Shin's Tricycle

On this blog, I have written several posts about bicycles, and the ways they have been used, in war.  It may surprise you to learn that the reason why I am interested in such things--and in military history, with an emphasis on the history--is that I am anti-war.  In fact, I believe that the only chance the human race has of surviving-- let alone becoming a better, more enlightened species--is to render war obsolete.  Only then will we be truly able to address issues of environmental degradation and economic injustice.

That last sentence also explains why I am anti-war and pro-veteran:  To me, few things show how pointless war is than seeing a veteran sleeping under a bridge, highway overpass or train trestle, as I sometimes see on my way to work. It also explains why I see bicycling to work and school, and even for recreation --and not as a self-conscious fashion statement or a callow attempt at irony (Can it really be irony if you're trying to achieve it?)--as an instrument for attaining peace and justice.

So, in that spirit, I am posting this photograph:

Why?, you ask.  Well, on this date 70 years ago, a boy named Shin and his best friend, a girl named Kimi, were playing with it when--to paraphrase Albert Camus in The Plague--death rained on them from the clear blue sky. 

When Shin's family found him under a house beam, he was too weak to talk.  But his hand still held the red grip of that tricycle.  And Kimi was nowhere to be found.

Shin would not survive that night.  Nor would Kimi, who was found later.   Shin's father could not bear to leave him in a lonely graveyard, so he was interred--along with Kimi and the tricycle--in the family's backyard.

In 1985--forty years after the first atomic bomb leveled their home town of Hiroshima--his father decided to move his remains to the family's gravesite.  He, with the help of his wife, dug up the backyard burial ground.   There they found "the little white bones of Kimi and Shin, hand in hand as we had placed them," according to the father.

Also present was the tricycle, which the father had all but forgotten.  Lifting it out of the grave, he said, "This should never happen to children.  The world should be a peaceful place where children can play and laugh."

The next day, he would donate the tricycle to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where it is exhibited with other artifacts, as well as drawings, photos and stories from survivors of the first atomic bomb, exploded over the city 70 years ago today.

The tricycle inspired a children's book written by survivor Tatsuharu Kodama.  Published in 1995, Shin's Tricycle is narrated by Nobuo Tetsunani, Shin's father.  It's as painful as it is beautiful.  I urge you to read it--and to take a good look at those stark drawings!  
 

The Life Of Carbon

Yesterday, I paid a visit to Bicycle Habitat in Soho.  Hal Ruzal is one of the mechanics I go to when I don’t have the time or tools—or am too lazy—to build or fix something.  As he was fixing another customer’s bike, I noticed a bike in his work station.

 

“Wow! That’s a really early Trek carbon fiber bike.”

He nodded.  “It’s hardly been ridden at all,” he said.

The bike certainly didn’t look any older than it did the day it rolled out of the showroom in 1990 or thereabouts.  That’s not to say it’s timeless:  While it looked new, it was certainly dated.

Although I was never tempted to buy one, I rather admired them back in the day.  They were sleek, almost elegant, in a high-tech sort of way, with purple lettering and graphics on a graphite-grey frame.
 

Aside from the color combination, the bike had an almost-classic look because its frame tubes were more or less the same diameter as those on steel frames.  Also, it had the slender joints found on classic frames, although it didn’t have the nice lugwork one finds on the best European and Japanese frames—or even the bikes Trek was building before they started making carbon frames.  

At least the frame, unlike too many of today’s frames, didn’t seem to have been built my melting frame tubes together in a microwave oven.  Then again, the way the bike is built might be the reason why so few of them are seen today—or that the one I saw  has survived as long as it has only because it hasn’t been ridden very much.

Hal reiterated something he and others “in the know” have said before:  Carbon-fiber bikes aren’t made to last.  Then again, the same thing can be said about most super-light aftermarket equipment:  something I learned from experience.  As I mentioned in another post, a hub with aluminum flanges bonded to a carbon fiber body collapsed one day while I was riding a smooth road.  I also broke a carbon fiber handlebar, and other riders I knew destroyed expensive lightweight CNC-machined parts as well as stuff made from carbon fiber.

Yet there are people who will—as I did in my youth—ride, or simply buy, such stuff “because the pros use it”.  While those carbon-fiber bars or magnesium wheels (or, ahem, non-round chainrings) might actually give some racer an edge in a World Cup event, said racer doesn’t have to buy, install, fix or replace it.  These days, the stuff sponsors give to top-level pros is intended only for one season; the following year, they get new bikes and parts.  And their teams’ mechanics keep everything running for them.

(Now I am thinking about Miguel Indurain, who won the Tour de France five times during the 1990s.  After he retired, he went shopping for a bike.  He all but fell over when he saw the price tag on a machine like the one he rode: During his two decades as a professional cyclist, he never had to buy a bike or any of the kit he wore.)

From what Hal and others have told me, things haven’t changed.  Yes, today’s bikes are lighter, and probably stiffer (if not stronger) than those of the past.  But carbon fiber frames and parts don’t last any longer than they did in those days—unless, like the Trek I saw the other day, it isn’t ridden.

Your Secret Is Safe With Me

Nearly every one of us has done something we won't admit--except, perhaps, under extreme duress-- to having done.

People have confided such misdeeds to me. Back when I was a Rutgers student and riding with the Central Jersey Bicycle Club, a ride leader about three times my age whispered to me that he voted for Richard Nixon.  One of my fellow students, who wanted to be the next Sir Kenneth Clarke, confided to me that he once paid full price for a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet--in hardcover, no less!  And a woman I dated tearfully related how, around the time she was entering puberty, she had a crush on David Cassidy, a.k.a. Keith Partridge.

Of course I assured them their secrets are safe with me.  I am not breaking my promise:  I am sure that none of them read this blog.  In fact, I know the Nixon voter never will, unless he can see it from that great bike path in the sky.

Now it's time for me to come clean.  No, I won't tell you about the things I've done behind closed doors:  Some things are best left to the imagination.  (I assure you, though, they were done only with consenting adults and no endangered species were harmed.)  I actually had a Members Only jacket--and copy of Spandau Ballet's True. (The latter was a gift--I swear!)  I also straddled the 80s trends of camouflage and neon colors:  When I wanted to look tough and macho, I did camo, but in my heart of hearts, I loved that neon pink, especially my Italian winter cycling jacket in that color. 

And I also--please, please don't tell anyone--wore something that looks even more ridiculous now than Duran Duran's hairdos: 

So you wore them, too?  OK, I promise not to tell.  I had a pair of those Oakley Factory Pilot goggles, circa 1985, in--you guessed it--neon pink. 

To be fair, they were more practical for cycling, in a number of ways, than traditional sunglasses.  For one thing, they had interchangeable lenses. So you could wear smoke-gray on sunny days, the amber lenses on cloudy days and clear ones at night.  Also, because they wrapped around the temples, they provided protection from wind and insects as well as sun.  (I really appreciated them the time I got caught in a sleet storm during a ride!)  Finally, they weren't as fragile as other sunglasses were.

But they seemed to cover the face of just about anyone who wore them. 

Now that's a strange combination:  Oakley Factory Pilots with a "leather hairnet".   But he needn't worry:  His secret is safe with me!  ;-)

 

They Have Been Done; They Will Be Done Again

Who made the first dual-suspension folding bike?

No, it wasn't Dahon.   Nor was it Montague.  Even Moulton's double-shock folder has antecedents.

We may not ever know for sure who made the very first bike of this type.  I did find out, though,that one was made 100 years ago by a company that's still making bikes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was developed for use in war.  Some of the earliest foldable or collapsible bikes were made for soldiers to carry on their backs. Some, like the one I'm about to mention, even had mounts for guns or rifles.

In 1915, all of the major European powers were embroiled in World War I.  Some of the best-known developments of that conflict are the machine gun (which is said to have inspired the ratcheting freewheel) and chemical weaponry.  It may also have spawned bicycles with suspension and some of the earliest foldable bikes.

Bianchi Dual-Suspension Folding Bike, 1915

A bike that could both bounce and fold was created for the Italian Army by--you guessed it--Bianchi.  The company claims that it was the first of its type.  That may well be true, but it's always difficult to say that anything was a "first" in cycling because so many designs simply disappeared without a trace only to be resurrected, sometimes by "inventors" who had no idea of their previous existence.

Still, I don't think folks at Bianchi are stretching the truth very much, if at all, when they say the dual-suspension folding bike they created for the Italian Army in 1915 was the first of its kind. There don't seem to be any records of bikes with dual suspension or folding bikes much before that date. Also, it's hard to imagine that the technology of the 19th Century--in bikes as well as manufacturing techniques--could have made suspended or folding bikes practical or widely available much before that date.

Whether or not it was the first bike of its kind, it's yet another example of how this passage from Ecclesiastes applies to the bicycle world:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. 

She Rides In Australia

A friend expressed consternation that today I cycled to Connecticut alone,  something I've done before.

I have also done that ride, and others, with friends.  But, she says, she wonders how I can ride alone.  

She is about a decade and a half older than I am and has not ridden a bike since she was a teenager.  That was typical for the place and time in which she grew up.  She says she'd thought about riding again but had difficulty finding other riders, particularly female ones.

"And the roads are so dangerous.  Don't you worry?"

I explained, as I've explained before, that I am careful but that cycling, while it has its risks, is really no more dangerous than any number of other things people do.  "To tell you the truth, I feel less safe crossing some streets--especially Queens and Northern Boulevards--as a pedestrian than I feel when I'm biking," I elaborated.

Her fear is a common one. In fact, a recent study shows that it's the main reason why women don't ride bikes.  To address that fear or reality, depending on one's point of view, Cycling Australia has initiated the "She Rides" program to get women to take to the same roads men ride every weekend.

Participation Coordinator Alex Bright said that while most women cycled as children, getting them back in the saddle as adults had been difficult.  In the hope of encouraging more women to ride, "We wanted to create a program that connected them with like minded women to help them get going and riding," she explained. "We wanted to provide a way to support women to get on their bikes because a lot of women feel unsafe on the road."

Members of a She Rides group in Parramatta, New South Wales

That program includes an eight-week course that now operates in 46 locations throughout Australia.  Charlene Bordley has coached three She Rides programs and says that while physical fitness is a benefit of riding, "it's also about mental fitness."  Riding for the first time in their adult lives--or, in some cases, for the first time in their lives, "is freedom for some people," she said.

Bordley, Bright and others involved with the program are doing something right:  Ninety percent of the women who have participated say they are more likely to ride on bike lanes or quiet roads than when they started, while 78 percent are more likely to ride busy streets.  

Manju Prajesh is one of those participants.  Even today, she still can't believe she now has the confidence to ride on the road.  "We have totally lost our fear," she says.