I am a terrible person: I just laughed at the misfortune of someone else.
Actually, I was laughing about the way that person came about her misfortune, and somewhat in approval about the person who brought it to her.
What disaster befell her? Well, she was sitting in a Honolulu bus stop Wednesday morning. A man approached on a bicycle.
He tried to snatch a carton of cigarettes from her hand. She held on, but he overpowered her and snatched it away. That caused her to fall on his bicycle and hurt her knees.
Now, given the way he robbed her--and the fact that he is 25 and she is 62--the police had reason to arrest him. But he wasn't charged with assault or any other kind of crime against a person. Instead, he was arrested on "suspicion of second-degree robbery."
Of course he was wrong to use force in an attempt to rob that woman. I can't help but to wonder, though, whether things would have been different had he destroyed those cigarettes. I mean, a cyclist taking away someone's cigarettes: If that doesn't sound like someone promoting public health, I don't know what does.
Seriously, though, I hope that woman recovers--and doesn't smoke!
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.
