Losing Two Teeth

We all lose teeth in various ways.  Of course, when we’re kids, we lose all of them so that our “grown-up teeth” can grow in. (A boy in a poetry workshop I conducted wrote, “My teeth are like stars, they come out at night”.)  Then, as time goes on, our teeth fall out or fall apart because of neglect, diet or simply age.  Or we might get into an accident or fight that knocks out an incisor.  Or two.

Wednesday night, I lost two teeth.  No, I didn’t win or lose:  I didn’t fight.  And I didn’t fall on my face.  Rather, those teeth were the casualties of a bungee cord.

Yes, you read that right.  I was pedaling home from work when, in the middle of a turn through a busy intersection, I rode into a pothole.  Just as I reached the other side, in front of a gas station, I suddenly couldn’t pedal.  No matter how hard I pushed, they wouldn’t move. Then, I budged them slightly; they moved as if my whole drivetrain had been stuffed with horsehair.

A bungee cord I’d hooked across the top of the rear basket on my LeTour popped off and entangled fell into the rear wheel. One of the hooks latched onto the non-drive side spokes.  That pulled the body of the chord into the space between the fixed gear sprocket and the hub flange and coiled it.

The hook was so tight in the spokes and the cord so tautly wrapped between the cog and flange that I couldn’t get it out by hand.  Rotating the wheel only seemed to pull it tighter.  I had to borrow a pair of pliers and a knife from an attendant, which I used to bend the hook out of the spokes and cut it away from the cord, which I could then unwind.

At first I didn’t notice the missing teeth.  I felt an odd skipping when I applied any kind of pressure while pedaling.   I figured that something was bent and, as it was late, I crossed my fingers and kept on riding.

I made it home with my chain going ker-chunk, ker-chunk every couple of pedal rotations.  I propped the bike and found nothing bent or warped, not even a chain link. Then, after a couple of more pedal rotations, I saw 

that I’d lost two teeth—and, of course, a chunk from the body of that cog.

So, I flipped the wheel to the freewheel side, gave the chain (a SRAM PC-1) a couple of shots of oil, and everything ran fine.

The cog was generic.  Maybe I’ll spend a few extra dollars and get something better.  Phil Wood cogs are great (I use them on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear), though I’m not sure I want to spend that much, or whether they’ll fit the Formula hub on the LeTour.  Perhaps I’ll get a Surly.  I don’t want to lose more teeth.

Bike Nation: Netherlands

In a game of word association, if I were to say, "bicycle commuting", I'd bet a lot of people would say, "Portland".

Or they might say, "The Netherlands" or "Holland".

The following image, which originally appeared on the Lonely Planet website, and I found on Wired UK), is a pretty good statistical portrait of cycling in that country.  Plus, ya gotta love the orange in it.  (I'll admit that I was sorta rooting for the Dutch team in the World Cup football tournament, just because of their uniforms!) 

Missy's Must-Have Accessory, Circa 1993

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Melissa--but we all called her Missy--and we wanted all of her accessories.

OK, this isn't about fashion, or a fairy tale, though I suppose it could be.  It's a story about cycling and, in particular, a part of it in which I was active for a few years. 

Some of you may have figured out that I'm talking about mountain biking and the girl in question is a girl in the "You go, grrrl!" sense:  none other than Missy "The Missile" Giove.


 She dominated her sport to a degree--perhaps to an even greater degree--than Eddy Mercx did two decades earlier.  If anything, I'd say her domination was more like that of Martina Navratilova in tennis a decade earlier.I actually saw her ride twice and I don't think I've ever seen a fiercer competitor anywhere. I take that back:  She wasn't a competitor because she couldn't be:  No one else could have competed against her.  

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that she was simply the fiercest athlete, and one of the fiercest people, I've ever seen.  I say that with great admiration:  Her firepower came from her intensity and an innate need to better herself rather than from hyped-up rivalries and petty jealousies.  She reminded me, in an odd way, of the first two lines in one of Emily Dickinson's most famous poems:  "Because I could not stop for Death/He very kindly stopped and waited for me."  Missy did not stop for anything because, really, I don't think she could:  The only way to catch up to, or with her, it seemed, was to wait.

To say that she was the first superstar of downhill mountain bike racing, a sport then in its juvescence,  would be to trivialize her dominance.  For a time, she held the world's downhill speed record.  Not just the record for women, mind you:  The Record.

Now tell me:  If you saw someone like her, wouldn't you want her accessories, too?

Perhaps the most iconic--and, at the time, best-selling--of them were her Onza handlebar ends.  For those of us who spent a lot of time riding dropped-bar road bikes before trying mountain biking, one of our biggest complaints was the lack of hand positions on the flat handlebars.  Most of us change hand positions, sometimes frequently, on rides of more than a few minutes.  The Onza bar ends offered at least a forward, somewhat aerodynamic position and a forward-facing flat section that somewhat resembled the "ramps" of road handlebars.  

I still see Onza bar ends fairly often.  Most often, they're on a Specialized or Trek or other mountain bike from the early- or mid-'90's that someone re-purposed as a delivery bike or "beater" and simply didn't bother to take them off.  I'm guessing that the ones that were actually ridden off-road are in landfills simply because most other mountain bike accessories and components that were ridden hard are there, too.  No matter how good such items are, they, like anything else, can only take so much abuse.

Other companies imitated the Onza bar end and some offered them in a rainbow of colors.  (If I recall correctly, the Onzas were available only in black because they were heat-treated--or, at least, that was the rationale the company gave.)  But most riders found that they didn't use the forward bend much, if at all.  Plus, trail and woods riders found that the shape made them easy to entangle in branches, brambles and other obstacles.  Furthermore, mountain bikers (some of them, anyway) were becoming weight-conscious--about their bikes, that is.  Onzas and similarly-configured bar ends weighed more than some of the handlebars to which they were clamped.

So, after a few years, those J-shaped extensions were replaced by more minimalist pieces that kept the "flat" but eliminated the forward bend:

Even so, Onza bar ends and their carbon-copies were a "must have" for about half a decade.  Very few other accessories last for more than a season, even if they're used by a smokin' hot chick named Missy: