Shay Elliott and The Roches On St. Patrick's Day

Today is St. Patrick's Day.  Here is a message for the President whose name I dare not say:

Actually, it might be even more appropriate for the guy he appointed to direct the Environmental Protection Agency!

Yes, "Go Green" on St. Patrick's Day!  And every other day of the year.  That might just be a good all-around political philosophy.  Forget the Democrats and Republicans. Go Green!

Today is as good a day as any to think about the great Irish cyclists.  I am one of the many people who regard Stephen Roche as the greatest of all.  He remains, to date, the only Irishman to win the Tour de France and one of the few from any nation to achieve a "Triple Crown" with victories in the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana in 1987.  In addition, he won or placed highly in a number of "classics" and proved himself in a wide variety of courses, from mountains to time trials.  

The reason why he will never have the status of Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain--whom I, like many other fans, see as the "Big Four"--is that his career was cut short by a chronic knee problem.  But the reason why he's beloved is that probably no other racer's form was as graceful as his.  He really was, to use a cliche, poetry in motion.

Roche, Sean Kelly and every other Irish rider owes a debt to Shay Elliott.  In 1963, he became the first Irishman to win the maillot jaune, which he wore for three days during that year's Tour.  

 

Unfortunately for him, his career spiraled downward because of financial and marital problems.  Worse, he became a pariah in the peloton when he sold a story to a newspaper about drug-taking in the sport.  Two weeks after his father died, he was found dead in the living quarters above the family business premises.  The cause of his death, at age 36, was a gunshot wound.

The Route de Chill Mhantain, a race held every May, was named for Elliott after his death.  It's considered the most prestigious race in Ireland besides the national championships.

About the Irish Road Race and Time Trial Championships:  Last year, they were won by a fellow named Nicolas Roche.  Yes, he's Stephen's son.

Collecting 200 Years Of Bikes

There are all sorts of great reasons to visit the Bourgogne region of France.  There are the food and wine, of course.  If you're interested in art, history or architecture, the place is a treasure-trove.  And the cycling is great.  I know:  three of my bike tours included excursions to the area.

Speaking of which:  In 2010, la Musee du Velo opened in the town of Tournus, which is also home to l'Eglise de Saint Philbert, one of the oldest and best surviving examples of Romanesque architecture.  Earlier, the Musee had been in nearby Cormatin, where it closed due to financial reasons in 2007.  

I saw the museum in its earlier location.  France is known for such monumental museums as the Louvre and Orsay, but small, quirky places like the Musee du Velo are found all over the country.  (If you're in Saumur, you simply must check out the Musee du Champignon. Really!)  

One of the things that makes the Musee du Velo so interesting is its collection.  It includes a version of the hobby-horse Karl van Drais created 200 years ago and is considered, by some, to be the first bicycle.  

Another fascinating artifact is this brake on an 1869 bike:

I hear someone's still trying to break that saddle in!

There are also a number of penny-farthing (high-wheel) machines and one of the first Tour de France bikes to use a derailleur in 1937, when such mechanisms were first permitted in the Tour.

I got a kick out of this 1938 triplet

with its drop bars in front and two moustache bars (No, Grant Petersen didn't invent them!) for the "stokers".  If you want to turn your kids into tandem riders, there is this:

If their legs tire out, let one of them ride this 1950 machine

which can be propelled by pumping the handlebars from side to side!

In addition to these and other bikes, the museum has a fantastic collection of Tour de France memorabilia, items from chinaware to match boxes with images of bicycles and cyclists, and what might be the most beautiful collection of bicycle bells in the world.

The museum's collection might be said to have begun with this:

which was used by a fellow named Michel Grezaud.  He was a butcher in the area during the 1950s who used that trike to make deliveries.

He is also the one who amassed the museum's collection and, with his wife Josette, founded the original museum.  Sadly, he did not live to see it in its new location.

Thinking About The Bicycle

Go to any residential college or university--or even to some commuter schools--and you will see racks full of bikes.  Where racks are lacking, bikes will be locked to lamp posts, fences and any other stationary object.

It's likely that the majority of those bikes belong to students.  Administrators don't seem to ride much, but more than a few faculty members (including yours truly) pedal from their homes to their campuses. 

Given how many bikes and riders are on American post-secondary campuses, it's astounding that so little academic attention is paid to them.  I don't recall any course about any aspect of bicycles or bicycling--or even any class that mentions them in any way--offered in any of the schools in which I've studied or taught.

Among that rare breed of academic offerings is something with an unlikely title.  At least, the first part is unlikely--for a college class, anyway:  Cars Are Coffins:  Ideologies of Transportation, offered at Adrian College in Michigan.

The emphasis is, of course, on the second part of the title.  The course in question "draws attention to how decisions we make concerning mobility and the design of our public environments have profound implications for how we understand community and identity," according to Scott Elliot, one of the course's instructors.  A study of such matters is important, he says, because it provides an "opportunity to discuss matters of justice, ethics and quality of life."

What makes that course unique (to my knowledge, anyway) is that it includes work in a bicycle shop.  The students dismantle, repair and reassemble bicycles, in part to make them intimately familiar (if they aren't already) with the mode of transportation they're studying.  Another reason for this work is that it brings students into contact with people and communities they might not otherwise encounter.  You see, the shop in which they work isn't selling carbon fiber machines with five-figure price tags to investment bankers.  Rather, it's ReBicycle, located in the same town as the college.

Adrian College senior Scott Campbell works on a donated bicycle under the guidance of  Scott Dedenbach, a professional mechanic who volunteers at ReBicycle.  Photo by Mark Haney of the Daily Telegram.

Like similar shops in other locales (such as Recycle-A-Bicycle, which I've mentioned in this blog), ReBicycle refurbishes used bikes donated to them.  Some of those bikes are sold; others are earned by people--including some students--who take their classes and volunteer in the shop.  Places like ReBicycle and RAB, as a result of such work, serve a wider cross-section of a community--from people who see bikes strictly as a form of transportation to those who cycle for fun, and a few as a religion--than bike boutiques.  

Elliott and fellow Adrian professor Tony Coumondourous taught a smaller but similar course for two years.  That effort helped to bring about Bruiser's Cruisers, the campus bike sharing program.  The increasing demand for the service and what the class was teaching were among the factors that motivated Elliott to continue and expand the course this year.

Another thing that spurred him on was an experience he had last July: "I was nearly killed when I was hit by a drunk driver while riding my bicycle".  If such an experience doesn't highlight how auto-centric transportation planning and infrastructure are (at least here in the US), I don't know what does.  

Interestingly, neither Elliott nor Coumondouros has any formal education or training in urban planning or engineering.  They are both professors of Philosophy and Religion:  Elliott is a Bible scholar and literary theorist, while Coumondouros is a specialist in ancient and political philosophy, the history of philosophy--and ethics.  So, not surprisingly, students in the bicycle course come from a wide variety of majors and backgrounds.

Talk to any scholar and educator, and he or she will probably tell you the purpose of research and education is not to "know stuff".  Rather, it is helping people to learn ways of thinking about a number of topics, including some students may not have previously considered.  From what I can see, Coumondouros and Elliott are doing that for their students, precisely because they had to do it for themselves.