Drillium Jewelry

You might say that I came of age (as a cyclist, anyway) in the late 1970s:  the heyday of drillium.

It seemed that, for a time, everyone was trying to drill as many small holes into whatever bike parts they could.  Even parts that were already ethereally light did not escape the probing and boring of high-speed steel bits.

Some drillium parts were rather lovely; others were just insane.  This, I believe, is beyond either category:

Uploaded to Pinterest by Henrik Jakobsson

I would like to meet the person who gave this Campagnolo Nuovo Record "the treatment".  Did he or she have a regular job (or was this part of that job)?  A family?  I can only imagine how much time that person spent on this project.

And I have to wonder whether that person did the same thing to the bike that this derailleur was hung on.  Or was it ever installed on a bike?

All right, I'll stop the snide rhetorical questions and admit that I actually like it.  No, I take that back:  I love it.  It's over-the-top in its minimalism. (Is that a contradiction?)  I would even say it's jewelry, of a sort.

Same Color, Different Fade

I like the color of your crank.

I heard that compliment while I was parking my LeTour.  Of course, I didn't put the bike together as I did so that people could admire it:  I intended it as a beast of burden that could be parked in urban combat zones.

The person making the comment added, "I've always liked gunmetal grey. It looks good with the color of your bike."

The funny thing is that I hadn't noticed what color my crank is until that person pointed it out.  Or, more precisely, I thought of it as black because that's what color it was when I installed it on the bike.

Believe it or not, the crank and guard were almost exactly the same.  In fact, it almost looked as if the guard was of one piece with the crank and the chainring was bolted to it. Of course, the guard and the ring are bolted to the arms of the crank "spider".

The LeTour is almost always parked on the street; I very rarely bring it inside.  (In fact, I even left it parked in front of Terminal B at LaGuardia for five days while I was in Montreal.)  I have long known that anodizing faded, especially after repeated exposure to the elements. But I never saw two parts in the same color, attached to each other, fade at such markedly different rates.  Or, to be more precise, I never saw one part fade so much and the other so little.

Now, to be fair, the crank is a no-name cheapie.  So far, it's served me well on two different bikes.  But it didn't cost me much less than the guard, on the other hand, was made by BBG.  I know little about how anodizing is done, but I suspect whatever materials BBG uses (in Oregon) in the process are better than the ones used by the (probably Chinese) crank-maker. And, being a smaller operation, BBG probably takes more time to do whatever it does.  Whether that makes a difference in fading (or lack thereof), I don't know.

The chainring is, by the way, a US-made Rocket Ring.  It's very good, better than most inexpensive single-speed rings I've seen.  Being silver, it has not faded.

When It's Harder To Get Out Of Bed Than It Is To Get On My Bike

Now, I hope that, having seen the title, you're not sending me copies of self-help books or the names and numbers of therapists, hypnotists or clergy members.  My reluctance to get out of bed this morning had nothing to do with depression or anxiety.  It just looked particularly gloomy and Max and Marlee were curled up with me.

Mind you, I didn't have any reluctance about riding today.  I have bikes with fenders on them.  I also have a rain jacket.  And it wasn't cold, at least for this time of year, or blustery.  It just that everything looked so heavy and gray.  Somehow the colors of the leaves made everything seem even more so.

In some years, in late October and early November, I experience surges of sadness that have to do with three deaths--one a slow decline, another a sudden demise and the third a suicide--that happened at this time of year.  But--for me, anyway--such sadness is not the same as depression.  It might make me a little slower to get out of bed, but it doesn't derail my life.

Anyway, I'll confess something:  I thought about doing the Tour de Bronx today.  I really don't enjoy big organized rides, but every once in a while I'll do one to, I guess, show solidarity with other cyclists.  I've done the TdB a couple of times--the longer version, of course--and enjoyed it.  Everybody, it seems, does the Five Boro Bike Tour, but most who ride it never see any of the Bronx besides the few blocks of it that are part of the ride.   I always liked that the TdB took riders through neighborhoods and to sites that those unfamiliar with the Bronx would not expect to see there.

But I got up after the check-in time for the ride.  Now, if you think I was looking for an excuse not to do the ride...well, maybe subconsciously, I was.  Subconsciously, I tell you.

I did a ride of my own.  It's one I've done before.  It wasn't as hard as getting out of bed.