Will They Still Be Riding When They're 64?

We all get older. Some of us get old.  Of course, when we're young, most of us don't think about that:  We simply cannot imagine ourselves not going on as we are.

I got to thinking about that again, ironically, while riding along the waterfront from my neighborhood into Long Island City, Greenpoint and Williamsburg, a.k.a. Hipster Hook. Hipsters are, of course, young by definition.  At least, that's how I understand them to be.  That begs the question of whether one can "age out" of hipsterdom.  (I recall how the hippies used to say young people shouldn't trust anyone over 30.)  What do hipsters become when they're, say, old enough to be President?  Or do they move to other hipster enclaves and lie about their age?

More important (at least in relation to this blog!), will they continue riding their fixed-gear bicycles?  And, if they do (or if they ride any bikes at all), will they still want "deep V" aerodynamic rims in rainbow colors?

I can just picture some hipster retirement community in 40 years. Maybe residents will be riding machines like this:

From Trikes and (odd) Bikes

To tell you the truth, I like it, though I don't feel ready to ride a trike just yet. (Knock on my Phil Woods!)

Crazy In Chicago

Since I'm posting this on the day after April Fools' Day, This it is not a joke.  But some of the bikes you will see in it will seem like pranks.

As we all know, Schwinn was based in Chicago for a century.  At the time it started building bikes, in the mid-1890s, about six dozen other bicycle manufacturers were making their wares in the Windy City.

Most, of course, did not survive beyond the first decade of the 20th Century.  Still, Schwinn was big enough, and enough smaller companies remained, to ensure that the city on the shore of Lake Michigan would retain its status as one of the centers of the American bicycle industry.

And it's one of the places where adult cycling actually survived, at least to some degree, during the Dark Ages of cycling in the US:  roughly the two decades following World War II.

Maybe it has to do with the water (Lake Michigan?  The Chicago River?  The Canal?):  During the 1940s, a lot of "crazy bikes" were built there by ostensibly sentient grown-ups.  

I don't know whether to have respect or to ridicule Art Rothman, who designed this one:

 

He's riding in the top position. Perhaps not surprisingly, he broke three ribs while learning how to ride it.  Perhaps he recuperated on this Joe Steinlauf-designed bike-bed:

 



Once he got it going, I'm sure he got further on it than anyone who rode this machine:


 

Just in case you run into any gangsters (It's Chicago, after all!), make sure you have this:

 


Thirteen shotguns, two revolvers, six bayonets and a flare gun.  They covered all possibilities, didn't they?


Now here's what we needed this past winter:

 

So You Wanna Have The Lightest Bike On The Block...

So...You missed your opportunity to ride Gunter Mai's 2.96 kilogram Lightbike.  You hadn't heard about it. Or you did,  but couldn't find his website.  Or you did, but can't read German.  Or you couldn't afford it. (I didn't ask.  You know what they say:  If you have to ask, you can't afford it.)  Or you had some other commitment.

Well, don't feel bad.  You didn't miss your opportunity to ride the world's lightest bike after all. As we speak, a new, revolutionary velocipedic machine is being made from the lightest material known to humankind.

 

How light is it?   Try 100 times lighter than Styrofoam (you know, that stuff in your helmet).  And it's stronger than carbon-fiber, beryllium or any other metal that's every been used to make a bike or part on which you've spent your hard-earned money.

What is that wonder metal?, you ask.  It's a nickel-phosphorus alloy.  Even more important, though, it's drawn into tubes one-hundreth the breadth of a human hair and woven into a latticework that can withstand enormous stresses.

No one has said when a bike made from this material will be ready to ride, but here is a prototype.


To learn more about it, click here.