What Can You Generate On Your Bicycle?

Hub generator?  Bottle generator?  An '80's bottom-bracket mount generator?

None of the above for me.  Nighttime cyclists in this city have the same goal as denizens of the club scene:  being seen. Here, flashing lights are more useful than steady-beam lights because most streets are relatively well-lit.  As far as I know, none of the generator lights made today has a flashing mode.  

But I can think of another kind of generator that might be useful here, at least in the summer.  Here it is, in action:

http://www.videojug.com/webvideo/how-to-make-a-bicycle-ice-cream-maker

Now tell me:  You really want to use your bike to make ice cream.  Admit it!

Once you do that, there's no telling how many appliances you can power with your bicycle.  Hair dryers.  Laptops.  Juicers.  How about a sandwich press?  After all, what's better than a panini for a mid-ride snack?

Forget ethanol or solar, wind or nuclear power.  You just saw the real solution to the world's energy needs!

A Circus Monkey In Red

I've cycled long enough to have seen some truly strange components.  Some were mechanically or functionally quirky; others simply left me wondering what their designers and manufacturers were thinking.


And a few simply look strange.  To wit:

Its brand name is apt:  "Circus Monkey."  Actually, I think it looked rather like a Ferris Wheel designed by someone who jumps through hoops of fire.  


Although it definitely wouldn't look right on any of my bikes, and I probably wouldn't buy it even if I could use it (It's made for mountain bikes with disc brakes, and I don't have one), I actually like it.  Or maybe I like--or, at least, admire-- whoever designed it.  I mean, how could you not?  


To grossly paraphrase Shakespeare, a hub by any other name would probably spin as smoothly.  Still, who wouldn't at least stop and look at one called "Circus Monkey"?  Especially when it looks like the hub in the photo.

Excelsior!, Or The Case For Bike Baskets

The next time someone makes fun of you because your bike has a basket, show him or her this:

The bike is an English three-speed.  So you know that once it's freed from the snow, it'll work just like it did before the storm.  What that means is that, for one thing, the brakes won't work worth a damn if the rims are the least bit wet!


Still, I'd take that bike over some of the others I saw in and around the piles of snow around the Bel Aire Diner:

Some would see that photo as a good case for a mountain bike.  Chacun a son gout.  Or is it de gustos no hay escritos?


But not all fourteen of the bikes parked around the diner were so isolated:

There are normally at least a dozen or so bikes parked around the diner. Sometimes some of them serve as "donor" bikes for the others.  


The US Postal Service claims that they deliver through snow, sleet, hail and the dark of night.  With all due respect to them, I can safely say they have nothing on the delivery guys at Bel Aire diner.  And, of course, the Postal Service doesn't serve French toast any time of the day you want it!

Stopping Is Part Of The Journey

I can say with near-certainty that on this date at around this time, ten years ago, I was riding on rollers.  Back in those days, that's what I did during the winter.  Even after I stopped racing, I still was trying to prove something to myself.  Or, more precisely, to disprove something.

What was it?  Well, before I try to describe, let alone name, it, I have to say that what led me to ride rollers even after my racing days ended was the same thing that kept me training for soccer after I stopped playing it.  I knew full well that I would probably never play again and, even though I enjoyed playing, I wasn't mourning my acknowledgment that my playing days were over.  In fact, I felt surprisingly little.  But I still had the impulse to train as if I were still playing.


Something similar happened after I stopped racing.  Although I'm glad I raced, I wasn't upset when I knew that part of my life was about to end.  And once I "retired," I really had no urge to go back.  However, I wanted to know that I could.  


Why?  Well, I always want to feel as if I start or leave stages and challenges in my life on my own terms.  It's never a good feeling not to do something because you're not capable of it.  The worst of it is that you can't even kick yourself, in hindsight, for lack of effort if you simply didn't have whatever it took to do something that you wanted to do.


Perhaps I never got past or over being the ungraceful, unathletic pubescent child I was.  Until I started training and playing, I was taunted by other kids--and sometimes adults--not only for my seeming lack of athletic ability, but also for my perceived lack of manliness, or even the capacity for becoming a man, whatever that meant.


Those taunts were echoing in some recess of my brain.  That's the reason why, ironically, I spent more time on rollers and trainers in my early post-racing years than I did when I was actually racing.    In an irony within that irony, I was pushing my body--my male body--so hard because I was trying to poound it, or something about it, out of existence altogether, or at least into submission.


I've been on my bike once in the past two weeks.  I'm feeling antsy and hoping that I'm not gaining weight.  (At least I'm not eating any junk.)  But, at the same time, I'm not as ornery as I would've been back in the day.  When I couldn't ride--or after a few weeks of riding rollers or trainers--I used to feel resentful and angry that I couldn't do what I wanted to do but, it seemed, everybody else could.


I think that being off my bike for a few months after my surgery last year made me aware, for the first time in my life, that the times when you recuperate, or simply stop for whatever reasons, are also part of the journey. In fact, those times might be almost as important as the times when we're riding and training.   For some people, it's the only opportunity to reflect on the question of why they are doing whatever they do.

Thirteen (Or More?) Ways Of Looking At A Cassette

For a time in my life, my favorite poem was Wallace Steven's Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird.  It's still a favorite of mine.


Now, as far as I know, there aren't any blackbirds anywhere near where I live or work.  In fact, there weren't very many living beings outside today.  Nineteen inches of snow fell on Central Park from last night into this morning.  Cold gusts whipped the snow around,  and thunder echoed the flashes of lightning that pierced the heavy clouds.  Why any living being would choose to be outdoors in such conditions is beyond me.


So, being indoors on a day that Charlie and Max slept through, I started to see the toes of glaciers creeping along my walls where the paint ran.  (No,I'm not taking intoxicants of any sort. )  And rows of tiles become an Andy Warhol painting of kaleidoscopes.


Which leads me to wonder:  How many worlds can be seen from the back of a cassette?

Soo '70's

Seeing it snow again made me think of The Ice Storm.  I liked it, but I also remember thinking how the clothes, hairstyles and the things people did (Wife-swapping.  Key parties.  EST.) were sooo '70's.  I know: That decade included my puberty, adolescence and undergraduate years.


Now this is sooo '70's:

Not only is it from the '70's; it's English.  No one in the USA today would get away with making an ad like that.


And nobody would get away with making a bike like the Lambert.  Or, I should say, nobody would stay in business for even as long as Lambert did (just over a decade).  


Not only did they try to mass-produce high-performance bikes in England, they tried to keep their prices reasonable, perhaps a bit low--even for that time.  During the company's first few years, they made most of the components, as well as the brazed lugless cro-mo frame, in-house.  The components were the bike's undoing:  Most of them didn't hold up very well.  Worst of all was the so-called "Death Fork," which was one of the first production forks to be made of aluminum.  That piece was indicative of much else on the bike:  It was a possibly-good idea that wasn't executed very well, mainly because no one knew how it needed to be executed.


They offered a 21-pound road bike, which was about as light as you could get at that time, for $149.  They offered that same bike, plated with 24-karat gold for $279.


A price like that for gold?  Now that's soo '70's.

Coming Out of The Cold and Leaving

I can't stop thinking about him.


OK, this isn't going where you think it's going!  


The other morning, when I was doing my laundry, I saw him.  He was riding a department-store mountain bike in the snow that had fallen through the night.  If he wasn't homeless, he looked like he was less than a paycheck away from it.  Or, if I want to be more charitable or simply literary, I could say that he looks like a grizzly bear that just came out of detox.


Wherever he doesn't go on his bike, he walks.  He doesn't even take the subway or bus, he told me. I believe him:  I've seen him around the neighborhood before, but I'd never talked with him until the other day.


He asked me whether it would be OK to put his shoes in one of the dryers.  I don't work there, I explained, so I don't make the rules.  And, I told him, I didn't think the person in charge was anywhere in sight. 


So he put his shoes--more like sneakers, really--in one of the floor-level dryers.  And when it heated up, he propped his feet against the door.  "Can't get frostbite," he explained.


After I loaded one of the other dryers, I went around the corner for a cup of tea.  I offered to bring one back for him--or a hot chocolate, coffee, or whatever else he wanted.  "Oh, no thank you, Miss.  You're too kind."


When I returned to the laundromat, he and his bike were gone.

Gyes Parkside: Product Review

I've been commuting on my Gyes "Parkside" saddle since September. 

I've been riding it on Marianela, my old Schwinn LeTour III.  The new saddle, oddly enough, didn't look out of place on a bike whose finish has more pits and pockmarks than some streets in this city.  Perhaps it had to do with the saddle's brown color, which goes nicely with the frame's orange hue.


Yes, it's an attractive saddle.  Now, the inevitable questions:  Does it ride as well as it looks?  And how is it holding up?


Well, I'll deal with the simpler question first:  The seat seems to be breaking in, not breaking down.  Being a sprung saddle, it doesn't take as much to break in.  But it also doesn't have to break in as much as an unsprung saddle would need to in order to be comfortable.  I say this as someone with Brooks B17 narrow saddles on two of her other bikes and a standard B17 on another.  


Of course, I'm not comparing those saddles to the Gyes Parkside.  However, I've had a Brooks B66, which is similar in dimensions and other design characteristics to my Gyes.  (I'm such a fast woman!)  As I recall it, the top is flat, as it is on the Gyes.  However, it seems that the way the top flares toward the end (or tapers toward the front, depending on your persepctive) is more gradual yet not as smooth on the Gyes.  Sometimes I have felt the edge of the top of the saddle.  Then again, I was wearing thin skirts and stockings when I felt the edge of the saddle rubbing against the inside of my thigh.  Back when I had the B66, I was living a different lifestyle and dressing differently for work, which was the destination of most of my rides on that seat as well as the Gyes.I should also add that I felt the rubbing after about two hours of riding:  near the end of my commute home.  And, perhaps I won't feel it anymore as the saddle breaks in more.


Perhaps the most significant difference between the ride of the Gyes and my memory of the B66's ride is that the Gyes seems a bit cushier.  I think the B66 had somewhat firmer springs than the Gyes saddle has.  If that's the case, and if I'm correct in recalling that the B66 has somewhat thicker leather, it may mean that a Gyes may not last  as long as the B66.  That is not to say, though, that the Gyes isn't a sturdy saddle.  If anything, the carriage rails and springs seem to be as robust as those on the B66, or other Brooks saddles.  And, if this matters to you, the Gyes rails are chromed steel, while current B66s and B67s (which are the same as B66s, except that they're made to fit modern seat posts with intergral clamps) have rails and springs that are painted black.  


On the whole, I give the Gyes Parkside two thumbs up.  It can be had for about a third less than the equivalent Brooks models.  That makes them a good value which will get even better if the Pound Sterling should recover some of its valule against the dollar.  

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.