Bikes Not Going Their Way

 

For the past two years, you may have had difficulty in buying a bike—the one you want, anyway. If you managed to find your machine of choice, you probably had to pay more for it than you would have in 2019.

You may have had a similar experience in procuring parts to repair, refurbish or update your favorite ride—or even if you were looking for accessories like water bottle cages or a pair or riding glasses or gloves.

The reason for the situation I’ve described is the COVID-19 pandemic. It disrupted supply chains and even closed production facilities at the very moment when folks took up cycling as a way to avoid buses and trains or to get exercise or mental cleansing in a way that allows for social distancing.

But at least you could get something you could ride, whether or not it was your first choice, as long as you were willing to pay and could wait. 

The folks in Russia aren’t so lucky. (Ok, the Ukrainians have it worse, but bear with me!) The way things are going, they won’t be able to get bikes, parts, accessories, apparel—or much of anything—at all.

A number of bicycle and bike-related companies have suspended their operations in the country. The list includes SRAM, Trek, Specialized, Tern and Quality Bicycle Products (QBP). Also, leading bicycle tire manufacturers Continental, Michelin, Pirelli and Bridgestone have joined their ranks.  

Those companies, no doubt, were motivated by the difficulty of doing business in Russia due to banking sanctions and that some shipping companies, including Fed Ex and UPS, have stopped delivering to the country.  But one representative also says “there’s a social aspect too” in the companies’ actions.

A Joycean Parade of Cyclists

 Today is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day.

Since I am not Irish (at least, not to my knowledge!), I will not tell you whether or how to celebrate this day.  I will say, however, that so much of what we’ll see today is what I’ll call Celtic Kitsch. (Confession:  I was in college before I knew that the “C” at the beginning of “Celtic” is pronounced like a “k.”  Until then, I’d been pronouncing the word as “sell-tick,” like the basketball team in Boston.) The truth is, few can agree on what is “authentically” Irish. Although schools teach the Gaelic language, nearly everyone speaks (beautifully) the language of their colonizers.  And, apart from Roman Catholicism with a strong monastic tradition—which the young are largely abandoning—we actually know little about pre-Anglo Irish culture and history.

James Joyce understood as much.  Although all of his writing is set in his native country—which he lived away from for most of his adult life—he is not part of a “Celtic revival.” Instead, he used Ireland—Dublin, mainly—as a lens through which he could explore how people move through life, and how it moves through them—and, perhaps most important, our minds re-assemble it all, whether in images or language—or simply deal live with it as the chaos it is.  

Some have said that Joyce’s works—specifically Dubliners and Ulysses—are therefore to literature what Picasso’s Cubist paintings are to art.  Others have called him the first “cinematic” writer.  I agree with both, and would add that his narrative style is like a bicycle ride:  Whenever I take a ride, even one I’ve done hundreds of times, I see not only people and things I haven’t seen before, but a building, a city block, a tree or a seashore from an angle or in a different kind of light (or darkness) from what I saw on that same ride on a different day.

Martina Devlin, Darina Gallagher and Donna Cooney seem to understand as much.  On Sunday, they participated in a Dublin St. Patrick’s Day parade that includes a procession of 100 cyclists dressed in Ulysses-themed Edwardian clothes. They took spectators on a journey through places in the book.

Martina Devlin, Darina Gallagher and Donna Cooney (Photo by Norma Burke)

Cooney, the artistic director of the Dublin Cycling Campaign (now there’s a job I wouldn’t mind having!) said this year’s bicycle procession and St.Patrick’s Day parade are particularly special because February was the 100-year anniversary of Ulysses’ publication.  But the essence of the event might have been best summed up by Devlin, a writer whose speech included an excerpt from the novel and began with this:  “One of the landmark days in my life was when I learned how to ride a bike.”

“I felt as if I were on the road to somewhere.”

As were the cyclists and marchers in the Dublin parade, 100 years after Ulysses came into the world.

Agonizingly Rewarding

I've cycled in the Green Mountains, Adirondacks, Catskills, Sierra Nevada, Pyrenees, Alpes Maritimes and the Alps of France, Italy and Switzerland.  I've also done some challenging climbs in places like the Greek island of Milos, where the road up the mountain, I think, was first built long, long before I was born and simply paved over.  

I don't know whether that climb was tough (but rewarding) because of the less-advanced state of engineering at the time it was first carved out, the hot weather or my age.  But it felt nearly as arduous, at times, as one stretch of the Col de Portillon, on the Spanish border.  I climbed it--and was both terrified and exhilarated by the views from the guardrail-less virages--on a bike loaded with full panniers.  I don't know whether that stretch--about a kilometer of a 10 kilometer climb --was steeper than the most vertical stretches of the Alpe d'Huez or Col d'Agnel (a.k.a. Colle d'Agnello: It's on the Italian-French border) but I remember a group of people applauding me when I made it to the top. 

Well, there is one climb that claims to put those, and all others, to shame.  Every year, the Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb takes cyclists to the top of the highest peak in the Northeastern United States. The route can lay claim to one of the world's steepest climbs:  The average grade is 12 percent; extended sections rise at 18 percent and for one part near the end, cyclists have to pump their way up a 22 percent climb.  

When bumper stickers proclaim, "This car climbed Mount Washington," you know it has to be quite ride for cyclists. (The road is closed to auto traffic on the day of the ride.)  What makes the ascent all the more laborious is the weather, some of the most severe and changeable in the world. For years, the race was held in September, but cold, wind, rain and snow caused organizers to move it to August--where there is still a chance of starting off in typically summer-like conditions but pedaling through cold, wind and freezing rain before reaching the top.

At the start of the 2017 ride. Photo by Joe Viger

Mark Greenleaf would know.  He plans to participate for the 35th time when this year's edition is held on 20 August.  

In 1983, he was living in Providence, Rhode Island when, one day, he grabbed the mail before going out to dinner with friends.  Among that day's delivery was a copy of Bicycling! magazine, in which he noticed an article about the ride.  "After a couple of beers, we dared each other to do it," he said of his friends at that fateful dinner.  The following year, he did it for the first time.

After each climb--which he completed--he always felt it was "agonizingly rewarding."  I could say the same for the climbs I've made.