Would you ride your bike in this?
The weather report called for a "wintry mix." I always thought that was a seasonal roll of Life Savers that could include, say, peppermint, spearmint, Wint-O-Green and Blue Crystal or whatever they call that flavor.
Our "wintry mix" turned into hail some time early this evening. I heard it rattling against the awning in front of the house.
Tomorrow's weather isn't supposed to be much better. And to think that less than a week ago the temperature had climbed into the 70's and the winter seemed like just a memory! Well, I guess we'll have more weather like that soon enough.
Once again, I cut through Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on my way home from work. It was the site of the 1964-65 World's Fair, for which its iconic Unisphere was built. Nearly three decades later, Men In Black was filmed there.
A German tourist I met in the park reminded me of that. In fact, he said, it was from watching Men In Black that he first learned about the borough of Queens. I was reminded of the time three young Germans approached me near the West Fourth Street subway station in Greenwich Village. They asked me how to get to the South Bronx. They wanted to go there because they had recently seen Fort Apache, The South Bronx. I tried, to no avail, to dissuade them from going.
But I didn't have to do anything like that for the youngish man from Munich I met today. He remarked on the wonderful light of this afternoon turning into this evening in that park as I took this photo:
All of the light has seemed different since my moonlight ride on the wee hours of Saturday morning and the "Super Full Moon" that rose that evening. Plus, it seems--even more than other full moons I've seen--to have brought some strange sights my way.
I encountered one of them in the bike rack at work:
I wondered whether that vestige of a downtube was there only to support the front derailleur. There seems to be no other rationale for it. Maybe it was conceived by someone who believes that we have heads so that we'll have someplace to put our helmets.
Or maybe it was designed by the same person whose bike was attached to a fire hydrant by the longest chain made of 3/4" thick case-hardened links I ever saw. I doubt anyone could have cut that chain, at least not with the sort of tools bike thieves carry with them. But it didn't take someone with a PhD in quantum mechanics to figure out that he could lift that bike and chain over the hydrant and into the back of his van. (I didn't see the theft. I just know that professional thieves, at least at that time, used vans. So, that bike's owner and I assumed that scenario played out.)
The sad thing is that faux seat tube isn't even the worst piece of bike design I've ever seen. Actually, I've seen a lot of things much worse than that. You tend to come across them when you work in a bike shop for a while.
Maybe the designers of that bike and the owner of the bike that got stolen from a fire hydrant could have blamed the moon--even if it wasn't the Super Full Moon.
And that friendly German tourist and I can blame it for the photos we took in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
A dreary, rainy, chilly day. Amazing, how spoiled one can get after a couple of nice days. But it's officially spring. And we had a "Super Full Moon" the other night. No wonder my late night-early morning ride didn't seem so dark!
Tomorrow it's supposed to clear up. I'll ride to work and, hopefully, for a bit after that.
I'm going to build a new rear wheel for the rear of Marianela. A couple of spokes have broken on the one I have. I think it had to do with the build quality of the wheel. So I'm going to build with another flip-flop hub (Formula sealed bearing under the IRO brand.) and a Sun CR-18 rim. Normally, I prefer Mavic rims, and that's what Arielle, Tosca and Helene have. But Mavic doesn't seem to be making anything in the 27 inch diameter these days, and I don't want to take chances with used rims. The alternatives are Weinmann (which I used to like, but seem to get mixed reviews these days), Alex and a couple of "mystery" brands.
I know, 700 C is the standard diameter. That's what all of my Mavic rims are. But Marianela came with 27" wheels, and the rear brake is a long-reach centerpull with its pads about as far down as they'll go. I really don't want to get a longer brake, as all that seem available are BMX-type brakes, which wouldn't work well on the bike or with the levers I'm using. Plus, in spite of its length, the rear brake is powerful. That has to do with the long straddle cable which wraps around the lug that joins the stays to the top tube.
The wheel will probably cost more than the bike did. But I figure that it's still cheaper than buying a new hybrid or low-end road bike. I've done that before, and within a year I end up replacing all of the parts. Plus, for a heavier bike, I like the way Marianela rides.
Slept late but still got out for a late afternoon ride. Along the way, I saw someone riding a bike I haven't seen in a long time:
If it looks like the seat tube swallowed up the rear tire...it did, sort of. That's because the seat tube isn't a tube. Rather, it's a pair of parallel tubes, much like what one finds in place of the top tube on a mixte frame. On this bike, the rear tire actually runs between the twin parallel tubes.
I didn't see this exact bike. But I saw someone riding one like it. Like the one in the photo, it was a track bike, which is the sort of bike on which this frame design seems most appropriate.
The idea behind it was to make the chainstays and wheelbase shorter, which gives the bike more torsional stiffness while making it more responsive and its handling more sensitive. It seems that every generation or two, someone pushes the idea that stiffer is better. And the last time that idea came around, I bought into it. After all, I was still a guy back then. So what did you expect. Stiffer is better indeed.
Anyway...before I get myself in any deeper, I'll tell you more about the bike. I actually got to ride one when I was working in a shop about thirty years ago. It was indeed the stiffest and most responsive bike I'd ridden up to that time. But it was so sensitive that if you sneezed, you'd probably end up across the street.
The funny thing about Rigis was that the road models seemed to be even more extreme than the track models. Maybe that was because the shortness of the stays and steepness of the frame angles seemed even more unusual for a road than a track bike. Look at the photos on Bianchigirl's page to see what I mean.
Back then, we all thought the Rigi was some radical new design. Turns out, an English builder had the same idea, and for the same reasons, before World War II:
To learn more about this late 1930's Saxon bicycle, check out Hilary Stone's article on Classic Lightweights UK, a beautiful and fascinating website for the bike enthusiast.
I guess in another decade or so, someone'll revive the design. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.
I didn't post yesterday because I was a bad girl. I stayed up well past my bedtime and partied. At least I rode my bike to and from the bash.
Being the warmest day we've had since October, lots of people were riding for the first time this year. One of them, I suspect, rode this bike:
It was parked in the same rack, at my second job, where I've seen a Pinarello. I couldn't get a better photo of it because the bikes were parked so close together. But I think you can see that it's a nice bike: a Motobecane Grand Record, circa 1973.
The frame was made with Reynolds 531 double-butted tubing, those nice curly Nervex lugs and Campagnolo dropouts. The bike was originally equipped with a mixture of high-quality French components and Campagnolo Nuovo Record shifters.
This specimen still has the shifters. However, the crankset was replaced with what looks like a late-model Sugino AT triple. It's a fine piece of kit, and allows for a small sprocket of 24 teeth. I'm guessing that its owner wanted a triple, which wasn't possible with the original crankset.
This is the Specialites TA "Professional" crankset, which is what originally came on the Grand Record. A number of European bikes, including a couple of models from Raleigh, sported this fine piece of machining and polishing. Notice that the chainrings were attached to only three arms, as was common on cranksets (including Rene Herse's) until the 1970's. Nearly all modern chainrings attach to either five or four arms. The newer designs are supposed to be stiffer and more secure. That may well be true, but plenty of really strong riders rode--and even raced--on three-arm cranks.
Anyway, these days replacement chainrings for those three-arm cranks aren't available from many other sources besides eBay.
After work, I went to the party I mentioned. A colleague was celebrating a round-number birthday; the guests included some other colleagues as well as friends of hers I'd never met before. They were all astounded that I rode there. "But it only took me 45 minutes," I pointed out.
The colleague offered to let me stay at her place. I would've accepted, except that I remembered Charlie and Max. Did I leave enough food for them? And how full was their litter box?, I wondered.
So I assured my colleague that I had a good time. I think she knew that, as I was one of the last people to leave. But I fibbed about something else: I said I would ride my bike to the Long Island Rail Road station, which was only two blocks away, and take the train home.
You can guess what I did instead. I rode home, about twenty-one miles. It's not a great distance, certainly, and as I didn't drink any alcohol (I never do.), I could easily ride in a straight line. As it turned out, even if I couldn't, it wouldn't have been much of a problem because the roads I took were almost completely free of traffic at that hour.
Surprisingly, I didn't feel tired, even though I started to ride at about four in the morning. The weather had gotten chillier, but I didn't put on the tights I'd brought with me. So I rode with my legs bare below the hem of my skirt. I didn't feel cold; I felt invigorated. And the full moon was so bright that, had I stopped, I could have read Ulysses. But I didn't stop, not even for a traffic signal. Some of them were blinking their red lights, but--OK, I was a bad girl--I ran a couple of red lights. OK, maybe more than a couple. If a girl runs a red light and no one's there to see it....
And, I'll admit something else: I took some main roads on which I wouldn't normally ride. I'm not talking about the Long Island Expressway; I'm talking about main local thoroughfares like Jericho Turnpike, Hillside Avenue and Queens Boulevard (a.k.a. The Boulevard of Death).
As I was riding those nearly empty streets, I thought for a moment about a Pinky and the Brain episode. In it, Brain carries out his latest scheme for taking over the world: He gets Pinky to help him create an alternative planet Earth. He lures people to it by offering free T-shirts, which he correctly identified as an irresistible draw. So, emptied of its former inhabitants, Brain finally "takes over" this world.
The difference was that I didn't suffer the empty feeling Brain had in the end. Instead, by the time I got home, I was starting to feel tired. And I fell into a very nice sleep--after I fed Charlie and Max.
