How Rattraps Became Beartraps---In 1899

Last week, I wrote about "rattrap" pedals.  They were the kind of pedals that came on most '70's Bike Boom-era ten-speeds, and have continued to enjoy popularity with cyclo-tourists, motocross riders and commuters. The great advantages of them are that they can be used with or without toeclips, and ridden on either side (unlike most quill and road clipless pedals, which must be flipped to the right side).  As I mentioned, two of the most popular models of rat-traps are the Lyotard 460 (which hasn't been made in at least two decades) and the MKS Sylvan.

Road "quill" pedals, which were all but displaced by the advent of easy-to-use clipless pedals from Look and Time, would sometimes have the "sawteeth" on the side of the pedal on which the cyclist pedaled.  The other side was usually cut away, and thus unrideable.  They were so made to improve cornering clearance, a definite concern for criterium and track riders.

(Track pedals usually had cages like those of road "quill" pedals, without the "quill".)

Famous examples of road quill pedals are the Campagnolo Record and its many imitators, and Lyotard 45. 

Double-sided quill pedals were all but nonexistent until around 1980.  At that time, the cults of BMX and mountain biking were spreading beyond their respective Southern and Northern California cradles.  That was also about the time equipment was being developed specifically for those new disciplines.



SunTour BMX pedals, circa 1980

Possibly the nicest double-sided quill came from  SunTour.  They had the same bearings, axles and bodies as SunTour's wonderful track and road pedals, which were made by MKS.  (The "Supreme" and "Nuevo" pedals, currently made by MKS, are virtual clones of the pedals made for SunTour.)  Some of the early mountain bikes came with those pedals; "bear trap" pedals, developed soon after, were essentially BMX pedals with curved plates.

SunTour "bear trap" pedals, circa 1985

When double-sided quill pedals first appeared on the market, many of us wondered why no one had ever thought to make them earlier.  Well, it turns out that someone had:

In 1899, the Bay State Stamping Company of Worcester, Massachusetts introduced the Bennet pedal.  Don't you just love the clover cutouts in the cages?

I tried to find out how long these pedals were produced.  They were introduced just as the first American Bike Boom was about to dissipate.  So, I suspect they weren't made for very long, and the design--like many others from that period--was forgotten.

Aside from the cage shape, the Bennet had a couple of other interesting features.  One is a dust cap that springs into the body and is held by latches. In contrast, most other dust caps are either screwed on or pressed in and often fall off, especially when the bike is ridden over rough roads or trails.   The other innovation was a bearing cone that was keyed rather than threaded to the axle, and held in place with a set screw.  According to the manufacturer, this system allowed for one-tool adjustments.  It also eliminated the problem of locknuts that came loose and allowed the cone to screw up and crush the bearings.

I would love to know how well those features worked. If they were effective, the Bennet was certainly well ahead of its time.  Even if they weren't, the Bennet is interesting as a kind of proto-BMX or -mountain bike pedal.

An Umbrella On The Trail

There are films I see for their artistry or historic or cultural significance.  Then there are movies that, I admit, I watch solely as entertainment, as harmless diversions. 

Then there are cinematic works that I simply must look at again and again because, really, there's nothing else like them and they defy categorization.  Among them are Vittoria de Sica's The Bicycle Thief and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Fracois Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

That last one is perhaps the most uncategorizable of all.  If someone had told me, beforehand, that all of its dialogue is sung, I probably never would have looked at it, as I am not a fan of musicals.  However, it would never work if someone tried to cast it as a musical, whether on film or stage.  Hey, I think that even translating it into English would be almost criminal.

Also, the film is shot in a way that doesn't remind me of any other.  It's been compared to an Impressionist or Pointillist painting--which, in some ways, is a valid comparison.  It often uses color and form in ways similar to those of Auguste Renoir or Georges Seurat. It's actually worth seeing for that reason alone:  It's purely and simply beautiful to look at.  (So, for that matter, are Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuova.)  It reminds me of why someone described melancholy as "beautiful sadness".

I got to thinking about  Umbrellas and the painters I've mentioned after coming across this image:

 

Trying To Shed Some Light

Early the other morning, Daylight Savings Time ended.  That meant moving the clocks back an hour, which means that it gets dark an hour earlier.  Of course, that means day begins an hour earlier, for now.  But within a few weeks, we'll "lose" that hour, as well as an equal amount of time at the end of the afternoon, as the days grow shorter overall.

That means, among other things, that most of my rides home from work will be done in the dark.  I suspect the same is true for other commuters.  And some of us will be doing at least some part of our "fun" rides in the dark, whereas we might have been doing them in daylight a couple of weeks ago.

Many of us will therefore be using our lights more than we had been--or using them, period, after months of not using them at all.   I fall into the former category:  I don't avoid night riding; in fact, there are times I enjoy a ride begun after sunset.  However, during the weeks and months of long days, I do my nocturnal rides mostly by choice; some of the riding I'll do in the dark for the next few months will be out of necessity.

Thus, I and other riders will be making more use of our bike lights. 

It used to be that here in New York--and, I suspect, in other American cities--one rarely saw a cyclist with a high-end lighting system.  The prevailing wisdom has always said that bike lights in the city are "for being seen, not for being seen by".  Most city streets are well-lit enough that you don't need a bright headlight to see potholes or other road hazards, not to mention the traffic and turns ahead. If anything, I think that for city riding, a headlight needs to offer more side than front visibility so that drivers approaching an intersection without a signal can more readily see a cyclist approaching.  Also, I think good side visibility is useful in very tight intersections where, even if the cyclist stops well short of the crosswalk or the "stop" line, a driver could turn into the cyclist's path--or the cyclist him or her self--if he or she is not seen.

Schmidt hub generator (for disc brakes)

If anything, it always seemed (at least to me) more important to have a good tail light, preferably a good, bright "blinky".  That is assuming, of course, that you are a nice, law-abiding cyclist (which you are--right?) who always rides in the direction of the traffic.

These days, though, I'm seeing more cyclists with more sophisticated (and expensive) lights than the removable "blinkies" I use.  Some are riding with hub generators; others with rechargeable battery packs carried in water bottle cages in other attachments.  And I have seen some very high-tech looking lights mounted on handlebars, brake bolts and fenders.

Planet Bike Super Flash

Such systems no doubt have their advantages.  But, for the time being, I still prefer the Planet Bike Super Flash  I've been using on the rear and PB's Beamer for the front.  I think I've spent more on batteries for them than I spent on the lights themselves--and it's not because the lights "eat" the batteries:  the lights simply hold up well.

Planet Bike Beamer

I think I'm reluctant to buy anything more complex or costly because, well, what I have seems to have worked for me (for seven years) and because I often park where theft is a concern.  Once, when I parked my Bontrager mountain bike, someone cut the White Industries hubs out of my wheels; I worry that someone might do the same to a generator front hub if I were to use it. 

"Bottle" generator

Bottom-bracket mounted generator

Also, even though I've heard that the all of those new generators and super-lights are better than what was available before, I'm skeptical.  Perhaps it's because when I came of age (as a cyclist, anyway), most of the bike lights available were, simply, junk.  "Bottle" generators were inefficient, chewed up tires and made a lot of noise ; generators that mounted on bottom brackets and ran off tire treads also ate up tires, didn't work on treads that were too knobby or too smooth, and simply skidded over tire treads if they were covered with rain or snow.  Battery lights were heavy, clunky, mounted on flimsy brackets and put out less light than the ones powered by generators.  Really, the best light--as Tom Cuthbertson noted in Anybody's Bike Book--was the "armband" flashlight made by Wonder and a few other companies.  I used to wear one on my left leg, just below my knee, on the theory that the light bobbing up and down would signal, to motorists, that a cyclist was ahead.

Wonder "armband" light

Maybe one day, if I ever decide to build a dedicated tourer or randonneuse, I'll build a wheel around a Schmidt hub dynamo or something like it.  But as long as I have to park on city streets, I think I'm going to stick to relatively inexpensive removable lights.