A Time Capsule In A Local Bike Shop

In this blog, I have often mentioned Bicycle Habitat.  It's a fine shop (well, now they're a series of shops) and I have a relationship with them that goes back decades, to the time I was working for American Youth Hostels and Habitat was around the corner.  They've remained a "go-to" source for me, and their chief mechanic and partner, Hal Ruzal, turned me on to Mercians.

I also patronize a shop in my neighborhood:  Tony's, right in the heart of the still-Greek part of Astoria.  Actually, I learned about them years ago, when I was an artist-in-residence at St. Mary's Hospital for Children and a chain snapped on my way home.

Recently, I bought a couple of things from them.  I got to talking with the owner, who is friendly and helpful.  Although he sells current-model Cannondales and Treks, he has a trove of older parts.  He probably wasn't joking when he said some of them have been there since the shop opened in the early '70's.

I spotted one such piece of equipment in his showcase:  a pair of Shimano bar-end shifters from the '70's.  "I haven't seen those in a while," I remarked.

"I can show you something else you probably haven't seen in a long time."

That was an understatement, to say the least.

I think that I've seen one other set of Simplex bar-end shifters in my life.  Certainly, I haven't seen them in four decades, or close to it.  

Most cyclists who rode bar-end shifters during the '70's and '80's chose SunTour's.  I even saw a few otherwise all-Campagnolo bikes with "Bar Cons," and with good reason:  Sun Tour's ratcheting mechanism made them much smoother and more reliable than other companies' bar-end shifters.  To this day, they are probably still the best-selling bar end shifter of all time:  Many cyclists, even some who aren't "retro-grouches," seek them out on eBay and other places.

If my own observations are indicative of wider trends, I'd say that just about everybody who didn't use SunTour's bar end shifters in those days opted for Shimano which, while not as pleasant to use as SunTour's, were still better than the ones made by other companies--including Campagnolo.

Simplex and Huret bar ends (which are often believed to have been made in the same factory) relied on friction to keep the lever in place when it wasn't being shifted.  So did Campagnolo's bar ends, as well as most other shift levers made for derailleurs.  Friction is fine on downtube shifters, but makes for balkier shifting with the extra cable length required by bar-end shifters.

Simplex, however, seemed to believe it had a solution to the problem with its demultiplicateur.  It clamps to the down tube, near the bottom bracket--in the same spot a cable guide would have been placed.  While most guides for rear derailleur cables were (and are) "tunnels" through which one cable runs continuously, the demultiplicateur was a bell crank-like device to which two lengths of cable--one forward to the shift levers, the other rearward to the derailleur--were attached to pivot points with differing radii.   This increased the mechanical advantage, which made for easier and smoother (if not necessarily more accurate) shifts.  A few constructeurs and custom builders brazed them onto their frames, most often tandems, which required cables longer than some of the rides people take.

Based on my limited experience with the demultiplicateur,  I'd say it did what it was intended to do, and did it well. It made shifting those old Simplex and Huret derailleurs (as well as Campy derailleurs that didn't have "Record" or "Gran Sport" in their names) tolerable, even with bar-end shifters.  But shops usually tried to dissuade customers from them:  For one thing, they were never easy to come by.  But, more important (at least from their point of view), they were more complicated than other cable-routing systems, which meant that mechanics hated installing them and customers balked at the extra cost (for the extra time needed) to install them.

I was tempted to make an offer on those shifters and their demultipilicateur, which were still in the packaging from nearly half a century ago.  But I encouraged Tony to list them, unless he wanted to keep them:  Someone out there is restoring a French bike and would want, if not the shifters, then at least the demultiplicateur.  Or, I'm sure, some collector would want them.

I asked Tony whether he had any Simplex downtube shifters.  (Of course, I'm thinking of the retrofriction levers.)  He doesn't think he has any, or any other vintage downtube levers, he said.  But those Simplex bar-ends were certainly a find!  Even if you're not interested in vintage bike equipment, people like Tony are fun and interesting to talk with just because they've been involved with bikes for so long. Oh, and I shared my reminisces about Greece with him.  He assured me that my itinerary was a good one for a first visit!

Is Thin “In” Again?

When I first became a dedicated cyclist, about four decades ago, it could have shared a motto with the fashion industry: Thin is “in.”  Even touring bikes had tires, and were constructed from parts, that are positively svelte.

Cycling was also like fashion because thin and rich went together.  The most expensive bikes were thinner and lighter than the rest:  You could get a Schwinn baloon-tired bike for a song, or less.

All of that began to change with the introduction of frames made from large-diameter aluminum tubing—and mountain bikes.  Road racing bikes still had skinny tires, but the development of mountain bikes showed many people the practicality of wider tires.

About a decade ago, “fat tire,” or simply “fat”bikes appeared.  They looked like downhill mountain bikes on steroids.  While they first became popular as “snow” bikes or the two-wheeled equivalents of Hummers.  I’ve seen some here in New York, though none in hipster or affluent neighborhoods.  And I have seen fewer of them over the past few years.

It seems that I’ve been witnessing a larger trend, according to Jeff Barber in Singletrack. Apparently, the fat-bike trend reached its peak around 2015, at least if we judge it by the number of models offered by manufacturers.  According to Barber’s article, half as many models are available this year, and a few companies have stopped making them.

One thing I have noticed is that here in New York City, the popularity of fat bikes seems to have fallen off as motorized   and electric bikes have become more common.  Just as I don’t recall seeing fat bikes in Greenpoint or other self-consciously hip precincts, I don’t see residents of such neighborhoods on e- or motorized bikes.  In such places, if you see someone on a bike with an electric or mechanical
assist, he (yes, he’s almost invariably male—and an immigrant) is probably delivering dinner to someone who doesn’t ride an e-bike, but might ride a “fixie” to the N.Y. Waterways ferry.

I wonder whether the fall of the fat tire correlates with the rise of ebikes in other parts of the country. Or is thin “in” again?

Does Your Bike Lie?

It’s 2:00 in the afternoon.

Is the bike’s owner inside the bar?

The girlfriend of an old cycling buddy once told me she could gauge his mental and emotional state by looking at his bikes. “He doesn’t say much,” she explained.  “But the bikes tell me everything.”

I wonder what she’d make of this bike.

Breaks

Shawn Granton, the man behind Urban Adventure League, was running errands in his adopted hometown of Portland.  He was riding at a speed normal for those circumstances when the seatpost on his Raleigh Crested Butte broke under him.

What was unusual, though, was the way it failed:  in the middle of the tube, near the seat tube collar.

In my four decades-plus as a cyclist, which includes time as a bike mechanic, I have seen and heard of maybe a handful of seatposts that broke.  And I can think of only one post besides Shawn’s that broke mid-tube:  In my last bike-shop gig,  I worked on a warranty claim for a customer who experienced the failure of an early carbon fiber post.  I think he rode into a pothole or something, because the jarring threw him forward, away from the jagged edge of the sheared post.  Had he not been thrown forward, he could have found out what it’s like to have a broken bottle shoved into his crotch.  I don’t wish such a thing on anyone!

The only other mid-tube seatpost failure I can recall happened to a onetime mountain-biking buddy.  During a ride in Massachusetts, his post bent about halfway between his saddle and seat collar.  Perhaps that doesn’t count as a “failure,” but I don’t think he was anticipating a mid-ride change in his bike’s geometry!

I myself have had two seatpost failures. In the first, about 30 years ago, the seat rail clamp bolt broke on a Laprade-clone post.  I was a block from my apartment , on my way home from work.  Fortunately,, a driver about 50 feet behind me saw me and swerved away.  Only my feet made contact with then pavement.

The second seat post failure was potentially more serious.  I wasn’t hurt but I was pissed.  On that post—an expensive after-market Syncros—the head, which included the seat clamping mechanism, separated from the tube of the post.  I was doing (or trying) some stupid mountain bike trick  when the break occurred.  I think I did another stupid mountain bike trick to keep myself  pedaling , more or less upright, through a turn.

Syncros wouldn’t replace the post, but the shop where I bought it gave me another.  Not long after, Syncros had a major recall.  At the time, I remember thinking “I should have known better than to buy anything called ‘Syncros’!”  After all, it was the name, a few years earlier, of Campagnolo’s early (and short-lived) indexed shifting system.  It certainly earned its nickname: “Stinkros.”

Anyway, I am happy that Shawn and his bike are OK—and hope he doesn’t experience another mishap like it.

The Real Joke

I thought it was a joke: “Bicycle tour of historic Venice set for Jan.21. Once, many years ago, I visited “La Serenissima” and discovered the semi-hard way that such a thing is not possible.

At least, you can’t do a bike tour of what people think of as “Venice”.  The folks who pose next to their wheels for their Instagram selfies on Ponte dei  Sospiri didn’t pedal there—not legally, anyway.  In fact, they couldn’t have brought their bikes their legally in any fashion.  Wheeled vehicles—including cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters or even skates, as well as bicycles—are not allowed in the city’s historic center.  Exceptions are made for wheelchairs and other devices to help the disabled, and cops tend to look the other way for young children on toy bicycles or tricycles.
When I say I learned the “semi-hard” way, I mean that I’d heard and read about the ban but, being young, I thought I could find a way around it.  Or, I’d ride until I was stopped. You might say that I was living by the belief that forgiveness is easier to get than permission.

I disembarked from a train at the Santa Lucia railroad station.  A friendly attendant carefully brought my bike out of the baggage car.  I wheeled it from the station, across the Calatrava Bridge to the Piazzale Roma, one of the entrances to the historic center.  

There stood two carbineri.  One waved his finger.  The other pointed to a railing where other bikes were locked. I nudged a couple of those bikes to clear a space for mine.

While you can’t ride in the city center, you can take some nice spins on the “mainland,” across the lagoon from the city.  If you had your heart set on riding, though, it can be a little sad:  You’re looking at the places where you can’t ride.

On the other hand, Venice’s city center isn’t a bike-friendly place.  The streets are even narrower than those of other European cities and are almost always full of tourists.  Also, to get to or from almost anyplace in the city, you have to cross a canal.  That means crossing one of the bridges, most of which are arch-shaped and accessible only by stairs. You’d probably spend more time carrying or pushing your bike up or down stairs than riding it!

Such is not the case in another Venice: the one in Florida. Unlike the Queen of the Adriatic, the Shark’s Tooth Capital of the World (!) does not have a network of canals in its center, though many private properties, as in other parts of Florida, have canals—mainly for drainage or irrigation—running through them.

As far as I know, bicycles have never been banned in the town by the Gulf of Mexico.  So the announcement is not a joke.  The real joke, I believe, is calling Venice, Florida “historic” when its namesake in Italy has stood
for more than a millennium and a half.