Paint...I Mean, Anodize...It Black

To many bicycle enthusiasts, “classic” components come in a spectrum of colors ranging from silver mist to gleaming chrome.  Some purists—or pedants who fancy themselves as such—believe that all components worth using are polished, preferably to a mirror finish.  Cranksets like the Stronglight 93, 63 and 49, Specialites TA Pro Vis (a.k.a. Cyclotouriste) or Nervar Star are among the preferred components of those with such aesthetic preferences.  So do Maxicar hubs, Huret Jubilee derailleurs and old-style 3TTT bars and stems.  

Stronglight 93 crankset in its natural habitat:  on a Peugeot PX-10.

 They’re all lovely pieces and perfectly valid on modern as well as classic bikes.  And, oh, yes, Campagnolo Gran Sport and Record stuff made until 1985 or so.  They had a more buffed finish but took on a nice sheen that looked great on just about any bike, especially a silver Cinelli.

Huret Jubilee in its natural habitat:  a Rene Herse

 

But not all components made before the lava field of carbon fiber oozed across, and blanketed, the cycling landscape looked like they were chromed or polished so that you could use them for shaving or putting on your makeup.  A couple of years before I started taking rides of more than a few miles—a year or two after the ‘70’s Bike Boom ended—a cult of sorts developed around black anodized parts.  

Original Campagnolo Super Record rear derailleur, circa 1974

It seems to have started when, in the middle of the decade, Campagnolo introduced its Super Record line.  It was identical to the Record line (which included the Nuovo Record rear derailleur) but included titanium bolts and bottom bracket and pedal axles.  And, to distinguish it visually from the Record line, the knuckles of the rear derailleur were anodized black.  So were the pedal cages and chainrings.  

(The hubs and brakes were the same as those in the Record line.  The brake levers had drilled-out handles and, ironically, weighed two grams (!) more than the non-drilled levers.  Apparently, the handles were made of thicker metal to compensate for the drilling.)

Sugino Mighty crankset, circa 1975

Maillard 700 pedals.  Don't you just love rhe red dust caps?

Once Campagnolo introduced its Super Record components, other companies got onto the black-anodized bandwagon.  Stronglight, Shimano, Sugino and other chainrings were available in noir versions.  Lyotard, Maillard, Mikashima (MKS) and Kyokuto (KKT)—the leading pedal makers, along with Campagnolo, at that time—offered black-caged and all-black versions of their products.  And, once 3TTT and Cinelli started selling black handlebars and stems, Phillipe and Pivo of France as well as Nitto and Sakae Ringyo of Japan followed suit.

SunTour Cyclone rear derailleur, circa 1975

SunTour and Shimano, naturally, offered several models of their derailleurs with black knuckles, like Campagnolo, or all-black versions.  I think the SunTour Cyclone silver rear derailleur with black accents is the prettiest shifting mechanism, besides the Huret Jubilee, ever made.  

Shimano Dura Ace hub, circa 1976

And Shimano went as far as to offer all-black versions of its Dura Ace components.  I think their hubs, with bright silver oil hole covers and axle nuts, looked particularly nice.  Their silver crankset with black rings was also nice.

Original Jim Blackburn rack on a Dawes Galaxy:  verrry '70's!

When those black components—and Jim Blackburn racks and water bottle cages—found their way to the market, I—like most novitiate cyclists of the time—had never seen anything like them before.  But a very few longtime riders—like Fred DeLong, the long-serving technical editor of Bicycling! Magazine—had seen an earlier fad for black anodized components in the years before World War II.  DeLong mentioned it in one of his columns.  And he—or some other bicycle writer of the time—mentioned a still-earlier time, around the turn from the 19^th to the 20^th Century, when black parts were all the rage.

The mid-70s mini-craze for black parts lasted a few years.  Then, most component makers quietly dropped them.  About a decade later, black chainrings and, later, other parts, started to appear on mountain bikes.  Road bikes reverted to the polished- (or buffed-) silver look in parts.  That wasn’t all bad, especially if said components were from SunTour’s Superbe Pro line.

SunTour Superbe Pro track hub

That aesthetic—and SunTour itself—disappeared around the time carbon-fiber bikes and parts reached the mass market.   The past few years, though, have seen something of a resurgence of shiny silver stuff as cyclists (mainly non-racers) are discovering (or re-discovering) the versatility, durability, beauty and ride quality of classic steel frames, or modern frames inspired by them. 

A Growler On Jeopardy

What do you get if you take a Dutch-style city bike with a "loop" frame, turn it upside down, move the chainstay (made of bar stock) about three inches above the bottom bracket and add a spring suspension on the front?

Well, I have never asked that question until now.  Actually, I didn't ask it:  I came up with it when I saw the (or an) answer.  

It sounds kind of like I was playing Jeopardy.  Can you imagine if they offered one of those bikes as a prize?

Joey Ruiter of Grand Rapids, Michigan designed the Growler City Bike after taking a Growler from a local pub and designing a bicycle--a cafe racer, specifically--around it.

The Growler features fat 29 inch tires, a Monarch springer front end, a two-speed internally-geared "kickback" hub , disc brakes and--the most important feature of all ;-)--a holder for a half-gallon jug ("growler") of beer.

Somehow I get the feeling I would actually like that bike. Does the Brooks Flyer (Or is it a B67?) saddle come as standard equipment on it?

Navigating A Pre-Dawn Fog

The past few mornings, I've been going to work early to get a few things done before students and others come around.  

That's meant riding in the dark.  Living in an urban area, I don't experience true darkness very often:   The city always flickers with ambient light from street lamps, skyscrapers, bridges and such.  Still, a lot of familiar sights are rendered invisible, especially in a foggy, misty pre-dawn like the one that surrounded me today:

Over the East River at Hell Gate, the world drifts or streams by, or suspends itself in points of reflection on those currents, all of them forms of light.

Sometimes I feel as if I navigate better by following those points and streams than by looking at signs and maps (or GPS devices)!

Protecting The Body (Or Bicycle) Electric

I can still remember when it was a big deal to see a Mercedes-Benz or BMW, much less a Porsche, on the road--at least here in the US.  I think I saw maybe two Jaguars before I turned thirty.

The joke was that you had to be really rich to drive a "Jag"--or to call it that--because you couldn't own just one.  The other was in the garage, especially after a rainy day.

One of my brothers told me that.  Back in the day, he fixed them, and other luxury cars, in a garage that catered to all manner of high-income (and high-maintenance) customers. He privately laughed at folks who spent $50,000 (probably $150,000-$200,000 in today's dollars) for "a car that doesn't start in the rain".  Garages that serviced "Jags" used to get death threats from customers who discovered its most unfortunate feature when the weather turned frightful.

The problem, according to my brother and others familiar with those vehicles, was the Lucas electrical system which, as one engineer joked, "hasn't changed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution".  Another joke said that the English drink warm beer because Lucas makes their refrigerators.

From what I understand, Jaguars' electrical systems have been redesigned and better-protected against the elements. One would think (Gotta talk like the Queen now--she never uses first or second person!) that Jags, coming from soggy England, would have been so designed all along.

I got to thinking about that today when I saw a guy making a delivery on an electric bike--in a downpour.  I wondered whether any of those bikes ever shorted out or were otherwise disabled by the weather.

Apparently, it's happened--or someone has realized that it could: an e-bike shop near me is offering these shields:

The World's Worst Place To Ride...And He Would Know

I started reading Bicycling! magazine as a teenager in the mid-1970s.  I came in, so to speak, for John Rakowski's around-the-world bike tour.  Every month's issue included another installment of his epic ride, whether in India or Afghanistan or South America. 

As I recall, after three years and something like 50,000 kilometers of riding, he made a list of "favorite" and "least favorite", "best" and "worst", among other categories.

The former included countries (As I recall, Spain and Thailand were among his favorites.) while the latter included food, beer and cycling conditions.

As far as I know, Thomas Andersen has not yet made such a list.  But he has declared a "worst", as in "worst place for cyclists".  That distinction, he says, belongs to Australia. He singles out Sydney for particular criticism, saying he was shocked by the regular abuse from drivers.  "Australia has wonderful people, but some just don't like cyclists," he says.

Thomas Andersen in Sydney

Andersen is following in Rakowski's tire tracks and circumventing the globe on two wheels.  He's pedaled over 30,000 miles in 25 countries and is now pedaling through Ecuador. 

"In most countries, people drive fast but are usually happy enough to give some space to a cyclist on the road," Thomas says.  "I think the worst attitude I met toward cyclists was the day I cycled into Sydney in Australia."

He believes that one reason for such hostility is the lack of infrastructure.  For example, he cites the lack of lanes. "You have them for a bit, and then a gap."  Such a lack of continuity makes it difficult for cycling to develop as a viable means of transportation, he says.

But another reason he gives is, in my opinion, far more relevant.  In Denmark, his home country, many people cycle to work and for recreation.  On the other hand, he says, he saw few cyclists in Sydney or the rest of Australia, where he cycled some 5000 kilometers.

In previous posts, I have said that having such a critical mass, if you will, of cyclists, is far more important than bike lanes or signs or anything else for improving cyclists' safety and causing the bicycle to be seen as a viable means of transportation.  More cyclists brings more awareness of cycling, as greater numbers of motorists are likely to be, or more recently have been, cyclists.

I don't recall that John Rakowski had a "worst place for cyclists" on his lists.  If he had, I wonder whether he would have agreed with Thomas Andersen.

Bicycle Safety Camp Rap Video (Priceless!)

Ah, yes, the 1980s.  What was not to love?  (Well, except that Reagan and Bush pere were President.)  "Power suits" with padded shoulders.  Ghostbusters. (The best English-language translation of Caesar's declaration of victory is reason alone to see the movie!) Televangelists.  Miami Vice.  Neon-colored ski wear.  Trashdance, I mean, Flashdance.  Jolt cola. 
 

And in the world of cycling we had...fade paint jobs. And the Campagnolo Stinkro system.  

And Shimano took over the world.

As for music...The decade gave us the worst song in the history of rock'n'roll--and the best old-school rap.

Let me tell ya, tho'---The Sugar Hill gang and The Beastie Boys had nothing on these kids!

Embracing My Inner Magpie Leads To Englightenment (Or, Being More Informed About Cycling Advocacy, Anyway)

One thing you learn (sometimes, anyway) as you get older is to accept what you are and work with it--or let it work for you.

For a long time, I tried to suppress my inner magpie.  So, yes, I'll admit it:  I like pretty, shiny things, especially if I can recognize my own reflection in them. Then again, given what I've just said, a pretty, shiny thing is something that will, by definition, allow me to recognize my own reflection.  And vice-versa.

OK, enough of these extremely amateurish philosophical ramblings.  I accept that I like looking at pretty,shiny things and it leads me to images like this:

Instead of turning my nose up at this two-wheeled contraption (which is, however you define it, a bicycle), as I might have done not so long ago, I allowed myself to be drawn in by the pretty, shiny lights.  It led me to blog, which also contains this image:

That blog, is the most important find of all: Chicago Bicycle Advocate. I looked at a few posts on either side of the ones containing those photos.  The stories in them are all-too-familiar to urban cyclists:  getting doored (been there, done that!), a police officer who struck a cyclist and lied about it and  a driver who darted in front of a cyclist and tried to blame the cyclist for the ensuing crash.  But there are also inspiring stories, like that of the 13-year-old girl who came up with an idea for a signal system after seeing a man "doored" while she rode with her mother.

In reading those posts, and others, I was impressed by the level of analysis and clarity in discussions of the issues involved with accidents and other incidents involving cyclists.  I am going to subscribe to it, even though I live nowhere near Chicago.

Hooda thunk it:  Embracing my inner magpie has enhanced my understanding of the legal issues around cycling!

A Rocket In His Pocket

We've all heard the declaration, "I know it when I see it".  Most of us have probably used it, or some expression that means more or less the same thing.  Nobody knows who first uttered it, but it's most often attributed to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in an obscenity case.  He admitted he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it. I'd love to know how he, or anyone else knows!;-)

(By the way:  He decided that the work in question wasn't pornography.)

I think most people would respond in the same way as Justice Stewart if asked to define a "bicycle".  Just about everybody agrees that it has two wheels.  (That, after all, is the literal definition of the word.)  I think most would also say that it has pedals, or is powered by human energy in some way or another.

Very few people, I believe, would define anything with a motor on it as a bicycle.  Even fewer, I think, would say that a bicycle is powered by a rocket.

 

That makes the record held by Francois Gissy questionable, to say the least.  His 263KPH (163MPH) ride is listed as the land speed record for a bicycle.  At least one rider has reached 260 KPH with his own feet:  He was paced by a racing car, but pedaled to his record nonetheless.

Cycling Out Of Poverty?

Time was, not long ago, when one "graduated" from riding a bicycle.  In the US, that usually happened (and, sometimes, still happens) when someone gets his or her driver's license.

In much of the world, though, people have left their bicycles behind when they moved up on the socio-economic ladder--or when automobiles and petrol became more affordable.  Some of the newly-affluent (or middle-class) have continued to cycle for recreation, but for the most part, new motorists distance themselves from motorless two-wheeled vehicles in much the same way they might try to get as far away from the slums and working-class districts in which they had been living.

The phenomenon I've just described happened with increasing frequency in Europe:  It seemed that I saw fewer and fewer cyclists on each trip I took from 1980 until 2001.  Lately, though, there's been a resurgence in cycling, mainly among young people,in northern European cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen.  In the Danish capital, people who can easily afford the high auto and petrol prices choose to cycle because it's easier to navigate the city's traffic on two wheels, and because it's a way to de-stress.

We are also seeing people cycle because they can, though perhaps on a lesser scale, in some North American cities like Portland, San Francisco, New York and Montreal. However, in urban areas of emerging countries like China, the bicycle is still seen as something one escapes from, rather than on:  In Beijing in particular, automobiles are signs of prosperity and two wheels spin in a cycle of downward mobility.

However, there are still parts of the world in which the bicycle can be a vehicle out of poverty, so to speak.  One such place is East Africa, where New York-based Bicycles Against Poverty sells bicycles to local people on installment plans matched to their circumstances and conducts repair workshops, among other things.  

The best part, though, is that BAP engages with local communities by buying bicycles from Roadmaster, a Ugandan manufacturer--and, best of all, training local staff to conduct workshops and in financial management.  Bicycle distribution is determined by the answers received on applications; as the organization's website says, BAP "aims to strike a balance between an individual's need for a bicycle and their (sic) ability to pay for it".

It will be interesting to see where this model leads those who buy the bikes. One cause for optimism is that the BAP model seems to avoid the colonial paternalism of too many aid programs, which almost invariably leads to mismanagement and corruption. Will that lead local people to develop their own sustainable communities?  Or will prosperity lead them away from the bicyles?

The Best Kind Of "Retro": Simplex "Teardrop" Shifters

Yesterday I wrote about what may have been the most jewel-like bicycle component I ever rode:  the Huret Jubilee rear derailleur.

Today I'm going to write about the part that might be a close second in the beauty contest.  I mentioned them in yesterday's post:  Simplex "retrofriction" levers--in particular, the "teardrop"-shaped ones. 

Most retrofriction levers in that shape were made to fit brazed-on lever bosses. I rode with those levers on several of my bicycles, including the Colnago Arabesque and Miyata 912.  The levers were also available in other configurations, including a "coke spoon" version made for Gipiemme.  

Simplex also made the levers in other shapes and colors for Mavic, Galli and other component manufacturers.  And, of course, there was the original version, which was usually attached to a clamp but was also available to fit braze-ons:

Although they all functioned in the same way, the Gipiemmes might have offered the best hand-feel.  (I am only guessing, as I never tried them myself.)  But whatever their shape, they offered the smoothest action of any lever I've ever used.  That is because they had a spring-clutch mechanism on the inside that kept the lever from slipping (and, thus, the derailleur from shifting accidentally) but allowed a shift with a lighter touch than was needed for other levers.  

Campagnolo and other friction levers, on the other hand, relied on nylon bushings and D-shaped screws to hold them in place--which made them more balky to shift.   The ratcheted SunTour levers were like Simplex's retrofrictions in that they,too, stayed in place when they weren't shifted but were easy to shift.  However, they had a clunkier feel and it was a bit harder to fine-tune shifts on them in much the same way that a one-bolt seatpost with notches is more difficult to adjust to exactly the right seat angle than one without notches, or a two-bolt post.

So, SunTour's "power" shifters tended (at least in my experience) to work better with wide-range slant-pantogaph derailleurs on which only the lower pivot was sprung like the SunTour's VGT or Cyclone GT.  On the other hand, Simplex's more nuanced action seemed to work well with just about every derailleur, with narrow-range racing or wide-range touring gears.  But they seemed especially well-suited to derailleurs that required smaller amounts of cable travel, such as the SunTour Cyclone S and Superbe, Campagnolo Record--and, of course, the Simplex Super LJ.

And, oh, yes, the Huret Jubilee.  It and the retrofriction levers seemed to go together like croissants and coffee.  The original Jubilee levers were made with a large drum that pulled too much cable for the Jubilee, which caused it to overshift.  Later, Huret made a lever with a smaller drum that was intended for both the Jubilee and the titanium Success rear derailleur.  But Huret's lever operated on friction, so Simplex's shifter was smoother.

If I were going to set up a bike with friction shifting, I'd definitely want the retrofriction levers.  However, that would mean using no more than seven cogs in the rear:  what made them so pleasant to use with derailleurs like the Jubilee is the small drum, which cuts down on the amount of cable the levers can wrap up.   In other words, even pulling the lever all the way back probably won't get it to shift onto an 8th cog.  (At least, it didn't on my bikes.)

But, of course, if I wanted to choose components purely on aesthetics, I would choose the Simplex retrofriction levers--and Huret Jubilee rear derailleur.