It's All Your Fault (If You Voted A Certain Way)

A proprietor loses his businesses.  He points his finger. "It's all your fault!" he bellows.

In this case, though, he wasn't pointing to an executive, employee, family member or incompetent (or crooked) lawyer, accountant or bookkeeper.  Rather, he aimed his accusation at 25 million or so people.

What did they have to do with the demise of his enterprise?  (That rhyme was unintentional. Really!)  They all voted for what, according to the proprietor, was the slit to the throat of his company.

Hint:  They voted seven years ago, in the UK.

I am referring, of course to "Brexit:"  the decision to take the country out of the European Union (formerly called the "Common Market).  That meant the re-imposition of tariffs that membership eliminated on goods from most continental European countries.  Perhaps more to the point, it meant reels and reels of "red tape" that tied up shipments in ports and terminals or made it all but impossible to pass through.  It even made Brooks saddles unavailable England, where they have been made for more than a century and a half:  For about two decades, an Italian company has owned Brooks, so the company's saddles are shipped from a distribution center Italy, an EU country.

And many bike brands sold in the UK are based in European countries, even if the bikes or parts are made in Asia or other parts of the world.  One of those bike brands is Austrian KTM, distributed by Huddersfield-based FLi Distributors for the past eleven years.  They have just ceased trading. In announcing their demise, owner Colin Williams said, "If you voted for Brexit, realise (British spelling) this is 90 percent because of your decision back in 2016."

FLi is not the only bicycle-related company to close its doors since Brexit-related regulations took effect at the beginning of 2021--just as the worst of COVID-19 related shutdowns were choking supply chains.  I would bet that the owners and employees of those companies and Williams--along with many others in the bike business, cyclists and other citizens--are not the only ones regretting the Brexit vote.

More Choppers!

 Even with all of my cycling experiences, there is one that I don’t share with some other members of my generation.  I never had one of those bikes that was styled so that kids could pretend they were riding motorcycles.  You know the kind I mean:  the ones with “banana” seats, “ape-hanger” handlebars and “stick” shifters strategically located (on the top tube) to, it seemed, reduce our generation’s fertility rate.

Such bikes included the spectrum Schwinn’s Sting-Ray bicycles (the original S-R and the Lemon Peeler, Pea Picker, the Orange and Apple Krates and the long-rumored Grape Krate) and their imitators from other American bike manufacturers.

That genre also included the Raleigh Chopper. Like the Sting-Ray, they have a loyal following among those who rode them in their childhood and, apparently, some who use them as compact or travel bikes—sort of like a Raleigh Twenty that doesn’t fold.

Last month, Raleigh released a near-as-possible reproduction run that sold out in days.  Now another run—based on the MK2 model—is set to be released next Tuesday, the 25th.  After that, Raleigh says, there will be no more.

Some of the parts used on the 1970s Choppers (and Sting-Rays) are long out of production and the companies that made them have gone out of business (or simply the bike business) or been absorbed into other companies.  Among those companies is Sturmey-Archer, which went into receivership in 2000 and was purchased by the Taiwanese company SunRace.  S-A made the three-speed hub found on the Chopper MK II (and those classic English three-speed bikes)—and the “stick” shifter. Raleigh had to work with S-A (SunRace kept the brand alive) to replicate a hub that looks like the original—and the “sterilization” shifter!

Riding To My Own Guitar Solo (Or Overtime)

 On Monday morning and early afternoon, I took Dee-Lilah, my Mercian Vincitore Special, for a spin out to Point Lookout and back: 120 kilometers (about 75!mikes). Yesterday morning I took Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear, for a shorter ride—about 40 kilometers (25 miles) to Fort Totten and back.

What did these rides have in common, besides the fact that I enjoyed them?  Well, both bikes are purple, though in different shades.  Also, I timed both rides to, as best I could, finish before the most intense heat—and worst air quality (those Canadian wildfires, again!) of the day.

Both rides also have something in common with every other ride I’ve taken in my life:  I rode without headphones, eat buds or any other audio device.  Sometimes I feel I’m the only person who still rides that way.

I think I’ll always ride that way.  For one thing, I don’t want to impede my ability to hear traffic or other ambient sounds—including bird sings and ocean tides. But I also believe  don’t need devices to hear music, if only inside my own mind.

Back in the day, the term “ear worm” didn’t exist. (At least, I hadn’t heard it.) I would,!however, find myself riding to a tune playing through my head—usually, somethings I’d heard not long before.

I first noticed myself riding to a tune I was carrying with me during a ride when I was, probably, fifteen years old.  I’d been pedaling a long, flat stretch of New Jersey Route 36 from Sandy Hook to Long Branch. The ocean stretched thousands of miles to my left—it years would pass before I saw the other side. The sky stretched even further above and beyond me.  And, even though I knew the road ended—or, more precisely changed direction—in Long Branch and I was gliding toward it on a combination of youthful energy and the wind at my back, I saw myself pedaling forward, forced, even further than that road could take, or my own vision could guide, me.

That ride’s ear worn before there were ear worms?  The long guitar riff of Black Sabbath’s “Rat Salad.”  It’s trippy yet hard-driving and expansive: the way I was pedaling on that long-ago ride.

And what did I hear as I pedaled, with a light breeze at my back, along the long,f flat—and surprisingly deserted—Rockaway Boardwalk? You guessed it: Rat Salad. As Kurt Vonnegut would have said, I was woozy with deja vu.

Oh, and during yesterday’s ride, my “ear worm” was an overture from Debussy’s “La Mer”: one of the first pieces of classical music I came to truly love—and an “ear worm” on another long-ago ride.

Given what I’ve described, you might think I was a strange kid. I wouldn’t try to disabuse you of such a notion.  Of course, you may think I’m an even stranger adult—one in mid-life—because I’ve never ridden, and intend never to ride, with headphones, ear buds or any other audio device.