Where Have This Bike—And Its Rider—Been?

 What is an occupational hazard of browsing sites like eBay and Craigslist? Distraction. That is to say—especially with algorithms and AI making suggestions—it’s so easy to fall into to a “rabbit hole” and find yourself looking at things that may be only peripherally, if at all, related to what brought you to the site in the first place. 

Looking at bicycle-related items, which is the reason for much of my browsing, is especially hazardous:  I can spend hours gazing at bikes, parts and accessories, especially if they are old or unused.

Today this beauty caught my eye:

It might have been a custom build. In any case, it looks like a quality machine:  the frame’s workmanship and construction chrome finish look nice and the parts seem to be high- or medium-high class for their time.

The person (I assume it wasn’t AI) who wrote the description said “a friend” raced the bike in “the early 1960’s.” That seems plausible to me, given what I know about bikes from that period. But it’s not just the bike or some of its rarely-seen-today parts, like the Altenburger derailleurs (the front is a dead-ringer for the Campagnolo Valentino “matchbox” design) that linger in my mind.

Six decades have passed since the early 1960’s.  The world is a different place today. Where has that bike been during those years?  Has anyone besides the “friend” ridden it?  Even more to the point (call me morbid) I wonder whether that “friend” is still alive and what he (I’m guessing he, like most racers of the time, was male) did after racing on that bike.  Did he continue racing, or riding at all, on another bike? Or did he “hang it up” after getting a 9-to-5 job and starting a family? Perhaps he turned his attentions to another sport because, at least in the US, there was even less support for cycling than there is now.

That bike definitely has a story!

If It’s The Cruelest

 “April is the cruelest month” is one of the most famous opening lines in English-language literature. What led T.S. Eliot to believe, or at least write, that? In The Waste Land, he tells us ihe month is a time of “breeding lilacs out of the dead land” and “stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

Rebirths certainly can be painful or, at least, arduous. Perhaps that is why lilacs and cherry blossoms have long been my favorite blooms. Not only does their vibrant colors stir me; they inspire—as strange as this may sound—as much empathy in me as any plant can.  Even before I read Eliot’s poem, I felt, even if I couldn’t articulate, how their beauty was as much a denouement of pain as an expression of joy or, at least, relief.

So, if April is the “cruelest” month, what is March?  

Perhaps it’s the month of uncertainty.

That occurred to me the other day, as I rode to work and saw this:

)

What Kind Of Cyclist Woukd They Be?

 I haven’t heard the expression “cool cat” in a while. (Maybe I hang out in the wrong circles.) It meant, as I understood it, someone who was unflappable, self-assured and stylish. Or, at least, such a person had their own un-self conscious sense of style and their ease with it was exactly the reason why others tried to emulate it, but couldn’t.

What sort of image would a “cool cat” cyclist project?