Don’t Try This At Home—Or On the Road

 After yesterday’s weighty post, here’s something that will lighten up your Sunday:

I used to joke that after “this won’t hurt” and “one size fits all,” the biggest lie is that you can walk in cycling shoes—at least the ones we were riding.

How Do I Write About Cycling Or Midlife After Renee Good’s Murder?

 In some of my earlier posts, I invoked my “Howard Cosell Rule.” It gives me the latitude to, if not the right, to write about something not related to bicycles, bicycling or even being in midlife. 

The rule’s namesake, along with Don Meredith and Frank Gifford, was calling a game when New England Patriots kicker took to the field to boot a potential game-winning field goal against the Miami Dolphins. 

Instead of helping to build suspense, he announced “an unspeakable tragedy” that came to him from ABC News: the murder of John Lennon.  “Remember, this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses,” he intoned.

While some praised him, many more criticized him. A similar scenario ensued a dozen years earlier when he used his “Speaking of Sports” radio program to talk about another “unspeakable tragedy” from the previous night:  the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, just two months after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down.

Now, I have never received similar backlash for discussing, for example, bell hooks, mainly because I am not the public figure Cosell was.  Also, I suspect, most of my readers are at least sympathetic to my interests and proclivities even if we do not share them. On the other hand, many sports fans do not share Cosell’s views about society or culture or simply don’t want to hear about them when they tuned in for a football game.

All of this makes me wonder how readers responded to Matthew Miranda’s article. I suspect more than a few didn’t get past the byline: “I dunno how to write about the Knicks when the government is killing people.”

My guess is that Howard would have approved.  Certainly, I do.  

Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Good. Full stop.  In spite of what Trump administration officials are saying, she did nothing to endanger him or anyone else. Moreover, said officials have given no plausible reason for sending Ross and fellow ICE agents to Minnesota, where Good met her demise.  Oh, wait a minute, the Land of 10000 Lakes has welcomed more—wait for it—Somalis—than any place else.  Dark-skinned people in a land of Vikings. Oh, the horror! (sarcasm)

That folks like Ross can kill innocent people with impunity is hardly unique in history. What makes it, and the killing of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, especially chilling—and why comparing ICE to the Gestapo is only partly accurate—is that Ross and his colleagues voluntarily signed up for their jobs. Hitler’s agents were recruited, sometimes forcibly, from police and military units, the latter of which were conscripted.

Oh, and agents of the Gestapo (and the SS, its umbrella organization) didn’t wear masks.

Another Legend Passes

 When George H.W. Bush was Ronald Reagan’s vice president, some press wag nicknamed him “You Die, I Fly” because his chief duty seemed to be attending state funerals.

Now, I hope nobody starts calling  me “You Die, I Write” after reading this post.

A few days ago, I reported the death of Cannondale founder Joe Montgomery. Now I’m going to tell you about the passing of another titan of the bicycle industry.

If you were embarking upon a fully-loaded bicycle tour at the dawn of the 1970s North American Bike Boom, and you needed something stronger and stabler than a Pletscher “rat trap,” you had to beg a shop to order an English or French rack made from steel rods—or order it yourself.  Then you had to hope you could fit it to your bike, especially your frame didn’t have brazed-on fittings.

A young industrial designer saw one of those racks and thought, “I can do better.”  

He then created a rear carrier from welded aluminum rods that could be fitted to braze-ons, clamped to the seat stays or secured with an adjustable stainless steel “tongue” that attached to the brake bolt.

He would introduce his new rack on the night “Saturday Night Live” premiered.  OK, that’s not quite true, but you have to admit it’s a good story.  But his creation first appeared in shops and mail order catalogs around the same time, in 1975.

The timing was fortuitous.  The following year, thousands of cyclists participated in Bikecentennial. They needed to carry panniers and sleeping bags (in some cases,  both from Cannondale) across mountain passes and prairies to the ocean white with foam.

The creator of that rack would use the same design basis to make sturdy water bottle cages.  In the meantime, he studied the ways French randonneurs and other long-distance touring cyclists carried their loads and used his training to determine the best ways to balance weight.  He used that information to design front pannier carriers that lowered the center of gravity, which made for a more stable ride without sacrificing handling.

You know that front carrier as the “Lowrider.”  And if you are using a rear rack, its design and construction is influenced, at least in part,  his rear rack—if you aren’t riding the “real thing.”

The man responsible for those bike luggage supports, and many other fine bike accessories, was none other than Jim Blackburn, who passed away on Monday.  He was 86 years old.  

You might say that seeing that English steel rack was his midlife “crisis.” And the cycling world is better for it.

(I never met him but it seemed that everyone who did, liked him.)

Photo of Jim Blackburn by Greg Hine