On My Bike, I Know The Season Is Changing

Tonight's post on Girls and Bicycles reminded me that cycling is, above all, a sensual experience.  After you've done some miles in the hills, any slice of pizza can seem like the manna from Heaven, and even the most ordinary cup of tea or bottle of beer (not that I've drunk the latter in a long time) can seem like the nectar of the goddesses.  


And, in the course of a ride--even a commute or a short "shake off the cobwebs" ride at this time of year--the senses attune to the subtlest nuances of light and the finest variations of clarity and mist in the air.


The photograph you see was taken from a park near the Nassau County line.  The ride there was flat yet invigorating. Perhaps that was the reason why I could sense, in every pore and orifice of my body, the play between the light that is opening from dimness to softness and the wind's inspiration turning the weariness of bare limbs stretched against gray skies into calmness that will turn to serenity as the clouds open for glimmerings of reassurance.


It's a wonderful feeling, even if it's momentary. But moments like that make rides and get you through the day, and night.  Really, what other reason is there to ride a bicycle? 

Rose, Thou Are Well

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

I took a slightly different route to work today.  Along the way, I found this:

Does this mean the rose's (with an unnecessary apostrophe) have gotten well? 

Nuke This

I'm selling a couple of things on eBay.  So, naturally, I did a little "shopping."  In addition to bike items, I like to look for books, music and vintage brooches and other accessories.  Ebay is actually quite a good source for the latter:  When someone cleans out an attic in Iowa or goes through Aunt Hattie's estate in North Carolina, all kinds of interesting things can turn up!


Anyway, it almost goes without saying that eBay is one of the first places you check if you're looking for discontinued bike parts.  And, sure enough, something I rode about fifteen years ago and hadn't thought about in about ten appeared:

The hub is a Nuke Proof, which was made during the 1990's. That was the time when it seemed that every mountain bike bum who was still living with his parents so he could have access to his father's lathe and drill press was making what an old riding partner used to call ELS--Expensive Lightweight Shit. 

For a short time, I had Nuke Proof hubs.  Two pairs, in fact.


The bodies were made of carbon-fiber weave, and the aluminum flanges were apparently bonded to them.  With what, I still haven't found out.


Whatever it was, it wasn't very strong or suitable for the purpose. On three of my four of my Nuke Proof hubs, the flanges separated from the shells and collapsed inward toward the center of the axle.  


From what I understand, this wasn't an unusual occurence.  In fact, I know a couple of cyclists to whom the same thing happened.  


Nuke Proof replaced my hubs.  Or so they said.  To this day, I think they simply Super-Glued them back together.  About a week after I got my wheels back, the rear one on my road bike collapsed again.  They didn't want to replace those hubs again.  But Mike Rodriguez, who owned Open Road Cycles in Brooklyn, was one of NP's better customers.  He got yet another set of new NP hubs.  And he let me take a pair each of Dura Ace and XT hubs, plus some other parts, in exchange for those hubs.  I don't know what he did with them.  


Apparently, Nuke Proof is still in business.  To be fair, they made other parts, and for a time they were also making frames, or at least having them made to their specs.  As far as I know, those products held up better than those hubs I, and a lot of other cyclists, suffered with.


I never heard of anyone getting hurt from mishaps from Nuke Proof hubs. That might be the reason NP is still in business:  If nobody got hurt, they probably didn't have any lawsuits.  Still, those hubs must have cost them a lot in warranty claims!


Those hubs are easily the worst bike hubs--and one of the worst bike parts--I ever had.  


Tell me about some of the ELS (with the emphasis on the "S") you've ridden, dear readers.

Fixin' to Sleep

Well, my plan is working.


I installed a fixed gear on Marianela so that my commutes and errand rides would give me more of a workout.  


Last night, I just barely kept myself awake to read the papers that had to be read and prepare my lesson for today. I think I fell asleep immediately after dotting the last "i" or the end of the last sentence.


Then again, I didn't get nearly enough sleep the night before.  

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.