All-Wheel Drive “Fat” Bike

Some of you ride cranksets, chainrings or other components or accessories made by Specialites TA in France.  “TA” stands for “Traction Avant,” or forward drive.  

Before he started making the parts for which the company would be renowned, founder Georges Navet tried to make, and market, a front-wheel drive bicycle.  High-wheel or “penny farthing” bikes had pedals attached to cranks fitted directly to the axle on the front wheel, which was much larger than the rear.

Navet, however, wanted to make a modern bicycle (two wheels of more or less the same size, propelled by a chain-and-sprocket drive) with front-wheel drive after seeing cars with the then-new innovation.  I would not be surprised, then, if some cyclist, especially one who rides off-road, looked at, say, a Subaru Outback (or, perhaps drives one) and wondered, “Why can’t my bike have this?”

“This” would be all-wheel drive. Someone called “The Q” may have been that cyclist.  Check out his attempt to make an all-wheel (OK, two-wheel) drive fat-tire bike:

To Continue His Work—And Passions

At schools and universities, celebrated alumni are memorialized with libraries, collections, laboratories, galleries and other facilities named for them.

Not many, though, have bicycle repair shops or programs that bear their names.

I must say, however, that few people would want to take the route to fame, if you will, of Sam Ozer.

Last year, days after his graduation from the AIM Academy in Philadelphia—where he was the co-captain of the mountain biking team—was riding along Henry Street when he was struck by a vehicle.

The fatal crash was accompanied by some terrible ironies:  It was Fathers’ Day and he was going to spend time with his Dad, Sidney—who, along with Sam’s grandfather Morris, were founding members of the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia.

Even if he hadn’t been working at the Trek Manayunk Bicycle Shop on Main Street, Anne Rock, his cycling coach, would not have been exaggerating when she said bicycling was “in his blood.” His passion for cycling was accompanied by his love of the outdoors, which may have been inculcated by his mother, Mindy Maslin, the founder and program manager of Tree Tenders for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

Thanks to her, her husband’s, Ms. Rock’s and other people’s efforts, Sam’s school will have a bicycle repair shop and program.  Aside from commemorating the “grit” Ms. Maslin recalled in her only son, the shop and program are appropriate in another way:  The AIM Academy is a school for intelligent and gifted kids with dyslexia, and bicycling and bike repair helped to put Sam Ozer on a road to becoming a confident adult.  Before he graduated, he took two college courses and had been accepted in all six colleges to which he’d applied.

I Didn’t Miss The Train

 Yesterday afternoon, I unwound myself with a no-destination ride.  I have no idea of how many miles or kilometers I pedaled.  All I know is: a.) I was hungry when I got home (I fed Marlee first!) and b.) I wandered through Brooklyn neighborhoods seen by almost no one who doesn’t live in them—streets where women in long dresses and thick hosiery pushed baby carriages while young men in colorful shirts chatted and swaggered to the beat of Bob Marley songs and other sounds from Jamaica, other parts of the Caribbean and Africa.

I also wended down streets in a neck of Queens between Jamaica Bay and the Hawtree Inlet.  The narrow streets, some barely or not at all paved, could just as well be part of a New England or Gulf fishing village.  It would be easy to believe they weren’t part of the New York City borough of Queens were it not for this:

Part of the neighborhood—Hamilton Beach* —lies within the Gateway National Recreation Area, which includes parts of the New York and New Jersey coastlines.  The West Hamilton Beach part might well be the only part of the US National Park system that has a municipal railway running through it.

That subway line is the A train—yes, the one in Duke Ellington’s song.  The Hamilton Beach section of Gateway is about 30 miles as the crow (or seagull or egret or whatever bird you like) flies from Harlem.  As Ellington reminds us, if you miss the A train, you’ve missed the fastest way to Harlem—especially from one of New York’s most remote locales.

Fortunately, I was riding Negrosa, my vintage Mercian Olympic, so I didn’t have to worry about missing the train.

*—Although the neighborhood shares its name with a brand of kitchen appliances, there is no relation between them.  Supposedly, the community is named for two of its early developers.

Fun Fact:  Hamilton Beach is one of the few NYC communities with a volunteer fire department!