From A Hairnet To A Tortoise Shell

How many of you rode "leather hairnets"?  


I never did, and never had any wish to do so.  I never saw the point of them.  


Now, how many of you rode this helmet?:

If you did, you remember that it was the original Bell "Tortoise Shell."  Actually, I'm not sure that was the actual model name, but that's what everybody (at least, everybody I knew) called it.


When it was introduced in 1975, it was as much an advance over the leather hairnet as a Commodore computer was over an abacus or a slide rule.   I finally started riding with a Bell about seven or eight years after it was first introduced.  My mother gave it to me.  


A few years later, I replaced it with another Bell.  By then, the "Tortoiseshell" seemed like a dinosaur:  My new Bell had more ventilation, was lighter in weight and offered even more protection than my old helmet.


And, most important ;-), it came in a dazzling array of colors:  black, yellow, red, blue and white.  The original Bell was the photograph negative of the Model T:  You could have it in any color you wanted, as long as it was white.


Believe it or not, every once in a while I see someone riding an original Bell.  They were indeed well-made.  The thing is, I get sweaty.  Plus, if I'm going to ride more than a couple of hours, the weight of the helmet matters.


Still, the original Bell helmet is one of bicycling's evolutionary "leaps," along with Mavic's hook-bead rims, the slant-parallelogram derailleur and sealed bearings.

Gerald Is A Good Mouse Because I've Got A Bike

I know a mouse and he hasn't got a house.
I don't know why I call him Gerald. 
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.

Would you believe the above stanza is from a song about bicycling?  Well, it's sort of about bicycling, anyway.

You wouldn't need to believe it--you'd know it--if you were a Pink Floyd fan.  What's more, you'd know that Syd Barrett was probably the only one who could've pulled it off.  At least he could before the drugs destroyed him.


I heard "Bike" today for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long.  It doesn't, like most of PF's music from their early (pre-Dark Side of The Moon) albums, doesn't get much airplay these days.  One reason, of course, is that it doesn't have the polished, orchestrated sound of the songs on DSTM and later albums.  Also, I think this song and others from The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn are even more surreal, but not dreamier, than other psychedelic music of the time.    It's not the sort of thing people tune into "Golden Oldies" or "Classic Rock" stations to hear.


All right.  You didn't come to this site to read half-baked commentary about music.  The reason I'm mentioning Bike is that hearing it made me realize how few songs (popular ones, anyway) there are about bicycling.  It seems that about the only one most people know is Queen's Bicycle Race.  

By Golden Bird

I wonder why that is.  After all, there's a pretty fair amount of visual and graphic art, as well as literature, about cycling.  Or, at least, bicycles or bicycling are at least part of the material for those works.  As I'm not a musician, I couldn't make a song about two-wheeled trekking.  I have written a couple of poems about cycling; I suppose I could write one that someone could set to music.  

I know that many cyclists (I include myself among them) are avid readers and writers, and I know of at least a few (including Lovely Bicycle's "Velouria") who are photographers, painters and artists of other kinds.  So it seems natural that we'd have literary and visual works about cycling.  However, I've known more than a few cyclists who were musicians, and Eric Clapton is known to have a passion for cycling.  So why the apparent dearth of songs and music about cycling?


What do you think, dear readers?

It's Got Your Name On It!

On my way to work, I took a photo of a parked bike with my cell phone.  I tried sending it to my e-mail address, but I got a message saying that the photo exceeded the maximum file size. 

Maybe I'll see that bike again and take another photo.  For now, I'll just say that it had an unusual look, although it looked like a perfectly functional bike.

On the other hand, I really have to wonder how much the builder of this bike was thinking about function:

"Mathilde" is the creation of Parisian designer Juri Zaech. He makes bicycles frames in the shapes of the names or words the customer chooses.  Check out the tandem he built for Megan and Elton.   

What's interesting, though, is that none of the bikes have pedals, cranks or brakes.  Even with their curvaceous lettering, they make "hipster fixies" seem utterly Baroque by comparison. 

If you were cycling about thirty years ago--or simply like bikes from that period--you might want to get the "Regina" model and fit it with the freewheel of that same name and Campagnolo components.  Now that would make for a strange bike.

Even if the "name" bikes are completely unrideable and are meant only as wall art, I love them.  I'm having a very difficult time, though, imagining how a bicycle frame could be shaped to fit my name!

Two Signs of Spring

Today's commute to work included two sure signs of spring.

One is something most people associate with this season:  the blooming of small flowers.  The violet wave I saw in the breeze were, as it turned out, a carpet of Iris reticulata:

 There must have been something in the light and air:  from a block or so away, I couldn't see the soil and I just barely noticed the green leaves rippling among the sea of indigo petals.

When I got to campus, I noticed another "sea," or at least a wave:

 
Yes, the bike rack was full when I arrived.  Actually,there was one space left--behind the motorcycle.

The weather reports say there's a chance of rain tonight.  One could hardly have guessed that on such a clear, dry--if somewhat brisk--early-spring day. 

A Bike That Could Have Been An April Fool's Joke

"To save weight, they used drilled-out tires and water bottles."


Yes, that is a joke.  But it was about a real bicycle.


Actually, the bike itself was a rather noble attempt to offer something unique.  Lambert bicycles were first built in England during the 1970's.  Apparently, someone bought the old Viking Cycle factory in South London and decided to make some high-quality bikes.


The frames were actually rather nice:  lugged and built from Cro-Moly aircraft tubing .  Later, after Yamaha (as in the motorcycle maker) bought the company, the frames were filet-brazed.  That is the same construction method used by the best tandem-builders and a few builders of single bikes. Still later production came from Japan, and then Taiwan (when the latter country was still making the worst bikes that weren't from India).  


The frames had a rather lively feel to them.  Unfortunately, they were paired with aluminum forks. Today that's not so unusual; however, at that time, I don't think anyone knew how to build aluminum forks.  The result is that several cracked and Lambert had to make a massive world-wide recall.  


Some of the parts weren't a whole lot better than the fork.  The original models had a rear derailleur that looked like a copy of the Huret Svelto and didn't shift as well.  (That's a bit like saying that some sandwich is a copy of a Big Mac but isn't as healthy.)  The front derailleur was like a Campagnolo Valentino--which had been an outdated design for at least a decade--and didn't shift as well.  Then there was the crankset, which looked like a TA Cyclotouriste but had more bolts, which meant that chainrings were not interchangable between the two brands.  Those cranks were attached to an axle that didn't have a taper:  Only a circlip separated the inside of the crank arm from the bottom bracket shell.


Probably the most interesting thing Lambert did, though, was to make a limited run of 100 bikes with an unusual finish.  It was gold.  Yes, that kind of gold, as in 24 karat plated.  Back in 1972-73, the complete bike, with alloy parts and sew-up tires and rims, sold for $259.95.

I can remember seeing this ad in Bicycling! and other bicycle magazines during my formative years.