What He Learned From The Army And Huck Finn

In the military, and in other large, bureaucratic organizations, it's often said that it's "easier to get forgiveness than permission."

What that means is that if you know something is useful, constructive or just good, it's best just to go ahead and do it rather than to wait for approval, which might be denied because of some technicality or mere whim.  

One thing is for certain:  Whatever you want to do, or get, won't come as a result of prayer.  Such great minds as Huckleberry Finn have reminded us of that:  

Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way.

Well, it seems that someone has, at a very young age, internalized the lessons of Huck and the Army:

Let's hope that he retains his healthy cynicism about prayer and forgiveness--but learns that stealing is, well, not good for one's karma.

When I Say "Never"...

Last Friday, I did something I said I'd never do again.  Actually, you might say I did two things I vowed not to do.

Yes, I bought a mountain bike: my first in nearly two decades.  I admit, it doesn't have the latest technology and wasn't even a high-end bike in its day.  But I don't plan to do some of the crazy stunts I did when I was younger.  

When I say the bike wasn't high-end, I mean that it was the lowest-level mountain bike its manufacturer was offering.  Which leads me to the second thing I said I'd never do:  I bought a Cannondale mountain bike.  An M-300 from 1996, to be exact.

Now, I don't have anything against Cannondale bikes per se.  I realize that, like certain saddles, some people just like the ride of them.  The Cannondales I had felt particularly harsh.  Then again, they were some of the company's early road bikes.  I've heard that C-dale refined their offerings, but I decided that since I generally prefer steel bikes, I'd stick to them.

The way I figure it, though, is that a Cannondale mountain bike won't be as harsh as one of its road bikes because of the mountain bike's  fatter tires and the slacker geometry.  Also, I don't reckon I'll take this bike on the sorts of long rides I take with my Mercians.

Oh, and the bike has a Rock Shox Indy fork and a suspension seatpost.  I plan to get rid of the latter: I can replace it with a long  27.2mm rigid seatpost I have lying around.  I'll leave the Rock Shox on the bike for now and if I don't like it, or just don't want to maintain it, I might switch to a rigid fork.

The rest of the bike, though, I'm going to leave as-is, at least until the parts wear out.  The only thing I absolutely must change is the right shift lever:

When I pointed it out to the man from whom I bought the bike, he knocked the price down.  I told him I was willing to pay his original asking price, as he let me ride it and I found that the bike tracked straight and everything else was working as it should. (I tried shifting the rear derailleur by hand, and I could see that it will shift fine with a functioning shifter.)  In a way, that broken shifter is just as well because I don't like twist-grip shifters*.  I plan to replace it with a cheap Sun Race thumb shifter and, if and when the rest of the drivetrain wears out, I will decide whether I want to "upgrade" to 8 or 9 speeds--or turn the bike into a single-speed, something I might do if I decide this is a "snow" bike.

So, here I am, with my first mountain bike--and my first aluminum frame--in ages.  Don't worry:  I'm not going rogue!

Oh, and the man from whom I bought the bike had every intention of selling it--unlike the fellow I wrote about yesterday.




*When I say I don't like something, I don't necessarily mean that anything is inherently wrong with it.  It's just a  matter of my personal preferences. For example I know some of you like bar-end shifters and if you do, you should use them.  They're just not for me. I'd say the same for certain saddles.

Sold--By Mistake

A onetime cycling buddy, Lewis, had his bike sold out from under him.  He didn't realize what had happened until several years later.

It's not that he was stupid or gave up riding.  He'd joined the Navy and was sent to far-flung locales.  He was in one of those places when his term of enlistment was about to end, and he signed up for another.  Four years later, he re-upped again.

All told, Lewis stayed in the Navy long enough to retire from it.  He said that, in a way, he couldn't really blame his family for selling his Frejus track bike--all-chrome, with blue decals that looked like stained-glass windows--because they really didn't know when he'd be back.  Even though he found other rides, and would eventually have a custom frame built for him, he missed that Frejus.  "It was the first really nice bike I had," he recalled.

The only thing that really upset him, he said, was that his parents sold the bike for $25.  Even in those days, that was a bargain price for a high-end bike that was in good shape.  "They didn't know any better," he explained.  "To them, a bike was a bike, and they were happy to get that much money for a used bike."

I hadn't thought about Lewis in a long time, until I heard about Allan Steinmetz of Newton, Massachusetts. Like Lewis' parents,  he sold a bike that had great meaning to another member of his family.  The bike, a Motobecane Grand Touring from the 1969-early 1973 era.  I say that from my knowledge of Motobecanes and looking at catalogue scans of that era.  Also, Steinmetz says it was new his father-in-law gave it to his wife "more than 45 years ago," when she was 16.  



He didn't say how much he got for the bike. But whatever it was, I'm sure it won't make his wife happy.  Her father was a Holocaust survivor and "made it a priority to give his family the very best."  Now, most of us wouldn't say the bike was "the very best," but it certainly was a very good touring bike for its time.  The frame was made from 1020, a carbon steel used in French bikes that weren't built from name-brand tubing like Vitus, Reynolds or Columbus.  That long-cage Huret Allvit rear derailleur is certainly a time capsule, as are the Huret levers that could be used to paddle canoes in a pinch. 

If I saw the bike in a garage sale, three things about it would tempt me:  the frame's long touring geometry, the Ideale 80 saddle and, best of all, the Stronglight 49D cranks.

Anyway, Steinmetz is pleading with the bike's buyer to return it.  "I can't win," he lamented.  "The only thing I can win is by getting this bike back."  His wife wanted to "give the bike to our granddaughter one day, which I didn't know," he said.

In a way, I could understand how and why Lewis' parents sold his bike.  But I wonder how Steinmetz could have "accidentally" sold a bike which, he surely knew, had so much meaning for his wife, whether or not she actually rode it.