threats from customers who discovered its most unfortunate feature when the weather turned frightful.
The problem, according to my brother and others familiar with those vehicles, was the Lucas electrical system which, as one engineer joked, "hasn't changed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution". Another joke said that the English drink warm beer because Lucas makes their refrigerators.
From what I understand, Jaguars' electrical systems have been redesigned and better-protected against the elements. One would think (Gotta talk like the Queen now--she never uses first or second person!) that Jags, coming from soggy England, would have been so designed all along.
I got to thinking about that today when I saw a guy making a delivery on an electric bike--in a downpour. I wondered whether any of those bikes ever shorted out or were otherwise disabled by the weather.
Apparently, it's happened--or someone has realized that it could: an e-bike shop near me is offering these shields:
