Where Are The Most Skilled Bicycle Mechanics?

Someone once told me, only half in jest, that the best auto mechanics are in Cuba.  "After all," he explained, "anyone who can keep a car running when replacement parts haven't been made for it in fifty years must be very skilled--and creative".

I don't have any way of refuting his assertion, so I'll accept it.  Any mechanic, anywhere in the world, who can keep, say, an Edsel running is almost certainly better than most.

Perhaps a similar principle applies to bike mechanics.  It's really not that difficult to repair or maintain a well-maintained late-model machine that's been used mainly for recreational cycling.  On the other hand, people whose bikes are used for transportation or other utilitarian purposes are more likely to be riding older bikes.  Think of all of those English three-speeds and European city bikes people rode to work every day, and for an occasional weekend jaunt in the park, for decades.  To my knowledge, no one is making replacement parts for Sturmey-Archer three-speed hubs that were made in England or cottered cranksets.  Still, many such bikes are still in use in their home countries and all over the world.

Mechanics in places where the bike is still what one rides because gasoline and car ownership are expensive, I imagine, have developed some interesting work-arounds. Somehow I think mechanics' tricks are even better-developed in places where people depend on bikes, and are poor--say, India, where this photo was taken:

If You're Under 50, You've Probably Never Heard Of It. Why?

Unless you are, um, of a certain age, you've probably never heard of this bike brand.  If you are familiar with the name, you probably know it from another field of endeavor, to which the early history of bicycling is more closely connected than most people might expect.    It also was one of the pioneers in  one of the major technological changes that has transformed bicycles, especially the ones ridden in the peloton.


I have never owned or used a gun, but I would guess that anybody who has would know about the company started in Connecticut by Swedish immigrant Oscar F. Mossberg, who previously worked for bicycle manufacturer Iver-Johnson.  By the time he got his operation going, in 1919, bicycle sales, particularly to adults, were fading.  That is probably the reason he turned his attentions to revolvers and such.

Very little information is available about the bikes.  It seems that some time in the 1950s or '60's, kids' bikes, especially of the "muscle" variety, were being sold under the Mossberg name in department stores.  Like most bikes sold in such outlets at the time, they were made by American manufacturers like AMF and Huffy, but not Schwinn.  Another thing they had in common with such bikes is that they were heavy, with the frames and all of their parts--including one-piece craks--made of mild steel.

Their foray into the adult bicycle market began, not suprisingly, around 1970, early in the Bike Boom .  At first, Mossberg ten-speeds were made by the companies I've mentioned and gradually found their way into bike shops. Later, the company offered lighter Japanese bikes much like other entry- to mid-level ten speeds of the time. Those bikes featured   SunTour and Shimano derailleurs and swaged cotterless cranksets from Sugino, SR and Takagi on carbon steel, or straight gauge Chromoly, frames. 

Mossberg carbon bikes.  From the Fairwheels Bikes site.

In 1972, Mossberg building experimental carbon frames.  One of those would, I imagine, be very collectible, as the special facility built to make it burned down only a year or so into production.  Perhaps the most interesting feature of the company's track frame was adopted by a few bike makers, such as GT, for at least some models:  a third set of rear stays, in addition to the seat and chain stays.  Given the state of carbon bikes at that time, I imagine that those stays would have been necessary to strengthen and stiffen the bikes.

From what little I could find, I surmised that Mossberg ended their venture in the bike business some time around 1980.  Around that time, production of other early carbon fiber frames such as the Graftek also ceased. The then still-primitive state of carbon fiber technology and techniques for using it led to failure of many frames built with the material; bike-builders and manufacturers would not re-discover the material for another decade or so.

Although its presence in the bicycle world was short-lived, it's puzzling that Mossberg bicycles aren't better-known, given the history (however checkered) I've described as well its connection to one of the world's leading firearms manufacturers.

Flying To The Mountain

I know this hasn't much to do with cycling:  the destination and winter haven of  monarch butterflies.

So why am I writing about it?  Well, for one thing, I suppose most of you like the orange-and-black creatures.  Also, one of the most unforgettable sights I encountered on a bike ride was a flock of them lifting off one early fall afternoon at Point Lookout.  If you've ever seen them take off, you know they truly deserve their name.

Forty-one years ago today, western researchers found the "Mountain of Butterflies" in Mexico.  Five years later, it officially became the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008.  The site encompasses 56,000 hectares; however, the butterflies--over a billion of them, by some estimate, live on less than five (yes, five, not 5000) of those hectares.

In the language of the local Purepucha people, the name of the Monarch means, "harvest butterfly" because it always arrived when they harvested maize, which was to their diet as rice is in much of Asia.  When Spaniards arrived early in the 16th Century, they noticed that the butterfly and harvest came around El Dia de los Murtes (Day of the Dead) in late October, so the Monarch came to be associated with that day's festival.

Google "doodle" commemorating the discovery of the "Mountain of Butterlies"

The Monarch is always on a journey.  So are we.  I think the luckiest of us are privileged to make significant parts of ours on our bicycles.