They Should've Been Riding Bikes

Yesterday I wrote about the Long Island Motor Parkway, which, in its history, has been one of America's first race courses and one of its first automotive expressways--and would become of the last bike lanes to open in New York for nearly half a century.  Now it's a segment of what is supposed to become the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway.

So, perhaps, there was some weird sort of synchronicity, or whatever you want to call it, at work when I found this image on one of my favorite non-bike blogs, Old Picture of the Day:

Riding An Early Race Course

Believe it or not, this was once an automobile race course.

It was also one of America's first expressways.  At least, it was one of the first roads to be designed so that drivers wouldn't have to stop for traffic lights, railroad crossings or many of the other things they'd have to contend with on conventional roadways.

Of course, when it was serving the functions I described, it didn't have all of the trees and other vegetation growing on its sides.  That was allowed after the road became a bike/pedestrian path.

Yes, the path in the photo was once part of the Long Island Motor Parkway, which I mentioned in an earlier post.  Now it's a segment of the planned Brooklyn-Queens Greenway.

I don't know whether storm damage has been cleared, or whether there wasn't much of it on the path.  Running through the middle of Queens, it's several miles from either the north or south shores and, I would assume, out of the path of a storm surge.

Here the former Parkway takes a turn underneath the expressway--the Northern State Parkway--that rendered it obsolete for automotive use.

When it carried automobile traffic, the Parkway had  several "toll lodges". (Don't you just love that term?)  One of them now serves as a Parks Department facility in Cunningham Park:

Tosca was clearly enjoying the ride, as I was:

The Current State Of My Bicycle Commuting

From Bike Commuters

This post is a response to a comment Kiyomi made on "The States of Bicycle Commuting."

About ten years ago, I would have turned my nose up at any bike with upright bars.  In fact, about the only kind of bike I'd ride without dropped bars was a mountain bike: I was a fairly active off-road rider and sometimes commuted on off-road bikes.  

I also wouldn't have been caught dead on a bike with an internally geared or coaster brake hub, a steel frame that wasn't chrome-moly (i.e., Tange, Ishiwata or Columbus) or maganese-moly (Reynolds or Vitus) tubing.  And I certainly would not have tainted any of my bikes with--gasp!--a kickstand.

Now, the latter accessory simply couldn't have fit on some of the racing bikes I've had.  But even on the bikes I've had with more relaxed geometry (my off-road, touring and cyclo-cross bikes), there would have been a practical reason not to have a kickstand:  It might not have been a good idea to clamp one onto such bikes, which tend to have thinner tubing than more utilitarian machines.

But, over the past decade or so, my life changed in a few ways.  Some of them had to do, of course, with my gender transition.  When I started, I wanted a women's or mixte bike because, well, they were "women's" bikes.  (At no point, though, did I consider giving up my diamond-framed bikes.) Also, I wanted to continue riding to work. In the old days, I used to ride in bike shorts or tights and jerseys/jackets because I didn't want to ride in anything else.  Sometimes I would ride in a pair of khaki or corduroy trousers, depending on the weather, and a button-down shirt to which I could add a tie, vest or jacket (I used to keep those things at work) as needed. I also used to keep a pair of shoes, in case I was too lazy to carry, or forgot, a pair into which I could change from my bike shoes.  

When I started living and working as female, though, I found that I had to be better-dressed than I was when I worked as a male.  (Truthfully, I also wanted to dress better:  In those days, I was still experimenting with different looks).  That meant more time to get dressed.  Also, I'd begun to wear make-up, and I was starting to take more care of my hair.  So, making myself "presentable" for work was taking me at least twice as long as it did when I was working as Nick.

Also, in those days, I would sometimes shower and change in the men's locker room before starting work. Of course, once I started my transition, that was not an option.  I wouldn't have wanted to do that, anyway--I never liked being naked (and vulnerable) in a men's environment.  

As buoyant as I felt when I started my transition, I still wasn't quite ready to change in a women's locker room. I take that back:  If anything, I wanted to shower and get dressed among other women.  But I hadn't yet had my surgery--it would be several years away--and I wasn't ready to deal with the possible repercussions of being met by campus security officers if someone who objected to my being there called them.  

So, I wanted to ride in more or less the same clothes in which I worked.  I was willing to bring a change of shoes, and maybe an accessory or two as well as a couple of cosmetic items. But I didn't want to go through the intricacies of having to, essentially, make myself over once I got to work.

It was around that time that women's and mixte frames started to appeal to me. Some of the commuters I rode in days past were equipped with fenders, usually because I added them.  So fenders were nothing new to me; however, they had more appeal to me when I stared to ride in skirts or even women's pants (which, I found, were more delicate and soiled more easily than men's pants).  I also started to appreciate chainguards.


I also rode a couple of bikes with internally-geared hubs.  Even though I had a three-speed in my pre-adolescent years, I couldn't quite cotton to one--or to a five- or seven-speed internally geared hub. They felt clumsy and inefficient compared to hubs with cassettes, freewheels or fixed cogs.  Plus, at least one never quite shifted right, in spite of the efforts of three mechanics whose work I've always trusted.  

So now I'm commuting on Vera, a Mercian mixte with a lively, pleasant ride. Just for the heck of it, I've ridden her in shorts and enjoyed it, but I can wear just about anything short of a wedding gown (which I don't plan on wearing) and not have to worry about ruining my clothes or being constricted.  

I had been riding her with an upright bar that's a bit like a flipped-over North Road bar. But over the past few months, I've been riding her with a Velo Orange Porteur bar, on which I'm not quite as bent over as I am with my dropped bars, but not quite as upright as on, say, a Raleigh three-speed.  

If you're used to riding lightweight bikes with dropped bars, or even mountain bikes with flat bars, the best way to get a commuter, I think, is to find a bike that has a geometry and ride that's at least somewhat like a bike you currently ride and to change the handlebars and seat, unless the geometry of the bike is such that it will not ride well with those changes.  

Another Forerunner To A Shimano "Innovation"

For today's post, I'm going to engage in a bit of bike geekery, as I did in yesterday's post.  Fear not:  This will not be a regular feature of Midlife Cycling.  At least, I don't intend it to be.

As I did in yesterday's post, I'm going to write about a long-forgotten component that featured a design used in later, more successful (at least commercially) bike parts.

From the 1920's until the 1970's, many British bikes featured Williams cranks, chanrings and bottom brackets.  That is not surprising when you consider that those parts were, like the bikes, made in England.  

As Steve Griffiths notes in "Classic Lightweights," Williams has been unfairly judged on the basis of its lowest-quality--and, unfortunately, most commonly-used--model, the C34.  It was a cottered steel crankset, and the arms (or spider) onto which the chainrings mounted was swaged (forced).  Willliams also make much nicer models,including some of those thin,elegant cranks you see on British bikes from the 1960's and earlier.  

But their best crankset--and the only cotterless crankset made in any significant quantity in England--was the AB 77. I have seen one of them in my entire life: on a Claud Butler that came into the first shop in which I worked.  

The AB77 was actually quite nice:  the quality of the materials, machining and finish were high.  It had the same chainring design as the TA Cyclotouriste, Stronglight 49D and the Nervar crank that aped them.  That meant the AB77, like those other cranks, could be set up as a road double with a 42 tooth small chainring  or as a triple with a 26-tooth inner ring.  

But the most interesting part of the AB77 was its bottom bracket.  Presaging a trend by two decades, its axle had a splined rather than square end.  In other words, it was a proto-Octalink or ISIS bottom bracket.  

Unfortunately, that bottom bracket was its fatal flaw.  During the period when the AB77 was produced (1962-mid 1970's), only one other crank had such a design.  It was made by Gnutti in Italy and its splines were of a different pattern from Williams', so the two could not be interchanged.  That was especially unfortunate for Williams, because the bottom bracket, which was made by T.D.C. (once a major manufacturer or headsets and freewheels), didn't last very long. 

When Shimano decided to resurrect this long-forgotten idea during the 1990's, it made the splines broader, which was supposed to increase the stiffness as well as the lifespan of the bottom bracket.  However, they, like their TDC/Williams predecessor, wore out quickly.  The problem with the Shimano splined brackets--and the similar, though not interchangeable, ISIS-pattern bottom brackets made by other companies--had narrower axles and smaller bearings than their square-ended counterparts.  Interestingly, Shimano's Octalink and other companies' ISIS bottom brackets had an even shorter run--not much more than half a decade--than the ones from TDC/Williams.  

A few years after Williams ceased production of the AB77, they were taken over by Nicklin,one of their former competitors, which offered only the C34 and a couple of other low-priced models that were fitted to mass-market bikes from Raleigh, Dawes and other manufacturers.  As production of such bikes ended, so did most of the British cycle-component industry, including Nicklin/Williams.  

Pivotal Brakes

Sometimes, when I surf the web, I am swept into a stream of flotsam from bikes past.

Here is an example of what I mean:

Photo by berangberang

If you ride road bikes, something about this brake may seem familiar to you.  And well it should.

It was made by Altenberger in the German Federal Republic (West Germany to us Americans) during the 1970's.  I started working in bike shops during that time, and some bikes--mainly lower-priced ones with upright handlebars--came with that brake.

It's the ancestor of brakes found on nearly every road bike built since the mid-1990's.  Why?  Take a look at those bolts with the red nylon washers.  They make it a dual-pivot brake.  While they may not have been the original of the genre, they were the first dual-pivots to appear on any significant numbers of bikes.

They were supposed to provide the simplicity and light weight of sidepulls but the "symmetry" and modulation of centerpulls.  Unfortunately, Altenberger's brake didn't exhibit any of those qualities.  I think that it had to do with the fact that the arm with the cable anchor bolt usually overlapped the pivot on the other arm, as you see in the photo.  That eliminated whatever "symmetry" the brake may have been designed to have, and made for very uneven braking.

Perhaps even more to the point, the brake was not of very good quality.  The metal used in the arms was pretty flexy. (The fact that the arms were long didn't help matters.)  The rather flimsy spring would lose its springiness fairly quickly, which further diminished the brake's power and modulation.

After Altenberger stopped making this brake (or went out of business altogether:  I don't recall seeing very many of the company's brakes after the early '80's or so), Weinmann produced a similar model, which they called the "Synchron".  Its quality and aesthetics were better than those of the Altenberger, but, like its predecessor, the Synchron never synchronized very well and got worse over time.

So, when Shimano came out with their own version of the dual-pivot brakes, I cringed.  Younger cyclists didn't have memories of the earlier dual-pivot brakes, so they were enthusiastic about this new "innovation".  I refrained from them for a few years until someone with whom I shared, at that time, a similar riding style and whose ideas I respected convinced me to try a pair of the Shimano 600/Ultegra dual-pivots.  Although I was, at first, put off by their gray epoxy finish as I was by the fact they were dual-pivots, I became a convert.  Shimano figured out how to actually make the arms work in harmony and used better quality materials than the ones found in the Altenberger or Synchron.  Even the lower-priced Tektros, not to mention the higher-end Mavic and Campagnolo Record and Chorus 

dual-pivot brakes, are worlds better than those early attempts to combine the advantages and eliminate the weaknesses of center- and side-pull brakes found on ten-speeds of the 1970's and earlier.