The Gear Maker

During the 1970's Bike Boom, millions of Americans bought ten-speed bikes.  Many people rode them only a few times, or once.  Some didn't like the dropped handlebars or small "hard" seats; others couldn't quite get the hang of shifting derailleurs.  Given the fragile nature of most derailleurs of the time, the results weren't pretty, especially when the derailleurs were out of adjustment or the rider tried to shift while standing still or under pressure.

Then there were the engineering types and tinkerers who look at any mechanical device and think "There must be a better way."  And, finally, there were lots of newly-minted lawyers with too much time on their hands who saw all sorts of potential lawsuits lurking. (Some of them helped to found the CPSC.)

One of the best-remembered attempts to correct the "deficiencies" of derailleur gearing was Shimano's Front Freewheeling system.  Basically, it incorporated a freewheel-like mechanism between the chainrings and crank so that the chainrings spun as long as the wheels were spinning. This allowed riders to shift without pedaling. 

Some people who were accustomed to internally-geared hubs (like Sturmey-Archer three-speeds) liked this new innovation, which is probably the reason why it developed something of a following in Germany, where many people still cycled for transportation but few were accustomed to derailleurs.  However, the FF system was heavy and complicated, and was equipped only on entry-level bikes.

Another attempt to bypass the idiosyncrasies of derailleurs and multiple rear sprockets is all but forgotten today.  But it was interesting in its own way.

Before its foray into the bicycle business, Tokheim had about seven decades' worth of experience in manufacturing fuel dispensers and pumps, and equipment for payment terminals and retail automation systems.  So, if you've ever owned or managed a gas station, you've seen or used Tokheim equipment.

Like a few other American companies, Tokheim thought the Bike Boom was an opening for a new profitable market.  And, like those other companies (including, of all companies, Beatrice Foods!), they thought they could make bike parts and accessories even though they had absolutely no experience with them--or, it could seem, cycling. 

Then again, Tokheim's experience with pumps and other kinds of machinery had, it would seem, at least some applicability to designing and manufacturing a bicycle gearing system.  It was at least somewhat in evidence in their "Gear Maker" system.

The Tokheim Gear Maker

When drivetrains with derailleurs are shifted to their extreme positions (small chainring with the smallest rear cog or largest chainring with largest rear cog), severe chainline angles can result.  This usually results in noisier running; in worse cases, it leads to premature chain and cog wear.  In the worst cases (especially with an inexperienced and unskilled rider), the chain can be thrown off the cogs and into the wheels or get stuck between the chainrings and chainstay.

Most cyclists learned, in time, not to shift into the extreme gear positions--or to do so carefully.  However, some could never get past that first experience of a missed shift.  Or, if they had no previous experience with multi-cog systems, they were intimidated.

That is the "need" the Tokheim system was intended to meet.  Imagine an old-fashioned Ferris wheel:  the kind with a "spider" that rotates around an axle at its center and "cars" or "gondolas" at the end of each arm.  Those cars and arms are in fixed positions and will always reach the same height at the peak of their rotation. 

Now imagine that between those arms, there are other arms, except that these arms are expandable and retractable.  Thus, the Ferris wheel operator could expand the diameter (and height) of the wheel for more adventurous customers.  But the cars of those expanded and contracted cars would rotate in the same plane as the cars on arms with fixed lengths.

The gear in the "gear maker" was like that Ferris wheel.  It was operated with a twist-grip shifter.  When the shifter was in its "high" position (slackened cable), the chain ran on the smallest gear, which was fixed to the axle.  Shifting down made an interposer arm push a series of bars out successively.  At the end of each bar were teeth like those of a typical rear sprocket.  The chain ran on a larger sprocket something like the "skip tooth" cogs found on some 1970s freewheels.  A tensioner--basically a derailleur cage and pulleys--took up chain slack.

For a time, the Tokheim system came as standard equipment on a few Huffy and Murray bikes.  I never saw a bicycle sold in a bike shop that was equipped with the Tokheim system, and I don't know whether anyone ever retrofitted it to a bike.  For that matter, I didn't know anyone who rode it, and only got to work on a couple of them, so I don't know how they performed in the "real world".  However, as the gears were made of plastic, I suspect they wore fairly quickly.  And, as Tokheim stopped making it around 1980 and, to my knowledge, never offered replacement parts (and because most of the bikes that came with them have long since ended up in landfills), I don't suspect that very many Tokheim Gear Makers are in use today.  But, I think, they are interesting nonetheless.

Campagnolo Gran Sport: Act II

Yesterday, I mentioned the Campagnolo Gran Sport and its offspring.  As I said, although the original GS derailleur ceased production in 1963, the name wasn't abandoned:  It was re-appropriated in 1975.  In a way, Campagnolo came "full circle" with the Nuovo Grand Sport rear derailleur:  It shared the geometry and overall design of the Record and its succ essors, but had a cruder finish and hexagonal rather than recessed allen bolts, while the Record, Nuovo Record and Super Records were refinements of the original Gran Sport.    The 1970's Gran Sport was situated below the Record but above Campagnolo's "budget" Valentino and Gran Turismo derailleurs, which cost more than, and didn't shift as well as, Japanese derailleurs of the time.  

Campagnolo Nuovo Gran Sport derailleur, late 1970s

Also, over the few years that followed the introduction of the original GS, Campy created a line of Gran Sport components: hubs, crankset, bottom bracket, headset, pedals and seatpost, but no brakes.  This gruppo is believed to be the first such comprehensive ensemble of professional-level equipment since Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) made the components-of-choice for Six-Day Racers as well as much of the peloton during the 1930s. (BSA also made some very well-respected bicycles.)  Soon, Campagnolo Gran Sport parts would be nearly as common among elite cyclists as BSA stuff had been.




A new gruppo was also created around the Nuovo Gran Sport.  It would include something the original Gran Sport group didn't have:  brakes.  (Interestingly, BSA made brakes to go with their other components, but Campagnolo didn't come out with their now-famous sidepulls until 1968, a year after the Nuovo Record derailleur was introduced.) The arms were all but identical to those of the Record.  However, the cable adjuster was a knurled dome and didn't have the rubber "O" ring seen on Record brakes.  More important, the quick release could only be opened or closed completely, in contrast to the infinitely-variable quick release on the Record, which could be opened part way.


One of the most interesting Nuovo Gran Sport components was the crankset, which had a three-arm spider:

Gran Sport crankset, 1970s

Later, it was replaced by a five-arm spider much like that of the Record:




The headset shared the same bearings and bearing surfaces with Record and Super Record headsets.  However, the Gran Sport, made entirely from steel, had only two wrench "flats" on the top adjustable race, while Record-level headsets had multiple sides that to fit a standard headset wrench.



Some people preferred the Gran Sport because it didn't have any names or logos on the adjustable race or lower head race. In that way, it resembled the headsets found on some old British frames like Claud Butler.

The pedals were based on the Record's quill design.  The bearings and bearing surfaces were the same. However, the NGS didn't share the Record's knurling on the outside of the cone locknut that helped to prevent dirt from working its way in.  In addition, the dust caps on the NGS were plastic (steel on the Record and alloy on the Super Record) and the cutouts on the cages were a bit smaller.  Finally, as with the rear (and front) derailleurs, the finish was cruder.  However, nobody seemed to notice any difference in functionality between the Gran Sport and Record series pedals.



Possibly the most inelegant (at least to my eye) constituent of the Nuovo Gran Sport line was the shift levers.  They functioned just like the Record levers but, like other Gran Sport components, had a less-polished finish. And the adjuster nuts, while easy enough to use, were not attractive, at least to my tastes.




In contrast, the Gran Sport front derailleur was all but indistinguishable from the Record:



Finally, here is my favorite component in the Gran Sport lineup:




These hubs were part of the Nuovo Gran Sport gruppo.  But they weren't called "Gran Sport". Instead they were known as "Nuovo Tipo", the name under which they had been made since 1965, a decade before the introduction of the Nuovo Gran Sport derailleur.  The hubs were simply incorporated into the group.


I had two sets of wheels with these hubs.  In fact, my very first set of custom wheels was built around them, with Super Champion 58 rims and Robergel "Sport" spokes.  I rode them on my first long bike tours and, after a few hundred miles, the hubs spun just as smoothly as the Record hubs I would later acquire.  

TIpos shared the same bearings, cones and axles with Record hubs of the same era.  However, the inner races on the Tipos were stamped, while those on Records were forged.  That meant that Tipos weren't as smooth out of the box as Records and needed "breaking in".  They also probably didn't last as long, but I knew cyclists (myself included) who rode plenty of miles, some of them hard, on Tipos.  

More visible differences, though, were in the logo (Tipos used the older-style "flying wheel" while Records had the "world" insignia), the oil hole clips on the Records and lack of same on the Tipos, and the knurled quick-release locknut on the Tipo vs. the nut with the D-ring on the Record.



Finally, the large-flanged version of the Record had oval cutouts in the flanges, while the Tipos had portal-style holes reminiscent of classic hubs from the 1930s to the 1950s.




Probably the best-known bike (in the US, anyway) to come equipped with Nuovo Gran Sport components was the Raleigh Competition from 1977 to 1985. (Before 1977 , the Competition came with a Huret Jubilee rear derailleur and other French components.)  The NGS gruppo was, not surprisingly, more likely to be found on Italian bikes.  I recall seeing Olmos and Cioccs outfitted with the full Nuovo Gran Sport ensemble, except for the rear derailleur, which was a Nuovo Record.  Stuyvesant Bicycle  and a few other shops sold them.  I don't know whether the shops changed the derailleurs or whether the bikes were originally spec'd that way.

Whatever the case, Nuovo Gran Sport equipment, while good and reliable, never became terribly popular in the US.  I think one reason was the crude finish of some parts, especially the rear derailleur.  For about  the same price as NGS, one could buy Shimano Dura-Ace or SunTour Superbe equipment, which were beautifully finished and offered some of the features (like the infinitely variable brake quick-release) Campagnolo included in their Record series but omitted from Gran Sport.  And SunTour derailleurs and levers shifted better than their counterparts from Campagnolo.

Campagnolo finally retired the Gran Sport name and lineup in 1985, the same year the Nuovo and Super Record series ended their runs.  The Record lines were superseded by the Record-C, while the Gran Sport's berth below the Record was taken by the Chorus and Athena gruppos.  And Campagnolo stopped making their lower-end Valentino and Gran Turismo derailleurs and developed new "mass market" component lines called Victory and Triomphe.

"The First Brakes That Worked"

If you have a Peugeot--or almost any other French bike (Motobecane being one of the notable exceptions) made before the late 1970's, you are riding them.

No, I'm not referring to those plastic Simplex derailleurs or the longer-lasting but worse-shifting Huret models.  Unless you acquired a bike that was never ridden, you've probably had to replace your shifters by now.  Even If you didn't need to, you might have.

On the other hand, there's a good chance you're still riding your Mafac "Racer" brakes.  You might have replaced the pads and cables--actually, you should have because even if the bike wasn't ridden, the cables were probably corroded and the pads hardened.  If you did, and your brakes are adjusted, they work as well as--or even better than--most brakes available today.

I am mentioning them because, for about two decades, they achieved a distinction very few other bike parts held:  They were used on bikes at all price and quality levels, from the machines ridden by Tour de France winners to the most utilitarian city and town bikes.  Some time in the mid-1970's, Mafac came out with the "Competition", which was really the same brake with a shorter reach.  Later, it was cleaned up and polished (and still later offered with gold anodizing).  A longer version of the Competition --i.e., one with the same reach as the Racer--was also marketed.

 

The one other difference between the "Racer" and "Competition" was the straddle cable:  The one on the Competition had double ball ends, while the Racer used what was essentially a shorter link of derailleur cable (with the barrel-shaped end used on Campagnolo and Simplex shifters) bolted into hex-shaped ends.

While some may see these brakes as anachronisms, they have an important place in cycling history. Some cycling historians say they were "the first brakes that actually worked".  That is almost not hyperbole:  There seemed to be a mentality among brake-makers (at least those that made brakes for road bikes) that was expressed by a Campagnolo representative at a training session:  The purpose of the brake is not to stop, but to decelerate.  Some would argue that notion gave the brakes of the time too much credit.

(When I first got serious about cycling, there was a joke that the Universal 68 side-pull--commonly supplied on bikes that were otherwise all-Campagnolo--was a "courtesy" brake.)

One reason for Mafac's superior power was the way the brake block attached to the arm:  through an eyebolt.  This allowed a far greater range of adjustability along the vertical and horizontal planes.  This was particularly important with rims like the Constrictor Asp, which did not have flat parallel sides.

(The Asp seems almost like an embryonic version of today's V-shaped "aero" rims!)

Another advantage offered by the "Racer" brakes was that the length of the straddle cable could be adjusted to optimize the mechanical advantage of the brake.  This allowed the brakes to work well with a variety of different levers, as well as with the pads set all the way up or all the way down--or anywhere in between--on the brake arm.

Now, you might be thinking that the first working center pull--and the one on which others were based, at least in part--is not so important because sidepulls have advanced so much, and so Mafac has been relegated to la poubelle de l'histoire.  Well, even though Mafac hasn't been in business for about three decades, their place in cycling history is sure because of the very first product they made, about seven years before the "Racer" was introduced.

Their cantilever brake, introduced in 1946, remained in production throughout the company's history (about four decades).  It's not the first of its type.  But, compared to the ones that had been made before, it was easy to set up and use, and was more powerful.  For as long as Mafac made them, nearly every lightweight tandem was equipped with them.  So were many high-quality bikes made for fully-loaded touring, and most cyclo-cross racers.  For the latter, cyclists often brazed the necessary posts to old racing frames to accommodate the cantilevers which, in addition to offering superior stopping power, were not as easily clogged by the mud that is an essential element of any cyclo-cross race.

The early mountain bikes also used Mafac cantis.  When Dia-Compe and Shimano made  cantilever brakes that appeared on off-the-shelf touring bikes (and second-generation mountain bikes) sold in the US, their designs were basically adaptations and refinements of Mafac's.  Weinmann also more-or-less copied Mafac cantis and, apparently, bought Mafac's tooling and continued making cantis, in steel as well as alloy, until their own demise in the 1990's.

Many of us still use cantis today.  Those of you who use V-brakes also have to thank Mafac, because Vees were developed from cantis.  And even those of us who use dual-pivot sidepulls owe a debt of gratitude to Manufacture Auvergnoise de Freins et Accessories pour Cycle for developing the centerpull that helped to make it possible!

For me, it's interesting to recall that Frank Chrinko, the proprietor of Highland Park (NJ) Cyclery when I was working there, would not ride any brakes but Mafac centerpulls.  In fact, he put a set of Competitions, along with a mixture of Campagnolo and top-shelf French and Japanese parts, on a frame that was built custom for him. 

A Way I've Never Commuted

In my four decades or so of cycling to and from work, school or any other place I had to be on a regular basis, I carried stuff in a variety of ways. 

Most recently, I've used my Koki pannier and Carradice Nelson Longflap saddlebags for the purpose.  At other times, I've stuffed the panniers I used on my previous bike tour with books, manuscripts, student papers, changes of clothing and shoes, lunch or other food and a few things I won't mention.  At other times, I've used backpacks, messenger bags (I was a NYC messenger for a year.), front baskets, milk crates zip-tied (or cinched with old toe straps) on a rear rack and plastic shopping bags tied to my handlebars orframe (or dangled from my fingers),  I've carried everything from baguettes to an Andy Warhol work under my left arm as I steered with my right, and even balanced things on my handlebars or head. I've even carried pizzas in a variety of ways, including balancing i in my raised left hand (a la the Statue of Liberty) while steering with my right, or clamping the corners of the boxes between my thumb and forefinger while grasping my handlebars with the other three fingers of each hand.

But for all of the ingenious (if I do say so myself) and stupid tricks I've employed as a bicycle commuter and messenger, I have nothing on this person:

From Bike Roswell

Velosteel: My First Coaster Brake In 40 Years

Now I'm going to tell you a little more about the wheel I was building--and Marley was "inspecting."

As you may be able to see, the appendage hanging from the hub is a coaster-brake arm.  (That's the kind of brake you backpedal.)  The wheel I built with it is going on the rescued Trek frame. 

I don't know what possessed me to go and buy the hub--one of two new parts I've bought for the bike--or to decide that it was going on the Trek frame.  After all, I haven't owned a bike with a coaster brake in about 40 years.

At least I know that I will end up with a very simple bike.  In fact, the only way I could make the bike simpler would be to use a fixed-gear wheel in the rear--without brakes, of course.  I had such a bike in my youth, and rode it on the streets.  There's no way I'll do that now!

Anyway, the hub is a Czech-made Velosteel.  From what I understand, the owners of Velosteel purchased the machinery used to produce the classic German Fichtel-Sachs coaster brake hub before SRAM bought out Sachs.  

Three things are immediately noticeable about the Velosteel hub:  the weight (definitely more than a Shimano coaster-brake hub), the shape and structure of the shell, the lush chroming and the way the cog is attached.  

On most coaster brake and internally-geared hubs, the cog is splined, slides onto the hub body and is held in place with a snap ring.   In contrast, the cog screws onto this hub in the same way as a track (fixed-gear) cog.  Another feature this hub has in common with a track hub is the reverse-threaded lockring.  In other words, the cog screws on one way (clockwise) but there is a second set of threads on which the lockring attaches counterclockwise.  This prevents the cog from unscrewing when you backpedal or do a "track stand".  

And, yes, you can use track cogs and lockrings--as long as they're not Campagnolo or Phil Wood. 

While looking at the above photo, I'm thinking of the very first fixed-gear bike I ever had:  a converted Peugeot UO8.  In those days, very few people (at least here in the US) were riding "fixies," and I couldn't find any instructions on how to do such a conversion in any of the books or magazines I owned or borrowed. (Remember, we didn't have the Internet in those days!)  So, I screwed a track cog onto the Normandy hub that came with the bike and tightened a bottom-bracket lockring as hard as I could against the cog.  

I got away with riding it for about a year before I did an unintentional "track stand" while stopping for a light.  Whomp!  I just-as-unintentionally found myself spread over the frame's top tube after the cog unscrewed and my legs imitated those of a collapsible table!

But I digress.  The Velosteel cogs and lockring look to be well-machined, if not as nicely finished as the hub.  Another interesting feature of the hub body is that it's cast as one piece, as the better road and track hubs are.  Most other coaster-brake hubs have flanges that are pressed onto the hub shell.   I once had a rear hub (non-coaster brake) with pressed-on flanges that collapsed into each other.  While this may have been an unusual occurence, I've never heard of such a thing happening to hubs with one-piece shells.  

And one-piece construction makes for a more elegant shape, and allows the nice chrome finishing you see on the Velosteel. 

I built the hub onto a Mavic rim that had previously been laced to another hub and sat in my closet for I-don't-know-how-long.   It has the older grey "hard anodized" finish which, to my knowledge, Mavic no longer uses.  So I had no "mate" to this rim, which is one of the reasons it's been entombed in my closet for so long.

To mate the Mavic rim to the Velosteel hub, I used Phil Wood spokes.  Guy Doss of Elegant Wheels--from whom I bought the hub as well as the spokes--recommends Phils for the Velosteel hub because, like other steel hubs, it has thinner flanges than alloy hubs, so spokes designed for alloy hubs (such as DT and Wheelsmith) won't fit as well.   If you build a steel hub (whether Velosteel, Shimano or an old Sturmey-Archer, SunTour or Sachs three-speed hub) with one of those brands of spokes, you should use spoke washers under the spoke heads.


In time, I'll find out how the hub works and lasts.  For now, I like the look of the wheel and it seems to fit nicely into the old Trek frame.

By the way:  I highly recommend Guy Doss.  He's very helpful and personable, and can also build you a wheel from  a Velosteel hub if you've neither the skills nor the inclination to do it yourself.

N.B.--Apparently, Velosteel offers a coaster-brake hub with a cog that slides on and is held in place with snap ring:  the same configuration most other coaster-brake hubs, and most traditional internally-geared hubs, use.  However, I don't know whether Velosteel's slide-on cogs and snaprings are interchangeable with those of other brands.  At least the "track" configuration I bought can use cogs and lockrings from a number of other manufacturers.

 

 

A Grand Record And, How I Became Queen of the Road

I didn't post yesterday because I was a bad girl.  I stayed up well past my bedtime and partied.  At least I rode my bike to and from the bash.


Being the warmest day we've had since October, lots of people were riding for the first time this year.  One of them, I suspect, rode this bike:

It was parked in the same rack, at my second job, where I've seen a Pinarello.  I couldn't get a better photo of it because the bikes were parked so close together.  But I think you can see that it's a nice bike:  a Motobecane Grand Record, circa 1973.

The frame was made with Reynolds 531 double-butted tubing, those nice curly Nervex lugs and Campagnolo dropouts.  The bike was originally equipped with a mixture of high-quality French components and Campagnolo Nuovo Record shifters.

This specimen still has the shifters.  However, the crankset was replaced with what looks like a late-model Sugino AT triple.  It's a fine piece of kit, and allows for a small sprocket of 24 teeth.  I'm guessing that its owner wanted a triple, which wasn't possible with the original crankset.

This is the Specialites TA "Professional" crankset, which is what originally came on the Grand Record.  A number of European bikes, including a couple of models from Raleigh, sported this fine piece of machining and polishing.  Notice that the chainrings were attached to only three arms, as was common on cranksets (including Rene Herse's) until the 1970's.  Nearly all modern chainrings attach to either five or four arms.  The newer designs are supposed to be stiffer and more secure.  That may well be true, but plenty of really strong riders rode--and even raced--on three-arm cranks.


Anyway, these days replacement chainrings for those three-arm cranks aren't available from many other sources besides eBay.


After work, I went to the party I mentioned.  A colleague was celebrating a round-number birthday; the guests included some other colleagues as well as friends of hers I'd never met before.  They were all astounded that I rode there.  "But it only took me 45 minutes," I pointed out.  


The colleague offered to let me stay at her place.  I would've accepted, except that I remembered Charlie and Max.  Did I leave enough food for them?  And how full was their litter box?, I wondered.


So I assured my colleague that I had a good time.  I think she knew that, as I was one of the last people to leave.  But I fibbed about something else:  I said I would ride my bike to the Long Island Rail Road station, which was only two blocks away, and take the train home.  


You can guess what I did instead.  I rode home, about twenty-one miles.  It's not a great distance, certainly, and as I didn't drink any alcohol (I never do.), I could easily ride in a straight line.  As it turned out, even if I couldn't, it wouldn't have been much of a problem because the roads I took were almost completely free of traffic at that hour.  

Surprisingly, I didn't feel tired, even though I started to ride at about four in the morning.  The weather had gotten chillier, but I didn't put on the tights I'd brought with me.  So I rode with my legs bare below the hem of my skirt.  I didn't feel cold; I felt invigorated.  And the full moon was so bright that, had I stopped, I could have read Ulysses.  But I didn't stop, not even for a traffic signal.  Some of them were blinking their red lights, but--OK, I was a bad girl--I ran a couple of red lights.  OK, maybe more than a couple.  If a girl runs a red light and no one's there to see it....


And, I'll admit something else:  I took some main roads on which I wouldn't normally ride.  I'm not talking about the Long Island Expressway; I'm talking about main local thoroughfares like Jericho Turnpike, Hillside Avenue and Queens Boulevard (a.k.a. The Boulevard of Death).  


As I was riding those nearly empty streets, I thought for a moment about a Pinky and the Brain episode.  In it, Brain carries out his latest scheme for taking over the world:  He gets Pinky to help him create an alternative planet Earth.  He lures people to it by offering free T-shirts, which he correctly identified as an irresistible draw.  So, emptied of its former inhabitants, Brain finally "takes over" this world.


The difference was that I didn't suffer the empty feeling Brain had in the end.  Instead, by the time I got home, I was starting to feel tired.  And I fell into a very nice sleep--after I fed Charlie and Max.

Bridges to Deja Vu

There are at least a couple of different ways in which you can experience deja vu during a bike ride.


The most common way, of course, is to see familiar sights during along a route you've ridden before.  More often than not, that is a pleasant or at least agreeable situation.  After all, you wouldn't be doing the ride again if you don't get some kind of pleasure from it.


Then there is what I will call, for lack of a better term, situational deja vu.  Any number of situations or other experiences can repeat themselves during a ride. Among them are weather, road conditions, fatigue, exhiliaration or some emotion or another that you're dealing with.


Yet another kind of deja vu is, paradoxically, the most ephemeral yet the one that affects us most deeply.  It's the one in which we recall feelings or memories which may have come to us on rides very different from the one we're on at the moment.  Or we have expereinced those emotions during rides we did much earlier in our lives, or in places very different from the one in which we happen to be riding.


There are other ways, I'm sure, in which we can experience deja vu during a bike ride.  I've just mentioned three I could think of at this moment.  They also happen to be the ways in which I experienced deja vu on today's ride.


Although this is my first visit to, and therefore my first bike ride in, Florida in two years, every inch of today's ride was at least somewhat familiar to me.  I had previously ridden every crack and grain of sand my tires tread, though not necessarily in the sequence in which I rode them today.  But it seemed that the flow of sense memories was all but seamless.


It began when I crossed the bridge from Palm Coast Parkway to Route A1A:

Hannibal is said to have shouted "Excelsior!" after conquering the Alps.  Whatever he was feeling, it has nothing on the sensation I experience as I reach the apex of a bridge that connects the mainland to a strip of land along the sea.  At such moments, I feel as if I'm exhaling for the first time, whether the bridge is the one I crossed today, the one that connects Broad Channel to Rockaway Beach, the one I crossed over the estuary of the Dordogne river to the coast near Bordeaux or the one from Highlands to Sandy Hook in New Jersey. 


It was over that last bridge that I took my first long rides during my early teen years.


And that bridge led, like the one I crossed today, led to a spit of land that stands, almost defiantly, between the ocean and another body of water.  When you ride along Route 36 from Sandy Hook to Long Branch, the ocean is never more than two hundred feet to your left and the Shrewsbury River is no further than that to your right.  When you ride A1A from Palm Coast to Flagler Beach, the dunes of Painters Hill (such an apt name!) and Beverly Beach are practically at arm's length on your left, and you're separated by no more than the width of a grove or mobile-home "campground" from the Florida Intercoastal Waterway.


Even though this is Florida, I'll admit that today's ride is more beautiful than the ones in New Jersey or to Rockaway Beach.  But in the end, I enjoy it--and, more important, it matters to me for the same reasons as those rides, and the one in the southwest of France.  They all are bridges to deja vu.