Today I did something I've never done before, and may never do again: I actually read an article in Rutgers Magazine.
Why does that matter? Well, I am an alumna (I was once an alumnus...) of the school on the banks of the Raritan. I graduated a long, long time ago. And I've been back to the school maybe three or four times--the last time about twenty years ago. That, even though through most of my adult life, I've lived within a day's bike ride of the place.
The day I graduated, I wanted to get as far away from it as I could. About the only thing I liked about being there was that there was some good riding--and New York--nearby.
Today the latest edition of the alumni (Don't they realize they're being sexist when they use that term?) magazine arrived in the mail. As I normally do, I flipped through it during a potty break.
A pretty picture of a pretty shiny thing got my attention:
It's quite possibly the first photo of a bicycle ever to appear in the magazine since the days of the six-day races, if indeed Rutgers had an alumni magazine back then. I am sorry I couldn't reproduce the quality of the image in the magazine. But I think this shows how warm and eye-pleasing the color combination is.
One Jay Zand, Class of '82 (I'd never heard of him, or anyone else in the magazine, until today. Now you know why I don't read it.) purchased the bike from Eddy's Cycle City in Bayonne, New Jersey (the hometown of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons). Zand, who's an optometrist, paid 300 dollars for the bike, which was in pretty rough shape, with the intention of restoring it. He had never undertaken such a project before.
He sent the bike to California for repairs and refinishing, and even had tires custom-made for the maple rims. The bike, as it turned out, was made over 100 years ago by the Middlesex Motor Company of New Brunswick. Eddy's purchased it from the Metz Bicycle Museum in Freehold (Bruce Springsteen's hometown). Metz is dedicated to the heyday of cycling--around the time the bicycle in the photo was built--in New Jersey. Turns out, Jersey was a veritable hotbed of racing, and Newark even had a well-regarded velodrome.
All the bike needs now is a honey-ish brown saddle to go with the grips and rims, although I think it looks really nice as it is.
It's nice to see fellow alums doing good things. I might even start referring to Rutgers as "my alma mater." Now, if I start attending tailgate parties, then you should worry about me!
Today, on my way to meet Lakythia for a ride, my rear tire blew out. I cursed my own stupidity: I tried to milk a battered tire for whatever miles I could get from it, instead of replacing it as an older, wiser cyclist (which I'm supposed to be, hence the title of this blog) would.
Lakythia was a sweetheart about it: She met me at B's Bicycle Shop on Driggs Avenue. There, I bought one of the cheaper tires they had (a wire-bead Vittoria Randonneur). As I installed it, Lakythia test-rode a Fuji single-speed/fixed gear bike. (See what a bad influence I am on her?) Then, we were on our way.
Well, not quite. As we were about to set off for a ride along the New Jersey Palisades, someone who doesn't look like any other bike-shop customer you've ever seen rode in. Well, actually, she walked her bike in because she had a flat. Either way, getting to the shop was a respectable feat, in part because of what she had on her feet.
You know you've spent too much time in bike shops when you ask whether a pair of stiletto heels is SPD or Look compatible. Sheryl (a.k.a. "Bitch Cakes), as you can see, doesn't ride either kind of pedal. Her Hello Kitty-mobile has classic cruiser pedals, which makes sense when you look at the bike.
Although I usually ride in skirts, and sometimes in heels, to work, I am a slouch compared to her. Last week, she rode 120 miles in the dress and shoes, and on the bike, you see in the photo. The Transportation Alternatives-sponsored ride took "all day," she said, and included "all kinds" of people. I did a few of their rides back in the day and I don't doubt what she says.
I must say: Back then, my fantasies included looking something like her, or at least exuding style and being a memorable presence in a similar sort of way. To tell you the truth, I still wouldn't mind it, although I'm not sure I could pull of her look. And, frankly, I'm too much of a scaredy-cat to get all of those tatoos, even if they would go with her Hello Kitty purse--which, of course, went with her bike.
We only got to talk briefly because, after her flat was fixed, she had to go to a photo shoot. But I enjoyed talking with her, as I found her to be friendly and articulate.
So, of course, is Lakythia, which is one of the reasons I enjoy riding to her. Plus, anyone who can put up with my scatter-brainedness and complete lack of navigational ability is exactly the sort of person I want and need as a riding buddy, and friend!
Actually, she's checking her GPS just in case! Me, I prefer riding off into the sunset, even if it's seen through a gate!
I promise: Vera will not end up looking like this:
However, she may end up with a fixed gear or a "flip-flop" hub. Now that she's become my regular commuter, I'm really thinking about dispensing with the derailleur.
Some of you will tell me to consider an internally-geared hub (IGH). I am. However, I haven't had the best of luck with the ones I've had. Hal, the Bicycle Habitat mechanic who's built any wheel I ride and haven't built myself (and who set up Arielle, Tosca and Helene) says the only IGH he likes is the Rohloff, which costs more than my first ten or so bikes.
And, I'll admit that I like the elegant simplicity of fixed gears, and even single speed freewheels. But don't worry: If I go that route, or give in to an IGH, I won't do anything silly like cutting off the derailleur mounting "ear" on the rear dropout. In fact, I don't want to cut, drill bend or otherwise mutilate the frame for any modification.
Just before I got home, I stopped at Tony's Bicycle Shop in Astoria. Even before I moved into the neighborhood, I used to go there whenever I happened to be riding that way because I liked the old proprietor and they had all sorts of then-unfashionable parts that would soon come to be known as "old school."
Anyway, I didn't have my camera with me, so you will be spared from one of the more hideous sights I've seen in Tony's shop. A Pinarello racing bike was clamped into one of the repair stands. It had one of those awful 1980's fade paint job. Strangely, it was tricolore, but in (from the rear) blue, white and red.
To tell you the truth, I've seen worse fade jobs, and, ironically, the addition of another color--yellow--in the saddle and the bands of the tire treads made it almost tolerable. However, one of the mechanics was in the process of turning the bike into a real aesthetic monstrosity: He was wrapping the handlebars with Cinelli "Italian flag" cork tape. I know, the bike is Italian, and some guys just want to flaunt the Italian-ness of their bikes. But, please, have some respect for a country that produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Botticelli and Titian!
However, I noticed something even more disturbing while at Tony's. It had nothing to do with anything any of the shop employees did. Rather, it echoed and confirmed an impression I've had lately: Bicycle theft is on the rise.
Another customer came in looking for something she could use to keep her wheels and seat from being stolen. Several of her friends had already lost those items on their bikes, one of them in the hallway of the building in which she lives. She also mentioned that a friend of hers caught a thief in the act; when the friend confronted the thief, he cursed the guy out and went about his business.
I found the above image on "A Short Introduction to Cycling," a British cycling blog. As the author points out, it's unusual to get such a good shot of the perps in action. Most of the time, as he points out, we have only grainy images from security cameras. And, the thieves in those images are usually of hooded young men, and the graininess of the images renders them even more non-descript.
Lots of people would say something like, "Those guys don't look like bike thieves." What I find even more remarkable, though,is that they did it in an open public area of London, not on some shady venue. Seeing that photo reminded me that bike theft, and crime generally, is becoming more brazen as well as more frequent than they have been in a long time.
The image also brought to mind something from around 1990--around the time bike theft and all sorts of other crime were at their peak here in New York. I had gone to the Paris Theatre, which is right across West 58th Street from the Plaza Hotel, to see a film--I forget which, exactly.
I think I was upset about something or another that day. That was when I was living in my previous identity: I was, of course, Nick. I was two decades younger and riding my bike much more than I do now, and I was lifting weights every day. Plus, even if I weren't upset about something specific that day, I carried the sort of anger--Some people who knew me said they could see it in my shoulders--that caused complete strangers to cross the street when they saw me approaching.
Anyway, I left the theatre and turned left on 58th Street. In front of one of the buildings was a bicycle rack. A guy who was built about the same way I was lifted a Motobecane and began twisting it, expecting to break the lock. I approached him from behind and tapped my finger on his shoulder. He turned, took one look at me and bolted.
He wasn't trying to steal my bike. But the fact that he was trying to take anybody's bike--possibly someone's transportation or simply someone's pride and joy--did nothing to quell whatever rage I was feeling.
I would love to have a photo of that, though I hope not to see anything like it again. And I still hope that we won't have anything like the tide of theft we had in those days. However, things haven't been looking good: The squeegee men are back.
In today's post on Lovely Bicycle!, "Velouria" presents the Trek Cocoa, which seems to be Trek's "take" on what is commonly called the Dutch-style bicycle.
Way back in 2000, Tammy and I took a trip to France. We talked about buying two bikes like those and bringing them back. Buying the bikes wouldn't have been so expensive, at least relatively speaking as, in those pre-Euro days, the dollar enjoyed a favorable exchange rate almost everywhere on the Continent. However, we figured out that we would have had to buy another plane ticket to get them back.
They might have worked for us as commuters or "town" bikes, and they certainly would have been conversation pieces, as almost no American who hadn't spent some time in Europe knew what a "Dutch-style bike" is.
But I digress. I agree with Velouria that the Cocoa is a lovely bike. So was the Belleville, Trek's take on the traditional mixte bike. I was tempted to buy one of the latter, which seems to have been discontinued, before I decided to save my money for Helene. However, two mechanics at a shop that sells Treks talked me out of buying a Belleville. Of course, one shouldn't infer that the Cocoa isn't a good bike: Perhaps Trek learned from something from making the Belleville.
I will admit that both are very nice bikes to look at. It seems, though, that Trek applies Newton's First Law of Motion to the aesthetics of its bikes: For every pretty bike they make, they make a really ugly one. (One might also say that it's a Hegelian dialectic.) To wit:
In case you're a glutton for visual punishment, here's a detail:
It used to be that bike makers' racing bikes were their prettiest. That was especially true of the Italian bike makers but was also the case for nearly all makers, big or small, in the days when nearly all quality frames were lugged steel.
Then again, at the same time Trek introduced the Belleville, they also came out with this monstrosity:
The graphics and color scheme reminded me of a Huffy, circa 1978. Why anyone would emulate a Huffy in any way is beyond me.
