R.I.P. Max

I've just lost a friend.

You've seen him on these pages.  He's one of the most loving and friendly beings I've ever known. 

Sometimes he would climb on me while I was sleeping.  I didn't mind: When I woke to him, I felt the sun rising.  He looked like a sunrise.

I am talking about Max, the orange cat who's lived with me for ten and a half years.

He came into my life on 9 April 2007.  My friend Millie rescued him from a street near us.  She told me that when she saw him, she walked right up to him.  He did the same for me the first time I saw him.

What that meant, of course, was that he is anything but a feral  cat.  "He must have had a home before," Millie observed.  When I saw him, I couldn't not give him one.

The vet said he was between five and seven years old when I brought him home.  So, that means he lived about sixteen or seventeen years--a pretty good lifespan for a cat.

Even if he'd been in my life for only a day, he could have given me a lifetime of happiness:  That is what he carried with him, and couldn't help but to give.  He greeted everyone who came to my apartment--including Marlee, the day I brought her home--like an old friend and playmate.

He died late Sunday night, after I'd come back from a nice ride, had a sumptuous dinner and talked to my mother.  I wrote yesterday's post about the ride I took Sunday, the day before, because it was just too difficult to talk about Max.

He won't be waiting for me at the end of my next ride.  Not physically, anyway.  I believe, though, that I'll see him at the end of many rides for a long time to come.

Note:  In a sad irony, I lost another cat--the first one I had who was named Charlie--on 16 October in 2005.

Does Nobike Fit All?

So why do you have six bikes?

If you have more than one bike, you have heard some variant of this question--from a spouse, lover, other family member, co-worker or friend who doesn't share your enthusiasm for cycling.  That person might see that one of your bikes has drop bars and the other has uprights or flats.  Or he or she might notice that one bike has fatter or skinnier tires, or has only one gear or multiple gears.  On the other hand, that person might see only that your bikes are different colors or have different names on them.

The reason nearly all of us give--if we actually ride the bikes we own (I do) is that they have different ride characteristics.  One bike might be better for long distances, another for speed and yet another for "rough stuff".  One of our steeds might carry our groceries, books r even furniture, while another can and should be ridden only in its most stripped-down form.

Now, if you've gotten this far in answering your incredulous friend or lover, he or she might ask whether there's one bike that can "do it all".  Some bikes are billed, by their makers or marketers, as Swiss Army knives on wheels, if you will.  Swiss Army knives are great (I have a couple.) and they can perform a number of different tasks in a pinch.  But, for most of those tasks, if you had to do them every day, you probably wouldn't want to rely on your Swiss Army knife.

Still, it seems that there's always someone trying to create a bike that can give a satisfying ride in all conditions.  Likewise, it seems that there's always someone or another who's trying to design a bike that will fit everyone.  Nearly every folding bike I've ever seen is touted as a machine that will fit everyone from about 150 to 215 cm (a little less than five feet to a little more than seven feet) tall.

When you've been riding for as long as I've been riding, you become skeptical about either endeavor.  So, it might seem doubly dubious when you hear that someone has designed a bike that not only can be adjusted to a wide range of sizes, but can also be altered to suit different riding styles and conditions.

Well, Dynalab has just designed such a machine. The frame is made from four triangular slabs of aluminum slotted together by three joints with cylinder spacers.

According to the folks at Dynalab, the frame has 80 cm (about 31.5 inches) of vertical adjustability, making it "suitable for men, women adolescents and adults alike".  The aluminum slabs can also be moved horizontally and the angles varied to change the frame's geometry.

The bike actually sounds interesting and I wouldn't mind trying one, if only out of curiosity.  If it works, I could see using it as a travel bike, as it looks as if it could be disassembled rather easily and carried in a relatively small piece of luggage.  And it could be made into whatever kind of bike would suit the conditions you might encounter upon arrival.  

Even if the ride and fit qualities are as good as Dynalab claims, I have to wonder how sturdy those slotted joints are. Just how much assembling, disassembling and moving around could the withstand?  And how much shock and abuse.

Still, even if it is what it's claimed to be, I might have a hard time shelling out my money for something called Nobike.  

A Beast Of Burden

For one more day, one more post, I am going to keep up the silly "theme association" I started the other day.

My post on Monday mentioned, in passing, Jean Paul Sartre.  Tuesday's post featured a photo of him on Le Petit Bi, a French folding bicycle developed just as Europe was going to war.  Yesterday, I wrote about another folding bicycle (actually a sort-of folding bike), the Donkey Bike.

So now I'm going to show a bicycle--or its rider, depending on your point of view--serving as a donkey:

From Top At World

Perhaps he is employed by a certain Presidential candidate.  If that's the case, he might not get paid.  Worse, he might need to build a wall around himself if he presses said candidate for what's due, or anything else!

When I was a messenger, I might've built such a wall, or protected myself in some other way, when I went to some of the locales I serviced--especially when I knew what was in some of those packages I carried.  Let's just say that the contents of some of those packets were, um, plant-based and others were chemical.

In other words, although we were employed by a legitimate courier service, my fellow and messengers and I became, at times, offspring of donkeys and horses, if you know what I mean.  I don't think most of us signed on for that.  I know I hadn't.

When Nobody Wanted Our Flags

If you are here in the US, you know that it is Flag Day.

Even if you aren't here, you've probably seen bikes--or, at least, bike parts and accessories--adorned with the Stars and Stripes.  Back in the days when CNC-machined aftermarket parts were all the rage, it seemed that they all had an image of Old Glory painted or emblazoned on them.  And one of SRAM's early mountain bike derailleurs was called the Betsy, in honor of the flag's creator:

And most of us, at one time or another, have had bikes, parts or accessories with an image of some flag or another on it.  I've owned Italian and French bikes that had little likenesses of their respective country's tricolore on them, and of course I've had handlebar plugs and such with those flags and others on them.  Interestingly, I can't find a Union Jack anywhere on my Mercians.  And I don't recall seeing a Rising Sun on my Miyata.  Oh well.

But there is another kind of flag I associate with bicycles.  When I first became a dedicated rider--late in the '70's Bike Boom, one could buy a triangular "safety flag", usually in bright orange, perched atop a plastic pole that attached to the rear axle or some other part of the bike.

I think they may have sold when they were first offered. But I never saw very many of them--and, usually, they were on recumbents, tandems or bike trailers.  It's hard to imagine a racer riding with one.

Someone, however, thought they were going to become the hot new bike accessory.  At least, that's what I thought when I went to work at American Youth Hostels.  Among my responsibilities was buying and inventorying bike equipment in the outdoor shop and mail-order service AYH ran from its headquarters, then located on Spring Street, near Sullivan Street.  Mostly, we sold panniers, handlebar bags and other bike luggage, racks, a few accessories (like pumps and fenders) and some commonly-replaced parts such as tires, tubes, chains, brake pads and cables.  We had a few components--mainly SunTour derailleurs and freewheels, which people often bought to replace their sick or broken Simplexes or Hurets, as well as a few high-end pieces such as SunTour Superbe brakes and Sugino triple cranksets.

Among the stock of bicycle equipment were boxes full of bike safety flags.  Turns out, there were about 1000 of those pennants, all told, all of them in the same corners of the store and stockroom where they'd been residing since the day they were delivered, nearly a decade earlier.

"Can you think of a way to sell them?"  That was one of the first questions David Reenburd, the manager, asked me.

"Sell them?".  I could just barely suppress a chuckle--and the impulse to say that my degree was in liberal arts, not marketing.

He explained that his boss wanted them sold.  Everyone else wanted to simply get rid of them, as they were taking up space. 

"Why don't we just give them away?", I wondered.

"He", meaning his boss, "said to sell."

"Did he say for how much?"  

I noticed that they had price tags of $7.95:  what they would have sold for (if indeed they had sold) a decade earlier.  David agreed we'd never get a price like that, but his boss wanted to get "as much as we can" for them.

"How about if we sell them for $1.00 with the purchase of anything else in the store?"

His eyes lit up.  And I thought that sooner or later they'd be running up the flag for me.

One week later, we had no takers.  So I came up with an idea that couldn't be carried out today.

In those days, bar codes for store merchandise weren't yet in use.  At least, they weren't in the AYH store.  So we entered the prices of items by hand in the register.    I realized that I could enter, say, a handlebar bag that cost $29.95 at $28.95 and enter $1.00 for the flag.  Then, if the customer questioned it, I could say that I "mistakenly" entered the wrong price and simply added the difference.  And they could take one of the flags.

A couple of days later, we still had no takers for the flags.  Even when I tried giving them to customers as "gifts" with their purchases, nobody wanted them.  

We even offered them to riders on the Five Boro Bike Tour--which, in those days, AYH sponsored.  Still no takers.  Perhaps I was hallucinating (from what, I don't know), but those orange safety flags were starting to look more like white "surrender" flags.

A few months later, AYH moved its facilites up the street, to a building on the corner of Crosby and Spring that today houses a Sur La Table store.   The boxes of flags got "lost" somewhere along the way! 

Did they send up a distress signal?  If they did, we never got it. 
 

Taking Them With You

What do you like to take with you when you ride?

There are, of course, the things we must take with us.  For most cyclists, they include keys for the house (a, possibly, a bike lock), identification, some cash and, perhaps, a credit or ATM card.  Many of us would also include a couple of small tools (or a multitool), tire levers and a spare inner tube--and, depending on the conditions in which we're riding, a bottle or two of water and an extra layer of clothing or a rain jacket.  And a banana or energy bar.

Then there are those things we want to take. Often, that includes a camera (or something that can be used to take photos).  I also like to have something to write with and write on or, if I am leaving home for more than a day or two, a notebook--or my tablet.  And, when I have taken multiday tour, I usually had a book or two in my panniers. 

Now, if I had my druthers, I'd take Max and Marley with me.  Neither they, nor any other cat I've had, were crazy about being carried in a basket or bag, or about posing on my handlebar stem.  Plus, their tastes seem not to run to bananas, Clif bars and Gatorade.

Oh, there's one other thing I like to have with me, whenever I can, on my bike:  flowers.  Yes, even when I was the "before" photo (i.e., before I became my siblings' transistor), I would tuck a bud I'd plucked into a vent in my helmet or between crossed cables or on any other nook or cranny.  Although my favorites are lilacs and cherry blossoms, I'm not picky about what kind of flower I wear on myself or my bike: They all make me happy.

Over the past few years, creative and enterprising people have come up with accessories for carrying six-packs, bottles of wine, pizzas and all sorts of other things.  So, I should not have been surprised to see these:

 

Atlanta-based artist/designer Coleen Jordan likes to have flowers with her wherever she goes.  That motivated her to design the vases in these photos, as well as necklaces, badges and other jewelry that contain tiny living plants.  They are available from her shop, Wearable Planter, on Etsy.

 

Horses Or Bikes, She Is A Real Freedom Rider

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, last month marked forty years since the release of Patti Smith’s album Horses. 

I was a senior in high school then.  It semed that my classmates fell into one of three categories:  the ones who loved it and didn’t want it to end, the ones who were looking forward to college or whatever else they were going to do after graduation, and those who just couldn’t wait to get out.

Those of us in the third category were, in one way or another, the class “geeks”.  Most of us were bookish; nearly all of us had some interest or talent that wasn’t fashionable in that high school where the unofficial motto seemed to be, “If you can’t f*ck it, smoke it or drive it and it ain’t Led Zep’, it ain’t worth it.”  More than a few of us read and/or wrote poetry or songs we would perform only for very close friends (who, naturally, were as introverted as we were); we loved poets like Patti who, we felt, told the truth—at least as we understood it at the time.

I had been writing stories, articles for the school newspaper and stuff I can’t categorize—most of which I lost or destroyed along the way from then to now.  Around that time, I started writing what some might call “free verse” poetry, or simply chopped-up sentences.  Whether or not it was “any good” (Let’s face it, how much of anything that we do at that age is?) is, I realize now, not the point, any more than whether or not I had the capability of becoming a world-class racer did or didn’t make the amount of cycling I was doing “worth it”.  Yes, I wrote and rode—as I do now—because I enjoyed those activities.  But more important, I could not envision life without them.

Actually, that’s not quite right.  I did those things, not only for pleasure, but also for survival.  And, in those days, the work of a poet like Patti Smith or Gregory Corso or Arthur Rimbaud was sustenance for “the journey”, whatever that might be.

I think what I really loved and admired about Patti Smith, though, was something I couldn’t articulate at the time, or for a long time afterward.  Now I’ll express it as best I can:  She did something interesting and unique, whatever its flaws (which I only vaguely understood at the time) and did it on her own terms.  At a time when I still did not have the terms or tools to articulate, let alone embody, the “differentness” I saw in myself—which others, especially the adults in my life, misunderstood as “rebelliousness”—Patti Smith gave us an image of how someone can become someone only he or she can become. 

When Horses came out, she was often described as “androgynous” because of the way she was dressed, and the way she carried herself, in the photo on the album’s cover.  The truth, I realized even then, was that she was actually showing that it was possible to be a woman in a way that didn’t fit into the boxes constructed by the governing institutions and individuals of our society.

She upset those authority figures in much the same way as the women who abandoned their corsets and hoopskirts for shorter skirts or “bloomers” so they could ride bicycles in the 1890’s. Most of those women weren’t consciously rebelling; they simply to wanted to live their lives as they saw fit.    

It might take a long time but, ultimately, independent spirits who realize their visions change the world and inspire us while those who try to suppress such spirits or the change they engender are forgotten or even vilified.  Most people, at least in the industrialized countries, think nothing of women wearing pants or skirts that don’t constrict their movement, and of working in what were once considered in “men’s” jobs.

Or of writing a line like, “Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."

Knowing what I’ve just said, are you surprised to see this image of Patti Smith?:

Trying To Shed Some Light

Early the other morning, Daylight Savings Time ended.  That meant moving the clocks back an hour, which means that it gets dark an hour earlier.  Of course, that means day begins an hour earlier, for now.  But within a few weeks, we'll "lose" that hour, as well as an equal amount of time at the end of the afternoon, as the days grow shorter overall.

That means, among other things, that most of my rides home from work will be done in the dark.  I suspect the same is true for other commuters.  And some of us will be doing at least some part of our "fun" rides in the dark, whereas we might have been doing them in daylight a couple of weeks ago.

Many of us will therefore be using our lights more than we had been--or using them, period, after months of not using them at all.   I fall into the former category:  I don't avoid night riding; in fact, there are times I enjoy a ride begun after sunset.  However, during the weeks and months of long days, I do my nocturnal rides mostly by choice; some of the riding I'll do in the dark for the next few months will be out of necessity.

Thus, I and other riders will be making more use of our bike lights. 

It used to be that here in New York--and, I suspect, in other American cities--one rarely saw a cyclist with a high-end lighting system.  The prevailing wisdom has always said that bike lights in the city are "for being seen, not for being seen by".  Most city streets are well-lit enough that you don't need a bright headlight to see potholes or other road hazards, not to mention the traffic and turns ahead. If anything, I think that for city riding, a headlight needs to offer more side than front visibility so that drivers approaching an intersection without a signal can more readily see a cyclist approaching.  Also, I think good side visibility is useful in very tight intersections where, even if the cyclist stops well short of the crosswalk or the "stop" line, a driver could turn into the cyclist's path--or the cyclist him or her self--if he or she is not seen.

Schmidt hub generator (for disc brakes)

If anything, it always seemed (at least to me) more important to have a good tail light, preferably a good, bright "blinky".  That is assuming, of course, that you are a nice, law-abiding cyclist (which you are--right?) who always rides in the direction of the traffic.

These days, though, I'm seeing more cyclists with more sophisticated (and expensive) lights than the removable "blinkies" I use.  Some are riding with hub generators; others with rechargeable battery packs carried in water bottle cages in other attachments.  And I have seen some very high-tech looking lights mounted on handlebars, brake bolts and fenders.

Planet Bike Super Flash

Such systems no doubt have their advantages.  But, for the time being, I still prefer the Planet Bike Super Flash  I've been using on the rear and PB's Beamer for the front.  I think I've spent more on batteries for them than I spent on the lights themselves--and it's not because the lights "eat" the batteries:  the lights simply hold up well.

Planet Bike Beamer

I think I'm reluctant to buy anything more complex or costly because, well, what I have seems to have worked for me (for seven years) and because I often park where theft is a concern.  Once, when I parked my Bontrager mountain bike, someone cut the White Industries hubs out of my wheels; I worry that someone might do the same to a generator front hub if I were to use it. 

"Bottle" generator

Bottom-bracket mounted generator

Also, even though I've heard that the all of those new generators and super-lights are better than what was available before, I'm skeptical.  Perhaps it's because when I came of age (as a cyclist, anyway), most of the bike lights available were, simply, junk.  "Bottle" generators were inefficient, chewed up tires and made a lot of noise ; generators that mounted on bottom brackets and ran off tire treads also ate up tires, didn't work on treads that were too knobby or too smooth, and simply skidded over tire treads if they were covered with rain or snow.  Battery lights were heavy, clunky, mounted on flimsy brackets and put out less light than the ones powered by generators.  Really, the best light--as Tom Cuthbertson noted in Anybody's Bike Book--was the "armband" flashlight made by Wonder and a few other companies.  I used to wear one on my left leg, just below my knee, on the theory that the light bobbing up and down would signal, to motorists, that a cyclist was ahead.

Wonder "armband" light

Maybe one day, if I ever decide to build a dedicated tourer or randonneuse, I'll build a wheel around a Schmidt hub dynamo or something like it.  But as long as I have to park on city streets, I think I'm going to stick to relatively inexpensive removable lights.

Two Stops, Two Conundrums

Today I rode to Point Lookout again.  It was not a perfect day, by most people’s definitions, but more than good enough for me:  clouds moved across a sunny sky, seemingly carried by the wind that I rode into on my way out to the Rockaways.  The temperature didn’t seem to rise above 25C anywhere I rode—the ocean water was only a couple of degrees cooler.  That might be the reason why I didn’t see very many people on the beaches or boardwalks, and the Point, like Jones Beach, across the cove, was deserted.  

The ride made me happy, even if it didn’t include any great developments or epiphanies.  I felt as if I got into a good rhythm while riding Arielle, my fixed-gear Mercian.  Most important of all, I didn’t feel achy or fatigued at the end of my ride:  I just felt as if I’d gotten a good workout and had a good time.  I really don’t ask for anything else.

Probably the most unusual things about this ride happened at two traffic stops—one in Atlantic Beach on my way out and the other in Sunnyside on my way back.

At the first stop, the light had just turned red.  I had about another half an hour—maybe forty minutes, given that I was riding into the wind—of riding to get to the Point.  Not that I was in a hurry:  I wasn’t worried about any commitments or even about the coming of night.  But I had, as I mentioned earlier, gotten into a good rhythm, and was trying not to stop. 

The light had just turned red and a man who looked like he had a decade or two on me was crossing the street.  Some guy in a Lexus tore through the intersection, against the red light.  Fortunately, the old man hadn’t gotten very far into the street, so he was in no danger of being struck.

What I found strange about the encounter, though, was the man kept on staring at me.  I wasn’t sure of whether he was surprised that I, and not the driver, stopped for the light. Or, perhaps he’d been directing stored-up anger over other cyclists who’d ignored traffic signals—or, maybe just stories he’d heard about them.  Whatever his motivations, he kept his head turned toward me until he stepped onto the curb on the other side of the street.

At the other stop, I was about two kilometers from my apartment.  Sunnyside is, like Astoria, an old blue collar-to-middle class neighborhood that never really deteriorated and is becoming home to increasing numbers of young professionals and creative people who work in Manhattan.  It’s also one of those neighborhoods where, at one time, I wouldn’t see anyone else on a bike but, over the past few years, I have been seeing more and more cyclists every time I ride through it.

Anyway, I stopped at an intersection of 48^th Steet, one of the neighborhood’s main arteries.  Trucks often come barreling down 48^th, coming from or going to the factories and rail yard that separate the neighborhood from Long Island City, so I don’t take chances when crossing it.  Neither do most people who live in the neighborhood.

A woman who looked like she was thirty, at most, crossed in front of me, with her son and daughter—neither of whom looked more than four years old—in tow.  She seemed like a nice person; we exchanged smiles.  “I’m sorry,” she simpered.

“For what?”

“For stopping you.”

“You didn’t stop me.  The light did.”  I pointed to the signal; it was turning yellow. She and her kids scampered to the curb.  “Have a nice day,” she shouted.

“You do the same.”

As pleasant as she was, I am still as puzzled by her reaction to my stopping for a light as I am to the man for his.

Photo by Darryl Kotyk

Comic Bikes

Geeky as I was, I was never much of a comic book fan, though many of my junior-high and high-school peers were.  However, they missed--by a decade or less--what many consider to be the "golden age" of animated magazines.

That period, it seems, began during the 1930's and continued until the early or mid 1960's. (Interestingly, that period is sometimes referred to as "the Golden Age of Radio".) Kids--boys, mostly--spent their allowance or money made from delivering newspapers or selling lemonade on cartoon-filled booklets that parents, teachers and other authority figures hoped the kids would "grow out of" in a hurry.

Around the same time, many a young lad saved his money for something that was much more socially acceptable--and which he "grew out of", usually without any prodding from said authority figures.

The thing typically lured a boy away from that second obsession was driver's permit.  As soon as he got it, the object of his former obsession was passed onto a younger sibling, tossed in the trash or left to rust in a basement or barn.

That object is, of course, a bicycle.  And many a boy's dream--at least here in the US--was a two-wheeler from Schwinn, which was sometimes referred to as "the Cadillac of bicycles." 

Not surprisingly, during the "golden age" of comic books, Schwinn very effectively used that medium to promote their products.  (They also used such publications as Boys' Life magazine, which every Boy Scout received.)  Not surprisingly, those magazines and comic books carried advertisements from the Chicago cycle colossus.  But more than a few had "product placements" not unlike the ones seen in movies or TV shows:  You know, where you can see--if only for a second--the Schwinn badge on the bike some character is riding.

 

Given everything I've just said, it shouldn't come as a shock to learn, as I recently did, that Schwinn issued its own comic book in 1949: the very middle of the Golden Age of comics.    Schwinn touted them as "educational", which indeed they were:  Included were segments about safe riding, locking up the bike and Alfred Letourner's speed record--accomplished, naturally, on an early Schwinn Paramount. 

Including Alfred Letourner's ride (and the bike he rode) exemplifies what I have long known about most "educational" publications:  They are teaching the consumer to buy a specific product, or to influence said consumer's parents to buy it for him or her.  And, indeed, most of what was in Schwinn's comic book--even the parts that showed the development of the bicycle during the century or so before Ignaz Schwinn started making bikes--had the purpose of showing that Schwinn bikes were at the top or end (depending on your metaphor of choice) of the evolutionary chain, in much the same way that the "history" we're taught as kids is meant to show us that all historical events were props that help to set the stage for our country's greatness--or, at least, the dominance of the group of people to whom the writers of the history belong. 

 

Still, I have to admit, I had fun looking at the Schwinn comic book.  Sure, it's schlocky, but it does offer a window into the almost-adolescent exuberance of the United States just after World War II.