Going Stealth In Pink

Some black bike parts are said to have a "stealth" look.  I suppose that on a black bike, they would "fly under the radar."  And, if enough people are riding black bikes,  I suppose that those "stealth" bikes and parts could go unnoticed.


But what if the world were lit by magenta neon?  Seeing the old Rudge-Whitorth in that light in Flushing made me think of this:  That bike, which was black, certainly didn't look "stealth."  That's not to say I didn't like its looks: It had a nice patina on it, and there's something classy about some of those old three-speeds.  But if one wanted to make it less visible, what would one do?

Would these be "stealth" in the light I saw last night?

Eccentric Rings

Tonight, on my way home, I stopped in Flushing for a bite to eat.  Now, I've never been to Hong Kong, but Flushing is what I imagine Hong Kong would be like if it were transported to Queens.  Or, perhaps, with its ubiquitous neon, it could be seen as an Asian version of Times Square.

I wonder whether the makers of this Rudge-Whitworth ever imagined it in magenta neon light.  In some odd way, bike and light are not incongruous, at least to me.  


One particularly interesting feature of this bike is its chainring cutout pattern:

Is the hand halting or waving? Whatever it's doing, it looks good doing it on this bike.  


I'm guessing that the bike is from the 1940's or 1950's.  At that time there were dozens, if not hundreds, of bicycle manufacturers who made what we now think of as classic English 3-speeds.  (Many of those companies, including Rudge, were bought by Raleigh during the 1950's.) While, at first glance, they seemed almost the same, each model had its own particular set of details that set it apart. An example is in the chainwheel you saw in the above photo. Many other British makers used chainwheels with interesting and sometimes whimsical patterns cut into them.  The Raliegh three-speed I rode last year had a heron--Raleigh, which of course was Raleigh's corporate symbol. 


I've seen other chainrings cut out in interesting patterns. Here's one of my favorites:

It's on an AJ Warrant bike from Austria.  Although there's no earthly reason to use a cottered crankset today, I wouldn't mind having the one in the photo.                                                                       

Santa's Helper

Last night my commute took me through the great wilderness of the Land of Overdecorated Houses.  


Even after so many years of cycling, I still can't get over how much brighter and gaudier those lights and combinations of green, red, gold, silver tinfoil seem when you don't have two feet of glass and two tons of metal between you and them. And the cold, clear night made them glint and glare all the more, or so it seemed.


We're supposed to have more of this bonechilling clarity through the next week.  I hear even Santa's reindeer don't want to come out in this weather.  Hmm...I wonder...How would the world be a different place  if Santa and his helpers rode bicycles instead of sleighs pulled by reindeer.

Cozying Up

I've tried to get Charlie and Max interested in cycling.  But they aren't interested in the hard work:  They like to supervise.

Max, at least, makes an effort at looking busy.  (Is that something like acting sincere?  I actually heard someone say that.)  Of course, there's no contract, but there are no rules about sleeping on the job.  Charlie knows that very well:

It was below freezing and, with the wind chill, about fifteen degrees colder.  I got on my bike to go to work.  Now you tell me:  Which species is more intelligent and evolved? 

Winter Now

From Utility Cycling

It is undeniably winter now.  Or, at least, it feels that way.  The winds of yesterday doth blew today. Hey, I'm teaching a Shakespeare play in one of my classes.  You have trouble with Shakespeare's language, you say?  All right:  Ou sont les neiges d'antan?


What made today really strange, though, at least climatically (No, that's not the word you thought it was!), was the fact that the temperature varied almost not at all.  It felt that way and the recap I heard of the day's weather said as much:  High temp 34 F; Low Temp 30; clouds but no precip; wind speeds from 20 to 30 mph.  Not a day fair and excellent, as the Bard would say.


It's time to get myself out of denial.  Time to take out the wool gloves, the wool shirts and such.  The week I'll spend in Florida will be a mere interlude:  the cold will precede and follow it.  


At least there hasn't been any sleet or slush yet.  I don't mind the cold, and I don't mind precipitation. Both together, though, can make for miserable cycling and can be simply depressing.  Fenders and the proper clothing make such conditions endurable, if not enjoyable.  


I'm not about to stop riding, though.  I never have gone on "winter break" unless I had some health issue or another that prevented me from cycling.  That hasn't happened often, and has never kept me off my bike for more than a couple of weeks every winter.  


At least winter rides make hot chocolate and soups taste really good!

Into The Wind; Into Life

Today I managed to get out only briefly.  I got up late and had a few errands and other things to take care of.  I wish I'd ridden more (Don't I always!) because it was a nice day, the cold and wind notwithstanding.


Actually, I wanted to ride more in part because of the wind.  Of course, there are two sides of it:  riding facefirst into it and having it blow at your back.  The former is the stuff that builds character and such, the latter is a reward for, I suppose, having your character built up.


Pedaling into the wind is, even among non-cyclists, a poignant metaphor for facing challenges. Not being pushed back is a kind of progress; moving forward is a victory in the same way as surviving another day of a struggle.  With these victories, with survival, comes the hope that accompanies the anticipation of a reward:  the wind blowing at your back.  


I did my first rides of more than an hour along the ocean in New Jersey. I would ride from Middletown, where I spent my high-school years, to Sandy Hook, which is exactly what the name says it is:  a spit of sand that somehow manages not to be submerged by the bay or the ocean that are on each side of it.  From there, I'd ride along Route 36 through Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach--both of which straddle strips of land even narrower than Sandy Hook--to Long Branch. (Later, as I gained more experience, I'd ride down to Asbury Park or beyond.)  

On the peninsula that forms the West End of Long Branch, the wind shifted direction about two o'clock every afternoon. On most days, I would be riding into the wind down to Long Branch.  That, of course, meant that the wind would blow me back home.  


Learning about that wind shift, and how to use it, taught me much more than almost anything else I learned in high school--or any school, for that matter. It took me a long time to learn how to use those lessons, but they are the sorts of lessons one doesn't forget.


Those lessons were even applicable to those times when I had to continue pedaling into the same wind from which I had no respite on the previous day.  There are times like that on most multi-day rides:  I recall now the second tour I took in Europe, from Italy into France.  Late one Saturday I checked into a small hotel in Brignoles, a place that was actually quite lovely and interesting (It is in Provence, after all.) but where I also hadn't any plans to stay.  I stopped there because, by the end of that afternoon, I simply couldn't pedal any more.  The next day was more of the same--wind and climbing punctuated by climbing and wind--but at least every pore, orifice and cell had been awakened by that previous day's ride.  


And, oddly enough, while I was pedaling through those lavender-tinged hills, I began to chant part of a Navajo creation song to myself:


It was the wind that gave them life.  It is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives us life.  When this ceases to blow, we die.  In the skin at the tips of our fingers, we can see the train of wind. It shows us where the wind blew where our ancestors were created.


Actually, now that I think of it, those words weren't so incongruous.  In the villages and countryside in which I had been riding, I'd had the sense that everything there was happening in some sort of circle that seemed to begin in the wind.  Everyone knew where their ancestors were created, if you will.  A few days earlier, I talked to an olive grower.  I told him that his trees were among the most beautiful things I had ever seen. While not prideful, he didn't seem surprised. "C'est aussi une cathedrale," he said.  "Il est leve pour longtemps" :  It has stood for a long time, like a cathedral.  Later, he told me, "Quand cet arbre est plante, n'est pas pour son moi; n'est pas pour son enfants ou petit-enfants; il est pour leurs petit-enfants":  You do not plant such a tree for yourself, for your children or grand-children; you plant it for their grandchildren.


At the tips of its leaves, one can also see a train of wind.  It shows where the others have grown and where their fruits have been picked, by the ancestors of those who planted it: The grower told me that an olive tree has to grow a hundred years before it bears fruit.  But, if cared for, it will continue to provide olives for a thousand years.


And it was given life by that same wind into which I would pedal a few days later.

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.

Losing the Lanes

Last night, about two blocks from the end of my commute home, a van pulled up alongside me.  The passenger side window rolled down.  My heart was starting to pump:  I was only two blocks from my apartment, but I was ready to pedal just about anywhere else.  The light turned green and, just as I was ready to thrust my left pedal down, a man's voice rasped, "Hey, sexy.  Why doesn't a beautiful lady like you use the bike lane?"


Now, that was one of the stranger things I've heard on my bike.  But he's probably not the first to have asked the question, and I'm not the first cyclist to have heard it.  But, if I were to meet that guy again (not that I'd want to!), I'd show him this:

It's one of those photos I wish I'd taken, but not because it would establish me as the next Eugene Atget. Rather, it shows all too clearly one of the reasons I normally don't use bike lanes. 


Now, if it were only a matter of cars being parked, I could ride around them.  But parked cars mean people getting in and out and, in some cases, not watching where they open doors.  I learned a painful lesson in that about this time last year.  At least I lived to laugh about it, once the pain subsided.  Other cyclists, though, haven't been so fortunate.


The photo came from a website I just found:  My Bike Lane, which is devoted entirely to bike lane violatons. In addition to photos, the license plate numbers of the most frequent offenders are posted.  


Thanks to "Greg" for creating and maintaining the site.  

Temptation Under My Feet

White Industries Urban Platform pedals

I succumbed to temptation and it arrived today with the guys in brown shirts.


No, I'm not making Nazi porn.  (Ironically, it was popular in Israel during the 1960's and is enjoying a resurgence.)  What I mean is that amid all those boxes from LL Bean and Macy's, the UPS guys (Yes, they were men.) delivered something I swore I wouldn't buy.


It's a pair of pedals that, even at the lowest online price and with a coupon from the retailer, still cost me more than the first ten or so bikes I owned.  But I have a rationale, if not a justification (I believe that, ultimately, humans cannot justify anything.) for my purchase.


On all of my Mercians, I've been riding MKS GR-9 pedals.  They're platform pedals, which can be ridden comfortably with any shoes heavier than ballet slippers, at least for a few hours. They're the closest thing I could find to my favorite pedal before I went clipless:  the Lyotard No. 23, a.k.a. the Marcel Berthet.

Lyotard No.23 "Marcel Berthet" Pedal

I did my first three European tours on those pedals.  They enabled me to ride in sneakers or trainers I could wear off the bike.  The only other shoes I brought with me were a pair of black cotton Chinese "coolie" shoes.  I could wear them with the dark pants  and polo shirt I brought with me and get into just about anyplace.  


The Berthets were a great design in all sorts of ways.  Even though they were made entirely of steel, they were lighter than the alloy Campagnolo pedals and their clones.  The bearings weren't as high quality as the ones on the Campy pedals, but they were rebuildable and spun freely.  And, did I say they were the most comfortable pedals I've ever ridden?


But today's package didn't contain a pair of them.  They can be found on eBay, but the prices for new ones are nearly as high as the lightest carbon and titanium clipless models.  That's no surprise, really:  Many other longtime cyclists would echo what I said about them, and they've been out of production for about 25 years.  Plus, Japanese collectors prize vintage French bikes and parts above all others. 


Of course, I could have bought used ones. But a "vintage" with a "patina" might mean that someone crashed it thirty years ago and nobody remembers because it's been sitting in a barn or basement ever since.  And that magnifies the one flaw that Berthets had:  They weren't the sturdiest of pedals.  I broke a few axles on them.  Then again, I was riding with, to put it euphemistically, youthful exuberance.  And, in a way, it wasn't so terrible to break them, even on my student's budget:  They cost about a fifth, if that, of what Campys cost.

MKS GR-9

When I decided to stop riding clipless, the nearest pedals I could find to the Berthets were the GR-9s.  MKS has always made good products at reasonable prices, so I was confident of their performance.  However, the platform is narrower, even at its widest point, than the one on the Berthet.  And, although they're comfortable, after more than a few hours--especially on a hot day--they're not quite as nice as the Berthets.  That's because of the way the toeclip attaches to the pedal:

The main part of the clip attaches slightly below the platform.  You can feel it if you're wearing a thin-soled shoe; even with thicker ones, it can create a "hot spot" (though not as severe as the ones on some caged or even clipless pedals).  


On the other hand, clips on the Berthet were level with the platform.  That is one of the details the White Industries Urban Platform pedal captures:

OK.  Now you know the temptation I was describing. I had the chance to try them on someone else's bike and immediately felt the difference.  Not only is the platform wider, it seems to be, if not more ergonomic, at least more suited to the foot.  


The body looks a lot like the Berthet, except that it's made of a high-strength alumunum alloy.  And it has a flip tab that, like the Berthet's, makes entry into toeclips amazingly easy.  

But, aside from the superior metallurgy, the WI pedals have another advantage over the Berthets:  high-strength stainless steel axles and sealed bearings that spin on them. The latter is another rationale for buying them:  On all of my Mercians, the other bearings are sealed.  And I've always thought that pedals were the best place on the bike to use sealed bearings.   


They're going on Arielle, as it's the bike on which I do my longest rides.  But, as finances allow, I'm going to equip my other Mercians with them.

WWRKD (What Would Ralph Kramden Do?)

Today I had to take the bus to the Jersey Shore.  Now, you're probably looking at my last name and wondering whether I did myself up like Snooki.  As if I could, or would want to...


Anyway, on the way out of , and back into, New York, I passed through the Port Authority Bus Terminal.  I committed, shall we say, a few of my youthful indiscretions there.  So did more than a few other people.  In recent years, the place has been cleaned up and made much safer, along with neighboring Times Square.  (Once, when I was drunk, I stopped a would-be mugger by laughing in his face.)  But the ticket counters are just as understaffed, and the staff in other parts of the terminal are just as rude and surly, as they were.


But I digress.  On my way out, I noticed a monument to a character and TV show that, as far as I can tell, are acquired tastes that I never acquired.  

Ralph Kramden was always threatening to send his wife Alice "to the moon."  I can only imagine how he'd talk to cyclists.  


To be fair, when cycling, I don't have many encounters with long-distance bus drivers, as we tend not to be on the same roads.  However, some of my more harrowing experiences in city cycling have been with bus drivers.  They're not as reckless as some cab drivers, but they are angrier.  I guess having to maneuver a bus into the same tight spaces afforded taxis would make anyone surly, if not psychotic.


How would Ralph Kramden have reacted to a lycra-clad messenger on a hipster fixie?