The Wheels Of Time

By now, you're most likely familiar with Marcel Duchamp's "Bicycle Wheel."

Keep in mind that it dates back at least half a century.

If he were to assemble a similar kind of work today, would it look something like this?:

 

Among The Skyscrapers

Riding along the Hudson Greenway, I saw something from the corner of my eye.  No, it wasn't a creature in the river. As a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship ploughed through the choppy water, I spotted this equally-formidable vehicle across West Street:

Of course, I just had to take a look.  The handlebars on that bike came almost to my neck.  As it was locked to a railing, and its owner nowhere in sight, I could only wonder how one mounted, much less rode, it.

Coloring My World

We're often advised to "stop and smell the roses."

Well, I stopped for flowers of some sort, but they weren't exactly roses.  I didn't mind:  They were flowers I'd never seen before.

I've seen other plants with buds that were bigger than those flowers.  Still, I assure you that they are indeed flowers, petals and all.

My cell phone camera didn't quite capture what I saw:  a kind of pointillist scrim of purple in the garden of St. Luke in the Fields.  I have no idea of what they're called, but whatever their name, they made me happier today.

The Invasion Of The Parking Snatchers

I don't read the Washington Times very often.  On the few occasions in which I've done so, it seemed like the New York Post transplanted to the banks of the Potomac.

I've spent enough time in organizations and involved in movements to know that sometimes their most ardent supporters can be their worst enemies.  I've seen too many single-minded activists and pure-and-simple zealots alienate people who could have just as easily been their allies.  

It's almost surreal to see both what I described in the previous two paragraphs come together, as it did in a piece published yesterday.

The WT article was entitled "Residential Parking Sacrificed to Bicycle Lanes: Bike 'Wars'?".  Those of us who live in communities with bike lanes and share programs have heard or read some variation on it by now:  It's like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with those alien cyclists and their strange vehicles "taking over" residential and business areas and wresting parking spaces from innocent, bewildered home and business owners.

I almost didn't read the WT article.  I'm glad for whatever influenced me to venture beyond the title and through the first three-quarters or so of the article.  Up to that point, I could have substituted the name of any number of New York City neighborhoods for Alexandria and the story would have been, essentially,the same as the ones we see in the Post (New York, not Washington).

I knew something was up, though, when after quoting someone who whined that cyclists "take over," the author of the article wrote, "Another common argument against cyclists and bicycle commuters is that they make up less than two percent of the American population."

Now, I know we're powerful and persistent (and, I daresay, smart), but I don't recall many examples of two percent of the population taking over the other 98 percent.  I also don't recall any group that's insignificant enough to dismiss yet powerful enough to "take over".  

Oh, but it gets even better.  A few sentences later, the author tells is that, on a given day, the number of cyclists who use a certain street exceeds the number of drivers who park in the spaces that would be eliminated for a planned bike lane.  In other words, those spaces are empty more than they're not.  And, as one study pointed out, the majority of the vehicles in those spaces are those of visitors, or they're service vehicles.

Hmm... Maybe if the anti-bike folks continue to make such fallacious arguments, we won't need to be so ardent or strident.  

That said, as I've mentioned in other posts, I'm not 100 percent for more bike lanes. I'm not against them; I just don't think they alone (or in conjunction with bike-share program) will make a community friendlier or safer for cyclists.  I still think it's far more important to have drivers--whether of personal vehicles, city buses or long-haul trucks--who also ride bikes, even if only on occasion. Especially such drivers who are also planners and policy-makers.

As for the WT article I mentioned:  I never would let my students get away with the lapses in logic I found in it.
 

It Made Our Bikes Possible

We have all had our life-changing moments, for better and worse: the first kiss, finding out that a hero or role model was merely mortal, tasting an unfamiliar food and liking (or disliking) it more than we expected, or doubting something that had always been believed or assumed.

I'm not going to tell you that I've had such a life-changing moment today, or within the past week or month.  But I got to thinking about those revelations or epiphanies or whatever you want to call them in our cycling lives.

Some of us experience such a moment upon riding a bike with dropped bars or a hard leather saddle and discovering it is actually comfortable--or, at least, not as uncomfortable as we expected.  Or it can come when we try a new genre of riding or type of bike:  For example, I never expected to fall in love with fixed-gear riding.  Conversely, some of us might learn that we do not have the time, resources or talent to become the racers we hoped to be--or that age or other changes in our bodies might mandate changes in the way we ride.

And then there are the seemingly-smaller, but nonetheless influential experiences that cause us to see some aspect of our cycling in a different way.

If you came of age during the 1970's (as a cyclist, anyway), one such experience could have come after you'd spent some time riding a typical bike from that era, which came equipped with Huret or Simplex derailleur--or the Campagnolo Valentino or Gran Turismo. Perhaps the derailleur broke, wore out or rusted solid (a common occurrence with Huret derailleurs in rainy climates).  Or you got to ride a friend's bike, or test-ride one in a shop.

Your friend's bike, or the one you test-rode, might have been equipped with the same derailleur your shop mechanic installed (or recommended, if you did your own work) when your Simplex, Huret or Campy died.  That derailleur was the Sun Tour GT--or, later, the VGT.

Sun Tour V-T Luxe Derailleur, ca. 1974.  From Disraeli Gears

To this day, I don't think I've ever ridden any other bike part that seemed so far superior to its counterparts.  Some people have described feeling that way about using an Apple computer after years of working on machines equipped with Microsoft.  Since I haven't used Apple, I can't vouch for its superiority.  However, I can assure you that the difference between Sun Tour derailleurs and anything else made during the 1970's was at least as great.

From what I understand, Apple is influencing changes in the design of other computers and electronic devices and that, in the near future, I might be using something with their imprint whether or not it's my intention.  

In a similar fashion, even though SunTour went out of business around 1995 (though its name is still licensed for bike parts marketed in Europe and other parts of the world), nearly all of us are riding a SunTour derailleur, if you will.  If you're riding any derailleur that clicks when you shift it, the mechanism will have a geometry very similar to, if not exactly the same as, a SunTour V-series (V, VT, V-GT, Vx, Vx-GT) from the 1970's.  Yes, even arch-rival Shimano adopted it for all but its least expensive rear derailleurs.  

In fact, Shimano's first SIS series of integrated derailleurs, shifters, cogs and chains came out in 1985--the year after SunTour's 1964 patent on the slant-parallelogram derailleur expired.  Shimano had made earlier, unsuccessful attempts at creating an indexed ("click-shift") derailleur system.  Turns out, they needed Sun Tour's slant parallelogram to make it work.

Ironically, when SunTour made its own indexed system a couple of years later, it didn't work as well as Shimano's.  The same was true of Campagnolo's first attempt at such a system:  the Synchro, which some of us called the "Stinkro".  SunTour and Campy both made the same mistake:  They simply retro-fitted an indexed ring to shifters they already made and didn't integrate it with the other parts.   

Campagnolo survived its mistake only because its more traditional Record (the Nuovo, Super and C- series) were still widely used in elite pelotons such as those of le Tour, il Giro and la Vuelta.  As good as SunTour's earlier equipment was, it was still almost unknown in those circles and, costing much less than Campy's stuff, didn't have snob appeal.  

People who started riding during the mid-90's or later have probably never heard of SunTour. But that once-proud derailleur maker made the bikes most of them ride possible--and changed our cycling world.