From An Olympic Race To A Run For Freedom: Michael Walker

To my knowledge, I do not have any Irish heritage.  So, perhaps, those of you who have any could forgive me for not writing about one of the definitive events in the history of Eireann and the role a cyclist played in it.

Last week marked 100 years since the Easter Rising, which took place from 24 to 30 April 1916.  It is seen as the first of a series of events that led to the declaration of the Irish Republic and the Irish War for Independence.

Four years before the Easter Rising, the fifth modern Olympics--and the last before World War I--were held in Stockholm, Sweden.  Despite objections from other countries, the British Olympic Association entered three teams in the cycling events:  one each from the separate English, Irish and Scottish governing bodies of the sport.

Michael Walker

Dublin native Michael Walker, who had begun racing only a year earlier, was chosen for the team. So was his brother John, three years younger. 

They, and the other riders, lined up for an individual time trial on the 7th of July.  Incredibly, that race--which would count toward individual and team medals-- was 315 kilometers (196 miles) long.  South African Rudolph Lewis won it with a time of 10 hours and 42 minutes. 

The Irish cycling team on their way to the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm

The Irish team finished 11th of the 15 teams that competed, and Michael and John finished 67th and 81st, respectively, in the individual competitions. 

The following year, Michael won the Irish 50-mile championship and set national records for 12 and 24 hours. 

Later in that same year, he attended the inaugural meeting of the Irish Volunteers, whose chief objective was to "secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland."  Within two years, in Dublin, an armed insurrection erupted.  That rebellion would become the Easter Rising.

The insurgents occupied six strategic positions in the city of Dublin.  The Walker brothers were posted to one of them, the Jacob's Biscuit Factory, along with 150 men, under the command of Thomas MacDonagh, with Major John MacBride second in command.  As the fighting raged on, the Walkers would spend much of their time in a role that befit their cycling skills:  as couriers whisking messages across the city.

One of the Rising's most famous leaders, Eamon De Valera, held fort at Boland's Mill, which was under siege.  He sent an urgent request to Jacob's for help.  "Members of this garrison with bicycles were selected for this sortie including my brother John and myself and we left the buildings some time in the afternoon," Michael related in a witness statement. "We proceeded... as far as Holles Street where we dismounted and fired several volleys up toward Mount Street Bridge."

On their return, however, they "came under machine gun fire from the top of Grafton Street."   The brothers escaped unhurt, and their battalion would surrender on the 30th of April.  MacDonagh and MacBride, among others, were executed.  The Walkers would be arrested and sent to Stafford Jail.

Five years later, Michael would go on to fight in the War of Independence.  He would receive medals for that, as well as his involvement in the Easter Rising. He would live another half-century, dying at the age of 85 on 15 March 1971, less than a year before the Bloody Sunday massacre in Londonderry.

In an interesting twist of fate, Rudolph Lewis, who won that 1912 Olympic time trial, would--while the Walker brothers were doing their part for Irish independence--serve in the German Army during World War I, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross.
 

From Pearl Harbor...To Rinko?

A cliche about modern history is that World War II "changed everything".  But I have found it interesting to look at some of the specific ways the arts, culture, technology and politics were affected in the US and other countries.

On this date two years ago, I wrote about how the attack on Pearl Harbor transformed bicycles in this country.  On the day of the attack, the average American bicycle weighed 57 pounds (26 kilos)!  The US Government decreed that bicycles be made lighter, both to save on materials (rationing had begun) and so that they would be more nimble for use on the front lines. Not many bicycles were available to the general public, and production of children's bicycles ceased altogether.  

Those few people who were able to buy those lighter bike preferred them to the older, heavier ones.  So did the troops who had the newly-redesigned bikes--and who saw, and in some cases brought home, still lighter bikes from the places in which they fought.  (Yes, even with their changes in design, American wartime bikes were heavier than even the English three-speeds, French ballon-tired bikes or Dutch city machines!)  Ever since, no American company has made bikes--except those for industrial purposes--as heavy as the ones made before the war.  And no American who is not a collector has bought anything like those old behemoths.

Still, even with all of the bicycles that were made for them, the US Armed Forces didn't use nearly as many bicycles as their counterparts from both their allies and enemy countries.  In fact, Americans didn't use bikes on the front lines at all, while British forces made some use of them in that capacity.  On the other hand, "It was probably the Japanese who used the bicycle most during WW II," according to Bicycle Technology co-author Robert van der Plas.  "The invasion of Malaysia, with thousands of soldiers rolling into Singapore on bicycles, is one of the best-known instances," he adds.  

During the war, according to van der Plas, the Japanese used folding bikes designed specifically for warfare.  Some were later re-purposed for civilian use.  In reading about that, I couldn't help but to think about Rinko, the Japanese way of packing bikes for train travel.

  

While there is not a Rinko-specific bike, and a bike doesn't have to be foldable or collapsible in order to fit into a Rinko bag, it's hard to think of a system that is more tailored to making bikes more transportable and usable in places where space is at a premium and bikes need to be transported quickly and easily.  Fenders, pedals and other parts are made easily detachable (and retachable) so that the whole bike fits in a bag not much larger than the frame.

I can't help but to wonder whether such a system might be, directly or indirectly, a development of the war.

The Heroes In A Veteran's Story

One hundred four years ago today, the treaty to end "the war to end all wars" was signed.  For years after that, this day was known as Armistice Day.  Then it came to be Remembrance Day, as it's observed in much of the world.  But here in the US, it's Veterans' Day.

Now, I have nothing against a day to commemorate veterans.  This might sound counter-intuitive, but as I've become more anti-war,  I have become more pro-veteran.  Whether or not the cause was right--which, in recent wars, means whether or not the war was based on any sort of fact or truth--no veteran should ever want--especially if that veteran was disabled in any way as a result of serving in the armed forces.

Forty-four years ago, Kevin Hebert was 19 years old and in the Air Force.  The latter would change when he suffered a broken neck, which left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Eventually, he learned to walk with leg braces.  Then he took on another challenge:  riding a bike again. 

Perhaps not surprisingly (though it may have been a disappointment to him), the Wilmington, North Carolina resident wasn't going to ride a bike like mine or, probably, yours.  Yes, it's propelled only by his feet spinning pedals.  And, at first glance, it looks like a recumbent; it differs in that it has three wheels.  But its most distinguishing trait might be the grip bars that allow him to get into or out of the seat by himself.  He was adamant about having that feature which, he says, "is independence for me."

Well, if in the immortal words of Tom Cuthbertson, stealing a bike is one of the lowest things one human can do to another, stealing a bike (or anything) from a disabled veteran drops someone a rung lower in Dante's Hell. You can tell that Hebert, even after what he's been through, isn't a cynical New Yorker like me:  He assumed that someone "borrowed" the bike.

His faith in humanity may have been well-placed after all:  Someone spotted the bike, returned it--and refused the reward Hebert offered. Oh, and the cops found the perp who took his bike.

Kevin Hebert isn't being immodest when he says he's "accomplished a lot."  That's why I am happy that he got his bike back, not only because it's his bike, but for what it's allowed him, as a disabled veteran to accomplish.  I don't know him, but I suspect he, being the veteran he is, would say that he's not the, or even a, hero in this story.

By the way, today is the 100th birthday of the author who wrote one of the best novels about a soldier's experience in World War II--and of PTSD, although nobody was calling it that when the book was published.   I'm referring, of course, to one of the first writers I fell in love with (as a writer, that is): Kurt Vonnegut, whose Slaughterhouse Five was published in 1969.

Bicycles Are For The Summer

Mention "bicycle movies" or "movies with bicycles" and the first ones that come to most people's minds are Ladri di Biciclette (usually translated as The Bicycle Thief, but is literally Bicycle Thieves) and Breaking Away.  Both, I think, deserve their reputations, although BA is a bit more of a "feel-good" film than LdB.  

I've seen both more than once.   Seeing either one reminds me of what Robert Graves said about Shakespeare:  In spite of all the people who say he's very good, he really is very good.  

Anyway, there's a lesser-known (at least here in the US) bicycle film that I'd like to see again. Las Bicicletas Son Para El Verano (Bicycles Are For The Summer), released in 1985, was directed by Jaime Chavarri and based an eponymous play written by Fernando Fernan Gomez.  I have not seen the play, but it was well-reviewed.  I imagine it deserved those reviews if the film is in any way true to it.

The play and movie take place during the Spanish Civil War.  Luisito, the son of upper-middle-class Madrilenos Don Luis and Dona Dolores (Sorry, my keyboard doesn't have accent marks or tildes!)  wants a new bicycle, in spite of having failed his exams.  However, the war forces his parents to delay the purchase of his bicycle and that delay, like the war itself, drags on longer than any of them expected. 

More than anything, it's a story of survival and adaptation.  In that sense, it has more in common with LdB than with BA, although the dreams and hopes of one of the characters are as central to it as they are in BA.  I'll try not to give too much away in saying that, in time, Luisito has to abandon not only his hope of getting a bicycle, but his education and his dreams of becoming a writer, much as his father did.  Meanwhile, Luisito's sister Manolita has to abandon her dreams of becoming an actress after having a baby with a soldier who dies.  

Also, the story reveals class resentments between the family and their neighbors and friends but how, ultimately, they have to rely on each other in order to survive the privations of the war and the subsequent Franco regime.

Those of you who are fans of Pedro Almodovar will be interested in this film because it features one of the early appearances of an actress who would later star in several of his films:  Victoria Abril.

I don't know when I'll get to see the play.  But I'm sure there's a DVD of the film to be had somewhere.  The first chance I get, I'll watch it.

Where Did You Leave Your Bike?

When I go to work, I park my bike on the rack in the college's parking lot.  There, a Peugeot mixte from around 1985 has been parked for at least a couple of years.  I can so date the bike because it's the same model I gave my mother:  a basic carbon-steel frame painted burgundy with yellow and orange graphics, equipped with European components except for the Shimano derailleurs and shifters.

At least one security guard has asked me whether I know who owns that bike.  I don't:  It was just there one day, and has been there ever since.  In the meantime, the chain has turned nearly as orange as the graphics, and other parts are tarnishing or rusting.  The paint still looks pretty good, though, which means that the bike probably wasn't ridden much before it was parked on that rack.

Campus security personnel want to clip the lock and give the bike to a charity or someone in need.  But, as one officer said, "The day after we get rid of it, its owner will show up."

So the owner of that bike remains a mystery. Perhaps she (or he) rode in one day, had some sort of emergency and never returned.  Or perhaps s/he decided that one ride was enough and simply abandoned the bike.

We've all seen bikes like that chained to trees, signposts or other objects for what seem like geological ages.  Once, I went with my parents to the Post Exchange (PX) at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, when my father was a reservist.  I saw a nice Fuji--an S10S, I think--chained to a pole seemingly since that base opened.  A soldier noticed that I was eyeing the bike. He said "the guy", meaning the bike's owner, probably "shipped out."  In the military, they can tell you to go to the other end of the world literally on a moment's notice, he said.

How many "orphan" bikes are there?  What are the stories of the people who left them behind?

Those questions have been asked for years about a bicycle on Vashon Island, Washington, about 15 minutes from Seattle.  This bicycle, though, isn't locked to a tree:  It's in the tree.

Not surprisingly, a few legends have grown about, and claims have been made for, it.  In the latter category is the claim made by Don Puz, who grew up on the island.  When he was a child, his family's house burned down.  Donations to the family included a bicycle, which was too small for Don and had hard rubber tires.  He says that one day in 1954, he rode his bike into the woods where he met some friends.  They weren't riding bikes, so he walked home with them, leaving the bike in the woods.  He simply "forgot" about it, he says, until it showed up on Facebook.

Which brings us to the legends--one of them, anyway.  According to the Facebook posting, "A boy went to war in 1914 and left his bike chained to a tree.  He never came home."

That myth isn't hard to refute:  It's very unlikely that a  boy small enough to ride that bike would have gone to war. Also, if he was American, he probably wouldn't have gone to war in 1914, as the US didn't enter World War I until 1917. 

As for Don Puz's claim, it's plausible if one question can be answered:  How did the bike end up as part of that tree?  Hmm..Dear readers, are any of you dendrologists?   

How They Covered The Revolution

On this night in 1969, New York City sweltered.  And, not surprisingly, tempers flared and a fight erupted. Then things exploded—and burned over the next few days.

You probably know that I’m talking about the Stonewall Revolution.  Some historians or other scholars might quibble with my use of the terminology, but I think it’s as much of a revolution as other conflicts that are so labeled because it, and they, changed the world.  

For one thing, I might not be who I am—or I might not be here at all.  And you wouldn’t be reading this blog.  What would you do?😉

Anyway, to give you an idea of what has changed, I am posting a New York Daily News article from 6 July 1969, three days after the uprising simmered down.  While it certainly wouldn’t be published today, and I doubt that even Fox News would broadcast commentary as demeaning today, it was far from the most derogatory commentary of its time—the Village Voice’s coverage arguably trafficked in more stereotypes and caricatures. (Also remember that Lisker probably didn’t write the headline.)

Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad

The New York Daily News, July 6, 1969
By JERRY LISKER

She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn't bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.

Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. "We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over," lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens.

"We've had all we can take from the Gestapo," the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. "We're putting our foot down once and for all." The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand painted brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together.

The thick glass shut out the outside world of the street. Inside, the Stonewall bathed in wild, bright psychedelic lights, while the patrons writhed to the sounds of a juke box on a square dance floor surrounded by booths and tables. The bar did a good business and the waiters, or waitresses, were always kept busy, as they snaked their way around the dancing customers to the booths and tables. For nearly two years, peace and tranquility reigned supreme for the Alice in Wonderland clientele.

The Raid Last Friday

Last Friday the privacy of the Stonewall was invaded by police from the First Division. It was a raid. They had a warrant. After two years, police said they had been informed that liquor was being served on the premises. Since the Stonewall was without a license, the place was being closed. It was the law.

All hell broke loose when the police entered the Stonewall. The girls instinctively reached for each other. Others stood frozen, locked in an embrace of fear.

Only a handful of police were on hand for the initial landing in the homosexual beachhead. They ushered the patrons out onto Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square. A crowd had formed in front of the Stonewall and the customers were greeted with cheers of encouragement from the gallery.

The whole proceeding took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn't protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn't want him to see her this way, she wept.

Queen Power

The crowd began to get out of hand, eye witnesses said. Then, without warning, Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb. Queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could get their polished, manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants.

Urged on by cries of "C'mon girls, lets go get'em," the defenders of Stonewall launched an attack. The cops called for assistance. To the rescue came the Tactical Patrol Force.

Flushed with the excitement of battle, a fellow called Gloria pranced around like Wonder Woman, while several Florence Nightingales administered first aid to the fallen warriors. There were some assorted scratches and bruises, but nothing serious was suffered by the honeys turned Madwoman of Chaillot.

Official reports listed four injured policemen with 13 arrests. The War of the Roses lasted about 2 hours from about midnight to 2 a.m. There was a return bout Wednesday night.

Two veterans recently recalled the battle and issued a warning to the cops. "If they close up all the gay joints in this area, there is going to be all out war."

Bruce and Nan

Both said they were refugees from Indiana and had come to New York where they could live together happily ever after. They were in their early 20's. They preferred to be called by their married names, Bruce and Nan.

"I don't like your paper," Nan lisped matter-of-factly. "It's anti-fag and pro-cop."

"I'll bet you didn't see what they did to the Stonewall. Did the pigs tell you that they smashed everything in sight? Did you ask them why they stole money out of the cash register and then smashed it with a sledge hammer? Did you ask them why it took them two years to discover that the Stonewall didn't have a liquor license."

Bruce nodded in agreement and reached over for Nan's trembling hands.

"Calm down, doll," he said. "Your face is getting all flushed."

Nan wiped her face with a tissue.

"This would have to happen right before the wedding. The reception was going to be held at the Stonewall, too," Nan said, tossing her ashen-tinted hair over her shoulder.

"What wedding?," the bystander asked.

Nan frowned with a how-could-anybody-be-so-stupid look. "Eric and Jack's wedding, of course. They're finally tieing the knot. I thought they'd never get together."

Meet Shirley

"We'll have to find another place, that's all there is to it," Bruce sighed. "But every time we start a place, the cops break it up sooner or later."

"They let us operate just as long as the payoff is regular," Nan said bitterly. "I believe they closed up the Stonewall because there was some trouble with the payoff to the cops. I think that's the real reason. It's a shame. It was such a lovely place. We never bothered anybody. Why couldn't they leave us alone?"

Shirley Evans, a neighbor with two children, agrees that the Stonewall was not a rowdy place and the persons who frequented the club were never troublesome. She lives at 45 Christopher St.

"Up until the night of the police raid there was never any trouble there," she said. "The homosexuals minded their own business and never bothered a soul. There were never any fights or hollering, or anything like that. They just wanted to be left alone. I don't know what they did inside, but that's their business. I was never in there myself. It was just awful when the police came. It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies."

A reporter visited the now closed Stonewall and it indeed looked like a cyclone had struck the premisses.

Police said there were over 200 people in the Stonewall when they entered with a warrant. The crowd outside was estimated at 500 to 1,000. According to police, the Stonewall had been under observation for some time. Being a private club, plain clothesmen were refused entrance to the inside when they periodically tried to check the place. "They had the tightest security in the Village," a First Division officer said, "We could never get near the place without a warrant."

Police Talk

The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones of the raid.

"They were throwing more than lace hankies," one inspector said. "I was almost decapitated by a slab of thick glass. It was thrown like a discus and just missed my throat by inches. The beer can didn't miss, though, "it hit me right above the temple."

Police also believe the club was operated by Mafia connected owners. The police did confiscate the Stonewall's cash register as proceeds from an illegal operation. The receipts were counted and are on file at the division headquarters. The warrant was served and the establishment closed on the grounds it was an illegal membership club with no license, and no license to serve liquor.

The police are sure of one thing. They haven't heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street.

Korean Woman On Bicycle

Will we see Korean War II?


Technically, the North and South have been at war for the past sixty years.  The fighting ended only with a truce in 1953, and there have been hostilities ever since, including North Korea's most recent attack.


And, of course, we can't forget that the US has stationed thousands of soldiers in Korea since World War II.


No matter what happens there, people go about their lives.  

The woman is riding along the Yalu River, which forms North Korea's border with China.  I stumbled upon this photo when I was looking up some articles about Korea.


No matter how great or powerful any country is, or becomes, it'always full of people like the woman in the photo.  Whether the backdrop is as stunning as the one in the photo or as drab as an empty subdivision, we're really like that woman.

A Rainy Day Of Contrasts

The rain started some time before I woke up. I think the young woman at the hotel's front desk knew it would rain throughout the day, and called a tuk-tuk driver for me.

That was a really good call.  The rain came and went until about two this afternoon.  Then it washed down in a torrent through the rest of the day and well into the evening.

I first saw Apocalypse Now on a cold, rainy day (Christmas Eve, no less) the year that it was released.  So I guess it makes sense that on a rainy day here I would go to--wait for it--the Landmine Museum.

Yes, such a thing actually exists. (I wasn't so surprised:  After all, I went to a Mushroom Museum and Mustard Museum in--where else?--France!)  But you don't have to be a military buff to appreciate it.  In fact, the aim of Aki Ra, its founder, is not to glorify war or fetishize weapons.  Rather, he wants to alert people to the fact that there are so many landmines and the harm they cause. And he has a goal of de-mining Cambodia by 2025.

U

In spite of his Japanese-sounding name, he's actually Cambodian.  He chose that name for himself after a Japanese journalist gave it to him.  Before that, he had a number of different names, not because he was trying to evade debt collectors, but because he was essentially "adopted" so many times.

Except that his "adoptors" weren't well-heeled go-gooder Western families.  Rather, as he says, he doesn't know exactly when he was born, but he believes it was in 1970.  Orphaned early, he was conscripted as a child soldier, first by the Khmer Rouge and, later, by the Vietnamese army after that country invaded.  As he recalls, he was taught how to use a rifle that was bigger than he was, and he preferred using rocket launchers because, at least, he could lie down while aiming them.

His training also included the installation of land mines.  He became such an expert with them that he was called on not only to install them, but to find them.  That also gave him the expertise to find other kinds of munitions  on the ground.

After the fighting ceased, he used his expertise to de-mine.  He's not the first to undertake such a task:  Many a Khmer peasant has dug up, or simply stumbled upon, these explosives.  To give you an idea of just how poor they are, they disassembled them to sell the scrap metal.  Some didn't live to tell about it; many others lost limbs, eyes, ears and other body parts.  I have seen a few such unfortunates in my travels here.

Sun Ra himself admits that, even with his expertise, he is very lucky to be unscathed--at least physically--from the thousands of mines and other munitions he found.  They became the basis of the collection in the museum he started, which is run by an NGO he helped to found.  Today, that organization works to detect and extract land mines, not only in Cambodia, but in the Middle East, Europe and even the Americas.  

As the museum's commentary reminds visitors, once placed, landmines can cause damage indefinitely.  In 1965, an explosion in Alabama resulted from mines placed a century earlier, during the US Civil War.  And, less than a year ago, 70,000 people were evacuated in Frankfurt, Germany when a British bomb from World War II was found.

The NGO Aki Ra helped to start is staffed entirely by Cambodians and, it says, pays "liveable wages".  It also runs a school adjacent to the museum, but not accessible to visitors.  Many Cambodian kids never attend school for a variety of reasons--mainly, because their families need their help on the farms or other enterprises, or because they can't afford the fees.  The stories of some of those students are posted in one of the museum's exhibits.

So, on a rainy day, what did I do after spending a couple of hours among munitions from the US, China, the USSR and other countries, as well as art and other works related to them?  I went to another museum--a preserve, actually, about two kilometers down the road.

So what was preserved there?  Not dragonfruits or lychee nuts or pineapples.  The things "preserved" there were living and not meant to be consumed, at least not on the grounds of the preserve. I'm sure, though, that someone has eaten them:  They sound tasty, at least in the English word for them.

I'm talking about butterflies.  More species have been identified in Cambodia, and in Southeast Asia, than in any other part of the world.  But, even though this area isn't as developed as the US, Europe or Japan, some of those species are, if not endangered, then declining in numbers.  As the exhibit reminds visitors, butterflies are a good "barometer" of ecological health:  Where they can't live and thrive, there are other problems.  I couldn't help but to think about how, last year, I didn't see the flocks of migrating Monarchs I had seen in earlier years on Point Lookout, Long Island.

Like the Landmine Museum, the Banteay Srey Butterfly Centre is run by an NGO that employs Cambodians, from farmers who collect butterfly eggs to the tourguides and the folks who raise the butterflies through all of their stages of life.  Some of the butterflies--which, of course, I'd never seen before coming here--look more like other kinds of insects, or even birds or bats, than what we normally think of as butterflies.  Others look like the ones most of us in the developed world have seen, only in different colors and patterns.

Admission is five dollars (two for kids).  For another four dollars, you can have lunch in the center's cafe.  I had something a staff member recommended:  a Khmer curry with chicken, pumpkin and other vegetables.  Frankly, I would have gladly eaten it no matter where it was offered, and at a higher price!

I can't help but to wonder whether there's some "product placement" going on here:  a butterfly center with a sumptuous lunch just down the road from a landmine museum.  It's sort of like watching Breaking Away after you've seen Apocalypse Now.

An Emblem of Bicycle History

 Believe or not, bicycle manufacturers were major, or at least significant, employers in the US until World War II.

I’m not talking only about Schwinn.  A few years ago, I wrote about the Shelby Bicycle Company, which took its name from the Ohio community in which it was based.

Another example of such a relationship between a town and a bike-maker is that of Emblem Bicycles and Angola, a New York Stare village 3.3 kilometers (2 miles) from Lake Erie and 50 kilometers (22 miles) from downtown Buffalo.

Unless you are even deeper than I am into pre-War bikes, you probably haven’t heard of Emblem bicycles.  Apparently, they began making bikes during the first Bike Boom in the late 19th Century and continued until the eve of World War II. During the 1910s, Emblwm, like some other bike-makers, began to make motorcycles, which hadn’t evolved into their own category. As a matter of fact, Emblem, like other fabricators of two-wheeled vehicles, were identified—and identified by the public—as a bicycle company even when their production of motorized bikes exceeded that of traditional pedaled bicycles.

So, yesterday, when a fire burned in the historical building that the company called home, local media reports identified it as the “historic Emblem Bicycle building “—even  though Emblem bicycles haven’t been made there, or anywhere, in about 80 years.

Two dozen fire companies fought and contained the blaze.  Fortunately, no one was hurt.

What Will Be Influenced By This Report?

The 1980s gave us, in addition to The Smiths and some really good movies and TV shows, one of the most risible failures and one of the most-needed successes of American public policy.  

The failure is the so-called War on Drugs.  It did little, if anything, to reduce the demand for illicit substances.  If anything, it made criminals, in this country and others, rich and allowed gangs to become the de facto governments of neighborhoods and even, arguably, of whole countries in Latin America and other parts of the world.

Related to it is the success:  the campaign against drunk driving.  The relation of the War on Drugs and the crusade against inebriated driving is the subject of a longer piece of writing that would be far outside the scope of even this blog! Suffice it to say that both policies were two sides of the coin of a kind of puritanism that swept over this country and continues to blanket us today.

Now, I am not condoning drunk driving or, for that matter, the excessive use of any substance, legal or otherwise.  But, while the so-called War on Drugs did nothing to stop people from using or buying--or, for that matter, bring to account those who were responsible for its worst excesses--it can be said that while intoxicated driving hasn't been entirely eliminated, there is almost certainly less of it, and lives have been saved, as a result.

That said, I had a mixed reaction to a report documenting the rise of bike accidents in which the cyclist was under the influence of a drug.  

Because the statute of limitations has expired, I can now say that while some of youthful euphoria came from cycling itself, let's just say that feeling was, ahem, enhanced.  Now, being in middle age, I can tell young people "Do as I say, not as I did."  I really and truly do not recommend riding under the influence of mind-altering substances--even if they come in pint bottles or cans, and even if Dr. Albert Hofmann did it and lived to be 102.

While I laud the intention of the report--if indeed its intention is to call attention to intoxicated cycling and, by implication, warn against it-- I worry that folks who are already anti-cyclist will further demonize us.

You know how that works:  When any member of a minority group (and that's what we are in the US) commits a crime or does anything the rest of society doesn't approve--or is simply accused of such a thing--every member of that person's group is painted with the same broad brush.  

Also, as the report states, many of those cyclists were high or impaired by drugs, including opiods (and, in some states, cannabis) their doctors prescribed.  So were at least some drivers who struck and killed cyclists, including one I reported earlier this month.  But that incident, or others like it, don't cause drivers to be tarred in the way a single incident becomes emblematic of scofflaw cyclists.

So, in brief, while I laud any attempt to bring awareness to the problem of impaired cycling, I hope it isn't used to further marginalize us. 

A Champion's Journey On The Blood Road

On this date in 1965, more than 30 US Air Force jets bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.  It was not such the first such raid, nor was it the first to be reported in the press.  After the attacks on this date, however, the State Department felt compelled to assert that these missions were authorized by the powers granted to President Lyndon B. Johnson with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of August 1964.

(Four decades later, newly-declassified documents would reveal what many had suspected:  The incident that served as the rationale for the resolution had not, in fact, happened.  Sound familiar?)

Anyway, I don't have to tell you about the carnage that resulted from the Vietnam War.  When I was writing about a Veterans' event for a local newspaper, I talked to someone who'd fought in Cambodia and still had nightmares.  He reminded me that more than 55,000 members of the American Armed Forces died there (not to mention many more Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Chinese, Russian, and other fighters).  "That's a whole stadium full of people," he exclaimed.  "Whenever I think of that war, I picture a whole stadium full of people getting killed."

One of those casualties was Rebecca Rusch's father.  He was shot down and killed during the war.

Today she is a firefighter and EMT in Ketcham, Idaho, where she lives.  But she is better known as "The Queen of Pain" for her exploits as a rock climber, white-water rafter---and mountain biker. 

Among her feats in the latter sport is a record for riding the length of the 228 kilometer Kokopelli Trail.  As if that weren't enough, she rode the 1800 kilometer Ho Chi Minh Trail, in part, to get to know her father better.  She was only three and a half years old when he was killed.

A full-length feature film about her journey, Blood Road, will open in the Sun Valley Film Festival on 15 March.  I won't be able to make it, so I hope the film makes it out my way soon!

A Road To Recovery Begins With VetBikes

Here in the US, today is Veterans' Day.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed a seeming contradiction:  although I am anti-war, I have written a number of posts about how bicycles have been used in the military. The real irony is that I have become more interested in such things as my opposition to armed conflict (in 99.9 percent of cases) increases.

As I have said before, studying military history in its truest sense (not what is commonly derided as "drum and bugle history") offers all sorts of lessons into other areas of history--and life. It shows us, very clearly, the sorts of mistakes leaders can make through their own egotism or arrogance, or through pure-and-simple misjudgment or miscalculation.  It also shows us, I believe, human nature in its most naked forms.

Now I'm going to present you with another seeming contradiction about myself:  the more I adopt an anti-war stance, the more pro-veteran I become.

Actually, my explanation for that will probably make sense (I think):  It is because I am opposed to war that I believe anyone who is sent to fight should never want for anything.  It's a disgrace that someone who has put on a uniform and faced danger should be sleeping under a bridge or railroad overpass.  I have seen a few on my way to and from work.   

Thus, I am willing to put in a good word for any organization that might help improve the lives of veterans.  Today, I learned about one such organization.

VetBikes.org is a veteran-run non-profit (501c3) that provides adaptive bicycles to recovering veterans.  VetBikes began in Seattle, but has recently opened a second location in Denver.   

Some of the machines VetBikes has provided were tailored to obvious physical disabilities such as the loss of limbs,  but most look like bikes most of us would ride, with small modifications.  According to VetBikes' website, its mission is to use bicycles, and cycling (mainly of the sport variety), to help veterans cope with their new lives.

To that end, VetBikes takes referrals from social workers, medical doctors and other profssionals for veterans suffering from combat wounds, substance abuse problems, homelessness and even blindness.  However, by far the largest number of referrals is for veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 




With those realities in mind, VetBikes does not merely lend bikes or have them available for the vets to take out:  It gives each vet a machine.  But  VB's program doesn't stop there:  It also offers mentors, placement in local cycle clubs (to help with community integration), professional mechanical instruction and, according to its mission statement, "an introductory path to a career in the cycling industry". 

The site doesn't mention anything about expanding beyond Washington State and Colorado, but it would not surprise me if someone in the organization has that in mind:  The need certainly doesn't stop at the borders of the Evergreen and Centennial States.  It does, however, say that it can use help, whether as a volunteer, or through donations of cash, bike parts or bikes. 

A Culture War--Over A Bike Lane?

When people talk about "culture wars," they're usually referring to contentious debates about issues like LGBTQ, racial or gender equality, what should be taught in schools or what place, if any, religious expression has in public life.  

For some time, i have suspected that arguments about bike lanes have been devolving from discussions about sustainable living to battles delineated by generational, class and other kinds of divides.  A woman in Berkeley, California has recently said as much.

She was referring to a plan to re-design Hopkins Street, a thoroughfare lined with shops and restaurants in an affluent part of the city, to accommodate a protected bike lane. In some ways, the debate echoes ones I hear in my hometown of New York, and hear about in other cities.  

Business owners fear that the loss of parking spaces in front of their stores, restaurants and other enterprises will hurt them.  And car-dependent people, who include the city's fast-growing population of senior citizens, worry that they will lose access to goods and services they need and enjoy.  On the other hand, cyclists, pedestrians and advocates for mass transportation argue that the very things that attract people to the city cannot be sustained without reducing the number of private automobiles on the city's streets.

A driver parks in front of a shop on Hopkins Street during a rally in support of a bike lane. Photo by Ximena Natera for Berkeleyside.

The discussion, according to Donna Didiemar, has been drifting away from one "about bike lanes" and instead is "turning into a culture war."  She and others are, in essence, saying that the debate is one over what kind of city Berkeley will become.  Bike lane proponents tend to be younger and, in the eyes of opponents, more "privileged," while opponents are seen as adherents to an old and unsustainable way of thinking.

It won't surprise you to know that I am, mostly, in the camp of bike lane builders and those who advocate for pedestrians and mass transit.  But opponents of the bike lane have made a couple of valid points.  One is that the lane won't necessarily make cycling safer.  That is true if the lane crosses in front of driveways, as too many bike lanes do.  Also,  cars may need to pull into the bike lane to get out of the way of emergency vehicles: something I've encountered while riding.  

One irony is that some of the entrepreneurs and residents of the street are artisans or people who were simply attracted by the very things that make an area a candidate for sustainability:  shops and other amenities close to residential buildings.  Another is that planners, including those who want to build the bike lane, still seem to be operating from a set of assumptions about what cycling and walking are and aren't.  That, I think, is a reason why a discussion about a vision for the city (and not simply a bike lane) may well be turning into a "culture war."

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.