Bending It, Though Not Like Beckham

Tomorrow I'm going to see the physical therapist about my knee.  It actually feels better now:  At least I can bend it, if not "like Beckham."


I must say, though, that it was weird to see a cycling colleague park her bike as I got off the bus.  And, of course, she asked why I wasn't on my bike, though not in a condescending or sarcastic way.  "I was really worried to see that you didn't ride in," she said.


Tonight her husband came by to accompany her home.  We have ridden together a few times, and I was sad to miss out on that tonight.  Then again, it is Valentine's Day, so maybe they wanted and needed the time to be together,without distractions.  I must say, though, with her in his life, I don't know how much of a distraction I can be!


Anyway...I'll try not to whine too much more before I'm on my bike again!

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"!

Sunset Pinup

Today is Charles Dickens' 200th birthday.  Although I can't connect it to anything I've posted here, I thought it is worth mentioning. 

And exactly one year ago yesterday, I wrote what has been, by far, my most widely-read post to date:  "Which Bike Was Pinned Up?".  All those people read it because of my wit, erudition and knowledge of bicycling. Right?

On the other hand, yesterday's post, "When All Ways Lead To The Sunset" may not ever be as widely-read.  But writing it, and putting up those photos I took, felt good.

Now I am going to do the seemingly-impossible, thanks to a serendipitous discovery on the Internet.  I mean, how can you not love this?:

When All Ways Lead To The Sunset

Today I did something I don't normally do:  I rode Tosca to work.  I had no particular reason; I didn't have much to carry today, so I thought it might be fun.


And I took a slightly different route home from the one I'd been taking.  I had just passed through Flushing Meadow-Corona Park when I saw how I was going to ride the rest of the way (well, most of it, anyway) home:

It was enough to make me ride alongside the railroad tracks.  The tracks are lined with, well, what one expects to see along railroad tracks: some warehouses and dirty, sad-looking dwellings facing the concrete barriers by the tracks.  But even they, and the wires over the tracks, felt serene, bathed in the simmering orange light:

As you know, my bikes are very well-trained, so Tosca knew exactly what to do.

And, yes, by the time I got home, everything was just starting to turn to dusk.  And Max, my dusty orange cat, greeted me.

Real Football

Today is Super Bowl Sunday.  So, being the sort of person I am, I am going to do something fairly subversive:  I'm going to post about the "other" football, a.k.a. soccer.


How does that relate to cycling?, you ask.  Well, I didn't think it did, except that they are both sports that make extensive use of a person's legs.  However, I found a connection between cycling and football, believe it or not:

Bicycle Football World Cup, 2010

Believe it or not, this is a UCI-sanctioned sport.  That, of course, proves the NFL has nothing on the UCI!

Banana At The End Of Christopher Street

If you are of my or Steve's or Gunnar's generation, you probably remember when bananas were "energy bars."  That's what we ate during rides before there were Power Bars, Clif Bars and such.


If you're of our time, you might also remember the movie "Bananas."  That came out a couple of years before a Presidential adviser tried to tell people that a dip in economy was a "banana."


But if you're a cyclist of our generation, apart from the association with the original cycling snack, you probably connect the word "banana" with "seat."  


From about the mid-1960's to the mid-1970's, banana seats were found on a variety of kids' bikes on which kids did "wheelies". I'm thinking of the Schwinn Sting-Ray and Apple, Orange and Lemon Krates as well as the Raleigh Chopper and other bikes.  


Those bikes, and seats, had all but disappeared by the early 1980's.  There are several explanations as to why.  There were rumors circulating (Remember, this was before the Internet!) that there were lawsuits involving people who got hurt when seat struts broke.  That seems plausible enough, given that, as often as not, those seats were carrying two kids at a time, and those seats weren't designed for that.

But the more widely-believed reason for the disappearance of banana seats were the rise in popularity of BMX and, later, mountain biking.  Smaller seats and lighter frames are better suited to those kinds of cycling, for a variety of reasons.


Also, the kids who rode those bikes simply got older.  Some of them moved on to road or mountain biking, but most put bicycling aside altogether once they got their drivers' licences.


I understand that banana seats are enjoying something of a resurgence in popularity.  Today I saw one where I wasn't quite expecting it:

Susan says she "loves" the banana seat on the rear of her otherwise utilitarian Giant hybrid bike.  I can only imagine what it's like to pedal from back there.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure I'd want to.  I also don't think I'd want to pull a "wheelie" on that bike!


Anyway...I've seen bananas at the end of Christopher Street--just not banana seats!

Is It English Or American?

Today, if someone has heard of AMF, he or she is most likely a bowler.  AMF remains one of the main manufacturers of pin-setting machines and other equipment used in kegling.

However, not so long ago (I say things like that to make myself feel young!), AMF was actually one of the world's largest bicycle manufacturers.  Around the same time, they also manufactured Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  But AMF bicycles never inspired the sort of loyalty that HD motorcycles have long enjoyed, and with good reason.   Most AMF bikes--which were sold under the "Roadmaster" name--were sold in department stores and were inferior even to other department-store brands like Murray and Columbia.

Roadmaster was a free-standing bike brand before AMF took them over in 1950.  A few years later, AMF would sell another line of bikes made for them in England--in Nottingham, no less.  You may well have seen one of those bikes, sold under the name "AMF-Hercules".  I saw a pretty fair number of them when I was growing up.

Those bikes bore all of the hallmarks of an English three-speed:  the same kind of lugged frame made from mild steel, the steel sidepull brakes, handlebars, stem and cottered cranks--and, most important, the same Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub.

In fact, if you stripped away the AMF-Hercules decals and badge, you'd probably think you were looking at a Raleigh, Rudge, Robin Hood or one of any number of other English three-speeds from that time.

However, the AMF-Hercules bikes differed in a few details from their Anglo peers.  It seems that AMF marketers thought that the bikes would sell only if they were given some of the same baroque flourishes found on American balloon-tired bikes (like the Schwinn Phantom and Hollywood) of the time, which in turned echoed the fulsomely-fendered and lushly-chromed cars of the time.

I mean, look at that chainguard.  Would any bike maker in Albion come up with something like that?  Or look at the two-toned seat and matching bag.  I don't recall seeing anything like those in the Brooks catalogues!

So...Was it an English bike trying to be American? Or was it an American bike in the body and soul of an English bike?

Future Shock Today

Someone--I forget who--once told me, "Anything you do in a car, you can do on a bicycle." 

My grandmother once told me, "Be careful of what you wish for; be careful of what you believe in."

Never did it occur to me that those two statements could actually converge.  Now I realize that it was bound to happen, given that I wished to believe the statement that opened this post.  If I do say so myself, that statement been true in my life:  I've never owned a car and have no wish to own one.

But I never realized just how true it could be until I came across this:

Who would have thought it possible to take the same obnoxiously loud stereo systems some young men have in their cars and transplant them onto bicycles?  The Future Shock Bike Crew, that's who.

The Crew consists of unofficial founder Nicholas Ragbir and his sister Jessica, and of Bhimraj brothers Anil and Travis.  They emigrated with their families from Trinidad and Tobago to the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens--about seven miles. or a quick run on Tosca, from my apartment.

I've actually seen them on the streets.  Unfortunately, I was on my way to or from work, or was weaving through traffic, so I have never had the chance to talk with or photograph them.  However, I recently found a page devoted to them on the Worldwide Cycling Atlas.

I wonder how long those young people keep on "pimpin' out" their bikes with stereo equipment and "peddling" their music through the neighborhood.  Their exploits involve DJ'ing and engineering as well as cycling.  Who knows:   They might develop whole new genres of cycling, entertainment or technology.  Whatever they do in the future, I hope it's as much fun for them as what they're doing now!

Sheldon, Aaron and Bob

Today was an unusually warm day for this time of year.  Because of a scheduling oddity, I didn't have classes today.  So, I took Tosca out for a ride through some of the landmarked areas of Woodside and Jackson Heights, as well as the promenade along that starts near LaGuardia Airport and goes to the World's Fair Marina.


Then I had an appointment in Manhattan, to which I rode Vera.  I changed bikes because I changed clothes:  from sweats and trainer shoes to a skirt, blouse and dressier shoes.


After my appointment, I took a quick swing down to Bicycle Habitat, from which I ordered Tosca, Arielle and Helene as well as some of the components I hung on them and other equipment I use with them.  Hal wasn't in, but I did see two employees I hadn't seen in a while:  Aaron and Sheldon.

Sheldon is an old riding buddy whom I didn't see for about a decade or so until I bumped into him in the shop not long before my surgery.  I don't think I'd seen him since some time in the fall:  I think I showed up on his off-days or -hours.


Aaron, like Sheldon, has been working in the shop for some time.  He doesn't want me to publish his photo. However, he said I could publish photos, and write about, of one of his bikes, of which I'd only heard before today.  

It's a nice Bob Jackson from, I believe, the '70's.  He's outfitted it with contemporary components: The only "period" pieces are the SunTour ratchet shifters and Cyclone rear derailleurs.  I can understand using those:  I used them myself, back in the day.


I remember, as a teenager, seeing Bob Jacksons, Mercians, Ron Coopers and the frames of some other English builder--I don't remember which, except that I don't think it was Jack Taylor--in a catalogue somewhere.  

I knew that the best racing bikes were believed to be those from Italy and a few American custom builders. The English made some excellent racing frames, too; in my heart of hearts, I really wanted one of those--or one from a French constructeur--even more than an Italian bike.  I would eventually ride, and race, on a couple of Italian bikes, but I really liked the ride qualities of those English frames (I got to try a few that belonged to customers in shops where I worked.).  Plus, the Italian racing frames always seemed gaudy to me, even in my youth; I always felt that my "bike for life" would have the meticulous lugwork and other detail of those English builders.  Their workmanship impressed me more than what I saw on the Italian bikes.

The only braze-ons the frame has are for the water bottle cage (on the downtube only) and a "stop" for the shift lever band.  That was typical on bikes of that time:  at least a couple of bikes I owned were so made.


That frame is at least thirty years old, and it's not hard to imagine Aaron--or somebody else--riding it for another thirty years.  I think Bob Jacksons are still being made--although, by this time, I rather doubt Bob Jackson himself is building them.  I don't know whether Ron Coopers or Jack Taylors are still being built:  I haven't seen references to them in recent catalogues or magazines.  At least it's nice to know that Mercian is still keeping up the flame they, and those other builders, kept burning for decades.  

The Rise And Fall Of Rapid Rise

I forget who told me that there's no idea so bad that nobody will try to revive it.

Here's a case in point:  low-normal rear, and top-normal front, derailleurs. 

On the bikes most of you ride, pushing the right lever forward shifts you to a higher rear gear (top-normal), and pulling the lever brings you to a lower gear.  Conversely, pulling on the left lever shifts your chain to the larger front sprocket, and pushing it drops your chain to the smaller, or lower gear (low-normal).  The derailleurs I'm going to talk about do the exact opposite. 

It seems that every generation or so, someone tries to revive the idea.  Why, I don't know.

This is an early example of the genre:  the Simplex Champion de France, circa 1935.  Believe it or not, it was a technological marvel for its time, even though it couldn't handle much more than a 22 tooth rear cog and a difference of 8 between the largest and smallest cog. 

It is, I think, rather elegant:  In particular, the cage shape makes me think of a part of a piano rather than a bicycle.  However, the shifts of single-pulley derailleurs are inherently imprecise; low-normal operation only exacerbates the problem.

As one might expect, World War II halted derailleur development and all but stopped their manufacture altogether.  The 1950's would see new innovations and experiments, including the pull-chain mechanism (which Shimano briefly revived on its mountain bike derailleurs during the late 1990's) and, most important, a derailleur with a parallelogram mechanism rather than a single arm or cam.  However, Simplex and other companies also revived low-normal rear derailleurs.

To be fair, the first modern rear derailleur (and, some would say, the first that shifted well)--the Sun Tour Gran Prix of 1964--also was low-normal.  But within two years, Sun Tour abandoned that operating principle, realizing that the slant-parallelogram design (which is found on every derailleur of any quality made in the last quarter-century or so) did more to improve shifting than any other idea or innovation.

However, Sun Tour continued to make front derailleurs that were "top normal" well into the 1970's.  I had one such derailleur.  It shifted well enough until the spring started to lose its tension.  With a low-normal front derailleur, you can sometimes adjust the cable tension to make up for the lack of spring tension.  That's not an option with high-normal front derailleurs.

It's also not an option with low-normal rear derailluers.  I briefly rode one on my mountain bike about fifteen years ago:  a Shimano XTR.  Luckily for me, the shop from which I bought it allowed me to trade it in for a more conventional XT rear.  The owner of the shop reasoned that the amount of wear I put on the XTR made it depreciate enough to warrant an XT as a replacement.

I'd say that was an example of addition by subtraction:  I was happy with the XT, as I was with an earlier version of the same derailleur.  On the other hand, I never liked the low-normal XTR, which was one of the most expensive derailleurs made at the time.  It never had the firm, postive feel I like when shifting:  Even when the gear engaged smoothly and silently after a shift, it always felt as if the chain would slip or jump off the gear at any moment. 

Other cyclists with whom I rode--who included hard-core mountain bikers as well as roadies like me who went off-road for a change of pace--felt the same way about that derailleur. And, in looking back at some old magazines and books, it seems that every time low-normal derailleurs come out, the high-mileage and hard-driving riders don't like them.  Even less-experienced riders who thought they were the newest and latest thing soon soured on them.

I see that Shimano has given up on low-normal (or, in their lingo, "rapid rise") rear derailleurs, at least for now.  I wonder whether they, or any other company, will revive them.  Maybe they will in a decade or so, when there's a cohort of cyclists who didn't use rapid-rise and who don't heed this gem of wisdom from Ecclesiastes:  There is nothing new under the sun.

Old-School

Now here's some real old-school lugwork.

There's a "mirror," if you will, of the front fork pattern on the rear stay, near the seat cluster.

I tried to get a better image of it, but it's in a display window.  That window is long past displaying anything, with all of the clutter in it.


The shop behind that window isn't much bigger than my living room, so they have to use every available space.  

Gray's, on Lefferts Boulevard in Kew Gardens, has most likely been in business for longer than I've been in this world. Bernice,the proprietess is a very sweet woman who's probably a decade or two older than I am.  Her husband passed on a few years ago.


One thing that makes the shop interesting--and a reason why I stop in from time to time--is their stock of older parts.  Bernice knows what they are, and what they're supposed to fit, but she's not a cyclist herself and doesn't claim to be any sort of bike enthusiast.


She is one of those old-time shopkeepers who, on slow days, chats with people in the neighborhood.  Today, a woman who seemed to be a couple of decades older than her was there, and they were just talking about family, the passage of time and such.


It's one of those shops that opened when the neighborhood around it was very different.  At one time, Kew Gardens--in which George Gershwin lived and Paul Simon and Jerry Springer were born and raised-- was full of neo-Tudor houses and had an almost-suburban feel.  I suspect the shop opened during that time.  Later, Kew Gardens was nicknamed "Crew Gardens," for all of the airline personnel who lived there.  


Many of the private houses have been torn down and apartment buildings have risen in their place.  Now, Kew Gardens is mainly a community of Orthodox Jews and emigres from Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan.  Among them, there doesn't seem to be very many cyclists:  Just about everyone I see riding comes, as I do, from other parts of Queens or from Brooklyn.


What seems to keep the shop in business is that it's near Forest Park.  And the shop is one of the few in the city that rents bikes.  A few cyclists I know are familiar with the shop; apparently, they go there for the old parts and the pleasant atmosphere, even if it's in cramped quarters.  


Gray's isn't what some cyclists would consider to be a "pro" shop, and doesn't try to be one.  It's, more than anything, an old-fashioned family business that happens to deal in bikes. In a way, it's fitting to find an old-school Hetchins there.

Pancake Rides

This is the time of year for the "pancake ride."


You've probably been on one:  You ride to someplace where pancakes (and foods that go with them) are served.  And then you spend the rest of your ride burning off what you just ate.


In two of the clubs in which I rode, Pancake rides were hugely popular and, certainly, the winter rides that had the biggest turnouts.


The club to which I belonged when I was in college (Rutgers) held those rides every other Sunday in January and February, if I recall correctly.  The rides took us from the urban confines of New Brunswick, New Jersey into the rural areas of western New Jersey.  Actually, many of the club's rides did, but the Pancake ride had a particular destination:  a firehouse that served pancake breakfasts during the winter. I think the proceeds were used to fund the volunteer fire department located in the firehouse, and that everyone who cooked, served, seated people and did all of the other work were family members or friends of the firefighters.


One of the greatest draws of that ride, apart from the complete lack of traffic outside of New Brunswick on a winter Sunday morning and the bucolic countryside, was what we called The Bottomless Plate.  Yes, it was an all-you-can-eat affair.  In addition to the pancakes, the house served hash browns, sausage, bacon and scrambled eggs, as well as coffee, tea and hot chocolate.  It may not have been the best-quality stuff, but when you're cold and hungry, just about anything edible is delicious and hearty.  


As I recall, that firehouse was very welcoming to us.  That's particularly surprising given how much we ate:  Those of you who are better than I am in math can calculate how much Bis-Quick it took to feed thirty to forty cyclists who'd just cycled twenty  or so miles in twenty-degree weather with a wind-chill of about five or ten degrees.  Also, I should add that some of us were young (i.e., college age) males, who typically had bottomless stomachs and empty wallets.


These days, of course, I'm not a young male.  But all of my changes don't seem to have filled in the bottomless pit in my stomach!  


Anyway, I decided, just for the heck of it, to type "pancake rides" into a Google search box.  It seems that they're going on everywhere, and they're not confined to winter.  Still, I'll probably always think of them as winter rides.   I mean, how many other foods feel warmer and cozier after a ride on a cold day?

As Good As A Tree...Or A Colnago?

One of the most parodied (and most eminently parodyable) poems in the English language is Joyce Kilmer's "Trees."


Hmm...Even though I know it wouldn't have fit the meter or rhythm of the poem, it might've been better if he'd written, "I think that I shall never see/A bikestand as good as a tree."

Certainly a parking meter isn't quite as nice a stand--although it's a lot easier to loop a chain around it:

The paint job tells me someone was trying to make that bike unattractive to thieves.  However, if that was the owner's/rider's intention, something else on the bike counters it:

Now, if you're going to so much trouble to make the bike unappealing, why would you announce, in screaming red letters, that it's a Colnago?


Of course, the bike is not a Colnago. (I know; I owned and raced on one and have seen many others.) Could it be that it's some kind of post-modern irony (translation: a joke)?  Could this cyclist be saying, "Ha, ha, it's not a Colnago?"

Who'd've thunk it--putting the Colnago name on a bike would make it less valuable?  What if people put Mercedes-Benz stars, or blue-and-white BMW shields, on their 10-year-old Hyundais?  Would that make them less of a target for car thieves?  

Actually, the basket almost made me wish it was a Colnago. It reminded me of the bike someone I met once in Williamsburg (where else?) about ten years ago: a vintage Cinelli track bike (not the ones sold today with the Cinelli label), with equally vintage Campagnolo Pista components and Mavic SSC rims--and a flowered basket strapped to the handlebars.


None of those bikes, though, will ever have a stand as good as that tree on which I leaned Tosca today.

When Hipsters And Hasidim Use The Same Adjective

From Indigo Jo Blogs

When people on opposing sides of the same issue are using "stupid" as a prefix for the same word, the thing they're talking about can't be good.  Right?


I'm thinking now of bike lanes.  Both cyclists and the people who hate us, or merely find us a nuisance, use that same adjective in reference to the lanes.  


I was reminded of this when I stumbled over a site called "Stupid Bike Lanes" and read articles like this, and the comments on them. 


Of course, the velophobes--who include all sorts of (but not all) people whose way of life or business is auto-based--think we're getting in their way of getting to wherever they have to go and believe we're getting "special privileges."


As any number of other bloggers (including yours truly) and commentators have pointed out, the antipathy toward cyclists, particularly in urban areas, is often generational and based on socio-economic or ethnic issues.  Here in New York, non-cyclists hold contradictory views of cyclists: the messenger, the hipster, the Whole Foods customer and the simply rich.  What reinforces these stereotypes is that those who most vociferously oppose the bike lanes tend to come from what remains of the blue-collar class and groups like the Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who have large families that they transport in vans.  So, they are always driving, it seems, from one available parking spot to the next and, as they see it, the bike lanes take away those spots.  


The bike lane-haters who are actual cyclists don't dispute those objections, and in fact cite one basic flaw of most urban bike lanes:  They run alongside parking lanes and, therefore, directly in the path of opening drivers' side doors.  I've been "doored" a few times: on all except one of those occasions, I was riding in a bike lane.


Some bike lanes are badly designed in other ways.  The most obvious flaw, aside from the one I just mentioned, is that many of them go nowhere, end abruptly or in the middle of busy intersections, or are so poorly marked so that only those who already know where they are can find them.  


All of the problems I've mentioned actually make cycling less safe than it is in the traffic lanes of most streets.  And they indicate that those who design them know as little about cycling as transportation, in an urban area, as those who hate cyclists.

Reconciliation

One of the nice things about being my age is that, if you're lucky, you can start to reconcile all kinds of things that seemed irreconcilable. If you're not lucky, they reconcile themselves, though perhaps not in the ways you'd intended--or one might destroy the other.


Where am I going with this?  Well, it's about cycling, but it also has to do with stuff you'd find on my other blog, if you read it.  So consider yourself forewarned.


You see, from the time I found out about John Rakowski, I wanted to do something like what he did.  He cycled around the world, turning his pedals on every continent except Antarctica.  (What would penguins think of some guy with a bike laden with full front and rear panniers, camping equipment and bottles of water anyplace they'd fit on the bike?)  He recounted his adventures in Bicycling! magazine during my teen years.


Rakowski was in his early 50's when he undertook his journey, which lasted three years, if I recall correctly.  As it turned out, he was living not far from where I lived, in New Jersey, at the time.  And, yes I met him, and he signed my magazines.  


Well, the fact that he lived nearby and did what he did would have been reason enough for me to take him as an inspiration, if not a role model.  But there was another reason--apart from the "local boy" and "cycling" aspects of the story--that meant so much to me at that time in my life.


However, as important as his feat was to me, I never talked about it with anybody.  For one thing, no one else in my family, or even in my circle of peers or the neighborhood in which I was living, shared my passion for cycling.   It was as if the so-called "bike boom" had passed them all by.  Everybody predicted that I would "grow out of" my obsession with cycling as soon as I got my driver's licence.  Then again, people said I would "grow out of" all sorts of other things, as if they were tops and shoes.


You may have figured out where this is going: something else I didn't "grow out of."  I'm talking, of course, about my wish to be able to wear bike jerseys and shorts with cleated shoes (in that place and time, almost no one had ever seen them), or skirts and blouses with heels, as a way of life.


The reason, of course, I didn't "grow out of" those desires is that there was more to them--which, of course, I didn't talk about with anybody.  Wearing the clothes wasn't the point for me; I wanted to be the person who was expected to wear them--or, at least, a person who wouldn't face opprobrium for doing so.  


That John Rakowski was a man, and most cyclists were men, was problematic.  How could I want to ride around the world and win the Tour de France and be a woman at the same time?


Today, of course, there are more female cyclists than there were in those days, and women's racing enjoyed a heyday during the late '80's and the '90's.  I could not understand why only men should race, tour or participate in most other sports.  Title IX had been enacted around that time; however, it would take time for women's sports to gain any momentum because the sorts of sports programs, like Little League and Pop Warner football, that existed for boys didn't exist for girls.  


It was a time when many people--including many women--thought sports were "unfeminine."  I recall one girl in my high school who was as an even better athlete than most of the boys.  Her family, which included three brothers who were athletes,  was supportive of her interests.  However, some of the teachers and other adults tried to discourage her, saying that no man would want to marry her.  I couldn't understand that:  She was a very attractive girl who had no difficulty getting dates.


Fortunately for her, she was able to play basketball and a couple of other sports in college.  Of course, I would have wanted to be like her.  Perhaps I could have been:  I played soccer in high school.  However, my real passion always lay with cycling, and only a few colleges had teams or even clubs for cycling.  To my knowledge, none were for women.


Although I repressed my desire to be a woman then, and for most of the next three decades, I always felt, deep down, that there was no contradiction between wanting to ride the world, and to race, on my bike--and being a woman.  What has always drawn me to cycling is the freedom I feel when I ride.  I feel as if my spirit is unchained, that--if you'll indulge me a cliche--I felt as free as the wind and as open as the air.  


And that, naturally, was what the woman in me wanted.  She wanted to be free from what I now realize were the same boundaries that seemed to contain me when I was off my bike.  When I say what I'm about to say, I don't mean to aggrandize myself:  To be a long-distance cyclist at an age after you were supposed to have a drivers license and a car, you had to be an independent spirit.  And, of course, it's impossible to be anything else if you want to live by the imperatives of your spirit rather than the dictates of your school, community and society.  That's doubly true if your subconscious or unconscious gender--the one you are when you're by yourself--is different from the one on your birth certificate, and for which you are being trained by your school, church and other institutions.


I wanted to be free--to be Justine, on a bike.  At least I lived long enough to know that those things weren't contradictory, and to meet people who understand that.  And, just as important,from my point of view, is that I've begun to develop a language to explain my complications, contradictions and complexities.  It makes sense to me, which means that I can also make it make sense to others--well, some other people anyway.  If they don't understand, or don't accept it, that is all right.  


I am Justine, and ride wherever and whenever my time and resources allow.  Hopefully, some day, I'll have more of both.  For now, living my life and riding my bikes are inseparable, and offer me so much.