Left In Their Tracks

Some time during my school years, I went with one of my science classes on a field trip to the hills of northwestern New Jersey.  There, we went to a quarry and looked at the rock formations that seemed to rise and fall with the colors of the sky and water.


Somewhere along the way, someone noticed what turned out to be a dinosaur footprint. At least, that's what our guide told us.  I have never had any reason not to believe him.  Still, I wonder how a print could be preserved for millions of years while the tracks we make with our tires are washed away with the next rain, or are blown away when the ground in which they were formed turns to dust.


I was thinking about that yesterday after I saw this:

I made those tracks.  All right, I take that back.  Even when I was most serious about off-road riding, I don't think I rode anything more than 1.95 inches wide.  


But I wonder now what some future researcher would think about us from the tracks we leave behind.  Would they be able to tell a tourist from a randonneur, a criterium bike from a regular road racer or a track bike from a hipster fixie?  Would they know whether I was riding Michelin, Continental or Panaracer tires?


I'm not being frivolous now.  As a writer and educator, I have to think about my effect on future generations.  What will I leave behind with my tracks?

Industrial Idylls

Where is this house?  Park Slope?  The Upper West Side?  Carroll Gardens?


Would you believe the South Bronx?


To be precise, it's on Beck Street.  It's about two and a half miles from Yankee Stadium.  Colin Powell (who, as far as I am concerned, gave the US one of the saddest days in its history) grew up a few blocks away.


In fact, the block on which that house stands is full of handsome brownstone and Victorian houses.  So are some of the nearby streets.  Somehow they survived the fires and other disasters that befell the Bronx during the 1970's and '80's.


As you can imagine, those streets make for some pleasant cycling, especially on a Sunday.


So, interestingly enough, do the nearby industrial areas of Point Morris and Hunt's Point.  

See that?  No worries about having or taking a lane here!


The weather was milder than we've had through most of this winter.  The temperature reached 55F and the thinnest wisps of clouds streaked the sky.  And, even though I was near the East River or Long Island Sound through most of my ride, the slight breezes carried only the faintest hint of chill from the water, which will be cold well into the spring.


I took Marianela because I thought there might still be some clumps of snow or slush, as well as potholes.  About the latter I was right, though the streets weren't as bad as I'd expected them to be.  


Speaking of streets: 

In almost every street name I've seen in the English-speaking world, the "Street," "Avenue," "Boulevard" or other designation came after the name.  I associate the practice of the designation preceding the name with French, Italian and Spanish cities.  


I wondered why I found a street named in the Latinate manner in the South Bronx, of all places.  I thought it might have to do with some French community that lived there at one time.  Gallic immigrants indeed settled in the Bronx, which was mainly rural, during the 19th Century, and opened spinning and weaving mills. And there is a parish of St. John (Jean) Vianney just steps away from that sign.


However, I found out that the street is actually named for a George St. John, who was one of the early English landowners of the area.  Still, I could find no explanation of why "Avenue" precedes rather than follows his name.  I guess he wasn't anticiapting curious cyclists riding by.

The Season of The Trompe d'Oeil

Here's one way to tell whether or not you have "bikes on the brain."

No bikes were harmed to make this picuture.  Actually, it's a couple of bike racks in front of the Scottish Parliament building.  

The photo reminds me, oddly enough, of this time of year:  You can't always trust some things--especially the weather--to be as they seem. The temperature reached 70F one day last week. It had been 60 the day before.  But the day after, the temperature had fallen to 30 and the wind increased.  

Yesterday, the weather was mild but rainy.  And now it's about to drop again.  

A day or two of mild weather in February seems like summer because of the perspective from which it's seen:  after two months of winter and a few snowstorms.  And those two recent "heat waves" melted most of the accumulated snow. That alone is enough to make it seem warmer than it is, or at least to make the spring seem as if it's closer.  There are still about three more weeks to go, I think.

Double Century

I've just completed a double century.


OK...This is my 200th post on this blog.  Is this an Imperial or Metric double century?


Have you ever done either kind of double century?  What is the most you've ridden in one day?


I'll confess that I've never done a double imperial century, though I've done a couple of metric double centuries (about 125 miles). 


Have you done a century of any kind since the beginning of the new year?  Do you plan to do any this year?

What The Weather Took And Left

Somewhere in my dim dark past I learned that when glaciers recede, they take away pieces of whatever they covered.


That theory would seem to hold up in light of what I saw this morning:

About two weeks ago, this bike was buried under about two feet of snow:

Now, I'd like to think that the bike had a seat (and post!) when it was parked before the snowstorm.  Although I'm a hardened New Yorker, I'd still rather believe that the seat and seatpost were swept away by retreating snow and ice than to know that they were taken by someone.  

And, just as the backtracking snow and ice cut crevasses and tear chasms into the earth, so did the retreating remnants of this winter's storm rend this vessel of urban transport:

Do we pity the bike or simply attribute what it's endured to the march of history?

Standing Out

While surfing eBay, I came across a listing for this classic beauty:

It's a Mercian from 1980, made--as nearly all Mercians had been, up to that time--of Reynolds 531 tubing.  The components on it are what one might expect on a top-level touring, randonneuring or audax bike from that time:  Stronglight triple crank, Huret Duopar derailleurs, early Phil Wood hubs.  


It's even in a color I like.  While my favorite is #57 on the Mercian color chart (Why else would I have three bikes in that color?), followed by numbers 17, 9, 53 and 39, I have a soft spot for British Racing Green.  Most bikes I've seen in that color have white lug outlines, panels and other details.  But I thought the gold panels on this Mercian gave BRG a glow and warmth I hadn't expected.  


Now, tell me, how can anyone so deface such a lovely bike?

Around the time that Mercian was made, the tacky accessory you see on its downtube first came onto the market.  It's called the Flick Stand, and it was made by Rhode Gear.


The idea was, of course, to keep the wheel steady when the bike was standing.  It could have been very useful when there was a load on the bike.  In fact, I had one on my bike for my first European tour.  It lasted about three days:  The part where the metal loop attached to the bracket cracked and broke.  


Every once in a while, I see a Flick Stand.  I also sometimes see remnants of them:  The metal loop broke off and the bike's owner didn't bother to remove the clamp. 


If that design flaw had been eliminated, the Flick Stand could have been very useful.  It still would have been ugly on a nice bike, though.

A Bike Boom Baby: Weyless

I first started to ride long distances at a very interesting time, at least for cycling.  The so-called Bike Boom of the early-to-mid 1970's was in full swing. I, like other Americans, was learning about the differences between various drop-bar bikes and what made one derailleur better than another.


Adolescents like me could only drool and dream over bikes with Campagnolo kit.  However, there was a small group of cyclists who were engineers or machinists by profession and believed that Campagnolo's products could stand improvement.  In fact, Weyless** founder Bill Tabb was said to be envisioning an entire line of components, all of which would have had more advanced design than any others that were available at the time. 

The first products Weyless (Aren't their graphics sooo '70's?) offered were their hubs.  They weighed about 25 percent less than Campagnolo's counterparts.  And they cost about that much less.   They were made with sealed cartridge bearings.  Today that seems commonplace; however, when those hubs were introduced around 1974, it was exotic.  So was the mirror-bright finish that was anodized with a clear coat. 


That same year, Weyless came out with a pedal that was orginally designed and made by Bob Reedy.  If it looks familiar, that's because a number of pedals that came into the market, and which are in use today, were inspired by--or are outright copies of--this simple, elegant design.

Soon afterward, Weyless came out with a two-bolt seatpost that served as the inspiration for SunTour's Superbe post as well as other designs.  So far, so good.  Right?


Well, a couple of things happened that neither Tabb nor anyone else in the company anticipated.  The first was the Oil Shock of 1974.  That should have gotten more people to ride bikes and use their cars less.  But, for reasons no one has explained, things didn't work that way.  


By the time the Oil Shock hit, most people who were inclined to buy new bikes had already bought them.  As good bikes are durable items, their owners would not be on the market for another any time soon after buying their first (or only) bike.  Plus, many people bought bikes and rode them once or twice before giving up.  That's why some of you have been able to find some nice vintage bikes in good condition.


That also meant fewer people were in the market for bike parts, let alone cutting-edge ones.  And, instead of going ahead with the rest of a component lineup--which could have found a niche market--they decided to make a line of bike clothes out of what may have been the first high-tech Merino wool.  


That in itself might not have been a problem save for the fact that those garments were guaranteed not to shrink.  And guess what happened?  What the company had to pay in replacements and reimbursements for their jerseys alone was enough to sink it.  It seems that, all told, Weyless was in business for no more than five years.


Today Weyless is one of those names that's been relegated to the footnotes of cycling history.  But, whatever the faults of their clothing or business model were, their parts--which were made in Rochester, NY--would serve as models or inspirations for other bike parts made decades later.


**The Weyless company I'm discussing in this post bears absolutely no relationship to a line of parts  and mountain bikes by the same name that was marketed by the mail/online retailer Supergo during the late 1990's and the first years of the 21st Century.  Supergo would be acquired by Performance Bicycles, which apparently killed off the Weyless and Supergo brands as well as Scattante, Supergo's house brand of road bikes.

Not Fooled, But Snowed Under, Again

Just when I thought we were going to have clear roads and the last of the sooty snow residue was gone, we got a couple more inches.  It was pretty wet, dense stuff, so it didn't stay for very long. But we're supposed to get more snow tonight and tomorrow.  So what will that mean for my commute?


Well, if I do ride tomorrow, it will probably mean that in at least one of my schools, I won't be able to use the bike rack.  

Now I'm really wondering what the Ground Hog saw almost three weeks ago. Do we really have only three remaining weeks of winter?

How Much Less Is More?

You all know that Robert Browning wrote "Less is more."  OK, if you studied English Lit instead of architecture, you'd know that.  At least I now know that my degree was good for something.


Anyway, it's become a guiding principle behind changes I made to two of my bikes.  

The irony of that is that when I first started cycling, I--like most people--thought, well, more is more. Young kids rode bikes with 20 inch tires.  In my parents' time, and when I was a young child, bikes for bigger kids and adults (the few who were riding in the US at that time) had 26 inch tires. Ergo, bigger wheel meant better bike.  So those Bike Boom-era ten-speeds with their 27 inch tires had to be le ne plus ultra, or the bee's knees, or whatever you wanted to call it,  of cycling.  

Then we learned that the really high-quality bikes--which included ones with tubular or high-performance clincher tires--had 700C tires.  They were sometimes referred to (quite erroneously) as 28 inch tires.  They were, however, slightly smaller than their 27 inch counterparts.


There was a corollary in gearing.   Most kids' bikes had single-speed coaster brake rear hubs.  Only the more grown-up "English racer" bikes had multiple speeds.  Three, count 'em, three gears!   


Then the bike boom came along, and "ten speed" became synonymous with a higher-performance bike.   Over the years, the bikes designed for the most serious and discerning (or simply status-conscious) riders had more and more gears.    By the turn of the millennium, one of the advantages cited for Campagnolo over Shimano was that the former had ten speeds in the rear, while the latter had "only" nine.  


Ten speeds in the rear.  Whooda dreamed of that back in the days when ten speeds for the whole bike was as exotic as the doors on the de Lorean?


Then, of course, Campagnolo came out with an eleven-speed system a couple of years ago.  So, anybody using it with a double front chainring has 22 speeds.  That's more than what could be had on two bikes forty years ago!


About two years ago, I went back to my roots and gave up on STI/Ergo in favor of friction down tube shifters.  I use them now with 8 speed cassettes in the rear.  


Why?  Well, even if you spend all of your free time scouring e-Bay for screw-on freewheels, you're not likely to find a wide variety of sizes. And they're expensive.  On the other hand, decent quality 8-speed cassettes can still be had at reasonable prices, and a wide range of sizes is available. 


Plus, the cassette system makes installation and removal easier, and is stronger than the old screw-on frewheel system.  And the chains are a bit thicker than those for nine, ten or eleven speeds, and therefore wear longer.

Now, after riding for some time on 8 speeds, I decided to "downsize" some more when I replaced the triple crank on Arielle with a "compact double."  So now I have 16 speeds instead of 24.  Although I'm not a weight weenie, I note that the new setup is a bit lighter.    More important, though, is that shifting is simpler and more reliable.  That has to do with having fewer gears to shift, but it's also a function of the fact that this setup allows me to use short-cage derailleurs, which shift more crisply.

I have the same sort of setup--albeit with lower gears--on Helene.  


It seems, though, no matter how many gears I have, I seem to ride in the same three or four on any given bike for about 90 percent of my riding.  Many other experienced riders say similar things. So, you may be wondering why we don't ride bikes with only our three or four favorite gears.  Well, we like to be prepared, especially if we're far from home or the nearest bike shop.  So we want a couple of lower gears for the hills we may encounter or the wind we run into along the way.  And, of course, we want a couple of higher gears, at least, for more optimal riding conditions.


So, you ask, how much less is more?  Well, that's a question you answer from your own experience.  Robert Browning, after all, wasn't writing about bike gearing!

The Wind: Changes From Yesterday

How much difference can a day make?


Yesterday, when I was riding home from work, the temperature was 70F (21C).  I was tempted to stop somewhere and take off my pantyhose, just to feel the unseasonably mild air against my legs.  


And I was wearing a short-sleeved lavender top and an amethyst-colored overshirt made of a silky material much like that of the blue and gray printed skirt I wore.


Today I wished that I'd worn heavier tights than the ones I wore, even though my riding consisted of a few short errands that totaled no more than 8 miles.


It's about 30 degrees F as I write this, a day and four hours after yesterday's ride home.  And the winds were powerful enough to topple utility poles in Westchester County and New Jersey.


Tomorrow's supposed to be much like today.  So are the couple of days after that.