At this early stage of 2012, it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that most of the miles I've pedalled this year have been on my commutes. That got me to thinking of some bikes I've ridden to and from jobs past.
Here's a bike I haven't thought about in a while: a Miyata three-speed. I'm guessing it was the 1981 model shown in the catalogue page above because it matches, in every detail, the bike I rode for about two years.
It actually was a classy-looking bike: Were I wearing suits to work, I would have had no difficulty riding it--or the ladies' (non-mixte) model were I wearing skirts and heels. However, I was working jobs that had no dress codes, and even by those standards, I didn't dress particularly well.
Still, I recall enjoying the ride of the bike very much. I think it had a somewhat tighter geometry than other three-speeds like the ones made by Raleigh, Peugeot and Schwinn. Equally important, the frame was made out of lugged chromoly tubing, which was considerably lighter than the frames on those other bikes. Plus, most of the components--including the rims, cranks, handlebars, stem, fenders and chainguard--were made from aluminum alloy rather than steel.
Back then, 3-speeds (or any other commuter-specific bikes) weren't "hip:" thus, I was able to buy mine when it was about two years old for about 50 dollars. (If I recall correctly, it sold for about 300 dollars new.) Occasionally, someone would compliment it on its looks; more often, though, I found myself defending it when someone wondered aloud why I didn't get a racing bike (which I had, in fact, in addition to the Miyata three-speed). And I enjoyed knowing that I was riding something not many other people--at least in America--were riding.
However, the bike shared one shortcoming with many other Japanese bikes of the time: its wheels. Japanese rims and spokes of that time were heavier but not as strong as their European counterparts, and the Japanese "stainless" spokes often corroded, even on bikes that weren't ridden in the rain and were stored indoors. Within a few months, I had to re-spoke the rear wheel with a new rim. In fact, it was one of the first wheels I laced myself.
In lacing a new Weinmann concave rim to the hub, I discovered that the largest-gauge DT spokes available were too small for the spoke holes in the Shimano three-speed hub. Fortunately, I hadn't tensioned the wheel, so it was relatively easy to unlace them and re-fit the hub and spokes with washers between the spoke heads and hub.
Then I discovered that the Shimano three-speed hub simply wasn't as strong or reliable as the Sturmey-Archers on the old English three-speeds. I don't know how many models Shimano made then, but the one I had seemed to be the only one exported to the US. This was in the days when Shimano was notorious for not making spare parts available. So, unless you knew someone with a pipeline to the factory in Japan, you were SOL if something wore or broke down in the hub. And it happened to mine within a year after re-lacing the wheel.
I should also note that those were the days when Sturmey-Archer's quality declined precipitously, and I'm not sure whether SunTour was still making three-speed hubs. Sachs, common on bikes in Germany and Benelux countries, was all but unavailable in the US. So, if I wanted to keep the bike a three-speed, my best option would have been to find a Sturmey-Archer from the 1960's or earlier. I never took on that project, for someone made an unsolicited offer of 400 dollars for the bike. Being the Starving Artist I was then, I took him up on it.
But having that quick but classy commuter probably had more of an effect on me than I ever realized it would: It's probably the reason I ride Vera to and from work now. She's even quicker and classier than that Miyata could have been.
Do you ride to go places? Or, do you go places to ride?
Those questions came to mind when, on my way to work, I saw the gull in the photo circling across an inlet from the World's Fair Marina. That bird had about as un-picturesque a view as any could have: Between the Home Depot and the orange-and-white "silo" are auto-body shops, a cement factory, scrap-metal yards and some warehouses, punctuated by garbage dumps. Yet that bird was flying because it needed to and because he/she probably found plenty to eat.
Of course, when we are riding to work, we have a very speicific destination in mind. And some of our other rides are like that. But much of the time, when I'm on my bike, I don't care that much about where I'm riding: I am happy simply to be in the saddle. Interestingly, today I felt that way for at least part of my commute.
I think Vera was rather enjoying it, too.
People have told me that, given my history and proclivities, I really don't spend much time in Chelsea. Actually, coming from some people I know, that statement is an accusation rather than an observation!
The funny thing is, I used to spend more time there when it was still largely a working-class Irish neighborhood and, later, when art galleries that couldn't afford to stay in Soho moved to the western fringe of the neighborhood. Those times were well before my transition.
Anyway, Chelsea is like a lot of places in that it's very different if you know people there and go into their homes. Otherwise, it's mostly a shopping area with lots of restaurants and the Piers. But, inside the apartment blocks, tenements and restored brownstones, there are all kinds of stories. A few of them can be told by the bikes parked outside:
For those of you more interested in the bikes than in my scintillating social commentary or historical perspective (You know who you are! ;-) ), the bikes are of course both Dutch-style city commuters/commuters. The one on the fence is a Raleigh, believe it or not. The bike leaning against it was made in Belgium by Mechelen (?).
In black, they make for a rather distinguished if bourgeois couple who have their charm. Isn't that what every couple wants to be, at the end of the day?
Today felt more like the seventh of May than the seventh of January, at least in terms of weather. So, there were plenty of people on their bikes, and some were wearing clothing that wasn't designed to shed rain or snow, or to fend off cold.
One of those riders, whom I met in Chelsea, strikes me as someone who would look absolutely fabulous on her bike in any season:
This sweet and engaging young woman is Andrea Diodati. She's been featured on other bike blogs, she said. I assured her that this one is not like any of the others. After all, how many bike bloggers are like me?
More to the point, how many cyclists have her sense of style? If you want to feature it, she's at electriclovelight.gmail.com. Come on, admit it: You want to write her just to type out that address!
Today the temperature reached 50F and I didn't ride.
Why?
I just lost a riding partner...
I'm going to start making good on a sort-of-promise that I made (or was it a promise I sort-of-made) in the early days of this blog: I'm going to write posts about the bikes I've owned and, perhaps, a few that I've ridden and haven't owned.
My bikes probably won't appear chronologically, or according to any other kind of scheme. However, I do plan to make a list of posts of my bikes past, and make that list available on the sidebar of this blog.
I've been looking through my old photos for some images of my old rides. Now I just need to buy a scanner, or find one that I can use somewhere. I don't have photos of some of my bikes; for those, I'll use old catalogue illustrations or borrow photos from other websites.
If any of you have a time machine, I'll go back and take photos of my old bikes. So far, I figure that I've had about sixty bikes during my lifetime.
In case you're interested, here are some links to posts I've already written about pedals past:
Royce-Union Three-Speed
Nishiki International
Schwinn Continental
Romic Sport-Tourer
Bridgestone RB-2
I don't know how long it will be before I post all of my old bikes on this blog, but I intend to do so. I hope that you'll continue coming here, not just for those posts, but for all of the scintillating wit and wisdom I plan to write in between them.
For all of his foibles and questionable behavior, I always thought Michael Jackson was one of the greatest entertainers of his generation. True, he made all of his worthwhile music before he turned thirty. (In fact, I think that was one of the things that caused or exacerbated many of his problems: The only way he could "outdo" himself after those great albums and videos was through outrageous behavior.) But you had to admit: He could always put on a show.
Somehow, though, I doubt he did much cycling, ever. I don't think much he ever did was conducive to pedaling two wheels. And his fashion sense, as interesting as it could be, simply doesn't work when you're in the saddle.
One example of what I mean was his practice of wearing one white glove. For one thing, about the only white articles of clothing I ever wore on a bike were the socks I raced in: Back then, the USCF and the UCI didn't allow racers to wear anything else under their Detto Pietros. Wearing white while cycling simply never made any sense to me; for that matter, I rarely wear much of anything in white because, when I do, I ruin it. Also, when I haven't had much sun, I look sickly in white.
But back to Michael Jackson: Wearing one glove isn't very practical on a bike. Sometimes I ride gloveless, but not when the weather is anything like it's been the past couple of days.
Sometime during my workday yesterday, I managed to lose one of my gloves. By the time I was ready to leave, the temperature had dropped to 18F and a brisk wind blew out of the northwest. The college in which I work is about half a mile from a strip of stores, all of which were closed.
Another few blocks away, there's another strip. By the time I passed it, only a Rite-Aid Drugstore and a Mandee's were open. RA didn't have any gloves, though they had things like electric socks and blankets. That left Mandee's, which had only those too-cute fingerless gloves that has a "hood" you can slip over the fingers--but not the thumb. They weren't much, but I figured they were better than nothing.
So I bought a pair and, every few minutes, brought each hand to my lips and blew hot air (Some people tell me I'm full of it.) over each thumb. Still, by the time I got home, my hands were tingling and my thumbs were numb. I was only too happy that Charlie and Max wanted me to stroke them!
There are lots of good ways to commemorate MJ. Emulating his sartorial style when you get on a bike isn't one of them!
Vera is once again up and running. She got me to work today. I definitely count my blessings that I lost only a seat and post, not the whole bike.
I am making a couple of other modifications to her and, when they're done, I'll show her in her new glory.
Speaking of theft: Yes, I have had bicycles stolen. Four, in fact. Two were "beaters" and I actually got one of them back after the owner of one of the shops in which I worked spotted it when he was riding home. However, another bike that was stolen from me was a high-quality, nearly new, road bike: a 1994 Bridgestone RB-2.
I bought it as a "leftover" at a substantial discount the following year. Most Bridgestones--at least the higher-end models--sold out in most years; I considered myself lucky to get one that was more or less the right size for me. I didn't "need" another bike, as I had high-quality road and mountain bikes, but I got a deal that was simply too good to pass up.
It came in a blue-green (I thought it was more blue) metallic finish that I liked, although I would have liked the plum metallic, the other color choice offered that year, even better. However, for the price I paid, I wasn't about to be picky.
I put a pair of Michelin 700 X28C cyclo-cross tires and rack on it with the intention of making the bike my commuter and winter road ride. That plan worked for about three months, if I remember correctly. At the time, I was teaching at the New York City Technical College (now the New York City College of Technology). The good news was that it was less than five minutes, by bike, from the Park Slope apartment in which I was living. However, the bad news was that it was in what was still a high-crime area of downtown Brooklyn.
The college consisted of a couple of fairly grimy concrete and steel buildings that sucked up all of the soot from nearby factories and the cars and trucks entering the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Bicycles weren't allowed inside any of the buildings. But nearly every day, I bought coffee and something to eat from a truck that stood just outside the main entrance. The owner told me to park my bike at the parking meter nearest his truck, plainly within his sight. I did that for a couple of months.
Well, one day, he was sick and someone else--a nephew, I think--manned the truck. And, after teaching eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds where to put commas in their sentences, I walked over to the truck, only to find my bike gone.
The young man in the truck claimed to see nothing.
I'd been using the best lock Kryptonite made at the time. They paid the full retail cost of the bike, minus the deductible. After another paycheck or two, I could have bought another RB-2, even at the regular price. The only problem was that they weren't available any more. It was made in Japan and the dollar lost a lot of value against the yen, making the bike, and others built in Japan, much more expensive in the US than they had been. So Bridgestone and other Japanese bike makers (like Miyata and Panasonic) simply stopped exporting to the US. (Other Japanese makers, like Fuji, outsourced their manufacturing to Taiwan and China.)
Because I already had a high-end road bike, a nice track bike and a pretty good mountain bike, I simply used the latter bike for commutes and saved up for a nicer mountain bike, as I was becoming a fairly serious off-road rider. But I missed the RB-2: It was a sweet ride and the time I had it marked the first time in my life I had more than one good road bike.
Has anybody out there ridden a high-wheeler (or, as they were called in England, "penny-farthing")? Every once in a while, I think I'd like to ride one.
Of course, there's one logistical problem: finding such a bike. And then I'd have to get a pair of bloomers. I suppose I could ride in a short skirt, but somehow that wouldn't be in the spirit of riding a bike like the one in the photo.
There are cyclists who ride on New Year's Day and don't mount their bikes again until the Spring. I once rode with some of them. We began at six in the morning and were done by noon or thereabouts.
I guess I don't have to mention that I was unattached and didn't drink the previous night. However, I did stay up to watch the ball drop on Times Square. I don't know when I went to bed, but I know I didn't get more than a couple of hours of sleep. Still, somehow I managed to do a century (in miles, not a metric century), which included a few short but fairly steep climbs, to Bear Mountain and back.
The funny thing is that all of us who did that ride were in really good condition, and most of us were young and male, yet it didn't have quite the same competitive spirit one finds on rides like it. n fact, it had less egotism among the riders than almost any ride I did with male riders before my transition. I guess we gave each other "props" simply for being there, even though we knew that some of us wouldn't see each other again for at least another two months.
My ride today was nothing like that. For one thing, I woke up later and ate something like a real breakfast. And I made and received a few "Happy New Year" phone calls, which I avoided on the morning of my long-ago ride. And, well, I'm not in the kind of shape I was in back then. However, it was a clear, mild day, and there was--unsurprisingly--little traffic anywhere.
Plus, I stopped to check out a few things along the way.
This house is about a mile from my apartment. I saw two a man, a couple and a woman walk by with their kids. None wanted to leave. I didn't, either: How often does one see a miniature village, Santa's workshop and a toy store all in one. I can't hope to portray the attention the owners of this house paid to detail, but I will show you some of the more enchanting parts of their display:
This is the part right above where I propped Tosca. She couldn't take her eyes off this place, for reasons visible in the next photo:
While there was no haze in this part of the display, another part had its own misty marvel:
Now, if your idea of a great view doesn't run to castles, you might like what I saw when I left and crossed the RFK Bridge:
The blue domes adorn a Greek Orthodox temple. Seeing them in that landscape of residential houses reminds me, somewhat, of a particular view from the hill of le Sacre Coeur de Montmartre in Paris. Looking down from that hill, you see block after block of fin de siecle and Beaux Arts townhouses and apartment houses, nearly all of which stand three to six stories high. That vista is interrupted by the glass and steel planes and chutes of le Centre Pompidou.
After crossing the bridge, I came face-to-face with a very inquisitive mind:
I heard him meow as I rode by. His eyes pleaded with me to stop. As soon as I got off my bike, he darted to my ankles and rubbed himself around my legs. I hope that he belongs to someone in one of the nearby houses; he simply does not belong on the street. I actually picked him up and he curled around my shoulder for a moment before deciding he wanted to follow the laws of gravity.
Isn't it interesting that dogs sometimes chase cyclists, but cats can be fascinated with bicycles? In a perfect world, they could accompany us on our rides--whether to begin the new year, or to continue a journey.
