Cross Tubular

Today was cold, but at least the air was calm.  But tomorrow the temperature will drop and winds will gust over 20 MPH; tomorrow night is supposed to be the coldest in six years.  And it won't be much warmer during the coming week.


It all means that the patches of ice on the street--not to mention the mounds of snow that stretch like soot-stained alabaster dunes between the streets and sidewalks--aren't going away any time soon.


I didn't ride today because I had a bunch of errands to do.  I might take a short ride tomorrow.  I'll probably take Marianela, just because I don't want to clean a lot of slop and salt out of my derailleur-equipped bikes.  And I just replaced the chain, chainring and cog on Tosca.  


But there's another good reason to ride Marianela:  She has the knobbiest tires.  A few weeks ago, I installed a pair of cyclo-cross tires on her.  Well, their manufacturer (Kenda) calls them cyclo-cross tires, but I rather doubt that anyone actually uses them for that purpose.  They're heavier than most cyclo-cross tires.  And, being much cheaper than most tires used in cyclo-cross racing, I have to wonder how long they'll last.  If they get me through this winter, I'll be happy, as I paid only nine dollars for each of them.    


So, while they're good for the money and the purpose for which I'm using them, they'll never be mistaken for what some regard as the finest cyclo-cross tubular ever made:

These are the Grifo Neve tires, which were made in Italy by Clement.  Back in the day, Clement tubulars were often regarded as the finest tires available.  The pros rode them, and they were often original equipment on Campagnolo Nuovo Record-equipped bicycles.


Like those tires, the Grifo Neves were made with silk casings.  Less expensive tubulars used cotton and, later, nylon casings.  


I used to ride tubulars, but not the Grifo Neves or any others that were intended for cyclo-cross.   I wonder what the ride might have been like.  Do any of you have experience with them?

Taliah Lempert's Vintage Rollfast

I recently came across Taliah Lempert's website.  She is a Lower East Side artist who is known for her "bicycle paintings."  She's a cyclist herself, and she owns and rides a stable of bicycles that includes everything from a folding bike she rescued from the street to a nice Bob Jackson track bike.  (It's definitely not a "hipster fixie.")


Actually, I'd seen some of her paintings before.  But, until I found her website, I knew--as many other people know--her only as the "bicycle painter."  I don't mean that to dismiss or pigeonhole her:  I thought of her that way simply because, somehow, I managed not to know her name.  


I like her work because it actually manages to capture both the aesthetic pleasures as well as the dynamic beauty of bicycles.  That, I believe is a result of her deep love of bicycles and cycling.  


Among her paintings, I was most taken, oddly enough, by this one:

I say "oddly enough" because it's a bike I've never ridden.  In fact, I've pedaled astride a tandem exactly twice in my life.  Each time was pleasant enough.  But it's difficult to find good partners and situations for riding a tandem.  Plus, the care and feeding of one is difficult and expensive, not to mention that storing one in a one-bedroom apartment isn't easy.


So, living in New York, one doesn't see many tandems.  And one is even less likely to see the one in the painting, for it hasn't been made in at least thirty years.  That was about when I saw the only specimen I've ever seen of this particular tandem, which was made by Rollfast.


I saw a fair number of Rollfast bikes when I was a kid.  That's not surprising when you consider that I grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey, and Rollfast was a locally-produced bike.  They were first made during the 1890's by the D.P. Harris hardware company, located just three blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center.


At that time, that part of Lower Manhattan--which includes, in addition to the former World Trade Center site, parts of what are now known as Tribeca, Soho and slices of what would become Chinatown-- was known more for grimy factories and musty warehouses than fashionable stores and trendy bars.    If you saw Tribeca or Soho today, you'd have trouble remembering that those were once gritty manufacturing districts. Fifty years ago--before much of the neighborhood was cleared out for construction of the World Trade Center-- there were factories that made everything from ladies' hats to construction machinery.   One out of every four books purchased in the United States was printed and bound in that part of town.  And, of course, Harris was making Rollfast bicycles --and later, parts, after Harris entered a partnership with the H.P. Snyder Company of Little Falls, NJ and Snyder took over the manufacture of the bikes.


Although Harris wasn't driven out by the World Trade Center, most of the other manufacturing companies were.   What seemed to cause Rollfast's decline--and retreat--was the ten-speed bike boom of the early 1970's.  All of Rollfast's bikes were heavy, and most of them  had balloon tires.   Plus, they were sold through department stores like Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney, though often under those stores' private labels.  So, even if the quality of Rollfast was equal to that of, say, Schwinn--which, in fact, it wasn't--they never would have had the same cachet as Schwinns or other bikes sold by bicycle dealers.  But Rollfasts were sturdy and sometimes quite lovely.


Perhaps one day they will have the status of an old Schwinn, or possibly a Ross.  The latter brand will probably be the next "hot" vintage bike because they were well-made, if heavy, and because it's now all but impossible to get a vintage Schwinn at anything like a sane price.  Rollfast's  day will come, too, I believe.  

With The Light Of This Day

Today the temperature went over 40F.  Yesterday it came close to that.  For the first time this year, we've had consecutive days on which the temperature rose above freezing. 

As a result, all of the ice and much of the snow that had accumulated since Christmas were gone.  So I rode to and from work for the first time this week.  It might be the last time, too, as the temperature is supposed to drop by twenty degrees tomorrow and we're supposed to get another snowstorm.

Last week, one of the office assistants asked how I rode to work.  I had to think fairly hard.  I actually have three or four distinct routes, and a couple of permutations of each one.  I don't think much about which way I'm going;  somehow I just know where to turn.  In a similar fashion, lots of passengers know, without seeing any signs or hearing any announcement, when the train is pulling into their station.  Sometimes the passengers don't even have to see the station, or anything around it.  

What guides them to disembark at the right stop?  Is it some sort of internal clock?  Or some other cue?

To tell you the truth, sometimes I'm just navigating by nothing more than light.  Somehow the glare of signals and the way in which the day's light fades--or grows brighter--is enough for me to know which way to go.  Sometimes.

They're Coming Along For The Ride Now

I haven't made a habit of checking the statistics about my blogs.  But today I took a peek. 


It seems that during the past week, one of my early posts on this blog has been viewed more times than any of my other posts has been in the history of my blog.  In fact, that particular post is now the most-viewed in the history (such as it is) of this blog.


I wonder why they're all reading "Edvard Munch Comes Along For The Ride" now.

Takin' It Slow In The Snow

When there's snow on the ground and ice on there road--the conditions we've had here since Christmas--you ride more slowly.  Of course, it makes sense, especially if you ride in the dark, as I sometimes do when I'm riding home from work.  There's nothing like hitting a patch of ice you didn't see when you're pedalling at 20 mph!


Even though I know it's sensible to ride more slowly in the conditions we've had, I don't make any effort to do so.  Somehow I just find myself pedaling, sometimes, as if the cold air were turning into molasses.  I wonder:  Does cold air slow us down?  Or is it the somnolence I often feel on winter days?  The latter makes some sense:  After all, most primates move more slowly--if, of course, they're not hibernating.  Does it have to do with the shorter days?


Or maybe it has to do with the fact that, about this time of year, I'm starting to lose whatever conditioning I built up during the summer and fall. 


Another good reason to cycle more slowly, I've discovered, is that brakes--rim brakes, anyway--seem to take longer to stop than they do in milder weather.  I wonder whether the cold surface of the rim has anything to do with it.  Or, perhaps, brake pads harden a bit in the cold.

From Cyclelicious

If my hypotheses are correct, do they also apply to disc brakes?  I've never owned a bike that had them, and I've ridden them only a couple of times, never in the cold.  But those of you who've ridden them--or all of you scientists and engineers:  What do you think?


I experienced the inverse of what I described the first time I cycled into the Alps. Just outside of Pontarlier, I had just crossed the border from France into Switzerland and, on a descent about a kilometer into Switzerland,  I got a flat.  When I pulled on my brake levers, it took more and more force to get the bike even to keep the bike from accelerating, let alone to slow it down or stop it.   Fortunately, the turns in the road weren't especially sharp and  only one car passed me from the time I pedaled out of Pontarlier.  So, I was able to stop the bike not far from the base of that descent.  


When I took off the wheel, my finger glanced off the side of the rim as if I'd touched a frying pan.  And my fingertip throbbed red for the rest of the day.  


I wonder what riding in winter there would've been like.