Views of A Sunday Ride

Another ride through Harlem, the New Jersey Palisades, Staten Island and lower Manhattan.

As always, there were interesting sights on the Ferry:

New York is all about style, right?    I was going to ask her where she got that bag, but I kind of lost her in the shuffle as we disembarked.  However, I got another glimpse of her sack and realized I wouldn't be able to buy it:

You can't see the logo from her, but it's from a film festival in Germany.  

In addition to style, New York has always been known for attracting dreamers:

With all due respect to Frank Sinatra, you can't have a city of dreamers if it's a city that never sleeps. 

And, of course, everyone wants a home with a view.  Along the way, I stopped at an open house. I didn't even bother to feign interest in buying the house (which I probably couldn't do, anyway) because, it seemed, everyone else had the same look of disattachment.  

But wouldn't you just love a patio with a view like this?

Hey, it's even better as you get closer:

If you were to buy the house--in Bayonne, NJ--you wouldn't be able to access the water.  It's fenced off about fifty meters from the shoreline:  It's government land.  Oh, who wouldn't want to take a dip in Newark Bay on a hot day?  

The bike riding is pretty good, though, as long as you stay away from the main commercial strip.  It's even better along Richmond Terrace in Staten Island:  As you approach the Ferry, the sight of cranes and tank farms give way to harbor vistas of lower Manhattan. 

Train Tracks To Bike Paths?

Today was one of those crisp, clear, early-fall (though the calendar still says "summer") days that just makes me want to follow roads just to see where they'll lead.

In this case, I found myself following railroad tracks.  Oh, I've passed by or over them hundreds of times before.  But, just for fun, I decided to see how much I could follow them.

This one starts at the East River, and, within about a mile, passes under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge of disappearing-bike-lane infamy.  It continues through along Newtown Creek, through a heavily industrialized area of Queens.

However, it's possible to follow it only for very short stretches.  Some of the land adjacent to the tracks is private property (factories, garages and such) that is closed off to the public.  And there are other stretches where the only way to follow the tracks is to ride on them. I've ridden on railroad tracks before--with a mountain bike.  

Apparently, the track is owned by New York and Atlantic Railway, which provides freight service on current and former Long Island Rail Road (Yes, it's spelled as two words!) tracks and right-of-ways.  One stretch of it--from about 43rd to about 58th Streets--seems to be used, at least on occasion, as it seems to be connected to another series of tracks and it's near UPS and FedEx terminals (and the Thomas' bakery!).  But other parts, such as the spur along Flushing Avenue and 56th Street, seem not to have been used in decades.

If New York and Atlantic indeed owns all of the tracks I've shown, I wonder whether they plan to use them.  As industrialized as those areas around the tracks are, there's still not as much as there was, say, during World War II.  And much of the freight is carried by trucks rather than trains, as there are highways nearby.

So...If NY and A doesn't plan to use the tracks, I wonder whether they'd sell, or even give, them to the city or state. If they did, I think the tracks and the adjacent paths and roads would make some great bike lanes.   I think now of the lane built by the Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx; I think something on a greater scale could be done with those tracks.  The effect would be similar:  Bike lanes that traverse some interesting urban-industrial architecture that takes on a unique beauty in the light of autumn foliage.

Back To School On Bikes

Now that the school year has started, I thought I'd post this photo:

No, I didn't take it.  (I did, though, take a photo of Abraham Lincoln on a bicycle. ;-))  It dates, apparently, to 1885.

It comes from the EarlhamArchives' Photostream, which is maintained by Earlham College in Indiana.  There are lots of other beautiful and interesting images there.  I actually thought this was one of the best, aside from the fact that bicycles are in it.

Wandering Into An Early Start

I've a question for those of you who commute:  How much do you vary your routes?  

Also:  Have you ever made a wrong turn, or even gotten lost, on a ride to work or a routine appointment?

Today, I could answer "yes" to the first part of my second question.  After wheeling out of my apartment, I proceeded two blocks further on 23rd Street than I normally would before making a right turn.  You might say that subconsciously (or, perhaps, not-so-sub-consciously), I wanted to make that diversion: I had left early and the weather could hardly have been better.  In fact, if I hadn't had to go to work, I would have made a few more "wrong" turns!

At first, what I got was nothing more than a slight change of scenery: I was riding along 30th Avenue, which I know but don't cycle very often because it is narrow and lined with stores.  Motorists frequently pull away from the curb, or dart into any parking space that becomes available, without paying much attention to other motorists or cyclists.  Also, pedestrians frequently dart out from between cars in the middle of a block, or saunter into that narrow space between the parking and traffic lanes, seemingly oblivious to everything else.

But, ironically, there was less traffic as I neared LaGuardia Airport.  Actually, it does make sense:   Wednesday is not a heavy travel day.  From there, it wasn't far to the World's Fair Marina Promenade.  Today was one of those days in which even the metallic hues of Flushing Bay seem almost idyllic.  

From there, I crossed the Northern Boulevard Bridge and made a couple more wrong turns under some trees that haven't yet begun to change color.  You might say that I was in a kind of seasonal denial, that I was holding onto one last moment of summer before going in to work.

The greatest irony of today is that, in spite of my meanderings, my office mates and students remarked on how early I arrived.

The FIrst Bike Lane?

Now  here's an interesting way to commute by bicycle.

Arthur Hotchkiss envisioned this monorail for bicycles as the future of getting to and from work when he built it during the 1890's.  Most roads then would make today's potholed city streets seem like magic carpets; amazingly, many cyclists still pedaled "high-wheelers" or "penny farthings, which were much less stable  and were more likely than today's bikes to be toppled by ruts and potholes.  Hotchkiss' bike "railroad" spanned muddy fields as well as a stream. 

Hezekiah Smith backed the project.  He owned a factory in a western New Jersey hamlet--named for him-- that, at the time, was making about a quarter of America's woodworking equipment.  Poor conditions, particularly when it rained, caused tardiness in his workers.

The bicycles that glided along the rail bore little resemblance to today's two-wheelers.  They had two mismatched wheels (one 20 inches in diameter, the other 12). Instead of pushing on pedals, the cyclist had to repeatedly depress a ratchet mechanism as if he were pumping air into a tire.  

There was only single rail.  So one cyclist had to dismount and allow the other to pass before resuming his trip.  As you can imagine, head-on collisions were frequent and tempers flared.

But these problems were not the ones that doomed the "railroad."  Rather, the introduction of the "safety" bicycle (with both wheels the same size, along with improving road conditions, made bicycle commuting more feasible.  So, the railroad's ridership declined and it went bankrupt in 1898.  No trace of it--or Smith's factory.  His company didn't survive the Great Depression.

It's interesting to think of what bike lanes would be like today if Hotchkiss and Smith's "railroad had survived a few more years.

Forever Locked To History

To myself, I debated whether or not I wanted to publish this.  Most of the "commemorations" of the 9/11 attacks seem like mindless chatter or grandstanding to me; I can scarcely stand to hear anything about it save from people--or their families or friends--who were directly affected by it.  

But I thought this photo would be a simple yet eloquent reminder of what happened on that day:

These bicycles and the rack were retrieved from the wreckage of the Twin Towers and are now housed, along with other items recovered from the World Trade Center, in Hangar 17 of John F. Kennedy International Airport.


Some of these bikes are twisted, almost mangled.  But they are still locked to the rack.  People rode them--probably to work--and locked them to the rack, where they will probably stay forever.

Holy Drillium, Eddy!

No matter how attractive you are, you have at least one photo of yourself that makes you wonder, "What was I thinking?"

It might be the hairstyle or clothing you wore when the photo was taken.  You can excuse yourself by remembering that they were en vogue at the time the photo was taken. Still, you wonder how you or anyone else dressed or looked that way.  

That's how I see most photos of myself.  Similarly, I look at pictures of some of my old bikes, and those my riding buddies and other cyclists rode, and wonder what possessed us to ride some of the stuff we rode. 

There are those scary '80's neon fade paint jobs.  And Benotto handlebar tape:  Available in colors to go or clash with those fade paint jobs!  But the first utterly pointless bike fade I can recall is "drillium."  Weight weenies of the '70's and early '80's drilled and slotted every part of every bicycle on which such things were even remotely possible--and even a few that nobody ever thought to drill.  As an example, holes were drilled in the toe clips of the bicycle Eddy Mercx rode to the hour record in Mexico City in 1972.

But I don't think even he went to this extreme:

Someone is selling it on eBay. Is it a seatpost with holes in it?  Or is it seatpost material formed around the holes?

After A Storm

It's hard to believe that less than 24 hours earlier, a storm that spawned tornadoes battered this stretch of shoreline at Point Lookout:

To my knowledge, a twister didn't blow through here.  However, funnels touched down in Breezy Point, near Rockaway Beach, and the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.  

Miraculously, I encountered scarcely a puddle on my ride to Point Lookout--in spite of all the rain every part of the Tri-State Area had yesterday! That made life easy for me and Arielle:

Bikes And Guns

I've never been too keen on guns.  Now, I'm not one of those people who thinks that getting a gun can turn someone into a mass murderer or serial killer.  (It seems that about 95 percent of the people I've met in the academic world believe something like that.) Two of my uncles were hunters; I simply never had any desire to join them.  And, although I had firearms training in my youth, I have  never had any inclination to own or use a firearm.

Most of the cyclists I know aren't gun enthusiasts, either.  I've known one cyclist who shot for sport, but only at inanimate targets on designated shooting ranges.  Other than that former riding buddy (a woman, actually!), the worlds of bicycles and guns have never, in any way, intersected for me.

What I just wrote would astonish or confound a cyclist of the 1890's.  Then, not only was it common for cyclists to carry "pieces" with them; it was more or less de rigeur.  And, Sears and Roebuck as well as other retailers offered revolvers, pistols and rifles designed especially for cyclists!

What's more, a few companies, such as Iver-Johnson and, yes, Smith and Wesson (!) actually made both guns and bikes.  The cities in which most firearms were made, such as Worcester, Springfield and Fitchburg in Massachusetts; Hartford, CT and Paterson, NJ, were also centers of the bicycle industry.l  Similarly, Birmingham and St. Etienne  also were the capitals of bike- and gun- making in England and France, respectively.  (They were also the centers of their nations' steel industries.)

As best as I can tell, guns made for cyclists differed from others in that they had shorter barrels so that they could fit into jacket or vest pockets.  Also, firearms for cyclists had mechanisms that prevented them from firing accidentally.   It would be an especially important feature, I think, for those who mounted "penny farthings" or high-wheelers, as riders tended to fall off them more often than those who pedaled "safety" bicycles.

The connection between firearms and bicycles extends, not surprisingly, to bicycle components.   Machine guns first became part of warfare during World War I.  A French soldier would study their mechanisms and use them as the basis for what remains, to this date, one of the greatest innovations in cycling:  Le Cyclo derailleur, which Albert Raimond designed and began to manufacture in 1923.  It is said to be the first reliable and practical derailleur made, and was seen on tandems in England into the 1970's.  Raimond would move to England and, with Louis Camillis, founded the British Cyclo gear company.  Their freewheels and other parts (including the derailleur, which became the Cyclo Standard) owed much in their designs and manufacturing techniques to the armaments used during the so-called Great War.

Cyclo Standard derailleur, 1930's.  From Disraeligears.

Today, few people make any connection between bicycles and firearms or warfare.  But, for better or worse, the development of the bicycle and that of firearms were once inseparable.  I wonder how our bikes today would ride, shift and brake had they not been such a relationship between wheels and revolvers.  Would frames have brazed-on brackets for carrying short rifles?  Hmm...

What To Do With A Rescued Frame

About a week ago, I mentioned that I "rescued" a rather nice old frame.

Turns out, I have most of the parts I'd need to build it.  So now the question is:  Into what kind of a bike should I build it?

As best as I can tell, this frame is a 1983 Trek 560.  That year, it was sold as a complete bike with SunTour Blue Line derailleurs along with a mixture of other Japanese components, most of which were reliable if not fancy.  However, in that component mix was a Helicomatic freewheel.  It was a good idea, and, had it been better-executed,  we might be riding it, or other hubs based on its design, instead of Campangnolo- and Shimano-style cassette hubs.

The frame itself was made from Reynolds 501 tubing.  Apparently, Reynolds made it for only a few years during the 1980's.  It's butted, but heavier than 531, 631 or 853.  Also, it differs from those higher-quality Reynolds tube sets in that it has a seam.   It's actually much like the tubing used to make the Bridgestone RB-2 I rode briefly, until it was stolen.  

A number of entry-level racing bikes (or relaxed road bikes) were constructed of 501 during the mid-1980's.  In addition to Trek, Peugeot, Gitane and a few other European bike manufacturers made bikes from this tubing.

The paint on this Trek is in pretty rough shape.  It's better on the seat tube because there had been a "panel" decal there, which was removed.   I suppose I could paint it and build a pretty bike from it.  But I'm thinking of turning the bike into a "beater" or winter bike.  If I do that, I will probably use a single speed (perhaps a "flip-flop" hub) on the rear and a single chainring.  And I have a scratched-up pair of Velo Orange Porteur bars (which have become my favorite upright bar).  

If I turn it into a "beater" or winter bike, the parts are going to be functional but not fancy.  On the other hand, if I take more care and make it prettier, I might end up selling it.  Whatever I do, this is going to be an interesting project, I think.