What Will Be The Latest Diet Craze For Bike Parts?

It looks like we're about due for a wave of insane measures to save weight on bike parts.  Of course, some might argue that we are in one.  In any event, it seems that such a cycle comes every other decade. 

In my cycling life, I have witnessed two such bouts of insanity. The first came during the '70's.  Those of you who weren't into cycling (or weren't around) then probably remember other ridiculous fads like disco, droopy mustaches, pastel-colored suits and mood rings.  Well, in cycling, there was something almost as absurd:  an attempt to turn seemingly every bicycle part into a wedge of Emmentaler (or, for us Americans, a piece of Swiss cheese).

  
 Ah, yes, drillium.  I remember it well.  Along with it came slotted brake and shift levers.  Ironically, Campagnolo's cut-out Super Record brake levers actually weighed a few grams more than their smooth-surfaced Record levers.  A company rep said that Campy made the material thicker so to make the levers safe for slotting.

Along with grunge rock and "indie" everything (To me "indie" meant, in the '90's. more or less what "gourmet", when used as an adjective, meant in the '80's:  "pretentious".), the final decade of the 20th Century took slotting one step further.  It seemed that every kid who had an Erector Set as a kid came of age during that decade and either made bike parts or opened a "high concept" shop that sold them:

What will this decade's insane attempt to save a gram bring us?  I would argue that it already gave us one such trend:  almost everything made of carbon fiber.  Now, I can understand why racers would want a carbon fiber frame, and perhaps even a set of wheels--as long as his or her sponsor is paying for them.  But a carbon fiber seat post rack?  Any kind of rack made of that material?  The day we see a carbon fiber GPS system for bikes will be the day when, as Pere Teilhard de Chardin said about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, technology has triumphed over reason.

Regimented

As you may know, my bicycles were made in a part of England that was part of the ancient kingdom of Mercia.  Some people and things from that region--like my bikes--are still called Mercians.  

So, not surprisingly, there's a Mercian Regiment of the British Army:

I always find it kind of amusing when military and paramilitary organizations make "ladies'" pendants, brooches or other accessories.  I think I gave my mother such a pin on some occasion from Scouts or the Army, I forget which.  Maybe she still has it.  

Anyway, learning about that regiment, for me, begged the obvious question:  What bicycles do they ride?

A Transgendered Bicycle?

Mixte frames are often referred to as "unisex".  Although the top tube, which is horizontal on a diamond or "men's" frame, slopes downward (and is sometimes split into smaller twin parallel tubes), it doesn't tilt as far downward as the top tube of a traditional "women's" bike.  Also, the top tubes of  traditional women's bikes are often curved near the point where they meet the seat tube.  

Whatever the designations and nomenclature,  the truth is that, at least here in the US, female cyclists are much more likely than males to ride mixtes.  And one rarely, if ever, sees a male cyclist of any age on a traditional female bike.

Some comedian--I forget who--once joked about getting hand-me-downs, and his older siblings were all girls.  I wonder how many boys have gotten bikes their older sisters rode before them.  And, of course, some girls received bikes their older brothers rode.  Believe it or not, one girl I knew was gifted with her older brother's Columbia diamond-frame (a.k.a. "men's") after its top tube was removed to turn it into a "girl's" bike!

But I never heard of anyone turning a female bike into a male one--until I saw this:

From Bicycle Shaped Objects

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 As a result of "surgery" performed on it, this vintage Schwinn cruiser no longer has a down tube.

I have to admit:  I love the style.  But I'm not so sure I'd want to ride it!
 

Pour la Victoire!

Views After My Commute

After I rode home from work, Vera and I were ready for a little more action and some visual stimulation.

So we climbed the stairs to the walkway/bike lane of the RFK/Triborough Bridge.  We could not have had a better view of Upper Astoria clothed in fall colors:

It's a New York view most people never see.  But, when I turned around, I encountered the sort of vista almost everyone expects late on a mid-autumn afternoon in the Big Apple:

Even the Hell Gate railroad trestle took on the hues of foliage reflected in the late-day sun:

Vera was being modest about helping to make this mini-revelry possible:

 

November Discs

Those of us who are writers or other creative artists have our own ways of getting started.  One obvious way for a writer is, of course, reading.  But many of us also follow visual cues such--or, as you might expect, take walks or bike rides.

When I first started writing poetry, I would sometimes begin my work with word associations.  For example, if I looked at the sky, I might write that word, then "flight", "wind", "skip", "bliss" or other words, and write a couple of lines using those words.

These days, I sometimes play a version of that game, if you will, on Google or some other search engine.  I might type in a word or phrase and see what comes up.

I did that a moment ago.  I typed in "bicycle november" and came up with a bunch of things, including a shop called November Bicycles.

Of course, I checked them out.  They're very much a racing-oriented shop, so I may not ever buy anything from them.  However, I like its owners' philosophy--or, at least, what I gleaned of it from the blog that's part of their site.

For one thing, they feel that racing bikes--and, especially wheels--cost too much.  So, as they explain, they market their own products and bypass many of the distribution channels through which other retailers obtain the merchandise they sell.

And they clearly have their own opinions about riding and equipment.  At least those opinions seem to be based on experience and common sense--and, unlike at least one other would be philosopher-bicycle retailer, they're  not evangelizing or selling a lifestyle.

Mike and Dave of November Bicycles

One blog post I found particularly interesting was "My Opinion On Disc Brakes."  In it, the author admits that he uses discs on at least one of his bikes.  But he also doesn't relish the prospect of them becoming the de facto industry standard for all bikes.  For one thing, trying to squeeze them into a road bike, which has narrower frame spacing than a mountain or cyclo-cross bike, can be problematic, especially if the bike has an 11-cog rear cassette.  The only way it seems possible to make it work is to use a brake with a smaller rotor, which negates most of the advantage a disc is supposed to have over caliper brakes.

About that advantage, he's skeptical, if not doubtful.  He also mentions problems in keeping them adjusted:  On some models, on some bikes,it's all but impossible to keep the pads mounted close enough to the rotor so that braking response is quick and powerful, without the pad occasionally rubbing on the rotor as you ride.  So you choose between response, power and modulation or being able to ride at more than a snail's pace.

What I found interesting is that the arguments he makes against disc brakes--except for the difficulty of using them with 11 (or even 10) cogs are ones I and any number of other mechanics could have made thirty years ago.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, "new" ideas in bike design (or almost any other area, for that matter) almost always are reiterations of things that had been done before.  For example, German manufacturer Altenberger made dual-pivot sidepull caliper brakes during the 1960's and '70's.  A few bikes were equipped with them; as one mechanic lamented, "They have the worst features of center pulls and side pulls, and none of the good features."  About twenty years ago, Shimano resurrected the dual-pivot concept and eliminated most of the problems encountered on the Altenbergers.

So it was with disc brakes.  As I recall, a Japanese company, a French company and Phil Wood made them.  For the latter, it was probably the only faulty product he ever made:  They were recalled.  But they, and the others, had the same problems with adjustability and issues with rotor size the author of November Bicycles mentions.  

Back in my day, the only bicycles that used discs were tandems.  Because tandeming has always been one of the smaller niches of the bicycling world, ideas, innovations and products developed for them rarely find their way onto other kinds of bikes.  That, and the problems I mentioned, are the reasons why disc brakes all but disappeared by the mid-1980's.

As I Ride, The Season Turns

I must be really photosensitive or something.  I seem to sense the movements of the seasons, the mood of a moment and much else through changes in the light that surrounds them.

We are deep into the middle of autumn now. Today, during my ride to Point Lookout, I could feel a turn within the season as the sky became a prism that refracted the hues of the earth into glacial shades.

About 15 km (10 mi) into my 105 km (65 mile) ride, I encountered this just before I entered the Addobo Bridge:

Even the evergreens and meadow grasses next to Jamaica Bay seem to be saying that summer is long, long past, and there is no going back, not for a long time.  However, by the time I got to Point Lookout, the season had indeed turned:

If this doesn't foretell the coming of winter, I don't know what does.

Everything New Is Old Again

Early in this blog's history, I documented using, at the suggestion of my gynecologist, Terry "donut" saddles.  I found that I didn't like them:  They reminded me of the Avocet saddles with the "groove" in the middle, which I tried not long after they came out.  Both saddles had the same effect:  They created pressure points, and discomfort, around my genitals--even though my genitals were not the same when I rode the Terry as they were when I rode the Avocet.

After the Terry experiment, I went back to Brooks saddles and have had no problems.  That may have something to with my post-surgery genitals healing and developing:  Although the area around them is more tender than it was in my days as a male, it's not quite as delicate as it was in the days just after my surgery.

Brooks has been making stretched leather saddles for nearly a century and a half.  Over the past decade or so, other companies have begun to make similar saddles.  At least even the most casual cyclist knows that those companies are appropriating and,in some cases, tweaking an old technology.  

The same was not true when Avocet first came out with its "grooved" or "double hump" saddles in 1977 or when Terry came out with its "donut" seats in 1994--or, for that matter, when AnAtomica started cutting out the middle sections of Brooks saddles in 2005 (or when Brooks began to sell its "Imperial" saddles in 2008. Every one of those ideas had been tried before.  Those companies marketed those saddles--and the public believed they were--innovations. 

Take a look at this Garford ladies' padded saddle from 1895:

Or this one, introduced five years earlier:

 


Yes, that is the original "Imperial" saddle, in the Brooks 1890 catalogue.