When A Cassette Becomes A Nutcracker

It's one of two pieces of Christmas music to which I could listen all year long. Handel's Messiah is the other.

You might have guessed the other:  The Nutcracker. I know, it's a ballet, and one really should go to a theatre or concert hall for a performance.  It is quite the spectacle.  I realize, however, it's not always possible to attend a staging.  Lucky for us, the music is very, very listenable. 

That the music, by itself, is so thrilling is not a surprise when you realize who wrote it:  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Marius Pepita choreographed the original production of the ballet, which is based on a story written by E.T.A. Hoffmann  and adapted by Alexandre Dumas, who is probably best known as the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. 

"That's all really nice," you might be thinking, "but why is she writing about it in this blog?"

Well, on this date in 1892, The Nutcracker premiered in the Imperial Marinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia (not Florida!).  Since then, it has been performed in ways that even Tchiakovsky himself, with his fertile imagination, probably never envisioned.  Here is one of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies:



Can you believe it was actually played on bicycle parts?  Cables and spokes were plucked for the stringed instrument sections, a disc brake hit simulates a triangle and percussion sections are really gears shifting, braking, shoes being clipped into pedals and other sounds familiar to those of us who ride.

San Francisco-based composer Flip Baber created this piece for Specialized, who wanted a Christmas music made only from bike sounds.  It became the company's musical Christmas card in 2006.

The Wright Day For A Couple Of Bike Mechanics

You probably know what happened on this date in 1903:  the Wright Brothers made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

It's often said, inaccurately, that the flight the Brothers made that day was the "first" flight.  Actually, people had flown for centuries before that in gliders, hot-air balloons and other airborne vehicles.  But those flights were wholly dependent on the speed and direction of the wind; they had no other power source and therefore could be kept up only for very limited amounts of time.  Other would-be inventors tried to make airplanes or gliders with wings that flapped or could otherwise be made to propel or steer them.  Needless to say, they proved unsuccessful.

The real innovations in the Wright Brothers' plane were that its wings were fixed,  it was powered by something other than the wind and that controls (which the Brothers invented) regulated the course of the flight. 

That control--known as the three-axis control-- may have been the most important innovation of all:  It's still used on all fixed-wing aircraft, from crop dusters to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A 380. It's the reason that every one of those planes can keep their equilibrium, a.k.a. balance, throughout a flight.  If an aircraft can't be balanced, it can't fly.

Now...Think of another vehicle that can't move forward unless it's balanced.

Since you're reading this blog, the bicycle is probably the first such vehicle that came to  mind.  So, it should come as no surprise that the Brothers were bicycle mechanics and, later, manufacturers.  They studied motion and balance using bicycles in their homemade wind tunnel. Knowing this shatters the common misperception that when Shimano and other bicycle parts manufacturers, as well as bicycle makers, were making "aerodynamic" equipment, they were following the lead of the aerospace industries.  In fact, as we have seen, the Wright Brothers and other inventors were studying the aerodynamics of the bicycle eight decades before Shimano or other companies paid heed.

So...The next time you see an aerodynamic bike or part, you can thank (or blame) Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Riding Cyclo-Cross Because They Had No Other Choice

From New York City, you can ride north for three days or so (or drive about five hours) and come to Lake George, often called "The Queen of American Lakes". 

There's another lake in the area:  Placid.  Most of you know that the town named for the lake hosted the Winter Olympics, most famously in 1980, when an underdog US Hockey Team beat the mighty Soviet squad.  (Many people mistakenly think that the upset occurred in the championship game because the meme "The US beat the Soviet Union for the Gold Medal" has been repeated so many times.  The Yanks' victory over the Soviets actually came in the semi-finals.)  Lake Placid was also the site of the third Winter Olympiad, in 1932.

Even when there aren't Olympics Games in session, a trip to the lakes and the town--and to surrounding Warren County--is worthwhile.  Located in the Adirondacks, the area offers some of the most beautiful fall foliage anywhere as well as all sorts of stunning mountain and lake vistas, as well as many opportunities for hiking, cycling, skiing, canoeing and other outdoor activities. 

There was a time, though, when nearly all of the economic activity in Warren County related to farming (especially dairy) and logging.  Hardly any of the county's municipalities, including Lake George, Queensbury (the present county seat) and even Glens Falls were barely hamlets, and none of the few roads were paved.  During the spring rains, riders of high-wheelers sometimes found themselves slogging through mud that came up to the hubs of their tall front wheels.

Can you imagine cyclo-cross on a high-wheeler?  I imagine riding under the conditions I've described were difficult enough on a bike with two wheels of equal size.  That might be the reason why, in the days of the first American Bike Boom, a Glens Falls boy named Harry D. Elkes became a World Champion.

 

In 1964, Howard Mason wrote about Elkes and his upstate New York milieu.  Mason could recall the first bicycle he ever saw--a high-wheeler--some seventy-five years earlier.  He also mentioned a cycle industry that flourished in the area in spite of the sparse population and the fact that, for much of the year, cycling was all but impossible, given the road conditions and the bicycles available at that time, not to mention the spring rains I've mentioned and the heavy snows that fall from October through April.  It was particularly interesting to read about one dealer who, even decades after the Bike Boom died out, wanted no part of the auto business "because of the service after a sale".  Cars, and tires especially, were not very reliable in those days.

You can read more about the world of cycling in the 1890's in Warren County on the county Historical Site's website.  "Such were the so-called 'good old days' of the '90's," Mason wrote.  "You may have them."