How Many Bikes Do You Need?

 A few neighbors have asked me, “How many bikes do you have?” I never give a direct answer. Part of the reason is my nature:  For whatever reasons, I have never liked “How much” or “How many” questions.

I will admit, however, that I have more bikes (seven) than most people. If I had more money or space, would I want more? In my youth, I would have said, “Definitely!” Then again, I didn’t have as many bikes as I have now.

Seeing this video from Rémy Métailler made me feel that while I may never know how many bikes are enough, I don’t feel as if I have too many.

Ten bikes. He has me beat. But the late, great Sheldon Brown had more bikes than both of us put together:  30.

Will Marilyn Be Forever In Midlife?

 The other day marked an anniversary. It’s one of those dates like that of the JFK assassination: Had I been a little bit older, I might’ve remembered where I was when news about it flashed across screens and buzzed over radio wires.

Early in the morning of 5 August 1962, Eunice Murray noticed a light under the bedroom door in the house where she worked. She knew that wasn’t a good sign. She called Dr. Ralph Greenson.

Why Dr. Greenson? He was the psychiatrist of the woman who slept in that room. Except, that morning she didn’t wake up:  Some time during the previous night, she ingested a fatal dose of sleeping pills.

Eunice Murray was the woman’s housekeeper. By now, if you didn’t already know, you probably figured that the woman in question was Marilyn Monroe.

So, apart from the anniversary of her death, why am I writing about her? Well, she was 36 years old, which means she would have turned 100 on 1 June.  Nobody seems to think of what she might’ve been like as a centenarian, or even if she had lived to be, say, 70 or 80. At the same time, the images of her are not those of an aborted youth, like those we hold of James Dean or any number of rock stars who died young.  

So was she in midlife when she died? Purely from the standpoint of chronological age, we might say she was on the cusp of it. In terms of her career and fame, however, she wasn’t. It’s generally agreed that her rise to international stardom began in 1953, when she appeared in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “Niagara.” So her career as we remember it was less than a decade old when she passed.

This fact is especially striking when you realize that just a few months after “GPB” and “Niagara” were released, she wed Joe Di Maggio, who had just retired from what made him famous. That fact and his age (12 years Marilyn’s senior) would lead most people to agree that he was indeed in midlife, or entering it, just as Marilyn was becoming, well, Marilyn.

Because he remained in the public eye after his playing days ended, people saw him age—well, but age nonetheless. By the time he died in 1998, aged 84, he had become a kind of eminence grise.  

Which brings me back to my earlier question: How do we remember Marilyn Monroe? Did she die on the verge of middle age? Or does she live on in a suspended kind of midlife?

Is This Raleigh The End?

 Two years ago, I wrote about Mercian’s near-death experience. It ceased trading in April 2024.  A few weeks later, a group of four businessmen who are cycling enthusiasts purchased the company with the intention to “honour its legacy.” (Gotta use British spelling, ya know!) it seems they have:  They kept the blazers, painters and other craftspeople who were doing all of that beautiful work. In the meantime, they overhauled management and customer service, which seemed to be the sources of the company’s problems.

The BBC and other media described Mercian, rightly, as “iconic.” They are, in the sense that they are emblematic of traditional bespoke frame-building. They are not, however, a name most casual or very young cyclists, let alone the general public, know. 

If you ask most people to name an English bike-maker, they would probably say, “Raleigh.” The (perhaps sad) irony is that it hasn’t made bicycles in England since 2002 and hasn’t even been British-owned since 2012. Those developments ended 115 years of manufacturing in Nottinghamshire and 125 years of English proprietorship.

Photo by Christopher Thomson for The Guardian

Raleigh was, perhaps, the most-recognized bicycle brand in the world (and probably second only to Schwinn in the US) because it was the largest manufacturer in the world.  At its peak, over 8000 workers turned out more than a  million bicycles in Nottinghamshire.  To put that in perspective, if we assume that Raleigh operated an eight-hour day five days a week, it produced more bikes in an hour than Mercian made frames in a year.   

By now, you might have guessed why I am writing about Raleigh:  it might be consigned to the parts bin of history. Back to 2012:  That’s when Dutch group Accell, which owns other bike and e-bike brands, bought Raleigh. Ten years later, KKR, a US-based private equity firm bought Accell.

Little did the folks at KKR realize they were buying just as the COVID pandemic bike boom was about to go bust. The industry couldn’t respond quickly enough to increased demand. Bike shops ran out of inventory; by the time manufacturers ramped up production, it was too late. Shops and manufacturers, including Raleigh, were stuck with excess inventory.

KKR couldn’t right its ship by cutting costs and sharing operations between brands.  But it was too little, too late:  They had to hand the business over to creditors, who tried arranging a takeover, which failed.