Cycling Couples and Bike Buddies

Much has been written, on various blogs and elsewhere, about cycling couples.  Most of those articles, entries and rants are about male-female couples of one variety or another.  

It seems that at least half of what I read on the subject concerns the disparity in ability, training, interest--or in the bicycles ridden--between the female and male half of the couple.  


When I first started cycling, the subject was mentioned only in passing, and only by men.  (Nearly everyone who cycled for non-utility purposes in those days was a man.)  In one of his books, Fred de Long referred to his wife as his "tandem partner."  I always wondered whether she was already cycling when she met him.  Or, was she a "willing convert"--or a grudging one?  


John Forester, in Effective Cycling (probably the best cycling book I read during my formative years) says frankly that one of his marriages broke up, in part, over her lack of interest in cycling and, as a result, one of the qualities he sought in  a prospective partner was her willingness to share his passion for cycling.  


A few articles in the magazines of the day--notably Bicycling!--mentioned the same dilemma.  However, the point of view was always the same: that of a high-mileage male cyclist.  This, from a magazine that was edited by a woman !


Later. on club rides, I would hear complaints from women about their male partners' impatience with them--or that those men had splurged on super-bikes for themselves but bought them uncomfortable bikes that handled like shopping carts.  And those men couldn't understand why they couldn't keep up, much less muster enthusiasm!


I have to admit that at in at least one relationship, I was guilty as charged.  Ironically, my last partner before my gender transition was the only one who shared my enthusiasm for cycling.  We did a tours of the Loire Valley and Vermont togethether, and were discussing plans for another when, er, other events intervened.


In my new life, the roles reversed.  I was the cyclist; he had no interest in it at all and couldn't understand why I'd spend an afternoon pedalling to some place to which he could drive in less than an hour.  However, that's not the only reason we're not together.


If you've been reading this blog, you might know that I sometimes ride with two female friends. Before my surgery, I was stronger than them, though not by as much as one might expect.  After my post-surgery layoff, and a shorter hiatus after I developed an infection, they were stronger than I was.  I'm starting to catch up; they have been patient.  (I don't post their photos only because they've asked me not to.  One of them just doesn't want, for professional reasons, to be mentioned on blogs or in any other public forum.  The other is simply shy.)  Somehow I don't recall anything like this in the groups of males with whom I used to ride.  When I look back, I feel that in those relationships, the accent in the phrase "cycling buddy" was on the first word.


Then again, on any Sunday, especially at this time of year, you can see people who are simply buddies who happen to be riding together, like these guys I saw on the Rockaway boardwalk:

Their bikes are what we used to call POS in one bike shop in which I worked.  But they don't know that, and don't seem to care.  Why would they?

Have I Become An Expert? How Did I Do That?

It's really strange to realize that you're an "expert."  Or, at any rate, an elder stateswoman.  Or, at least, experienced.

These days, people ask me, whether in person or by e-mail, questions about some aspect of bicycles or cycling. What's even more ironic is that women--not only young ones--ask me what they should do about or with their boyfriends or husbands.  As if I know!  But that's a topic for my other blog.

Anyway...I think of the times when I was looking for advice about bicycling (and guys!  and girls!) when I was young (which, believe it or not, I was once).  There weren't nearly as many experienced adult cyclists in those days as there are now.  Likewise, there weren't many people who were knowledgeable about bicycles.  Of course, I didn't know that when I first became serious about cycling, but it didn't take me long to find out.

If you rode for a couple of years, you could find yourself walking into a neighborhood bike shop and asking for something they'd never heard of.  Hal Ruzal, a longtime mechanic at Bicycle Habitat, told me about an experience he had during his ride across the USA in 1980.  He was riding with two friends and they'd had a rash of flats. As they were all riding high-quality bikes (Hal was on a Mercian, which he still rides!), their wheels were all 700 C diameter, rather than the 27" that was found on most ten-speed bikes of the time.  And their inner tubes all had Presta valves.  

For those of you who may be relatively new to cycling, Presta valves are thinner than the kind of valves found on cars and motorcycles and on older and heavy bicycles, which are called "Schraeder" valves.  Not only are Presta valves thinner; they also have a stem that must be unscrewed in order to inflate it.  It actually makes a high-pressure tire easier to inflate, and because there's no spring, as there is in a Schraeder valve, there's less to go wrong.

Anyway, Hal described a dilemma he and his buddies faced:  "There wasn't one single Presta valve tube or 700 C tire in the entire state of Kansas!"  A few years earlier, when I was first starting to take long rides and do my own repairs, one didn't have to go to Kansas to find bike shops with such limited selections:  There were plenty in New Jersey, where I was living at the time.  To be fair, there were a few really good shops, and their personnel and I quickly came to know each other.  But most local shops still hadn't progressed beyond kids' bikes or, more tellingly, the notion that bikes were only for kids.

The sad thing is that most of the books in cycling that were available at the time weren't much more useful.  There was no Internet in those days, and although its predecessors existed, they were very limited and you practically had to have a national security clearance to use one.  So people like me were limited to those few-and-far-between experienced cyclists, good shops and books that were available.  

Even the "good" cycling books were full of things that are, at best, outdated (and probably were when they were published) and, worse, laughable or just plain wrong.  One book recommended "yak butter" for breaking in leather saddles.  Does "yak butter" actually exist?  Maybe they have it in Dean and De Luca.  I suspect that whoever wrote that (I've forgotten which book it was in, much less who wrote it.) was partaking of  some Sonoma County gold, and I ain't talkin' about wine, as the early mountain bikers would say.  Or maybe they were simply pulling their readers' legs.

What's really strange, though, is the realization that I know more than the writers of even some of the better bike-related books I read at the time.  I'm thinking now of the first edition of The Complete Book of Bicycling from the late Eugene A. Sloane.  (Scroll down to the bottom paragraph for a very politically incorrect statement!) He was roughly the same age as I am now when the first edition of his book was published in 1970.  I read the book about three years later and, even by that time, some of the information had become dated.  For example, he said that the best derailluers were the Campagnolo Nuovo Record, followed by the Simplex Prestige and the Huret Allvit.  Granted, there weren't as many derailleurs available, at least in the US, as there would be by the time the second edition of the book was published.  But I know that there were others,  some of which shifted better than the Allvit.  

Also, he says that high-quality bikes were almost always made of Reynolds 531 tubing.  Now, I've always liked it, but even in those days, it wasn't the only high-quality tubing.  He mentions Columbus tubing (which he refers to as "Columbia") only in passing.  I've ridden bikes with Columbus tubing (including a Colnago on which I raced) and, while it is stiffer, I always felt that Reynolds tubings (of which all of my Mercians are made) gave a livelier ride, which made them better all-around.    Still, I think that any book that called itself "complete," even in the embryonic days of the bike boom, should have said more about Columbus, not to mention Vitus and one or two other brands of tubing.

Also, he recommends Brooks saddles, but the only model he mentions is the Professional.  I know that the B17 and other models were available, and probably many more cyclists ride B17s than any other model of Brooks.

In fairness, Sloane was trying to sum up, for would-be cycling enthusiasts, what was known and available at that time.  And I realize that a large portion of any book that contains technical information as well as advice about equipment that's available--and conditions that prevail--is bound to date itself after 40 years.  But I also see how limited Sloane's perspective was.

Again, to be fair, I must say this:  If the resources available to me were limited, I can only imagine how much more so they were for Sloane.  And he had even less of a cycling infrastructure, so to speak, than I had.  I would imagine that in his day, in order to learn much about cycling or obtain good equipment, it was all but necessary to live in England, France or some other country where cycling was more ingrained in the daily fabric of life.

Now I can say that more people are knowledgeable about, or at least aware of, various aspects of bicycles and bicycling than were at the time I became serious about cycling more than three decades ago.  People like Sloane are responsible, at least in part, for that.  But it's weird to know that I know more, at least about some things, than the people from whom I learned.  Yet I still feel as if I don't know about anything.

Then again, sometimes I feel the same way about writing, literature--and guys--and girls!  Yet I'm still asked for advice about all of those aspects of life.  And bicycles and bicycling.

CWS (Cycling While Sick)

I was a hypocrite yesterday.


The other night, I felt unusually tired after about an hour and a half of cycling.  Granted, it was on my fixed-gear bike, but I've ridden longer on that bike.  And I hadn't much sleep the night before.  Furthermore, I've cycled long enough to know that sometimes you just have "one of those days."


A couple of weeks ago, on Lovely Bicycle!, "Velouria" asked whether her readers cycled when they were feeling "under the weather."  In response, I said that sometimes it's better to wait until you're feeling better, lest you should exacerbate whatever's ailing you.  Besides, you probably won't enjoy the ride as much if you don't feel well.


Well, I ignored my own advice.  (Is that new(s)?)  After starting a good bit later than I'd planned, I cycled a familiar route down to Rockaway Beach.  Up to that point, everything was good, or so it seemed.  The weather was autumnally cool and breezy, I was riding Arielle and I felt fine.  And, the boardwalk and beach felt serene but not isolated.  There were a few people out, but they weren't aggressive in the way many in the summer crowds are.  Mainly, they were couples and families.

From there, I cycled more another familiar but favorite stretch to Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden, which was decommissioned some years ago and has some of the best beaches in the area.  I'm amazed at how many current and former military installations are located on prime real estate!  From there, I crossed the Marine Park Bridge to Brooklyn, where I cycled part of the Greenway that parallels the Belt Parkway to Sheepshead Bay.  Part of the Greenway is closed because it was washed away in a Nor'easter during the winter.  So, if you're not on a mountain bike, you have to walk for a couple hundred meters along a sand path until the Greenway resumes.  It was during that walk that I started to feel very tired, achy and congested. 

I got to Coney Island in time to see the sun setting and deciding that yielding to the temptation of an order of Nathan's fries wouldn't be such a good idea.  I actually started to nod off after watching the sunset; when I got back on my bike I felt spacy.  Although I had lights, I didn't feel comfortable about the idea of riding in the dark.  So I took the train home, where I had just enough energy to boil up some ravioli and mix in some of my homemade pesto sauce I have in my refrigerator.


Even after sleeping nearly ten hours--the longest sleep I've had since the night after my surgery--I still felt congested and achy when I woke up.  And my eyes felt like they were full of chunky peanut butter.  I knew it wasn't from the ride, which was just barely thirty miles and flat--and completely familiar.  And I was riding a responsive bike that fits me comfortably.  Given that there were no problems with the terrain or the vehicle, I can only conclude that I pushed the engine a bit when it needed some TLC.  


I should know better.  Oh well.  At least the riding was good.  And I was worried about reacclimating to a Brooks saddle!

First Autumn Ride

Every year, there's a moment when I realize I'm on a fall ride.  It usually has nothing to do with the calendar, for--as we know--the seasons neither begin nor end on the "official" date. The Autumnal Equinox comes on the 21st of September, or some date one or two days on either side of it, but the weather may be no different from that of August--or December.  Similarly, the arrival of the seasons has much to do where you are, geographically.  Autumn, or any other season, is not going to arrive or manifest itself on the eastern plains of Montana on the same day, or in the same way, as along the coast of Florida.


Although we've had some cooler weather during the last couple of days, today felt like autumn for the first time.  It had to do with what I saw while riding today:

Picasso had his "blue period;" today I took my Yellow Shot.  Although our trees are nowhere near peak,  and they're not in Vermont, they are lovely.   


I took the shot in Ozone Park, on a street called Aroine Road.  That road dead-ends into a place called Rocket Park.  Perhaps it has something to do with the how quickly the seasons go by.  (That's what you have to look forward to as you get older!)

Replacing Stolen Booty

If you saw yesterday's post, you noticed that I was on my Le Tour III.  And, a couple of weeks back, I mentioned that the seatpost and seat had been stolen.  The guys at Habitat gave me a seatpost and clamp that had been in one of their used-parts boxes; I installed it with the Terry Butterfly saddle I had on my Miss Mercian.  Someone else is getting the Butterfly; I am going to try a new saddle I saw on sale.

It's made by a company called Gyes.  I think they make the Velo Orange and a few other "own name" saddles.  The one I'm installing on the Le Tour is the Parkside model, which is very similar to the Brooks B67--which, of course, is a B17 with springs.


That means I'll again have all-leather saddles on all of my bikes.  A B17 is perched on Helene, and both Arielle and Tosca sport the narrow versions of the B17.


I'll admit that I'm starting with a certain prejudice:  The Gyes is on my mass-produced, beat-up LeTour (which I've decided to name Marianela), and the Brooks saddles are on my handbuilt Mercians. Although the Gyes has a couple of features that Brooks doesn't (e.g., the flaps of the saddle skirt riveted together underneath the main part of the saddle), I still expect it to be of lower quality and lesser workmanship and not to last as long.  That's another reason I put it on the Le Tour:  If someone takes this saddle, I don't think I'll be as upset as I'd be if someone took one of my Brooks.  


This should be interesting.  I haven't ridden the seat yet, but I expect it to at least by early in the coming week.  

Another Song At Sunset

Every year, there are two or three days that I would love to continue for about eight or ten weeks.  In other words, I'd like to turn days like those into seasons.  Today was one of those days.  


The day started rather brisk, but still nice for cycling.  So, by the time I got to my regular job, I was in a good, almost giddy, mood.  Along the way, I passed and was passed by all different kinds of cyclists, and they were all friendly.  Even the drivers seemed patient.  The same thing happened as I cycled from my main to my part-time job.

And, at sunset, everything just seemed positively radiant.  I couldn't help but to think of these lines from Whitman's Song At Sunset:

Splendor of ended day, floating and filling me! 
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past! 
Inflating my throat—you, divine average! 
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. 

Bicycles And The Rain

The other day, I got home just in time from my seashore ride.  Just after I walked in the door, it began to rain.  It's rather ironic, isn't it, that I spent a couple of hours riding next to an ocean but I was happy to stay dry?


Anyway, it's been raining almost nonstop ever since.  And, I got to thinking about how bikes look when they're out in the rain.

I found this photo on a Flickr page.  It was taken by Andre Wine in the Hardebrucke Station in Zurich, Switzerland.  The next time someone tells you the Swiss are boring or don't have a sense of style, show him or her this photo.  


Plus, I must say, I haven't done a lot of cycling in Switzerland.  But what cycling I did was certainly memorable!  


Anyway, the rain also brings me into the mood of this poem by Guillaume Apollinaire:

The poem, "Il pleut," or "It's Raining," can be translated thus:


It's raining women's voices as if they had died even in memory
It's also raining you,  marvelous encounters in my life, o little drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds falling off that bind you above and below.


Those last two lines are such an apt description of what I've experienced over the last couple of years--and the way I often feel when cycling.  Especially the last line.


Still, I'd prefer that it stop raining, at least for a couple of days--and even if one of my bikes has fenders!

Autumn Littoral

It seems that every year, on the first weekend of October, I take a bike ride to the ocean. Last year was an exception, as I was still recuperating from my surgery. But this year, without any plan to do so, I continued my "tradition." In fact, I never plan to do my autumn littoral ride; I just seem to take it just about every year.

I could attribute the seeming inevitability of this ride, and versions of it I've taken in other years, to the fact that this date is the anniversary of my grandmother's death, and the other day was her birthday. Now, as to what a ride to the ocean has to do with my grandmother: on the surface, nothing, as I never knew her to cycle and she seemed to have no particular affinity for the sea. I guess this ride is appropriate because I am utterly myself when I pedal along the shore, and my grandmother had as much to do with my development as anyone had.

Plus, about this time of year, the people you see at the beaches-- or along any stretch of seashore-- are a bit more individualistic than the summer crowds. That is especially true on a day like today, which featured what isn't most people's idea of "beach weather."

It's hard not to contemplate along this stretch of beach.  Maybe that's why it's called Point Lookout. 


The name of that place could also serve as a description of my annual early October rides by the sea:  They get me into a contemplative mood.  Or do I take them because I'm in a contemplative mood?

There was the one I took during my senior year in high school. On that bright, cool and breezy first Sunday in October, the sea and sand of Long Branch, New Jersey spread as far ahead and around me as my future. 

Even though the same metallic rays reflected on the Atlantic waves as far as I could see, I knew there was something I could only imagine at the end of it; just as I had only heard, read and seen images of Portugal, Spain, France, England and Italy by that time in my life, I had a vision of my future that no one else had--or, for that matter, could or would imagine.

And, on either side of me, windswept outlines of footprints had turned into swirls that extended as far as I could see.  If I could follow them, where would they take me?, I wondered.  Then I realized there was no way I could have followed them; even at such a young age, I realized that I could not follow any example or path I had seen before me. 


Still,  I tried. I really tried, for a long time. 

But on that day, after I had my revelation, the only thing that I could rely on--at least at that moment--was my newly-acqired Nishiki International, painted almost in the exact shade of the water I saw that day.  

And the only certainty was that I would pedal it home--about 20 miles away--to the big meal my mother made every Sunday afternoon.

Fall Cycling Vacation

Rain, rain and more rain. 

That's been the story of this week.  The only variable has been the temperature:  Up to midday yesterday, the air felt tropically humid and dense.  

Since then, the raindrops have been needles of the chilly wind.  I don't mind the sensation; it is a sign that autumn has begun. 


Being an educator has meant giving up something I used to enjoy: the fall cycling vacation.  Since I've begun to teach, I've taken weekend trips in the fall.  One of my more memorable ones was a Columbus Day weekend in Vermont.  The foliage was just slightly past its peak, and save for some rain on the second afternoon and a sudden drop from 54 to 15 degrees F that evening, the weather was great.  

In some odd way, cycling in Vermont reminded me of cycling in Europe.  Perhaps it had to do with being in the countryside, but within an hour or two (by bike) from a town where I could, if I wanted to, stop in a friendly cafe and enjoy a cup of coffee or some other beverage with local people.  Plus, I found that even when the drivers left cyclists little more than elbow room when they passed, they  were never really a threat or danger because they seemed to understand bikes and cyclists on the road.   Some of those drivers, I'm sure, rode bikes at least sometimes.


I don't plan on doing a trip like that this year, mainly because I'm still nowhere near the kind of shape I used to be in.  Some of the steepest climbs I ever pedalled were in the Green Moumtains.  It seems that the roads there are older than, say, the ones in the Alps or the Rocky Mountains.  The older roads aren't as well-graded as the newer ones and so can be even more difficult than the more modern thoroughfares.   


Perhaps I'll take a trip to Vermont, or some other place, next fall.  Meantime, I hope to take a miltiday trip this coming summer.   And, I'd like to take the kind of trip I took for three weeks one September, from Italy into France,  when I was working for American Youth Hostels.  If I had taken the same trip in the summer, some of the roads would have been all but impassible with traffic and everything would have cost a good bit more.  To be more precise, they would have cost then what they cost now.


Perhaps I'll do a trip lke that next year, or even sooner.  Meantime, I'll enjoy some fall cycling here.

New Saddle, Used Saddle

I've  been having computer troubles.  At least they're more tractable than man (or boy-toy) troubles, I think.  Welll, now you know why you haven't seen my posts for a couple of days.  Today, if  you can stand it, I'll talk more about changing saddles. 


Would Mel Brooks have made a movie called "Changing Saddles"  if he'd had a slightly different outlook on life?  Hey, can you get any more ironic than a man named Brooks making a movie with "saddles" in its name?


Before I decided to switch saddles, I had a B17 narrow saddle that I saved from a bike I sold about three years ago.  I didn't ride it long enough to break it in, but I recall liking the shape and width of it.  So I planned to use it on either Arielle or Tosca, and I bought another saddle like it.


Then I saw that Wallingford Bicycle had another saddle like it listed on eBay.  Someone had exchanged it under Wallingford's six-month return policy--and, apparently, ridden it a bit.

The listing contained a photo and description that depicted the saddle's condition honestly.  So I bid on it, figuring that it would take less time to break in.  I won the auction and paid about twenty-five or thirty dollars less (including shipping) than the saddle would have otherwise cost me.   Today it arrived.


I think I'm going to install it on Arielle, my geared Mercian Audax Special.   And Tosca, my fixed-gear bike, will probably get the saddle I saved from the bike I sold.  I figure that the saddle that since the saddle that arrived today will take less time to break in, it makes sense to put it on Arielle, as I usually ride fixed-gear more than derailleur-equipped bikes during the winter.  So, even if I don't ride Arielle much after, say, the middle of December, at least the saddle will be broken in for next spring. And since my winter fixed-gear rides are usually shorter than my geared rides during the rest of the year, it won't hurt as much if the saddle hasn't broken in yet.


So I have a spare B17 Narrow, in case I wreck one  or decide to build another bike (!) that calls for one.  I'm not going to give it to Helene; instead, she's getting a standard-width B17.  I have one that was treated with a little bit of Proofhide but was never ridden.  I'll use it, unless I get lucky and find a partially broken-in B17 at a reasonable price.


One thing I discovered about the B17 Narrow is that, unlike the standard-width model, it's not made in a "special" model.  Still, I think the saddle will look good on both bikes.  And, in one of those "only-with-Brooks"  quirks, the "special" model of the Professional, which has the big hammered copper rivets, is available with chrome or copper-plated rails, while the B17 special has somewhat smaller copper rivets and is available only with copper-plated rails.  To tell you the truth, I'm not so crazy about the copper rails, in part because the plating comes off fairly quickly.  (At least it did on the copper-railed Professional I rode.)


It's funny how I was able to prepare in all sorts of other ways for my surgery and my life after it.  But there are some things nobody tells you about.  Hmm...Are there other cyclists who are about to have Genital Reconstruction Surgery? Just remember:  All you have to lose is your old saddle.  Well, maybe.