When Is It A Motorcycle?

The other day, during a ride in Queens and Brooklyn, I detoured to the Ridgewood Reservoir.  Because the loop around it is flat, I can ride around it a few time and add a few kilometers/miles to my ride without trying.  (I recently learned that the loop is 1.2 miles, or about .7 kilometers:  longer than I thought it is!) I was enjoying myself on a sunny, breezy afternoon when I made the turn near the Brooklyn side.  There, two young men on ebikes without pedal assists whipped around the curve.  One of them popped a wheelie and veered to his left-my right.  I had almost no room to maneuver:  I was well near the right edge of the lane and, even if I could have cut in front of him without colliding, I almost surely would have hit, or been hit by, the other guy on eBike, a cyclist riding in the opposite direction, or a group of people walking with a dog.

The guys on eBikes were going as fast, it seemed, as the car traffic on the nearby Jackie Robinson Parkway. Lately, I've wondered whether those bikes seem faster because I'm getting older and slower.  But that experience--and a couple of reports that have come my way--show me that those machines are indeed getting faster and because prohibitions against them on bike and pedestrian lanes and speed limits are never enforced (if indeed they exist), too many riders seem to feel no compunction about endangering other people.

Folks like David Rennie in Park City,Utah are having similar experiences to mine on bike lanes and hiking trails. In a letter to the Park Record,  he says that allowing such bikes on trails is "an accident waiting to happen" and can "see no reason why throttle-controlled e-bikes should not be treated exactly the same as a petrol-driven bike, and subject to the same licensing and use rules."

From Electric Bike Action

In another Park Record letter to the editor, Mike Miller echoed his concerns and concluded that throttle-driven bikes without pedal assists are really "motorcycles" and should be treated as such.

Voices Of My Rides

In "Sounds of Silence," Paul Simon wrote, "the words of the prophets are written the on the subway walls."

I've been riding daily and haven't been on the subway.  But I have seen, if not the words of the prophets, then at least expressions of the zeitgeist, if from different points of view.

During my Saturday ride to Point Lookout, I chanced upon this in Lido Beach:

I don't think I've seen such a large US flag anywhere else, let alone in front of a suburban house.  When I stopped to take the photo, I talked to a man walking his dog.  He said the house is "outsize for this neighborhood" and that he's seen "the flag more than the people who live there."  I quipped that I've lived in apartments smaller than that flag.

Not only is its size overwhelming:  It's placed so that in whichever direction you walk, ride or drive, you can't not see it.

As I've said in earlier posts, ostentatious displays of outsized flags--often seen on the back of "coal rollers"--seem less like expressions of patriotism and more like acts of aggression.

In contrast, during yesterday afternoon's ride down the waterfront, from my Astoria apartment to Red Hook, I saw something more inclusive on one of the last ungentrified blocks of Long Island City.

The author of that bit of graffiti, I suspect, also gave us this:

That person is not the enemy of the flag-flaunters and coal-rollers--and would surely know that I'm not, either. 

Leaving Waterloo

Sheldon Brown dubbed the quarter-century or so following World War II as the "Dark Ages" of US Cycling. Few adults cycled and nearly all of them were clustered around a few cities.  So, perhaps not surprisingly, high-quality cycling gear was difficult to come by, as nearly all American bicycle manufacturing consisted of bikes for kids.  Those tiny number of shops and mail-order companies that offered high-end parts and bikes, as often as not, ordered them for their customers from Europe or a few companies in the US.

As for the bikes:  Some frame builders, like Dick Power of Queens, New York (who, interestingly, sponsored and mentored female riders) and George Olemenchuk of Detroit, turned out some well-crafted machines that rode well. But they made small numbers of frames that rarely, if ever, were ridden by cyclists beyond their immediate environs.  Quite possibly the only nationally-availabe, US-made, world-class (Did I use enough modifying phrases?) bike was Schwinn's aptly-named Paramount. But you couldn't buy one of the showroom floor--unless, of course, your local Schwinn dealer stocked one (and if they did, the probably stocked only one) and it happened to be the right size for you.

1971 Schwinn Paramount

 

Then came the 1970s "Bike Boom."  High-quality racing and touring bikes from England, France, Italy and Japan appeared even in small-town bike shops.  Some might debate that they had ride qualities that the Paramount lacked, but few argued that the workmanship of those imported bikes was better. But they--especially the Japanese bikes--offered much better value for the money, as the Paramount's price doubled within three years.

More to the point, though, the newly-available bikes made Paramounts, as nice as the were, seem stodgy.  And, according to people in the industry, the Paramount's production facilities and methods were dated.  Moreover, by the end of the decade, a number of American custom frame builders like Albert Eisentraut and Bruce Gordon were turning out bikes that rivaled those of their overseas counterparts.

So, in 1980 Paramount production moved to a new facility in Waterloo, Wisconsin.  (Not long after, much of Schwinn's other production shifted from Chicago to Mississippi.) These changes occurred around the same time Schwinn ownership and management shifted to a new generation. But the company failed to keep up with changes in the industry--they were late to the mountain bike and very late to the BMX game--and declared bankruptcy for the first time in 1991.

In the wake of those developments, two members of that new management generation--Richard Schwinn and Marc Muller--took over the Paramount facility and started a company familiar to a generation of American bike enthusiasts:  Waterford.  It focused on building, essentially, updated custom versions of the Paramount:  hand-crafted lugged frames from Reynolds, Tange or other high-quality alloy steel tubing.  Later, they added another line of bikes--Gunnar--with TIG-welded steel frames that weren't available in custom sizes or colors.

A late-model Waterford

Last month, Schwinn and Muller announced that Waterford/Gunnar was closing up shop.  The reason, they said is that they and several other key employees are retiring. They fulfilled their remaining orders and sold the building.  This Saturday, the 24th, there will be a "farewell" ride beginning at the factory, where there will be an "open house."  On that day, an online auction will begin.  Running until 10 July, there won't be many frames or forks available for sale.  But it might be a good source for current or aspiring builders or manufacturers or a collector with "an interest in something from the legendary Waterford factory," according to the company.