Saul Lopez Probably Never Saw It Coming

When a cyclist ends up under a motor vehicle, do you assume--if only for a moment--that it was some careless driver who was texting, drunk or simply not paying attention?

I admit: I do.  Perhaps it's because I've heard and  read too many of those stories.  

Do you also assume that a single motor vehicle, and driver, was involved?  Again, I admit that I do.  Reason:  See above.

Now, when you hear that two motor vehicles collide, do you picture both of them stopped as a result of the impact?  If you answered "yes", welcome to a club that includes me.  

Also, if you are like me, you probably don't expect a cyclist to be run down by one of those two vehicles that collided. In fact, I'd never heard of such a case--until today.

The crash site in Pacoima.

The other day, in the Pacoima neighborhood of Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, a 2016 Dodge Ram pickup truck was headed south on Glenoaks Boulevard.  It collided with a 2006 Chevrolet pickup truck running eastward on Vaughn Street. 

The impact sent both trucks careening southward to an intersection where the Dodge struck a 15-year-old boy who was riding his bike westbound, to school, in the south crosswalk at around 7 am.  He was pinned under the truck and after police arrived, Saul Lopez was declared dead at the scene.

Saul Lopez, from the GoFundMe page for his funeral costs.

The good news--if there could be said to be any--is that both drivers stopped at the scene and cooperated with police.  Neither was arrested.  It's not clear which of them had the right of way.

A GoFundMe page created to cover the costs of his funeral has already raised nearly $28,000: about $13,000 more than the goal.  If only it weren't necessary!

Hasta La Vista, Esquire!

Yesterday, I mentioned Vista bicycles.  If you became a cyclist around the time I did--or were in junior high or high school when I was--in the US, you probably saw a lot of them, if you didn't have one yourself.

Vista Esquire, circa 1972

I got my Schwinn Continental just as the '70's Bike Boom was building up steam.  At that time, shops routinely ran out of Schwinns, Peugeots and Raleighs, which were the most popular brands in bike shops.  I had to wait three months for my Continental, which was not unusual.  But not everybody was willing to wait for one of those brands, and dealers knew that such customers would buy pretty much any ten-speed that resembled, even in the most superficial ways, bikes from those companies.  

Head badge from early Vista bicycle.

Some accused Schwinn of suppressing production in order to create such a demand and, consequently, drive up prices.  Truth was, they, like most other bike manufacturers, simply couldn't keep up with the demand: US Bicycle sales doubled from 1970 to 1972.  Even the boatloads of bikes that arrived daily from Europe and Asia weren't enough to satisfy consumers.

Schwinn Collegiate, circa 1972

Schwinn, however, did something else that made their bikes--and, by extension, other ten-speeds--more difficult to find, especially in rural areas.  On the eve of the Bike Boom, in the 1960s, Schwinn tried to eliminate from its dealer networks the small-town stores that sold tractors, feed and fertilizer, hardware, guns, cars or whatever else alongside Schwinn bicycles. (Some kept only a couple of bikes in the store and if the customer wanted another model or color, or needed a different size, the shop ordered it.)  The company wanted their bikes sold in showrooms devoted to their bikes and that stocked a sizeable number of Schwinn bikes and accessories.  Jake's Feed and Seed or Rick's Rifles couldn't or wouldn't make the investment in showrooms and inventory and were thus shut out of what would become a lucrative enterprise.

Vista Esquire, circa 1971

In response, a group of manufacturers and suppliers formed the National Independent Dealers Association and put together a line of bikes.  It's long been rumored that one of those manufacturers was Columbia bicycles of Westfield, Massachusetts:  Early Vista bicycles, for all of their attempts to look like Schwinns, had the style of everything from welding to graphics seen on the Columbia bicycles found in department stores.  

I knew more than a few kids--and a few adults--who rode them when they couldn't get Schwinns.  Vistas sold for about 20 percent less and were lighter than the Schwinn models they were designed to compete with.  From my limited experience with them, they clattered in that same clunky way as department store bikes like Columbia and Murray.  

The early Vistas had the same components as Columbias of the time:  Huret Allvit  derailleurs and steel one-piece cranks-- which were also found on Schwinns-- and cheap sidepull brakes.  Around 1972 or 1973, however, Vista began to equip their "Cavalier" and "Esquire" with their own brand of derailleur.  At least, that's what a lot of people thought.

Made-in-Japan Vista 15 speed bike with 64 cm(!) frame, circa 1975

In-the-know cyclists, however, soon realized that Vista had simply rebadged the SunTour GT rear and Spirt front derailleurs, and the ratcheted "power" shift levers bolted onto the handlebar stem.  Folks like me who had the chance to ride those Esquires and Cavaliers simply couldn't believe how much easier, and more accurately, their gears shifted than the ones on our Continentals and Varsities--or even on some of the more expensive European racing bikes.

Made-in-Japan Vista Elite with Shimano 600 components, circa 1978

That move probably did as much as anything to popularize the Vista brand and to keep sales even after the Bike Boom died down.  Some time around 1975 or so, Vista began to offer a line of "professional" bikes made for them in Japan.  Those bikes resembled the mid-level ten (and later twelve) speed bikes from Takara, Azuki and other Japanese marques, with their lugged frames made out of high-tensile (and, in a few cases, straight-gauge chrome-moly) steel tubing outfitted with components from SunTour, Shimano, Sakae Ringyo,Takagi and other well-known manufacturers from the Land of the Rising Sun. By the early '80's, Vista was even offering an "aero" model with flattened chrome-moly frame tubes, early "deep V" rims from Araya and Shimano's 600 EX "aero" components.

Head badge from Japanese-made Vista

Those Japanese-made Vistas were good, but mostly indistinguishable from other bikes from the by-then-more-familiar Japanese brands.  Thus, thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who bought American-made Vistas weren't, if they were still riding, buying Japanese-made Vistas when they went to college and beyond.  Instead, they purchased ten- (or, by that time, twelve-) speeds from such iconic brands of the 1970s and '80s as Fuji, Miyata, Motobecane and Raleigh.

The Vista brand seems to have disappeared some time around 1984 or 1985--a couple of years after those "aero" bikes came out.  By that time, Schwinn was making a series of missteps that would cost much of the market share it once enjoyed.  (As an example, the company's management acted as if mountain bikes were just a passing fad at a time when other manufacturers were making their mark in that discipline.)  And the quality of other American mass-produced bikes (with a few exceptions like Trek), which wasn't very good to begin with, fell off precipitously and, within a few years, nearly all production shifted offshore.

"Check" Out This SunTour Derailleur

When I first became a dedicated cyclist--more than four decades (!) ago--a common perception among cyclists was that "if it's good, it's from Europe".  Or, at least, it was built (as the Schwinn Paramount was) from European equipment such as Reynolds 531 tubing and Campagnolo components.

As I became more involved in cycling, that belief started to change, at first with derailleurs.  For many of us, one of our first revelations was shifting the SunTour or Shimano derailleur on someone's Fuji or Nishiki or even Vista. (Yes, a bike that was a cheap imitation of the Schwinn Varsity had a derailleur that shifted better than the ones on bikes costing five times as much!)  When we wore out or broke our Simplex Prestige, Huret Allvit or Campagnolo Valentino derailleurs, we replaced them with a Shimano or, more frequently, a SunTour model.  Sometimes we didn't wait:  We changed our derailleurs as quickly as we could.

From the time I outfitted my Schwinn Continental with a SunTour GT, I rode a number of different SunTour, and a few Shimano, derailleurs on my bikes.   And, because I worked in bike shops, I felt as if I had seen every model SunTour produced through the 1970s and '80s.  It seemed that the only cyclists who wouldn't ride Japanese derailleurs were those few who remained unconvinced of their superiority, or were simply snobs.  (The most expensive SunTour derailleurs typically sold for about as much as the least expensive Campagnolo models or mid-range offerings from other European makers--and shifted better.) The rest of us rode happily with our SunTour, and sometimes Shimano, derailleurs--sometimes on otherwise all-European bikes.

I used the iconic, successful SunTour derailleurs such as the Cyclone (first version and MK II), the V and Vx series and  the almost-otherworldly Superbe Pro. I also  saw the commercial and technical failures like the Superbe Tech L (the derailleur that started SunTour's downfall) and the ones which were well-designed and -made, but came along at the wrong time, like the S-1 (S100).   And I installed and adjusted any number of derailleurs like those of the AR series, which came on many bicycles during the 1980s.

I really thought I had seen them all--yes, including the "Love", "Hero" and "Chroma GX".  Today, however, I came across a SunTour derailleur I've never before seen.  

A seller in Poland listed it on eBay.  It could mean that the "Checker" was sold only in Europe or other markets.  Or, perhaps, that it was so short-lived that only a few found their way into other countries.  

At first glance, it looks rather like the SunTour AR II of the early 1980s.  At least, it has a similar main parallelogram and knuckles, though the Checker's body is closer to the mounting bolt than the AR's.  Also, it has a cable mounting outside the parallelogram, instead of the inside-the-parallelogram mounting of the AR (which I never liked, apart from its looks).  And the finish looks similar.

I am guessing, though, that the Checker--for which I couldn't find any information--was made later than the AR series because the Checker is made to be used with SunTour's indexed gearing systems, which weren't yet made at the time the ARII was produced.

With a name like "checker", though, I have to wonder what its intended purpose was.  A retro pedi-cab, perhaps?  A Peugeot?  Or maybe it was intended to rhyme with the name of another derailleur.  That would make for quite the slogan:  Checker The Pecker!