Prone To Revival--And Deservedly So, I Think

Shakespeare never had an original idea--for a story, anyway--in his life.  George Orwell took almost everything that makes 1984 worthwhile--including the notions of "thought crimes," "Big Brother" and its mathematical theme--from We, a novel from a little-known Russian writer named Yevgeny Zamyatin.  (Orwell reviewed the book three years before 1984 came out.)  D'Artagnan was not the creation of Alexandre Dumas; rather, Dumas lifted him--and Athos, Porthos and Aramis--from the first volume of Gaeten Courtilz de Sandras' book called The Memoirs of D'Artagnan.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, we find this:  "There is nothing new under the sun."  So it is in the world of literature and the arts.  So it is in science and technology.  And so it is in the world of bicycling.  In the four decades I have been cycling, almost every "new" idea had been done before, sometimes in the very early history of cycling.  As I mentioned in two recent posts, suspension is one such idea.  Another idea is that of building frames of anything besides steel:  During my formative years, carbon, titanium and aluminum frames were not only created; they were available to the general public (for a price, of course).

Then there are those ideas that never really go away but are nonetheless "rediscovered" by a new generation of marketing types (or, sometimes, actual cyclists who haven't been in the sport for very long).  One such concept is that of the recumbent bicycle.

I am not about to dismiss recumbents, as I have never ridden one myself.  I don't doubt that, as their proponents claim, their aerodynamics can make them faster than standard bicycles.  My concerns about them are twofold:  How well and comfortably can a rider use his or her muscles in such a position?  (At my age, the answer to such questions is more meaningful than it was when I was younger!)  And, how visible is a recumbent rider in traffic?

(I'll admit that the second question is the one that has done more to keep me off a recumbent!)

That there were recumbents before Dan Henry and others were touting them doesn't surprise me.  It's also not surprising to note that in the years just after World War I, some cyclists experimented with riding nearly prone.  Marcel Berthet--for whom the Lyotard No. 23 platform pedal was named--was concerned with aerodynamics, as were other racers and designers who flew or worked with aircraft during the war. 

The Challand Recumbent

But it's truly interesting, if not shocking, to see that some two decades earlier, in 1896 a horizontal bicyclette normale was exhibited in Geneva.  The Challand recumbent, named for its inventor, was said to allow easier mounting, improved stability and greater thrust on the pedals. It had just one problem, though:  It weighed about three times as much as its rider!

Berthet and others who revived recumbents after the War used them in record attempts. Charles Mochet designed his own recumbent--dubbed the "Velocar"--and used it to set records for the kilometer, mile and hour.  In the case of the latter, he broke a 20-year-old record by half a kilometer.

His exploits ignited a debate as to whether the "Velocar" was actually a bicycle.  The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) answered that question in the negative, and banned recumbents, as well as aerodynamic devices, from racing in 1934.  The UCI then declared all of Mochet's records invalid.

Given all of the controversy about pharmaceutical and mechanical doping, the controversy over recumbents seems almost quaint now.  Recumbents are, I believe, here to stay, just as--unfortunately--doping is.

 

Fifty Years, And Still No Bike Lane

"Are we there yet?"

Just about every kid who's ever gone anywhere with an adult has whined that line.  I include yours truly.

"Is it done yet?"

Just about every kid has moaned that one when his or her mother or grandmother (or the equivalent in the kid's life) was cooking or baking something.  As adults, we intone it when we're waiting for a repair, a project, or something else to be finished.

(Asking that question is also the easiest way to annoy an artist--or to reveal yourself as a philistine to the artist.)

The first time I uttered the question the way an adult would was in my childhood. (Was I a precocious child?)  In my early years, I witnessed the building  of what I still consider to be one of the most beautiful--and exasperating-- manmade structures in the world.  

It opened to the public fifty years ago today.  By now, you might have figured out that I'm talking about a bridge. I am:  specifically, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which opened to traffic fifty years ago today.

The span, photographed by the Wurts Brothers when it opened fifty years ago today.  (From the collection of the Museum of the City of New York,)

At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It's still in the top ten, I think.  It's so long that engineers actually had to take the curvature of the Earth into account in designing it.

Please indulge me for a moment if I sound like a sexist male.  (Some things aren't cured even with years of hormone therapy and surgery!)  I have long thought its towers looked like long, elegant goddesses rising from the waves of the inlet of the Atlantic Ocean for which the bridge is named.  The lady is serene on days when sunshine refracted through high cirrus clouds glints on waves; she is looks dramatic, even stern, but still beautiful as clouds gather and storms brew in those waves.

All right:  Some of you are might think I'm more guilty of bad poetry than sexism in that passage. Fair enough. My talents, such as they are, can only accomplish so much.

Anyway, I have pedaled (and, on occasion, walked) under the bridge any number of times and have never grown jaded to its majesty.  Monsieur Verrazano (He was Fiorentino but sailed for le Roi Francois I.) would be honored to have the bridge, and the body of water it spans, named for him.  But the fact that I'm always pedaling underneath the bridge is precisely what exasperates me about it.

You see, the bridge has never had a bike or pedestrian lane.  In a way, it's not surprising, given that the bridge was the last major work of Robert Moses, whose mistakes have been replicated by urban planners all over the world for decades.  Through most of his career, he showed a complete disdain for anything that didn't have an internal combustion engine.  It's especially odd when you consider that he built the Kissena Velodrome near the World's Fair site just a few thousand pedal spins from my apartment--and that he himself never had a driver's license. 

There has been a movement (in which I am playing a small role) to have a bicycle-pedestrian lane added to the bridge.  Many people say it would encourage them to use their bicycles to commute or simply travel between Brooklyn and Staten Island, and would link a number of already-existing bike routes in the two boroughs, which in turn would make parts of New Jersey more accessible to cyclists in the Big Apple.

I would like to have the same thrill I knew as a child when I saw the bridge under construction.  I would also like to experience the same thrill I had when I rode across the bridge the only times it was possible:  during the Five Boro Bike Tour, when the lower deck of the Verrazano is closed to traffic. 

Note:  The "Verrazano Narrows Bridge" link in my seventh  paragraph will take you to an excellent article on The Bowery Boys, one of my favorite non-bike blogs.

A Franken-Barracuda

Spend enough time in New York City, and you're sure to see some "Frankenbikes".  Such machines have been modified to serve some purpose for which they weren't built.  So, an old racer becomes someone's "pedal taxi" by changing the dropped bars and clipless pedals to flat versions of both, wider tires and, in some cases, clip-on fenders and lights.  Sometimes such bikes, which could have originally had anywhere from 10 to 20 speeds, are converted to single-speed or fixed-gear use.

Old mountain bikes might undergo similar treatment.  The difference is that these bikes' tires are often swapped for narrower ones or slicks (rather than the knobbier treads found on mountain bikes).  

Other "Frankenbikes" include ones in which one frame is stacked on top of the other, or "parts bin specials", in which a bike is assembled, basically, from whatever is lying around.

Today I spotted an interesting version of the latter kind of bike:

I wish I could have gotten a better angle on it.  At first glance, it didn't seem so unusual.  However, in passing it, I noticed this:

It's not the first time I've seen side-pull caliper brakes on a bike made, as most mountain bikes were until a few years ago, for cantilever or V-brakes.  Still, they look pretty strange (a least to me) on a front fork with suspension.  It was then that I realized that 700 C (road diameter) wheels were substituted for the original 26" mountain bike wheels.  The brake would not have been long enough to reach the rim of the smaller-diameter mountain bike wheel:

The same thing was done on the rear.  As I looked closer, I saw that the crankset had also been changed. 

What's interesting is that the crankset and brakes more than likely came from the same bike, most likely a mid-to-upper level Japanese road bike of the late 1970's or early 1980's.  The brakes were Gran Compes, which were a Japanese near-copy of Campagnolo's Record brakes.  And the crankset was forged by Sakae Ringyo, known in bike circles as SR.  

That they ended up on what appears to be a Barracuda A2B from 1995 or thereabouts is a story I'd like to follow.  Moreover, they ended up on that bike with a current Quando wheelset, yet the rear derailleur is a Shimano of later vintage than the bike.

Barracuda bikes had a meteoric "career", if you will. Two lifelong friends from Grand Rapids, MI founded the brand in 1992 in the mountain biking hotbed of Durango, CO.  After the business and its race team were well-established, manufacturing was moved to Taiwan, as was typical at that time.

The bikes had a loyal "cult" following, like many iconic mountain bike and component makers of the 1990's.  But those companies--often started, like Barracuda, by a couple of guys who liked to ride or a twenty-something in California whose father had a lathe and a drill press--often were run on unsound business practices.  In an odd way, this story parallels the dot-com boom and bust that followed it by a few years.  

Also, some smaller mountain bike and component makers of that time were done in by warranty claims or, in a few cases, litigation when a product was faulty.   It only took one or a few such cases to sink some of the smaller manufacturers, especially the ones that were operating out of someone's father's garage.

Late in 1995, in spite of positive reviews of their bikes, Barracuda was hemorrhaging money.  At the end of that year, Ross Bicycles bought the company. While they didn't change that year's models considerably, the ones that rolled off the assembly lines in the brand's later years bore almost no resemblance to the ones that had become virtual legends among a small group of mountain bikers.  By the end of the decade, Barracuda production had stopped.

Ironically, Ross--which was headquartered in Rockaway Beach, Queens--actually made a bike called the "Barracuda" during the 1960's and 1970's.  It was a small-wheeled bike with a stick shifter on the frame, similar in many ways to the Raleigh "Chopper" or the Schwinn "Krate" series.  So, one might say that the "Barracuda" I saw today was a Frankenbike even before anybody altered it!

 

I Paid Again (Don't Tell Anybody!)

Yesterday was a milestone for me:  It was the second day in a row I did an organized ride I had to pay for. I pride myself on not paying to go on a ride unless there's a very, very good reason--say, an event or cause or some ride I purely and simply want to do. (That's why I paid the five-dollar fee in a couple of the early Five Boro Bike Tours.) And it would have been against something--I won't say my religion, because I don't have one--to pay to ride two days in  a row.

 The way I rationalize this second consecutive day of pay-to-ride that I am in a completely unfamiliar place.  I can get around Paris almost as well as I can navigate New York.  After spending a day riding with a guide, Rome wasn't so difficult to figure out from the saddle.  Ditto for Montreal.  But Siem Reap is a whole different experience in every way--from the traffic patterns to the language, of which I can use about five words.

Also, I have no qualms about this second consecutive paid ride because it's very different, in almost every way, from the one I took the other day.  I enjoyed both, but some of you might prefer one to the other, for various reasons.

Yesterday's bike ride was run by a company called Grasshopper Adventure Day Tours, which also organizes rides in other countries.  The first point of difference between the ride I took with them, and the one I took the other day with PURE, is that yesterday's ride was supported en route.  The driver even picked up me and Stuart, the other participant in this ride, from my guest house and his hotel.  

The driver brought us to Angkor Wat, where we watched the sunrise. Well, we saw the dawn, or the beginning of the day, anyway:  A curtain of clouds cloaked the sun and allowed a few orange and pink rays from its fringes.

Oh, well.  For me, it was two days in a row of clouds blocking the sunrise at Angkor Wat.  It's a cliche, but you can't do anything about the weather:  In January, when I went to Florida, I had two days when the temperature didn't get much past 5C (40F) and two nights when it dropped to -4C (25F).  

After that sunrise, we had breakfast.  Yogurt, cereal, bread condiments, juices, coffee and tea were provided, and the driver made omelets (good, in fact) for me and Stuart. But the show-stopper, if you will, was a plate of sliced fruits, including the small but succulent bananas that grow here, as well as papaya, pineapple, a couple of melons and a white dragonfruit I'd never had before.  I could have eaten any of them all day!

That breakfast made me feel like I was part of a racing team.  Perhaps that wasn't a coincidence: Our ride leader, Vichea, is a mountain bike racer here in Cambodia. At least, he is when he isn't leading tours like ours or working his regular job as a teacher.

Before we set out to ride, he took us on a mini-tour of the main Angkor Wat temple.  I complimented his commentary; he demurred, saying, "Well, I  know this because I've been here all of my life."  

He also knows the trails in this area.  Grasshopper promised that this ride would take us away from the crowds.  Indeed, it did:  Even when we arrived at the temples, we were ahead of the biggest throngs of tourists.

Stuart is a regular mountain biker in his native Australia.  I once was semi-regular, but I haven't been since I sold my Bontrager 15 years ago.  Since then, I've stuck to road and street riding.  But I felt comfortable riding with Stuart and Vichea as we bounced oer rocks and tree roots, and navigated the steep turns, on dirt, mud and rock trails between the main Angkor Wat temple and its satellites, including Bayon.  We even rode through jungle but didn't see elephants, lemurs or even big snakes.  Near the end of the ride, though, we did spot some water buffalo.

By the way, in another contrast with my PURE ride, I rode a GT mountain bike with disc brakes and a mid-range suspension fork. When I registered, the Grasshopper administrator asked for my height and I noticed that Stuart, who is taller, had a bigger frame and Vichea, who is shorter, had a smaller frame than mine. I did the  PURE ride on a local-brand "city bike", which is kind of ironic given that the ride ventured  into the countryside.  That bike probably came in only one size.


We concluded with lunch at a roadside restaurant: a Khmer chicken-and-vegetable dish for me, accompanied by a small fruit plate, as every Khmer meal seems to be.  Not that I'm complaining:  I enjoy getting at least a taste of fruits I don't find often, if at all, when I'm at home.  

Now I'll admit that I feel at least one point of pride about this ride:  Stuart and Vichea both complimented my riding. I hope--and suspect--they weren't slowing down for me or tamping the intensity of those trails just because I am nearly two decades older than Sturart and he, in turn, is about a decade and a half older then Vichea!I  Then again, they probably didn't know that about me, if I do say so myself.

When I Say "Never"...

Last Friday, I did something I said I'd never do again.  Actually, you might say I did two things I vowed not to do.

Yes, I bought a mountain bike: my first in nearly two decades.  I admit, it doesn't have the latest technology and wasn't even a high-end bike in its day.  But I don't plan to do some of the crazy stunts I did when I was younger.  

When I say the bike wasn't high-end, I mean that it was the lowest-level mountain bike its manufacturer was offering.  Which leads me to the second thing I said I'd never do:  I bought a Cannondale mountain bike.  An M-300 from 1996, to be exact.

Now, I don't have anything against Cannondale bikes per se.  I realize that, like certain saddles, some people just like the ride of them.  The Cannondales I had felt particularly harsh.  Then again, they were some of the company's early road bikes.  I've heard that C-dale refined their offerings, but I decided that since I generally prefer steel bikes, I'd stick to them.

The way I figure it, though, is that a Cannondale mountain bike won't be as harsh as one of its road bikes because of the mountain bike's  fatter tires and the slacker geometry.  Also, I don't reckon I'll take this bike on the sorts of long rides I take with my Mercians.

Oh, and the bike has a Rock Shox Indy fork and a suspension seatpost.  I plan to get rid of the latter: I can replace it with a long  27.2mm rigid seatpost I have lying around.  I'll leave the Rock Shox on the bike for now and if I don't like it, or just don't want to maintain it, I might switch to a rigid fork.

The rest of the bike, though, I'm going to leave as-is, at least until the parts wear out.  The only thing I absolutely must change is the right shift lever:

When I pointed it out to the man from whom I bought the bike, he knocked the price down.  I told him I was willing to pay his original asking price, as he let me ride it and I found that the bike tracked straight and everything else was working as it should. (I tried shifting the rear derailleur by hand, and I could see that it will shift fine with a functioning shifter.)  In a way, that broken shifter is just as well because I don't like twist-grip shifters*.  I plan to replace it with a cheap Sun Race thumb shifter and, if and when the rest of the drivetrain wears out, I will decide whether I want to "upgrade" to 8 or 9 speeds--or turn the bike into a single-speed, something I might do if I decide this is a "snow" bike.

So, here I am, with my first mountain bike--and my first aluminum frame--in ages.  Don't worry:  I'm not going rogue!

Oh, and the man from whom I bought the bike had every intention of selling it--unlike the fellow I wrote about yesterday.




*When I say I don't like something, I don't necessarily mean that anything is inherently wrong with it.  It's just a  matter of my personal preferences. For example I know some of you like bar-end shifters and if you do, you should use them.  They're just not for me. I'd say the same for certain saddles.

I Ride My Rental Into History

So, here's where I went yesterday:

Take a closer look:

No, I didn't come home early from my trip.  This replica of the Statue of Liberty is on the Ile des Cygnes, a manmade island in the Seine under the Grenelle Bridge.  

(Now I'll make a confession:  I am one of those New Yorkers who's never been to the Statue of Liberty in my hometown's harbor.  When I have made that confession elsewhere, I have been called a disgrace to the human race, and worse.)

Another difference between this one and the one in New York is that you can ride to this one. Well, almost:  You have to walk down a couple of flights of stairs from the Grenelle Bridge. (When I had a mountain bike with a suspension front fork, I probably would have ridden down those stairs!)  And I rode to it--well, actually, I didn't intend to visit the statue. But it happened to be along my ride.

Yes, I rode a bicycle--but not one from Velibre.  One of the hotel staff told me about a site called Bim Bim Bikes, which can locate a bike rental for you anywhere in France.  When you reserve it, you can pay directly with your credit card or with PayPal or other services.  (I used PayPal since my card is linked to it, which makes things easier.)  The shop--Paris Velo, C'est Sympa (which lives up to its name) --is in a neighborhood I know well, near the Canal St. Martin. A six-day rental cost me 65 Euros (about 75 dollars at current exchange rates).

For that price, I got this bike:

a basic "city" bike from a company called "Arcade".  It's slow and handles like a truck, but  I'm not going for speed or even distance on my rides here.  I could have paid more for a "name brand" bike like Giant, but I figured that even if I got a lighter, sprightlier bike, it still wouldn't be my own.  Perhaps this sounds counter-intuitive, but a more performance-oriented bike might make me wish for my own more than a basic bike like the one I'm riding--which, of course, can in no way resemble my Mercians.

But it rolls over cobblestones--and grips to ones slicked by the light rain this city has experienced for most of the day--nicely.  Plus, it includes, in addition to the lock, this interesting bag

that fits onto a Klick-Fix attachment used with some other bags and baskets.  It loos rather like a purse and includes a shoulder strap for carrying it when I park the bike--which, of course, I did at two cafes and a store.  

(I have to admit that I cried at the store.  A young woman was cradling a kitten who looked like Marlee when she first came into my life!  When I stroked that cat and rubbed its nose, that young woman said, "'s't v'avezoon chat, vrai?" (You have a cat, don't you?) in that Parisian equivalent of New York speech that seems, at times, to have more contractions than actual words.

The drizzle I that colored most of the day was interrupted by bouts of rain and overcast sky. But there wasn't any wind, and it wasn't terribly cold (8C high temperature).  Best of all, the low clouds made for an interesting view:

Since I've lived in, have visited and have friends in, this city, I don't think of myself as a tourist.  So I always promise I myself I won't take another picture of the Eiffel Tower.  But I figure the one with the low clouds is justified.  Heck, I can even rationalize another photo of the Arc de Triomphe.  At least I'm approaching it, just like the riders at the end of the Tour de France.

Hey, I even rode around the rond--twice!  I have to wonder, though, what it would be like if they made those Tour riders pedal through the cobblestoned bike lane. Hmm...Maybe they could think of it as training for the following Paris-Roubaix race.

Finally, I'm going to do something I often do when I travel: subject you to a history lessson.  Two, actually.  The first I encountered on the Metro, on the way to pick up my rental:

I had to transfer from la ligne 2 to ligne 5 at Stalingrad.  That's what everybody calls it, but the official name is la Place de la Bataille Stalingrad.  The city was known by that name at the time it staged one of the major conflicts of World War II.  For centuries, it was known as Tsaritsyn; today we call it Volgograd.  I find it interesting and ironic that the name "Stalingrad" cannot be found in Russia, but it remains part of the appelation of the intersection of Paris' two main canals (St. Martin and Ourcq).  

The sign is also interesting because it's in a style that's disappearing. When I first came to Paris in 1980, most signs inside the city's Metro stations were in that style.  Now most of them look more like this:

Now for more history:  Along the way, I stopped at this square:

named for the French officer falsely accused and imprisoned for passing military secrets to the Germans.  He just happened (yeah, right) to be Jewish.  So was the writer who fought for his release, and the reversal of his guilty plea:

The avenue on which Dreyfus park is located bears Emile Zola's name.  He is right that the truth wins out.  Sometimes it takes time--and it comes too late for some people, including the  victims of the terrible incident this statue commemorates.

I have mentioned Jews who were rounded up and detained in the Velodrome d'Hiver (known to locals as Vel-Deev) before they were deported.  That is, if they survived the head and unsanitary conditions inside the velodrome.  

As Zola said, the truth marches on.  And this is its color:

Or so I like to believe.  That sign is found on one of the streets that form one of the Dreyfus Park's boundaries.