Interesting Vintage Light

I confess:  I bought it because I had one like it in my youth. And the price was right.


It's a German-made Union "bloc" generator, on which the headlight is attached.  Generators of this type are made to mount on the front fork.  This one was most likely made during the mid-1970's.  I tested it, and found its light output to be surprisingly good, given the light's small size and old-style bulb.


The best-known generator of this style was made by Soubitez of France.  It--especially in its later iterations--was very stylish, as Soubitez products tended to be, and lighter in weight than other generators.  


However, the light on this one is larger than the one on its Soubitez counterpart. It is also, as you can see, mounted on the side of the generator, while Soubitez's light was mounted on the front of the generator body. (Sanyo and other companies emulated Soubitez in this detail.)  


Some would  argue that the Union was a somewhat more efficient generator.  Having owned both, as well as other generator sets made by both companies, I would say they were about equal in that regard. 


French constructeurs commonly installed Soubitez generators (on brazed-on brackets) and lights on their touring bikes and randonneuses, while many Dutch and German city bikes were equipped with Union products.


I was going to use the Union bloc generator in the photo on Marianela.  However, the strut from the basket got in the way.  

That's too bad, because I think it would have looked right on the bike. And it's a good generator.  The light is good, too, especially considering that it's an older technology.  Perhaps there's a halogen or LED bulb that would fit. 


Some would say that would violate the "spirit" of having a light like this.  But I'm all for new technology (when it works better than the old) with old style.  And, for me, that would have been the point of using it.

Exceeding Their Grasp

Although the day was almost as mild as yesterday was, I didn't ride.  In fact, I barely got out of my apartment at all.  I wasn't the only one who stayed indoors:  The driving rain that began some time early this morning seemed not to let up.


As much as many of us would like to think Spring has sprung, some things tell us otherwise:

Stretching toward the light of a sun that is beyond them, their wizened fingers must weather the wind and rain, for now.  They remind me of what Robert Browning wrote in Andrea del Sarto:  "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp/Or what's heaven for?  All is silver-grey/Placid and perfect with my art:  the worse!

Biking Bauhaus

A warm, or at least mild, early March day.  And I spent a good part of it doing errands.  At least it was on my bike.


Is a day like this one a foreshadowing of the season that will soon come?  Or is it a respite from the long, wearying season we've been experiencing?  Or is it just a teaser?


What if days like this were labeled?  What if bikes were so labeled?  Some announce themselves as racing bikes, city bikes or "comfort tourers" (whatever they are) in the decals on their frames or other parts.  Nearly all bikes--even the ones that aren't so marked--are marketed under one designation or another.  


What if there were truth in advertising?  One bike might be labeled, "sound design, solid construction."  Another would have to say, "Ignores 140 years of accumulated wisdom."  Yet another would have to say, "Designed by art-school dropout on crystal meth."  


Or they could tell you what they offer.  "Arcane design and proprietary parts."  How would you like a bike that so announced itself?  "Plastic with a pretentious name."  Then there are those bikes that could tell us they offer a "comfortable ride," "speed" or, perhaps, "flawless shifting and braking."  They could take their inspiration from this:

That building is in my neighborhood, more or less.  I've always wondered whether "Cornice and Skylights" was an advertisement?  An announcement?  The name of the firm that built or manages it?


Whatever its story, it has nothing on this building on the eastern end of Long Island:

You guessed it: Ducks and duck eggs were sold inside this building by a duck farmer.  (Now there's a career!)  Now it's a museum or visitors' center or some such thing.  I'm not surprised, as the days when one could make, or order in a restaurant, a dinner consisting of duck, potatoes and vegetables from Long Island are long past. (Such a dinner could be had during my childhood.  The ingredients could even be bought at our neighborhood's Waldbaum supermarket.)


Hmm...Can you imagine a bike shop or factory shaped like the product made or sold inside?  Is that Bauhausian?  Or some other -ian?  Or Ian?

A Long And Restful Sleep

I didn't post last night because I got home dead-tired and fell asleep not long after walking through the door.


Thursday is my longest day of the week, work-wise.  And I did it on about half as much sleep as I'd planned.  Plus, it seemed, everyone--and I'm not talking only about my students--had some pressing issue, question or need.   Sometimes there are just days like that.


Riding from home to my main job, to my second job and home again, I felt surprisingly fluid.  Yes, I felt as if my legs were just flowing through each pedal stroke.  And I felt even more surprisingly strong, considering how little riding I've done since Christmas.  So what made me feel so tired when I got home?


Perhaps it had to do, at least in part, that I rode a bit more than I'd planned.  On my way home, I decided to ride a bike/pedestrian path along the southern edge of Kissena Park.  Close as it is to my commute, and other rides I do, I hadn't ridden there in a very long time.    So my memory of it was faulty, to say the least.  As I result, I made a wrong turn coming out of it.  Then I made another wrong turn. And another. 


My errance (Is that the noun form of "errant?") took me, among other places, around the perimeter of a cemetery.  And it was dark.  That, of course, is not an aid to someone who is a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus and inherited his navigational skills.  Well, OK, I may not be the great-great-great-great-whatever of CC.  But you get the idea.


One thing I wasn't going to do was to sleep in that cemetery.    For starters, it was very cold and windy.  More to the point, nobody ever plans to do such a thing.  At least, I didn't the one time I did it.


It happened back in the days before my first ATM card.  I didn't have any credit cards then, either.  I didn't buy traveler's checks, as I had done for my first European tour a couple of years earlier.  So all I had was cash.  And I was almost out of it the night I rested under the stars in a graveyard.


I knew that I was in New York State, somewhere near the point where its borders with Massachusetts and Connecticut meet.  I knew that because I crossed, during the course of that day's ride, from Massachusetts into Connecticut before seeing a sign that read "Welcome to the Empire State," or something like that.  


It was, as I recall, the fourth day of a ride I took from Montreal to New Jersey.  I'd carried a sleeping bag with me, which I didn't use until that night.  The day was hot, though not humid, which is unusual in most of the Eastern United States. I was tired: As young as I was, riding more than 80 miles with a load (small as it was) through a hilly area was a lot for one day.  


Most people's navigational skills decrease as they grow weary.  When your skills are like mine, they shrink into non-existence at times like that night.  If someone had told me there was a hostel or some other place fifteen feet in a straight line in front of me, I probably wouldn't have found it. 


Tired, broke (almost, anyway) and lost.  What did I do?  I rolled out my sleeping bag.  At least the night was clear and full of stars, with absolutely no threat of rain.  And it was quiet.  Very quiet.  But I was too tired to be disconcerted by anything, so I fell asleep almost as soon as I got into my bag.


I had a very long and restful sleep, as I had last night.

Nailing Down The Perception

Sometimes I wonder whether my life would have been free of irony had I not undergone the changes I've experienced.  But then I realize that if you've lived any kind of a life at all, a certain amount of irony comes simply with aging.

However, today I felt that I experienced a particular aspect of karma, or whatever you want to call it, that would not have been possible in any life but mine.  Or so it seemed.

To wit:  Today, before riding into work, I rode (admittedly, only two and a half blocks) to Hannah and Her Sisters. That's where I get my nails done.  


If you can't stand to look at the hands of a middle aged woman, then skip over the following photo.  In fact, you might want to skip over the rest of this post.

So I got to ride to work in freshly-painted nails. And Hannah herself recorded the occasion:

The irony in this is that I stopped reading Bicycling! magazine thirty years ago because a model on the cover of one issue had much longer and more heavily lacquered nails and a ring with a much larger stone than I had ever seen on any cyclist.  I decided that nobody could possibly ride with such nails or a ring.  And I couched my indignation--over the fact that the model on that cover wasn't me--in some pseudo-feminist rant about how the magazine was reinforcing gender stereotypes.


The fact is that I was ready to stop reading Bicycling! because most of its content was, by that time, "old hat" for me.  Plus, I saw that it was turning into more of a lifestyle magazine than a publication about cycling.  Most likely, it had already reached that point and I had just noticed.


I looked for the cover of that issue of Bicycling!, to no avail.  Now I wonder whether anyone was as appalled as I pretended to be over a woman cycling with long painted nails.

Getting It All Back

Today I saw something I haven't seen since before Christmas:

Yes, this is the same bike rack that just two weeks ago looked like this:

I didn't see the Pinarello or my colleague's bike (or said colleague, for that matter).  However, I saw something that I wouldn't have noticed had I not parked next to it:

It's a 1970's Campagnolo Nuovo Record crankset, set up with a single chainring.  It was arguably the nicest crankset in its day.  What struck me, though, is that it was on a bike with this: 

Yes, it's a basket attached with two improvised clamps and a toe strap.  The basket looked like one of the nice  ones that might be used on a Porteur-type rack.  


Underneath that stem is a Chris King headset.

But the bike on which I saw that basket, King headset and the Campy crankset was utterly nondescript:  A hipster-fixie frame with welded joints and black paint flaked and pockmarked like an old smokestack.  


There are all sorts of possible stories as to how great parts end up on not-so-great bikes.  Whoever put it together might've simply using what was at hand. Or, the rider might be one of those mashers who actually bends and breaks cranksets.   Or he or she may have just liked the look of those parts.  I guess they stand out all the more on such an unremarkable bike.


Anyway, the wind was starting to bring in the night's chill and the evening colors as I left the campus:

And I cut through Kissena Park for this:

I'm starting to get it all back now.

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?