Tiagra Is Top-Of-The-Line. Really!

Some of you may be riding bikes equipped with Shimano Tiagra components. In the hierarchy of the world's largest component maker, it is fourth in the six levels of road components--one level below the 105 (which, along with the Deore LX, its mountain-bike counterpart, has long offered Shimano's best value for the money, in my opinion) and one level above Sora.  So. if you have Tiagra, you have good stuff that functions well, though it might not last as long as Shimano's better lines--Ultegra/600 and Dura-Ace for the road and Deore XT and XTR for mountain bikes.

I have long known that, in addition to bike parts, Shimano also makes fishing equipment.  Not being a fisherperson myself, I hardly paid attention.  However, when looking for a diagram of a Shimano derailleur, I came across this:

It's a Tiagra, though obviously not one you're riding.  Actually, there are several different models of Tiagra.  Like the one in the photo, they're made for deep-sea fishing.  None of them are cheap, but from what I understand, they are among the best, if not the best, deep sea fishing reels  available.

And, I must say, they are beautiful, though I have to wonder how they (or any other reel used in deep sea conditions) would keep their looks.  To be fair, I think most fisherpeople aren't as inclined to buy their equipment for aesthetics as some cyclists are. Or, perhaps, they define beauty in a different way.

I think it's interesting that, for one sport, Shimano gives its top-of-the-line models the same model name as the one that appears on mid-level equipment for another sport.

Who Needs The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Anyway?

In my youth, someone gave me a subscription to Sports Illustrated.  I don't know how long it was supposed to last, but I think I recieved every issue from the day my first puberty began until I was engaged.  I don't remember why I didn't renew it.  Perhaps, not having a lot of money, I had to choose between it and and something else--was it a Campagnolo part?  Or something my fiancee and I would need for our new household?

Whatever the reason for my cancellation, it had nothing to do with the most popular issue published every year.  Back then, it was released in January, around the second or third week.  By now, you probably know what I'm talking about:  The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

I was not at all interested in the very scantily-clad images of Cheryl Tiegs and and Carol Alt and Elle Macpherson posing in exotic locales.  Really, I wasn't.  I was reading about the NBA and NHL All-Star games, which were usually played around the time The Issue came out.

I swear it's true.... ;-)  

Anyway...I was reminded of the SISI when I saw this:

Can you say, "Ooh-la-la"?  About the bicycle, I mean?

Seriously, Abbey Lee Kershaw looks great on or with--or without--any bike.  But take a look at those fenders. Those reflectors  The bags on the sides of the rack.  They're almost as cool as the tatoo on her ankle. (And I don't even like tatoos, generally.

There's one problem, though, with those photos.  No outfit is complete without a faabulous pair of shoes.  For Abbey Lee, they wouldn't be just a fashion statement.  I mean, would you ride those pedals barefoot?

Really, now.  

Did You Make A New Year's Resolution?

You know all of the most common New Year's Resolutions:  go on a diet, drink less, stop smoking, learn a foreign language, get a better job (or start a new career or business), return to school, be nicer to people-- and never, ever make a New Year's Resolution ever again.  

You've probably made at least one of these at some point or another in your life--or when the clock struck midnight the other night.  ("I will stop drinking," she said while sipping champagne.)  And, if you're typical, it lasted about two weeks.

Somehow I think cycling-related resolutions last longer. Usually, they involve riding more or doing more challenging--or simply different kinds of--rides.  People who make such resolutions are, typically, already cycling (or are motivated to do so) and have riding partners or belong to cycling clubs.  Common sense and basic psychology (Believe it or not, they're not mutually exclusive!) tell us it's easier to stick with something you're already doing than to start it, than it is to start something and keep moving ahead with it when we encounter the first "bump in the road".

From The Bike Cafe

Another reason, I think, cycling-related resolutions made by cyclists are more likely to be kept is that tend to be more specific than something like, "I will be a kinder person".  That doesn't surprise me:  Over the years, I've noticed that students who have a specific or particular goal, whether it's becoming an accountant, auteur or anaesthesiologist, are more likely to stay in school and complete their degrees than those who have some vague sense that they need a degree to get a job that pays well (an increasingly dubious proposition these days) or because their parents, friends or communities want them to become an "educated" person.

Now I'll confess that I didn't make any resolution, cycling- related or otherwise.  In fact, I haven't made one in a long time.  If I recall correctly, I made my last resolution before I discovered this poem:

      For The Coming Year
         --by Peter Everwine

      With the stars
      rising again in my han

      Let my left arm be a rooster
      it will keep the watches of the night

      And let my right arm be an axe
      it will be sleepless in the gate of morning

      When I fold them to me
      they will take things into their circle

      They will sing softly to each other
      softly

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

From NBX/Narragansett Bikes

A Reflection On 2015

I know that for many people, 2015 has been a terrible, tragic year.  I feel their pain, not in the least because at least one devastating event touched my life, if only tangentially.

Still, this year has been a very good year for me---the best since my surgery, and possibly before that--in many ways.  Cycling has had much to do with that.

Of course, riding to and from museums and cafes, along rivers, canals and boulevards, and through new experiences as well as memories, in Montreal and Paris can make just about anybody's year.  What really made those events, and much else in my life, special this year is an observation my friend Jay made while we had lunch in the City of Light: "You seem very settled as a woman now."  


The last time we'd met before then, I was in the early stages of my gender transition.  I was still acting and dressing in ways I was "supposed" to.  To be more precise, I was trying to show that I wasn't a man. (That, after I'd spent so much of my life trying to prove the exact opposite!)  At that point in my life, I really wondered whether I could or wanted to continue cycling. For one thing, I knew that I couldn't continue to ride in the way in which I'd been accustomed.  More important, though, I still believed that my transition meant "killing", if you will, the man named Nick I had lived as.  For that reason, I also wondered whether I would continue teaching although most people don't think of it as a particularly "masculine" occupation.

Since then, I have come to realized that cycling and teaching, as well as writing and even my taste in foods, are not part of one gender or another; they are part of my identity.  In other words, they intertwine with other things to make me who I am.  When anything is so integral to your life, you don't dispose or efface it; it changes with you or you change it as you are changing yourself.  So, perhaps, the way you execute or express them changes.  

In my case, pedaling up a hill or writing an essay or poem is no longer a conquest or even a goal met; it is an accomplishment, on whatever scale. Sometimes I still think about how Nick would have seen all of this--he wouldn't have approved, I'm sure--but I feel compassion for him.  After all, he couldn't have understood that he was, even then, becoming me.   Yes, she was becoming her mother!

It's fun, really. And the cycling has gotten better. That's what 2015 means to me right now.