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.

Before They Made Bikes: Cannondale

There are a few bike brands that even non-cyclists can name.  Here in the US, Schwinn is one of them.  Others include Raleigh, Peugeot, Motobecane and Fuji.  

Cannondale might also be included in that list.  I think they gained notice with the general public because when their bicycles were first introduced in 1983, they looked very different from the others.  While Klein may have been the first to make aluminum frames from large-diameter tubing, Cannondale made them a mass-market (relatively speaking, anyway) item.  To this day, those frames are the first thing most people associate with the name "Cannondale".

What most people, especially those younger than--ahem--a certain age, don't realize is that Cannondale was in business for more than a decade before they built their first bicycle.  Furthermore, even though the first product they ever made was bicycle-related, their early reputation was established as much on non-bike equipment as on accessories for two-wheelers.

In the late 1960's, Joe Montgomery was a self-described "grunt" on Wall Street.  The experience, he later related, taught him how businesses work.  Always an avid outdoorsman, he saw a growing enthusiasm for hiking, camping and related activities--and foresaw the North American Bike Boom.  He knew he wanted to build bikes but didn't have the necessary capital.  So, when he started Cannondale (and named it, as nearly everyone knows by now, after a Connecticut train station) in 1971, he knew he had to develop and market a product that would distinguish his new enterprise as well as help him raise the money he'd need to build bikes.

Thus was the world's first bicycle-towed trailer--the Bugger--born.  One funny thing about it was that it predated, if unwittingly, the luggage that people roll through airport lobbies all over the world.  That's because the Bugger was, in essence, a big backpack on wheels.  Since it was mounted on an angle, it transferred all of the weight carried in it to its tires and didn't add to the weight of the bicycle.  I never owned one, but had opportunities to ride with one.  While it increased the turning radius, it didn't affect other aspects of the ride nearly as much as I expected.

The original Cannondale Bugger, 1972.

Sales took off and in spite (or, perhaps, because) of the connotations of its name, it sold well in the UK.  That allowed the new company to create other products for which they would be known.  They included panniers and handlebar bags with innovative designs and sturdy construction.  

Within a couple of years, Cannondale was also making backpacks, sleeping bags, parkas, and other items for camping, hiking, snowshoeing and other outdoor sports.  LL Bean sold them through their catalogue; one was as likely to find Cannondale products in ski shops as in bike shops. 

The "Trackwalker" is on the left.  Mine was black, with tan leather and red tabs.

During that time, I used several Cannondale products, in part because the shops in which I worked (as well as American Youth Hostels, where I also worked) carried them.  For at least a decade, my "Trackwalker" backpack was my go-to bag when I was off the bike--and sometimes on it.  With its black body, tan leather bottom and red "spider" zipper tabs, it had a very distinctive look.  Also, I wore one of their parkas through a number of seasons.  They, like their bike bags (I used one of their handlebar bags and seat bags on my first few bike tours) were well-constructed and practical.  

But my favorite Cannondale product of all time (Remember, I owned and rode two of their bicycles) was the glove they made--by hand, in Pennsylvania--during the 1980's.  I don't think I've come across another sport glove--or, for that matter, any glove--made from such high-quality materials and with such good workmanship.  It was like a Brooks saddle:  stiff at first, but once broken in, a perfect fit that would last for many years.  I wore mine until the crochet backings deteriorated--a long, long time after I first started wearing the gloves.

The best glove ever made--by far!

I wish I could find a pair of them--or something as good--now.  Back then, a pair of those gloves retailed for $25-30, which, it seems,  is what a "good" pair of gloves costs now. 

 I'm guessing that Cannondale couldn't continue to make them in Pennsylvania--or anywhere in the US--without raising the price significantly.  So production of those gloves was sent overseas.  Later, that of their bike apparel and accessories and, finally, their bikes followed.  Around the time Cannondale introduced their bicycles, they stopped making and selling backpacks, parkas and other non-bike-related gear.

(If you want to learn more about what Cannondale was doing before they started building bikes, check out this site.)

Smart Dumbbells And Other Tools

Recently, I saw this tool in a bike shop:



 The mechanic referred to it as a "smart dumbbell wrench".  

My first reaction is, of course, that a "smart dumbbell" is an oxymoron.  Then I remembered a tool I carried on bike rides--and sometimes even when I was off the bike--not so long ago.

 

This is the not-smart dumbbell wrench.  Actually, given the time it was invented, it was a smart tool, as recessed allen-bolt fittings were still uncommon.  As recently as the 1980's, Campagnolo's Gran Sport derailleur attached to the dropout with a hex-head bolt.

The tool was also called a "dog bone" wrench.  A smart--or, at least, a modern-- dog bone wrench might be this:

 

I'm sure you've seen it before.  I've mentioned it on this blog: the Park Tool MT-1.  It now serves the purpose my old dumbbell wrench did back in the day:  I even have one on my keyring.  

It really is a smart tool in all sorts of ways, not the least of which are its shape and style, which makes it sleeker and much easier to carry than the old dog bone or dumbbell wrench.

Speaking of old-style wrenches:  How many of you still have one of these?

 

 If you bought a Raleigh three-speed in the 1970s or earlier, you more than likely got one of these with it.  The smaller "tombstone"-shaped opening was, if I'm not mistaken, intended for installing or removing pedals, though you can't get as much leverage as I think you need, especially if you're removing a pedal that's been in the crank for a while.

Back in the day, we didn't use the term "multi-tool".  Nobody believed that  a spanner (or wrench to you Yanks) could be made to handle everything short of a full bike assembly, contrary to what some multi-tool designers of today seem to think.  We usually carried a small adjustable wrench or a small spanner with 8 and 10 millimeter heads, 6 and 7mm allen keys and a few other things, depending on how long we intended to ride and how far we planned to be from our favorite bike shops.

That way of thinking, I believe, gave rise to mini toolkits, like this one:

 

If you bought a Peugeot before the late 1970s, you got one of these Mafac tool kits with it.  They were pretty smart, actually, given the bikes and components of the time.  About ten years ago, you could get one for practically nothing.  Today, with all the collectors and others who are doing "period" restorations, and those who are building nouveau retro, if you will, bikes, those kits are fetching decent money.  Just recently, someone sold eight new-old-stock kits with the brown pouch (instead of the black one shown) for $39.00 each.

Are they smarter than the dumbbell wrench?  That depends...

Note:  Some Gitane bikes came with the Mafac kit in a bag shaped like the Mafac but with softer material and printed with Gitane's logo: