Never Again. Unless....

Every time I swear I won't do something ever again...

Someone gives me a plate of nachos or chocolate chip cookies.  Or a ridiculously cute kittie needs a home.  Or I meet someone and start dating.  Or I teach.

All of those things have happened within the last year-plus.  But I'm not going to write about them now. Instead, I'm going to tell you about another "never again" pledge broken.


Yes, I've taken on another bike project.  This Trek 720 is a hybrid, as best as I can tell, from the early or mid-90s. It's heavy, at least compared to the bikes I have.  And while it's made of chrome-moly tubing--probably straight-gauge--it's has plain welds at the joints:  nothing fancy, but seemingly intact.

(During the early and mid-1980's, Trek made a loaded-touring bike that was also called the 720.  It was a lugged frame made from Reynolds 531 tubing and had multiple braze-ons for racks and water bottles--and for center-pull brakes.  About the only nicer touring bikes at that time were made by Mercian, Jack Taylor and Alex Singer.  Trek discontinued the touring 720 in the late '80's and introduced the 720 hybrid in 1990.)

I got a deal I couldn't refuse. I'm partly Sicilian.  I'm supposed to say stuff like that.  Really, I got it for nothing.  On it, I installed a stem and rear derailleur I've had for ages.  And a seat post I've had lying around, in 26.6 mm diameter, seems to fit.

I'm going to put it together, as I find parts.  Then I'll decide whether to use it as a "combat" or "feed to the sharks" bike, or to sell it or whatever.  Then I'll never, ever take on another restoration or rebuilding project, ever again.  Really.

 

Black Friday Bike

I did the Black Friday store circuit twice--once on my bike.  Neither time was worth the effort.  I guess I didn't go early enough in the morning or shop for the right stuff.

It seems that bikes and books don't figure much into BF sales.  A few online retailers had sales on one thing or another for today.  I guess I've become jaded: I didn't bother to check them out.  Bricks-and-mortar bike shops and book stores (the independent ones, anyway) don't seem to participate in the madness. Maybe that's one reason why I love them.

I'll admit that, just for fun, I typed "Black Friday bicycles" into a search window.  The first few entries featured Bike Friday machines.  I've met a few owners; all of them raved about their bikes.  If I were shopping for a high-end foldable bike, I might consider them--and, of course, Brompton.

My search also yielded, among other things, this:

From The Top Christmas Gadgets Gift Guide

It's an Exerpeutic Folding Magnetic Upright Bike.  Doesn't it just sound like something someone would buy on Black Friday?

A Thanksgiving Parade

In last year's Thanksgiving post, I showed some costumed cyclists in the Macy's parade.

It seems that in Columbia, Missori, there's another kind of bicycle parade on Thanksgiving Day.  However, it seems that procession stands still.
 
Here's one of the "floats":

And another:

That one was "fixed".  So was this one:

And then there are the couples--in this case, Peugeot mixtes:

Finally, every parade has at least one float that's garish, or at least visually strange:


P.S.  If you want another vision of cycling and Thansgiving, read my Thanksgiving Eve post from 2011.


" 

Don't Cross Here

We've had the strangest weather over the past couple of days.  Last night, a storm blew into this area.  It was supposed to bury everything between Pittsburgh and Montreal in snow; however, we experienced a deluge in New York, along with gale-force winds.  Through it all, the temperature actually rose overnight, from the mid-30s to around 60F (2 to 15 C).  Then, this afternoon, the temperature dropped again.

Somewhere in all of that I sneaked in a few of miles on Tosca. After descending the ramp from the Queens spur of the RFK Bridge, I wended my way along the path that rims the East River until I reached the Bronx Kill.  No, it's not a dance or crime; it's a strait that separates the borough for which it's named from the Island.  ("Kill" comes from "kille", a Dutch word for "creek".)  Underneath the ramp to the Bronx spur of the RFK, I espied this:

How I missed it in all of the years I've been riding there is beyond me.  As we say in the old country, "What's wrong with this picture?"

Perhaps I need to get out more, but I don't recall seeing, anywhere else, a railroad crossing sign on the bank of a creek, river or stream.  Who are they trying to keep off the tracks?  The Randall's Island Salamander?

To be fair, when the tide recedes (The East River is actually an estuary of the ocean.), the water level in Bronx Kill drops so much that you can walk across the abandoned car and body parts on the bottom.  Still, I don't know why anyone would try to cross the tracks--or jump on a train--from there.

 

Social Bike Share

Sometimes old-time New Yorkers will refer to the "BMT", "IRT" and "IND".  I still do, sometimes.

They were (and, for some purposes, still are) the three branches of the New York City subway system.  The lines designated by numbers constitute the IRT, while those marked by letters A through H are part of the IND and the remaining letters mark BMT routes.

These divisions came about because of the way in which the system developed.  The first line--which followed the route of today's #1 train from 137th Street to Times Square, cut across Manhattan under 42nd Street (along the path of the current Times Square Shuttle) and continued along the path of today's #4 and 5 trains to the Battery--was built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, financed by J.P. Morgan.  After other IRT lines were built, another financier (and philanthropist), Jacob Schiff, stepped into the fray and built new lines that became part of his Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit network.  

Later still,  the city began another network--called, ironically enough, the Independent system--to serve areas the IRT and BMT hadn't reached.  Finally, the city took over those two companies and unified the system.

I give you this brief history of the subway system because a similar system may be unfolding with the city's bike share program. Currently, it's run by Citibank (hence the name Citibike).  Currently, it serves a small (geographically) part of the city:  Manhattan south of 59th Street and the Brooklyn neighborhoods closest to that part of Manhattan.  While they are the most densely populated parts of the city, and the areas most visited by tourists and business people, they are more than a 45-minute ride (the current Citibike limit) from most other parts of the city.  Moreover, some parts of Queens like Astoria (where I live) are also commonly visited and full of cyclist--and are even closer than any part of Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Now it looks like another company wants to bring a bikeshare program to parts of the city that don't have it.  Social Bicycle is a three-year-old startup begun by a former city Department of Transportation official. It aims to bring bikeshares to other parts of the city, beginning with Harlem.  

Social Bicycle designer Nick Foley with one of his company's machines.  From the New York Daily News.

But Social won't be Citibike with a different color (green, vs. Citibike's blue).  Social designer Nick Foley has designed a "smart bike" which differs from Citibikes. A user punches in a code to unlock the wheels.  Even more important, though, Social Bikes don't require kiosks, the placement of which has angered residents and business owners who believe Citibike is taking away their parking spaces.

Not surprisingly, Citibike--which currently has a monopoly on the city's bike share program--doesn't like Social.  Apart from the simplicity of Social's system, the threat to Citibike is that Social--which already rents thousands of their bikes in other cities-- is ready to bring their bikes to unserved neighborhoods.  Meanwhile, Citibike says that they are not expanding into Queens, or even Harlem, any time soon.

In Autumnal Mists

If you read some of my earlier posts, you might recall that I actually enjoy riding in fog.

That's kind of ironic when you consider one of my rules about riding in the rain:  I won't do it if the precip is falling so densely that I can't see more than two bike lengths ahead of me.  Somehow, though, it's easier (for me, anyway) to navigate--and pedal--through even the densest fogs.  Hey, I've actually ridden through clouds, when ascending and descending mountains in Vermont and the French Alps.  Compared to that, navigating a mist is easy.

Perhaps my enjoyment of riding under such conditions has to do with the structure of my eyes:  After all, I love riding (or walking or just about anything else) in the diffuse light of places like Paris, Copenhagen and Prague, and of overcast days at nearly any seashore.

Perhaps the best thing about such light and mist is the way it brings out autumnal hues:

From Favim

 
What is it about bikes that they are (to my eyes, anyway) best photographed in the fall?

Weird Handlebars

I can honestly say that I've ridden more bikes than most people will ever try.  I've mounted steel, carbon, titanium and aluminum bikes--and, yes, one made of wood.  Most of the bikes I've owned are/were high-quality steel ones; the others were aluminum.  That said, the only material besides steel (preferably Reynolds, but Columbus, Ishiwata, Vitus and Tange are also fine) I'd consider for one of my "good" bikes--let alone a custom build--is titanium.

For all of the bikes I've ridden, I must say I now realize that the range of handlebar styles I've ridden is fairly narrow. I never rode or owned "ape hanger" or "trekker" bars, and I've had only limited experience with aero or "bullhorn" bars.

I've also never ridden bars like the ones Chris Kulczyki posted on his Velo Orange blog the other day:

I love Chris and VO.  In fact, I use several VO products. But, for all of his love for traditional randonneur bikes made by constructeurs, I always suspected he had a secret liking of the bizarre.  After all, he and I are about the same age and can recall when being an adult cyclist--let alone one with the sort of tastes we share, at least to some degree--made us minorities, perhaps even geeks.  

When I use the later term, I don't mean to be derogatory in any way.  I mean simply someone who cares deeply about something that's not considered part of the mainstream.  Being transgendered makes me one almost by definition.  So does my love of poetry and interest in foreign films. So, some would argue, does the fact that I have been part of the academic world.

Anyway, seeing Chris' latest post got me to type "weird handlebars" in Google.  Some of the results are, not surprisingly, interesting and bizarre, even entertaining.

Swerving

I have to admit:  I have never been much of an indoor cyclist.  When I was racing, and when I was working out, I used to have a set of rollers for the winter.  But I've never owned an exercise bike and I've never taken a "spin" class.

"Spin" classes, to me, always seemed to be the bastard children of cycling and gyms.  From what I have seen, those who ride in "spin" classes may be getting great cardio workouts, but never mount bicycles they can ride from one place to another.  They also seem to want a gym that looks more like a cross between a disco and a boutique rather than one like the one in which I used to lift weights. Frankly, that place--located on a Brooklyn corner that hadn't yet gentrified-- was a dungeon, but I didn't mind:  I wasn't there to be seen.  The "spinsters" would not allow themselves to be caught dead in such a place.

The folks who designed Swerve must have understood that when they were designing their new studio.  Co-owner Eric Posner says, in different words, that his new venture is meant for "an individual to come and potentially meet people."  Those who come with other people can "compete together and hang out afterwards."

The funny thing is that although our workouts were solitary, I often found myself "competing together" and hanging out with some of the people who worked out alongside me in what we used to call "the sweatshop".  The difference, I guess, is that most of us didn't go there looking for dates.  (At least, I don't think most did.  I know I didn't.)  And if we had coffee afterward, it was in a real old-school luncheonette (Does anybody use that term anymore) a couple of doors away.

And some of us rode home--sometimes alone, sometimes together.

JFK

Today, I am going to go off-topic.  I believe I have good reason:  This is the 50th anniversary of JFK's assasination.

I was five years old when it happened and have no memory of it.  Perhaps that says something unfavorable about me: I can remember a lot of other things from that time, but I can't even recall having the day off from school or the throngs of grieving people.

Still, I can't help but to wonder how different this country and world might be had he survived and served a second term as President.  He did some things that were misguided and politically-motivated, but I somehow think he had a more ideal, if romantic, view of people, his country and the world.

Perhaps the US military still would have been in Vietnam and we might have been involved in other wars.  After all, the man was a Cold Warrior, as nearly any politician elected to any office above the local or county level was in those days.

Also, he didn't act as quickly on Civil Rights issues as some would have liked.  However, he did lay the groundwork for the laws and policies that his successor, Lyndon Johnson, would sign into law.  And, somehow, I don't think it would have taken prodding from his vice president (as it did, ahem, with a certain President who fashions himself as JFK 2.0) for him to declare his support of same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights.

Whatever else we can (or can't) say about him, we "gotta give him props" for saying, "Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride."

Beating A Tick

Normally, I try not to give Fox News publicity.  I try not to even dignify them by mentioning them at all. However, one of their affiliates in the middle of Pennsylvania actually reported favorably on a cyclist.

Then again, how could they not say anything positive about John Donnally?  In late September, he got on his bike in California and started pedaling to New York City, his hometown.  

 



Some undertake such rides because they can.  Others, like Donnally, ride for a cause.  In his case, he's part of the Tick Born Disease Alliance, and he's riding to raise awareness of Lyme Disease, which afflicts his parents and sister.

With yesterday's stop in Lancaster County, he has about 300 miles of riding to New York. He expects to arrive home on the first of December.