Nina: A Nice Person In A Nice Bike Shop

You've probably seen the following in your favorite bike shop:

• MAMILs
• Fitness buffs who want to try a new sport/activity
• Customers who have more money to spend than riding experience
• People who haven't ridden since they were kids and are intimidated by all of the newfangled bikes and accessories
• Women who are there with their boyfriends/husbands--and, much less frequently, men who are there with their girlfriends/wives
• The ones who've decided to go on the next MS (or other charity) ride, but haven't been on a bike in years.

There are other kinds of people you meet in bike shops.  But, based on my experience in working in shops and having visited many others, the people I've mentioned are the one who seem to be found in just about any shop.

Today, I met someone who doesn't fit any of the above categories.  I stopped in the shop--James Vincent Bicycles of North Bergen, NJ --in the middle of today's ride.  The shop has been in business for 75 years and, even though it carries "serious" racing and mountain bikes from the likes of Cannondale, Trek and Giant, it attracts a lot of people from the immediate neighborhood, sometimes for non-bike-related issues.

The young woman I met today is one of those neighborhood denizens.  Actually, her father was there for a non-bike issue, and she accompanied him.

But she wasn't one of those bored and resentful family members who doesn't share her relative's enthusiasm for cycling.  In fact, she was on the same kind of wheels as her father rode:

Nina could get around perfectly well without that cart.  But her father couldn't:  He had no legs.  He'd gone to the shop to have something in the chasis tightened:  He could feel it coming loose, and it would've taken only a decent-sized hole or crack in the sidewalk or pavement to immobilize him.


I only got to talk with Nina briefly.  She seemed like a very nice and intelligent young woman.  I'm guessing that she rode her cart to the shop so that her father would have it in case he needed to leave his at the shop.  Even if that's the case, she's doing a great thing in helping him and experiencing, however briefly, the world as her father does.


I rode behind them for a few blocks until they turned.  I continued down the Jersey side of the Hudson River to the Bayonne Bridge, and through Staten Island to the Ferry.  I'm not religious, but I can say I felt blessed:  two good legs, a great bike, a beautiful day and an interesting ride.

A Simple Life?

Normally, I'm happy to get home from a trip to Florida.  These days, I'm happy to see my parents, in part because I don't know how many more years they'll be in this world.  But, apart from them and some lovely bike-rides (The good and bad news is that they're all flat!), I have almost no motivation to go to Florida.


Since I got back last night, though, I'm feeling a little wistful. I think the feeling started on Monday, when I rode down A1A through Painters Hill and Flagler Beach.  Along the way, I stopped, for no particular reason, in one of those stores that sells things made out of seashells.


The proprietress was one of those friendly, helpful and sun-bleached people you meet by the sea, though not necessarily by the trendy beaches.  "Anything I can help you with, let me know," she intoned in a voice of sunshine and sea salt.  She wasn't one of those surly, hipper-than-thou storeclerks you see working in trust-fund enclaves.  She probably wasn't making a lot of money, but she also, most likely, didn't need to. 


I imagined myself in her place, but with my cats and bikes.  I imagined myself closing the store and riding Tosca up and down A-1A or along any number of other roads.  It used to amaze me there weren't more fixed-gear bikes in Florida; this time, I saw a pretty fair number in and around St. Augustine.  Of course, their riders were young, or seemed to be:  I don't expect a senior citizen who hasn't been on a bike since he or she was a teenager to hop on a track bike.


Anyway, I'll be back to my normal rides, work and such soon enough.  One day, if I can afford it and don't have to worry about property values, I might have a house that looks like this (ha, ha):

Half A Century On A Cruiser

Today I rode the longest distance I've done on the cruiser I borrowed from my parents' neighbor:  52 miles.  Given that it's designed to make the rider feel as if he or she is sitting on a sofa chair while the boardwalk goes clack-clack-clack under the tires, I feel good about the ride.

The bike I rode is certainly nothing like these, which I saw parked in front of a convenience store near the Old City:

At least, I got to St. Augustine faster than Ponce de Leon did when he was looking for the Fountain of Youth.

And I will say that even though I wrecked the original rear wheel, the bike is sturdy if flexy. 

If it had been about fifteen years ago, I would have tried to ride the bike across the moat just below the castle.  After all, there's no water in the moat and no water=no alligators. 

There is a dedicated bike lane for much of the length of A-1A.  One way in which drivers--even the transplanted ones--here differ from the ones in New York is that they don't use the bike lanes to pass or double-park.

Plus, the beaches, inlets, dunes and ocean are beautiful.  Here is a view from the bridge over the Matanzas Inlet:

Check out this formation on a nearby beach:

St. Augustine, in addition to the tourist traps one would expect, has some interesting establishments.  At least, the spirit behind them is not what you'd find in New York:

A Giggling Gator?  I'm having a hard time picturing it.  However, I have to love a place with a sign that says "Open when we get here\ Closed when we leave."


 

Whatever Doesn't Stop Us, Slows Us Down

All right.  So I've slowed down, and I can't blame it all on riding a cruiser.  I also won't make the excuse that I'm enjoying the sunshine, blue skies and surf, although I am indeed reveling in those things.

I won't even blame the not-much-longer-than-my-hand lizards that darted across my path in Painters Hill.  I must say, though, that I found myself thinking of Geico commercials, even though I have absolutely no reason to buy auto insurance.

However, there is one thing I can blame for slowing me down momentarily.

This adorable (in his/her own way, anyway) creature wandered into my path after a few lizards played chicken with my wheels.  What he/she expected to find in the path, I'll never know.  That particular stretch of path is bounded by tall grass that ends on the banks of the Florida Intracoastal Waterway, which parallels the Atlantic beaches on the other side of the path and Route A-1A. 

Perhaps my armored friend was confused or trying to evade a less likeable creature.  Or, perhaps, he/she didn't find any edibles to his or her liking, and thought that a cyclist might be carrying some tasty carbohydrates.  In fact, I wasn't, as I was trying to burn off the lunch I had with Mom and one of her friends, and build an appetite for dinner, which would consist of leftovers from Easter dinner.  Fortunately, said dinner consisted of foods that taste better the second or third day.

Mr./Ms. Tortoise rowed along the path on front legs that were more like flippers, and back into the tall grass.  Then the lizards darted out, and the ocean seemed to deepen in a shade of turquoise at the end of a surprisingly desert-like dune.

On A Borrowed Cruiser, Again

Another holiday with parents in Florida means...another ride on the borrowed cruiser.

A neighbor of my parents bought the bike years ago.  Now, at age 85, arthritis and other health problems keep her from riding it.  Now the bike's riders consist of me and a couple of her kids and grandkids.  However, I think it hasn't been ridden since I rode it at Christmastime.  That's the reason why she was surprised when I told her I'd done some repairs, including the installation of a new rear wheel.

Last time I was here, I rode a few miles on a flat because I was nowhere near an air pump.  I'd been riding a stretch of A-1A along the ocean, past Gamble Rogers State Recreation Area and a bunch of foreclosed-upon or otherwise-abandoned houses.  I once had a wheel from which spokes flew off at high speeds; I didn't have to ride at such high speed for them to fly off the wheel on that bike.

Plus, the old rear wheel had one of Shimano's old coaster brake/3-speed hubs.  It's one of the worst Shimano parts I've ever used or worked on:  the gears never adjusted quite right.  If you've ever had an out-of-adjustment 3-speed (Sturmey-Archers made after about 1970 never stayed in adjustment), you know that's not just an inconvenience:  You're pedalling hard or spinning fast, and all of a sudden, you find yourself in "neutral."  You push a pedal forward and your face hurtles toward a very close encounter with your handlebars. Or, worse things can happen.

Plus, as a long-ago shop mechanic, I learned that hubs have to make up their minds as to whether they're going to be coaster brake or internally geared.  From what I've seen, a hub can't do both well.  Usually, it's the gears that suffer.  At least, that was the case on the Shimano, Sturmey Archer and Sachs coaster brake/3speed hubs.

To my knowledge, Shimano doesn't make such a hub anymore--or, at least, not the model that was on that bike.  SA stopped making them, but have started making them again since the takeover by SunRace and the move to Taiwan.  Sachs, after taking over Huret, Maillard, Sedis and other French component manufacturers, was in turn swallowed up by SRAM.  I don't think they're making internally geared hubs with coaster brakes.

Anyway, the bike now has a coaster brake rear hub, an Alex rim (not as good as Mavic or Velocity, but better than what was on there) and DT spokes.  Plus, it has a Michelin mountain bike tire, albeit one of the cheaper ones.

So far, so good.  But now I'm going to reveal that I've spent too much time around messngers, hipsters and wannabes.

Actually, I installed that pink chain as a bit of a joke. I don't know whether the nice (She really is!) old lady from whom I borrowed the bike, or her kids or grandkids, will notice.  If they do, I hope they share my twisted sense of humor.

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.