Families find all sorts of ways to keep the memory of a loved one alive.
This might be a "first", though: a recycle-a-cycle program.
Three years ago, a motorcycle accident took Brett Rainey, whom his sister, Lisa Karrer, described as her "best friend".
She lives in Huntington Station, a Long Island town just a morning or afternoon ride from my apartment. It has its charms, but as in many parts of Long Island, streets marked with hardscrabble lives are woven among the strands of mansion-lined lanes. A kilometer or less away from folks who drive their Mercedes' to shops where they buy the latest carbon fiber bikes and lycra kit, one can see children who don't have a bike to ride--or immigrants, mostly young, who could use a bike to get to the lawns they manicure and houses they paint.
Living with such a reality, and with the memory of a brother whose last job--and passion--gave birth to the idea. "My wife said why don't we get used bikes? We'll fix them up and donate them to the kids that can't afford them, we'll give them in Brett's name because that's what he would have wanted," she recalled.
The family's project, Brett's Bicycle Recycle, has given away about 100 bicycles, tricycles and skateboards since it started last year. "Some of these kids have never even rode a bike and they're like 14- to 15-years old and they're in shock," Karrer explains.
"He would have loved seeing this," said his mother, Drena Kanz
Three years ago, "The Retrogrouch" wrote about one of the most interesting and enigmatic companies in the cycling world.
Zeus probably came as close as any bike manufacturer to crafting all of the parts for its bicycles. Of course, they didn't draw the frame tubes, which were usually Durifort, Vitus or Reynolds. But they, or one of their subsidiaries did make all of the other major parts, except for the tires. But you could still ride Zeus tires on your Zeus bike. How's that?, you ask.
Well, there was a company in the US called Zeus that made them. But they weren't the kind of rubber someone riding a Reynolds 531 frame with Zeus 2000 components would have wanted. The appeal of that tire, the Zeus LCM, was found more among novice commuters and folks who didn't want to get their hands dirty or scratch their just-enameled nails. (I can understand that!)
Those tires were airless and didn't go flat because they were solid polyurethane rubber. I tried them for a half-century and a few days of commuting. I wondered whether I had just experienced what it was like to ride a "boneshaker"!
As so often happens when a new product comes to market, people think the idea is new when, of course, it isn't. And when it disappears, it will probably return and have another generation of consumers believing they've just witnessed the most wondrous innovation.
Well, it turns out that the airless tire has been revived during the past few years. Three and a half years ago, The Retrogrouch wrote about a new crop of such rim coverings. They were not solid, like the Zeus, but like other offerings that preceded them, they had solid inner tube-like inserts.
Now a German startup company, ProFLEX, has created its own version. This one does not have an insert but, unlike the Zeus, it is not solid rubber. Instead, it is supported by a complex honeycomb-like structure inspired by a car tire Michelin introduced last year. That network mimics alveolar structures like the air sacs of lungs: solid on the inside and more flexible on the outside.
(Or, since we're talking about Michelin here, we could say it's the inverse of a baguette, which is crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside.)
The ProFLEX has one more thing in common with the Michelin tire: It is 3D printed.
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| ProFLEX tire |
Although I am not sure I would switch over to such tires, I would be curious to try them. I wonder whether their ride is more akin to that of pneumatic tires (most likely heavy ones) or solid tires like Zeus.
None of these airless tires, by the way, should be confused with tubeless tires, which are filled with air and can therefore be flatted. I know: Bill and I stopped to help a fellow who'd just been sidelined with his tubeless tires.
In Greek tragedies, the hero falls to a combination of circumstances and his or her personal failings or shortcomings.
One of the reasons such stories endure is that they make the world make some kind of sense. The combination of situation and personal flaw give a sense of symmetry, if not justice, to the demise of the hero.
Of course, it doesn't always work out that way in life. Sometimes a person meets his or her fate due to an incident that he or she did not bring on and cannot control.
Such is the story of Roger Grooters, who went on a ride to help people whose lives were changed for the worse by a circumstance not of their making.
Eight years ago, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (better known as the BP Oil Spill) spewed seemingly endless streams of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, befouling beaches in five US states and Mexico and leaving birds, fish and marine mammals sick, helpless or even dead. Grooters wanted to help the people from whom the spill their property, livelihoods and health.
His pastor and fellow church congregants told him there was nothing tangible he could do. He thought otherwise. So, on 10 September of that year, he got on his bicycle in Oceanside, California, near San Diego, with the intention of reaching Jacksonville, Florida. He documented his trip, which raised $12,000, on a blog called Roger X Country.
The name of that blog has been changed to We Ride For Roger. A little more than a month after he started his ride, a pickup truck was barreling down State Road 20 just outside of Panama City, in the Florida Panhandle. The driver was texting and--unfortunately, you can guess what happened next: He plowed right into the back of Grooters.
You can probably guess what happened next: He didn't make it to Jacksonville. He didn't make it, period. His ride ended after 2179.4 miles, or about 300 miles short of his destination.
The following year, a group of cyclists that included some of his family members gathered at the crash site and continued his ride to Jacksonville. He rode to raise awareness of the victims of one disaster; they were riding to raise awareness of the victims of the kinds of disasters that occur all too frequently on roadways in Florida and elsewhere.
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| The Ride Of Silence |
A cyclist has a greater chance of being killed by a motorist in the Florida than in any other state in the Union. I am sure that at least some of the 100 riders who gathered yesterday at Pensacola State College were aware of that. They participated in a seven-mile "Ride of Silence" along the city's streets in drizzle and rain. At the beginning of the ride, organizers read the names of dozens of cyclists who have been killed while riding in the Florida Panhandle as bagpipers played "Amazing Grace".
The riders wore armbands--black for those who'd never been struck by a car, red for those who had. I couldn't find a count, but from the photos I saw, the red bands were numerous.
Oh, by the way....The driver was so immersed in his texting that he didn't realize what he'd hit until the police stopped him. He was cited and fined but never apologized to Roger Grooters' family.
