Rides And Memories From The Day Of The Dead

I grew up thinking today was All Saints' Day.

Later, I learned that it was also called All Souls' Day.

Either way, it was the reason Halloween (All Hallows' E'en) existed.

Then I learned that those two days, and the one that follows are celebrated as Dia de Muertos in Mexico, and now in Mexican communities here in the US. 

Actually, only the southern part of Mexico, where Aztec and other indigenous cultures were still strong, celebrated it until the middle of the 20th Century.  Until then, the north--which was almost entirely Roman Catholic and mainly of European ancestry--commemorated All Saints' Day in a fashion similar to the rest of the Catholic world.  What that meant, mainly, was going to Mass and, for some families, a commemorative meal or other event for their dear departed.

I must say, though, that for a time in my life, it didn't seem to have anything to do with death--unless, perhaps, the weather was particularly gloomy.  Catholic schools, including the one I attended, were closed that day.  We were expected to go to church, but other than that, we were free.  At least, I was, because my family didn't do anything special for the day.

I can remember going for bike rides on the first of November, both as a child and as an adult.  According to the calendar, this day is the first day of the year's penultimate month.  Some years, the weather told us that the cycling season was winding down, or even on its last legs.  

Whatever the day was like, the sensual feast of October would soon be over and the more austere beauty of November would lead to rides that shortened with the amount of daylight available but grew in intensity, sometimes physically but more often emotionally.

Today I rode to work and  I might get to sneak out for a "quickie" before riding home.  Whatever I do, I am sure to think about not only my rides past, but also the people who rode (some of) them with me--and the person I was on those rides.  And, of course, about the rides ahead.  

Yes, on the Day of the Dead.

About the Images:  The first is the box from a special edition "Day of the Dead" Bicycle playing card set.  The second, third and fourth are by Heather Calderon and are titled "Hollywood Bicycle Woman," "Hollywood Bicycle Man" and "El Panadero", respectively. 

After You Make Your Pie...

When should you replace your helmet?

Giro, the manufacturer of the helmets I currently ride, recommends getting a new helmet every three years.    MET, an Italian constructor of cranial caskets, says that a helmet should be good for eight years after the date it's manufactured.  The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, on the other hand,says that while the rumors about sweat and sunlight degrading helmets aren't true (in the case of sweat) or exaggerated (in the case of sunlight), five years is a "reasonable" lifespan for the helmet of a cyclist who rides thousands of miles a year.

So, according to Giro, both of my helmets should be replaced (coincidence?) and the folks at BHSI would tell me that replacing mine would be a good idea.  According to MET's recommendations, one of my helmets should be retired, while the other has a year and a half or so left.

Giro, MET, BHSI and every other helmet-maker and safety organization of which I'm aware say that you if you crash your helmet, it should be replaced.  Some say that dropping it onto a hard surface is reason enough to consign it to the scrap heap.

I actually had planned to replace my helmets in the spring. About two weeks ago, I bought two new helmets, both Giros, that were on sale.  (This, it seems, is the best time of year to buy a helmet, as retailers are clearing out this year's stock to make room for wares from the new model year.)  Soon, I'm going to toss the older of my current helmets.  I'll replace the fitting pads in the other with thinner ones so I can ride it with winter headgear underneath.

I got a really good deal on the new helmets.  Still, before I bought them, I wish I'd known about this:

From Alienation Bicycle Components

I would love to read the report if Snell or the American Society for Testing and Materials did a crash test on pumpkins.  Do the kinds of patterns you carve in them affect their structural integrity?

Happy Halloween! 

Tell Them Groucho Sent You

When I was a kid, we thought Rambler was a car old people drove.

Such a conclusion was based on the impeccable powers of observation children have:  Everyone we saw driving a car with the "R" was old enough to be one of our grandparents.  Also, everything about it just seemed like it was meant to be driven by someone who would have fit the demographic of Brezhnev's last Politburo.  The word for it--which I didn't know at the time, because it wasn't used in my blue-collar milieu--was stodgy.

Thus, when the brand died, one could, perhaps, have been forgiven for thinking that its demise came because all of its potential customers had gone to the Great Golf Course In The Sky.

I was just short of eleven years old at the time.  Not only had I seen what we would, in more politically correct times, call "senior citizens" driving Ramblers, I also noticed some cars--also, as often as not, driven by members of the same age group--bearing a brand that wasn't advertised on TV.

Several years earlier, that brand--named for the first known European to cross the Mississippi River--crossed the Rubicon, or the River Styx, or whatever body of water separates us from The End.  I am referring, of course, to De Soto.

Now, I don't recall the passing of De Soto--the car or the explorer (in spite of what some of my students might have you believe!).  The brand died around the time I was passing through a "terrible" age.  Aside from seeing  some of their cars--which, by the time of Rambler's end, were about a decade old--the only other reference I saw to the brand was in re-runs of You Bet Your Life.  The popular game show's host would urge viewers to go to their nearest De Soto dealers and tell them "Groucho sent you."   

Hmm...If you did utter that magic phrase, did you get a free duck on your dashboard?

Or, perhaps, if you bought one of their cars, you'd get this as a bonus:

I tried to find information on De Soto bicycles.  I don't know whether they were made by any company connected with the automobiles.   It wouldn't surprise me if they were, or at least if someone in the auto company had a hand in designing them.  After all, you can see some of the same "aerodynamic" features--which, on both the bike and the car, were probably more design flourishes than engineering innovations.  And, at the time of the ad (probably the 1950s), bicycle makers marketed their wares to appeal to the fantasies children--boys, mainly--had about the cars they would drive when they were of age.

From what little information I can find, I think I can safely assume that the De Soto bicycles of that time have no more relation to today's De Soto adult tricycles than the bikes today sold as "Motobecane", "Windsor", "Mercier" and "Dawes" have to the classic marques of the Bike Boom and earlier.