What They Brought, What I Took Away

Yesterday I pedaled out to the Brooklyn Army Terminal, better known today as a terminal for the ferries to downtown Manhattan and the Rockaways.

BAT has also been a vaccination site--which is the reason I rode there.  I got my second jab; the first went well, so I figured I wouldn't have any problem riding there or back.

I didn't.  I did, however, enjoy a beautiful early Spring afternoon.  I still find it ironic to be riding a bike for enjoyment in a place where men like my uncles and grandfather did difficult and often dangerous work.

And they weren't going there to look at the Statue of Liberty, the passing boats or the lower Manhattan skyline.  The latter looked very different in those days--which included my early childhood.  The Twin Towers that came tumbling down after the 9.11 attacks had yet to be built.  They may not have even been conceived, any more than the promenade or cafes were--or the notion that the piers would ever be used for anything other than unloading loading and unloading the ships that came and went, and the flatbed railroad cars that connected them to the factories were still other men (and some women) did other kinds of hard and dangerous work.

And to think--getting jabbed with a needle was the most pain I experienced on this waterfront, where so many others endured so much more, and ocean waves lapped against ships with cabins soaked within by their sweat, the blood of some and the tears of others.  

I rode, my wheels seemingly lofted by the sun and wind.

Speed, From The Comfort of Your Sofa

In my post about the death of Prince Philip, I mentioned that he particpiated in one of the few genres of cycling in which I've never tried:  bicycle polo.

Now I'm going to talk about one of the few kinds of bicycles I've never tried:  the recumbent.

The "safety" bicycle, with two wheels of equal (or nearly so) size and a gear-and-chain drivetrain appeared in the late 1880s.  Earlier bicycles--the high-wheelers often called "penny farthings"--had a front wheel much larger than the rear.  The crank and pedals attached directly to the front wheel, so how high or low a gear you rode depended on the size of the wheel.  Typical front wheels were 60 to 70 inches in diameter, which meant for a rather precarious perch in the saddle.  The "safety" bicycle was a contrast to such machines.

Charles Challand's "Normal"

But not everyone liked the bent-over position of those early "safety" bicycles.  So, Charles Challand, a Geneva professor, created the "normal" bicycle--so called because it allowed the rider to pedal in a "normal" position.

Around the same time, Irving Wales of Rhode Island applied for a patent on a similar bicycle.  His bike, however, had an added feature:  a hand drive similar to the one on a rowing machine.  Though augmenting pedal power could make for a faster ride, hand power never really caught on.

Other tinkerers would experiment with other features, which re-appear from time to time on modern recumbents:  An Italian recumbent had a steering wheel instead of handlebars; an English machine had a 16 inch front wheel and short wheelbase, rather like a time trial or triathlon bike.  A long-wheelbase recumbent from France, possibly made by Peugeot, had a 26-inch rear wheel and 22-inch front, with a front end resembling that of a diamond-frame safety bike.  But the handlebars were where the saddle of a safety would have been; bridle rods linked them to the steerer (headset). 

That long-wheelbase recumbent might have been the most conspicuous example of what recumbent bike designers have tried to achieve:  a smooth, stable ride from the comfort of your sofa.

Paul Jaray's "Sofa" bicycle

Speaking of which:  In 1921, Austrian aeronautical engineer Paul Jaray created the "sofa" bicycle.  In addition to its seating arrangement, it boasted another unique feature:  treadle drive.  On his first stereotype, Jaray connected the treadles to the rear wheel by steel cables with return springs.  

In a later version, a cable from the left treadle lever wound several times around a left drum on the rear hub, then onto a horizontal pulley, and then onto a right drum.  After several more winds, the cable connected to the right treadle lever.  This might seem complicated, but it did away with the "dead center" problem of the first stereotype.

Over the years, other cyclists, engineers, inventors and tinkerers experimented with different recumbent designs.  Two developments, though, halted the machines' evolution for a few decades.  The first came in 1934, when the UCI published a new definition of racing bikes that, some said, was crafted specifically to exclude recumbents, which were being ridden to record times and distances.  The second was World War II.  

Still, the recumbent never quite faded away.  There seems to be renewed interest in them, and they're being reconfigured with modern materials and componentry.  One rarely, if ever, sees recumbents here in New York or in other large cities, I believe, because of their (and their riders') lack of visibility in traffic.  But I intend to ride a "sofa" one day.

Even The Dutch Take A Wrong Turn Sometimes

Which of these statements is true?

A. The Netherlands gets it right when it comes to cycling infrastructure.

B.  Justine Valinotti is a direct descendent of Christopher Columbus and inherited his sense of direction.

Actually, neither is completely true--or false.  I can't claim lineage (as far as I know, anyway) to the guy who didn't "discover" America, but my navigational skills are on par with his.  It's a good thing I have a sense of adventure!

As for the Netherlands:  Much of the world sees it as a cycling paradise.  Indeed, there are more bikes than people, and its system of bike lanes and other structures are, well, a system, more or less:  They actually make cycling a real transportation alternative, at least in the cities.

That said, even Dutch planners get it wrong sometimes.  Mark Wagenbuur reminds us of this in a recent post on his blog, Bicycle Dutch.

Once or twice a year, he rents a bike at the Venlo train station and rides to his in-laws in Grubbenvorst.  In times past, his route was perhaps not the most scenic, but was pretty direct--and, from his direction, relatively safe for cycling.  Four years ago, however, the local government built a viaduct for cyclists that was ostensibly safe and convenient for cyclists.

The problem, from Mr. Wagenbuur's point of view, was that one of the roads he took on earlier trips was closed to cyclists--and the viaduct was designed, in part, to bypass that road. It forces cyclists to take a slightly longer--but considerably more complicated--route.

The blue line is Mark Wagenbuur's current route.  The horizontal blue segment is the viaduct.  His old route is in green.  In red are possible connections that could make his route more straighforward. From Bicycle Dutch.

He admits that the additional distance isn't much--it adds only 36 seconds to his trip--but the detours and other turns are exasperating.  I guess he's a bit like me in that way:  I don't mind taking a longer route, whether it's for a commute or a fun ride.  If I'm trying to get to a particular place (e.g., work or a doctor's appointment) at a particular time, though, I prefer to minimize my chances of taking a wrong turn.

As I've said in other posts, merely building bike lanes isn't going to convert people from four wheels to two.  Those lanes have to be planned in order to provide safe, convenient and practical routes for cyclists.  That happens more often in European countries, like the Netherlands, than in the United States.  But, since Dutch planners are people (and may not realize that folks like me are navigationally-challenged), every once in a while they make missteps--like the viaduct Mark Wagenbuur described.