When This Day Was Bicycle Day

Here in the US, most holidays have long since lost whatever meaning they had and have become, instead, occasions for orgies of consumerism.

Perhaps the most prominent example is Thanksgiving.  For decades, the day after, dubbed "Black Friday", has been an occasion for sales that mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.  In recent years, however, large department stores have been opening--and holding their sales--on Thanksgiving Day itself.  

This day--Presidents' Day--is no different.  While other holidays feature other kinds of bargain bonanzas (e.g., spring clothing and bedding on Memorial Day), this holiday is seen as the beginning of the automobile-buying season, and dealerships offer deals to entice consumers into buying new cars outright or trading in the ones they already have.

How did presidents come to be associated with cars? (Well, Ford Motor Company does have a line called Lincoln!)  To answer that question, we have to look at the origins of this holiday.  During my childhood, schools were closed on the 12th and 22nd of February, in honor of Abraham Lincoln's and George Washington's birthdays, respectively.  In 1971, Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Act, which moved the dates of certain festivities to Mondays.  At that time, Lincoln's and Washington's days were combined into one holiday, which falls on the third Monday of February.

Before the merger, if you will, auto sales were held on Washington's Birthday, which was seen as the beginning of the auto-buying season.  That tradition dates to the early twentieth century, when automobiles first began to shape the landscape and culture of this nation.  It has, however, roots in yet another kind of sale held on the same date.

If you've been reading this blog, you know that the bicycle is, in essence, the predecessor of the automobile.  Some of the early auto manufacturers and designers had been in the bike business, much as the Wright Brothers were at the time they made their flight.  So, it should come as no surprise that bicycle-buying (and, in some locales, -riding and -racing) season began on the 22nd of February.  Bicycle dealers usually debuted or featured new models on that date and offered special deals.  Many also had parties and even held or sponsored races, even in such locales as Boston which were as likely as not to have snow on their streets at that time of year.

From Green Fleet Messengers

As an article on the Atlantic Monthly website relates, some people were not happy that "crass commercialism" sullied the occasion of the birth of our first President.  Some of them pointed out, rightly, that there really was no reason to associate two-wheelers with "The Father of Our Country" because it's unlikely that he rode anything resembling a bicycle.  My guess is that the date was chosen because it's near the end of February and Spring is so close that people can practically taste it, if you'll indulge me in a cliche.  And, to be fair, there are parts of the US where the weather is already spring-like by that time.  

By the turn of the century, bicycles were becoming less popular as the motorcycle and, later, automobiles, seized e public's consciousness.  As bicycles are again becoming more popular, wouldn't it be interesting if the old tradition of bicycle sales was revived for Presidents' Day?

How Does He Love Thee? As Much As He Loves His Bike?

Pity Elizabeth Barrett Browning. While her husband wrote poems that tackled the Big Questions (including those of the very nature of poetry) and are in every anthology in the English language, she's seen as a "chick lit" poet.  Even if she'd written The Inferno or The Waste Land, she'd've never lived this line down:

            How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

It certainly wouldn't look out of place in a Hallmark card.  But some of the greatest works of literature contain passages that, frankly, are even more banal. The problem with that line is that it's what comes first in the sonnet. The rest of becomes more serious, even darker:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

"I love thee with a love I seemed to lose/ With my lost saints."  Hmm...I wasn't expecting that with my box of Godiva.  "[A]nd if God choose/I shall but love the better after death."  I know that love is patient--but is it that patient?

Say what you will, but I actually like the poem. No, forget that:  I love it.  Somehow I believe Robert did, too, in his heart of hearts.  Had they been cyclists, one might have sent the other something like this:

Being poets, they probably had a sense of humor.  (Believe it or not, verse and mirth are not mutually exclusive!)  So I could also see them exchanging something like this:

Couldn't you?  Happy Valentine's Day.

His Spirit of Innovation Wasn't Suspended

The other day, I wrote about some bicycle suspension systems that were patented nearly a century before Rock Shox or Girvin Flex Stems came bouncing down the trails.

It's not as if the idea of cushioning the ride and rider died with the fin de siecle Bike Boom.  Indeed, some of you rode balloon-tired Schwinn, Columbia, J.C. Higgins or other bikes with a big spring in front of your handlebars.  That spring was attached to a bars that were, in turn, attached to the front fork.  How much that actually absorbed shock, I don't know.  I have long thought that they--like the "banana" seat struts attached to shock absorbers on bikes like the Schwinn "Krates"--were really intended to enable kids' fantasies of riding a "chopper" on the flats of Daytona.

Around the time that boys (and, on occasion, girls) were tearing up and down driveways and cul-de-sacs, one of the few American adults riding at the time was thinking about real, functional suspension for bicycles.  Having been one of the first commercial pilots (for American Airlines), he no doubt saw the value in keeping his bike stable and upright (the real purpose for suspension on cars and motorcycles) in turbulent conditions.

If you've on any kind of organized bike ride for, say, the past half-century, you have heard his name.  More precisely, you have followed his directions.



Yes, there was a real, live Dan Henry behind the "Dan Henry arrows".  While he is best remembered for his system of road symbols, his most interesting contributions to cycling may well be in the ways he made his bikes more comfortable and stable.  



I remember reading about Dan Henry's bicycle in an issue of American Cycling, the magazine that became Bicycling!  As I recall, the bike was a Rene Herse or Alex Singer--or that of some other prestigious French builder.  He made the mechanisms himself from springs and bar stock he obtained in auto-repair shops.  Again, if memory serves, he said that this system allowed him to ride the lightest tubuar tires and rims under nearly all conditions without getting flats or dinging his rims.

(Interestingly, he would later convince Clement to make tubular tires with butyl tubes, which are more durable and retain air longer than the latex tubes commonly found in high-quality tubulars.)

Another part of his "suspension system", if you will, was something he made himself--from a pair of handlebars, a tandem "stoker" stem and some canvas webbing.  

It seems that every decade or so, someone re-invents this saddle.  When I first became a dedicated cyclist (around the time I found that copy of American Bicyclist in the local library), a similar saddle called the "Bummer" was advertised in Bicycling!  I think one of the magazine's editors test-rode it, probably unaware of his perch's provenance.  

Perhaps it's not surprising to know that Dan Henry was also one of the early proponents of recumbent bicycles, and that he designed and rode such a machine.  I guess he was one of the first cyclists to see that high performance and all-day comfort needn't be mutually exclusive--and, as an engineer and pilot, was one of the first modern cyclists to have the background and skills to realize such a vision.

He died nearly four years ago, just short of 99 years old, riding almost to the end.  I wonder what he thought of some of the suspension designs--especially for downhill bikes--that have come along.