Dodging The Rain For The Light

The past two days have included bouts of rain.  A deluge bore upon us just after I woke up this morning; after that, it seemed to rain every two hours or so.

This afternoon, I decided to do one of my "playing chicken with the rain" rides.  I got on Tosca (She really seems to like those rides!) and dared the skies to spill their wrath on me.


After riding cirlicues of cul-de-sacs and alleys around La Guardia Airport and the World's Fair Marina, I pedaled up the incline from downtown Flushing to Bayside Avenue, which took me to the eponymous neighborhood--and one of my favorite cycling destinations in Queens:

Fort Totten, as I've mentioned in other posts, was built at the point where the East River (which separates Queens from Manhattan, the Bronx and Rikers Island) opens into the Long Island Sound.  Some say that this is where Gatsby's "North Shore" begins.  

It offers one of those "I don't believe I'm in New York City" views.  The great thing about it is that it's as wonderful on a day like today as it is when the sun is shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky.

Some would call the light I saw today "subdued" or even "melancholy".  I wouldn't disagree with either, and enjoy both aspects of it.  In a way, it's rather soothing, even forgiving:  It reminds me, just vaguely, of the light that illunminated many days (especially in the early spring or fall) I lived in Paris and some of the time I spent in Prague.  Although it's a light you in which you can immerse yourself after long periods of difficulty, it is not merely soothing for it brings a lot of things into relief in a way that most people (I include myself) could never do on their own.

As for "playing chicken with the rain":  I felt a few raindrops as I took the photo.  And a few more whisked me as I rushed through Jackson Heights.  But, at the end of the ride, most of the moisture on my skin was my own sweat:  As you might expect, the day was very humid.

Christo, Bike Burritos and a Peugeot P8

By now, you've seen the Bike Burritos I attach to Arielle and Tosca when I don't need a larger bag.

Now I'm going to ask a question you'd probably never ask: What might a bike look like if it were finished to match my Burritos?

Well, it's not an exact match, but you get the idea.  I saw the bike parked in Tribeca, near the home of the Film Festival named for the neighborhood.

If you look closely, you realize the bike wasn't painted in that pattern:

The "finish" seems to be some kind of contact- or wall-paper wrapped around the frame tubes.

From the unwrapped parts of the bike, I guessed that it's a Peugeot P8 from around 1983.  I feel confident in saying that because I assembled dozens of them while working at Highland Park Cyclery.

Now I know what one of those bikes might have looked like if the creator of the Bike Burrito and Christo had collaborated!

Croix de....?

Just a couple of pedal strokes away from my apartment, I chanced upon this:

I don't know whether the two crossed posts were intended to prop up the wires or the light fixture.  Perhaps they were intended as a monument to something.  Whatever their purpose, they looked ominious against a sky ready to drop its wrath.

For a moment, I recalled a cross I reached (but didn't bear) on bicycle:

Photo by Mute*

Yes, that is the Croix de Fer on top of Mount Royal in Montreal.  It's visible from just about anywhere in the city. (At least, it seemed to be when I last rode there, about a dozen years ago.)  The 1974 World Championships were held in Montreal; a Belgian racer said the climb up Mount Royal was one of the most difficult climbs he encountered in his career.

Said Belgian won the race.  Three guesses as to who he was...

(Yes, Eddy Mercx.)

Now, I wonder what the "cross" in my neighborhood was made from.  I don't think it's fer.

An Old Conversion

In an earlier post, I wrote about the Schwinn Super Sport, a bicycle Schwinn produced from 1962 until 1973. 

At the time, Schwinn marketed it as a “lightweight” model.  It was indeed lighter than the Varsity or Continental, which were essentially ten-speed tanks.  The Super Sport featured a frame made of Chrome-Molybdenum tubing and most of its components, including the rims, were aluminum alloy.  One of the notable exceptions was the one-piece “Ashtabula” crank of the kind commonly found on cruisers, heavyweights and kids’ bikes.  (Some of those kinds of bikes, on which weight is no object, still come equipped with such cranks.)

However, it was possible to take a couple of pounds off the bike by changing the crankset.  At least one company offered a bottom bracket assembly that allowed the use of cotterless alloy cranks on frames made for Ashtabula cranks.  They seem to have been most widely used on motocross bikes; around the time that sport was developing, Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, Tom Ritchey and other early mountain bikers were using crank adapters on old Schwinn balloon-tire bikes they adapted for use with derailleur gears.  (Most of those bikes came with single-gear coaster brake hubs as original equipment.)  I haven’t seen, or even thought about such a crank conversion in ages—until today.

This bike was parked, with a few other bikes that were being used for deliveries, outside a bodega/takeout luncheonette not far from where I live.  I spotted it on my way home from a lunchtime ride:

Unfortunately, as the bikes were locked to each other, I couldn’t get a better photograph.  But I think you can see how the bike was converted.

I’m guessing that this conversion was done some time ago, as the crank is a Sugino Maxy from the mid-1970’s that shows its age.  At the time, they were one of the least expensive cotterless cranksets made.  Many mid-level Japanese bikes—including the Nishiki International I once owned—came with the Maxy as standard equipment.

It wasn’t bad:  It was definitely an improvement over the cottered steel cranksets found on most European bikes in the same price range, or Ashtabula cranks.  On the Maxy (and other cranksets like the Takagi Tourney), the large chainring was “swaged” (pressed) onto the inside of the right crank arm, and the smaller chainring was bolted to it.

That meant, of course, that the outer chainring couldn’t be changed.  But cyclists rarely wanted to make such a change:  Outer chainrings usually had 50 or 52 teeth, and the smallest cog on most freewheels had 14 teeth.  (Thirteen-tooth cogs were still exotic items used by professional racers.)  And, it was believed, few people would ride enough miles to wear out the large chainring. 

Anyway, the Super Sport was probably the one full-sized, derailleur-equipped bike on which such a crank conversion made sense.  (The next model up in Schwinn’s lineup, the Super Sport, came with a Nervar or TA cotterless crankset.) 

Because the Maxy is of more or less the same era as the bike (and the conversion kit), it didn’t look out of place.  All of the other components, save one, were original.  The rear derailleur—an all-black Shimano Deore—is definitely an improvement over the Schwinn-branded Huret Allvit that came with the bike.  I couldn’t photograph the bike from an angle in which I could show the derailleur, but I think you’ll understand (and perhaps agree) when I say that it screams “replacement part” in a way the crankset doesn’t.

A Frustrated Mechanic?

Most of the world uses the Metric system to measure things. 

My recalcitrant country-men and -women (I'm not politically correct enough to say "countrypeople"!) will have none of it:  We still cling to the Imperial/Avoirdupois system, and measure heat or cold in Farhenheit rather than Celsius temperatures.

About three decades ago, the powers-that-be in the world's bicycle industries talked of adopting a universal standards. At the time, most of the world's bikes came with English, French or Italian threadings for bottom brackets, freewheels (There weren't any cassette freehubs in those days.), headests, stems and pedals.  English measurements were expressed in inches, while French and Italian were in milli/centimeters.  Older and lower-priced American bikes had unique threads and other dimensions that were expressed in fractions and inches. But most bikes from Japan and current or former British colonies had English threads, while most Continental European bikes that weren't from Italy had French threads.

A strange thing happened, though.  French threading was dropped altogether.  Italian bikes--and some French and other Continental (e.g., Belgian) racing bikes adopted Italian standards.  But the rest of the world adhered to English standards--at the same time they started to size their bikes (even those intended for export to the US) in centimeters rather than inches and equipped them with 700C rather than 27" wheels.

I thought about all of this on seeing this graffito:

Was this person protesting the adoption of the Metric system?  Perhaps he/she was accustomed to ordering pints of beer in a bar/pub. Or, perhaps, he or she was a good ol' Amurrrikun mechanic who's sick of the half-Imperial, half-metric system we have in bicycling.