For All Seasons

Today I had the day off from work.  (Happy Birthday, Abe!)  However, I am still not quite ready to ride.  So, I spent the day reading, doing some course-related work, I installed the new handlebars, brake levers and shifter on Vera.  I'm not finished, though:  I still have to install new cables.  I'll probably do that after work tomorrow.


And I did a little web-surfing.  The last couple of days have seemed, well, wintry:  The temperatures have been below freezing and the wind has gusted to 30 MPH.  After the spring-like weather, we've been having, it seems frigid.  However, it can't compare to what I saw on Alaska All Season Cycling:

Not The Bee's Knees

Since I'm not Eric Rohmer, I'm not going to make this post about Le Genou de Justine. And it may not be the bee's knees, either.  Where did that expression come from, anyway?


Anyway...My knee doesn't look particularly bad:  a couple of cuts and some swelling.  As my doctor said, it feels worse than it actually is.  Still, I don't think you want to look at it.  So, instead, I'll show you what happened to Vera:

Thankfully, the real damage isn't to Vera herself--well, not to the frame, which is to the heart and soul of the bike.  The front wheel is only slightly out of true; the rear is unscathed.  All else seems fine, except for the handlebar.  The right side is bent downward, and there are stretch marks at the point where the main body of the bar meets the center sleeve. It had actually been bent more; I bent it back as much as I could so I could ride the bike home.  But, of course, I'm not going to take any chances with it.  I once broke a handlebar and I was fortunate not to have broken anything else!


I'd been riding the bar--a Nitto Jitensha--for not much more than a month.  It had the nice, solid feel of the Nitto drop bars and stems I ride on Arielle and Tosca.  And they gave me a good position--upright, with a somewhat leaning-forward attitude--for commuting and city riding. They were a bit wider than other city/upright bars I've ridden, which gave me a bit more steering power, but were a bit more difficult to maneuver in tight spots.  That brings me to the one and only complaint I had about the Jitensha:  Given its width, I expected the grip area to be longer. Plus, the hand position it affords is something of a cross between that of a flat bar (which I find is hard on my wrists) and that of the flats or "hooks" of a dropped or "moustache" bar.  I like the drop/moustache position better.  But that, and my liking of a longer grip area, are my personal preferences; if they're not yours, the Jitensha is a nice bar for commuting and other kinds of urban riding.  


I've decided that I'm going to replace it with a bar on which I've ridden more, and like:  the Velo Orange Porteur.  It's the same bar I've been riding on Helene, and I rode it on another bike on which I commuted for a time.  However, I'm not going to use it with inverse levers, as I have on Helene, because they won't work with the brakes that are on Vera.  


Finally, when I install the Porteur bars, I'm going to try a shift lever I found on eBay.  More about that later.  Now all I have to do is heal my knee.   Will Eric Rohmer make a movie about that?

A Fallen Woman (On Her Bike)

Had a bit of a mishap yesterday.  On my way to work, a driver pulled out of a parking lot and into the street, about twenty feet in front of me.  I made a panic stop. Fortunately, the driver and I didn't collide.  However, I took a tumble.  


Except for a bent Jitensha handlebar, the bike incurred no damage.  However, my left knee hit the pavement.  So, it's swollen and bruised, and I feel pain when I bend it.  I feel it when I bend to sit down, but not once I sit down. However, it's painful to cross my legs.


I've been to the doctor.  He said, "It feels worse than it actually is."  That's good to know.  A few days of staying off it as much as possible should heal it, he says.  


So, if we get the snow, sleet, hail, slush and everything else the meteorolgists have forecast for this weekend, I won't mind, really.  I'll read, write, play with Max and do some cooking.  Maybe I'll make some soup: I haven't done that yet this "winter."


Oh well.  If I get some miles in before the season starts, at least I can be in something like reasonable shape.  Meantime, I'll keep on posting!

MAMILS

It's about a year old.  I'm linking it because it describes the very antithesis of what I want in this blog, or for my life.

The BBC News item talks about Mamils--Middle-Aged Males In Lycra.  According to the article, those men are trying to fight back the passage of time--and divert themselves from the mundanness of their lives--with expensive racing bikes and overpriced team bike wear.

What I am going to say next may seem to reflect my own biases as a cyclist.  I'd say it's better--for those men and for everyone else--that they're riding bikes, even if they're over the top, rather than squiring around girls half their age in sports cars.  For one thing, cycling is better for their health, even if they're not climbing Mont Ventoux.  For another, a man who has the discipline to train and who will ride long distances or intense sprints, let alone up mountains, can be something of a role model to his kids and others in his life. 

Plus, as expensive as the bikes and team kit are, they're still far less expensive than new red convertibles or services rendered, if you know what I mean.

The only real problem I have with men like that is that many of them leave their wives alone on weekends and at other times.  Then again, men (and not only those in midlife crises) do the same thing, and worse things, when they abscond with their female accessories in their racy new cars.  For that matter, golf, fishing and any number of activities in which men engage leave a lot of lonely wives in their wake.

Still, I'm glad I didn't become a MAMIL.  Why do you think I'm Justine, and not Nick, now? ;-)  Perhaps now I can call myself a MAWRIH--a Middle Aged Woman Riding In Heels.

Suicide Machines

I don't want you to infer anything about my current state of mind from this post.  Its topic just sort of happened when I stumbled over something on eBay.

I haven't seen one of these in person for some time.  Apparently, Simplex- made this front derailleur--commonly referred to as the "suicide" front derailleur-- almost to the beginning of the "bike boom"  of the early 1970's. When I first started riding distances, as a teenager in the mid-1970's, I actually saw a couple of them.  They were ridden by cyclists whose bikes were made before I was born and who most likely started cycling some time before my parents were born.


If you don't like downtube shifters, you'd hate this derailleur because you actually have to bend over enough for your head to touch the top tube of your frame (if it's a diamond-style) in order to turn the lever.  


Probably the one good thing about it was that it eliminated the stretch and flex of cables that are used on nearly all shift levers.  On the other hand, modern designs have made that flex less of an issue.


Other companies, including Campagnolo, made similar front derailleurs.  But it is most associated with the French manufacturer SImplex because they invented it and it was the most prevalent type of front derailleur during the 1940''s and 1950's, when Simplex ruled the derailleur world in much the same way Campagnolo, SunTour and Shimano would in future decades.


If you were riding this "suicide" front derailleur, there would have been a good chance that you were riding another "suicide" part--a stem.

Track racers--particularly in the days of the Six-Day Races-- used these stems, which were usually made of forged steel, because different events called for different riding positions.  I've known a few people to ride them, and nobody was hurt from them. That may be due to the fact that they were all highly experienced and trained riders who knew enough to keep the pinch-bolts tight, or had someone else do it for them.  


Sometimes shops and teams used "suicide stems" for fitting and positioning purposes.  Usually, after the shop's fitter or team's trainer figured out the right position for the rider, the stem would be replaced with a solid one in the proper size.


If you were riding a "suicide stem," you may also have been riding on Cinelli's M-71, a.k.a., "Suicide" pedals.

Introduced in 1971, they are the forerunners of modern clipless pedals.  However, they have one distinct disadvantage vis-a-vis Look, Time, Speedplay and SPD's.  Those pedals are like modern ski bindings:  When you step into them, they click and grab your cleat.  To disengage, you turn your heel outward and your foot away from the bike.  On the other hand, to get out of the Suicide Pedals, you have to bend over--in a very similar way to which you would have to bend for the "Suicide" front derailleur--and flick a lever on the pedal.  I simply can't imagine using these pedals in a peloton and, I believe, nobody ever did.


If you were riding "suicide" pedals, front derailleurs or stems, chances are you weren't riding this item:

During the bike boom, many people bought bikes with dropped bars because they were fashionable.  Most, who weren't cycling much beyond the local park (if they cycled at all) found they didn't like riding in a bent-over position.  So, brake-maker Dia Compe invented these levers to fit on Dia Compe's road levers, and similar ones like those from Weinmann.


Why were brake extension levers bad?  Well, they cut down on how far you could pull a brake lever, which cut down on the amont of leverage you had when braking.  Also, the hardware that connected the so-called "safety levers" to the regular levers tended to come loose quickly and often, which led to the risk of those levers coming off altogether when they were used in an emergency.


Do you know of any other bike parts nicknamed "suicide"?  We are going to use them to build the velocipedic equivalent of Bruce Springsteen's "Suicide machines"!