The Reason For The Season

"Jesus is the reason for the season."

Now, if you're a Christian, you might say that about Christmas or Easter.  But Springfield (MA) City Councilor Bud Williams made that comment during a public menorah-lighting ceremony.  When someone pointed out his gaffe, he responded, "Jesus was Jewish."  

So, Mr. Williams, you are American, I presume.  Are you the reason why we celebrate Independence Day?

Anyway, I am not going to pick on him any more.  I've been around long enough to have heard some real howlers from elected officials, including Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Dan Quayle, Michelle Bachmann and the inimatable (except, of course, by Tina Fey) Sarah Palin.

(Ms. Fey's spot-on portrayal of John McCain's assasination insurance lends credence to the adage that it takes a genius to play an idiot.)

Anyway, I will enlighten the esteemed Mr. Williams by pointing out that axial tilt and the ellipticality (Is that a real word?) are the reasons for the seasons.

But they are not the reason for this:

Believe it or not, that winsome couple was on a Winter Solistice ride.  But they were, not in Florida, but in Victoria, Australia where they don't have (except in the mountain areas) any season like our winters here in NYC, let alone in places like the northern plains of the US or Canada, or the Eurasian steppe.

The Victoria (not Victorian!) "winter" is also unlike those in that it begins in June--when the couple was photographed.  So their June is, well, our May.  

Happy Solistice to all, whichever you're experiencing!

N.B:  Please do not try to infer anything about my own politics from my choice in the honorable elected officials I've mentioned in this post! ;-)

For Ornamental Purposes Only

We've all seen cute bicycle Christmas (or other holiday) ornaments.  Some are faithful representations of racing, mountain, BMX or other kinds of bikes.  Others are just barely recognizable even as bicycle shaped objects.

While some capture our favorite two-wheelers in admirable detail, there are others that leave you wondering whether it was made by anyone who had ever seen a bicycle in his or her life.

This one, though, is truly strange:

Talk about toe clip overlap!  If an actual bicycle were designed in proportion to this ornament, I think its would-be rider would take a "header" even before getting his or her leg over the top tube!

That said, it is kind of cute.  And the woman who made it also makes some other nice stuff, bicycle-themed and otherwise.

Other Decorations Can't Hold A Candle To This!

I know that during the four-plus years I've been writing this blog, I've written a few Christmas-themed posts.  I have shown bicycles used as props for Christmas lights and other decorations and, a couple of days ago, an ugly Christmas sweater with cycling reindeer.  A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a diatribe against buying your kids (or the kids in your life) department-store bikes for Christmas.

Now, I'm assuming that some of you, my dear readers, are Jewish--or, at least observe Hanukkah in some fashion. I haven't forgotten about you.  How could I, after coming across this?:

This, and other menorahs, can be found here.

Hanukkah, of course, commemorates the victory of an army of Jewish Maccabees over a Greek occupying force that vastly outnumbered them.  The Maccabees thought they had enough oil to last only for one night, but their menorah burned for eight days and nights.

Given the role that bicycles have played in the military, it's hard not to wonder how things might have turned out if one side or the other had bicycles. For that matter, would Moses have had to spend forty years wandering the desert if he had two wheels and two pedals?

All right:  I'll stop before I start offending anyone's religious senibilities (if I haven't already done that).  Happy Hanukkah!

A Prewar Anglo Continental

After yesterday's serious post, I thought I'd give my dear readers a bit of relief.  Specifically, I'm going to offer something I assume most of you like:  bike porn.

Specifically, I'm offering up bike elderporn.  Here is a 1939 Claud Butler Anglo Continental bike:

The bike was refinished but, from what I've gathered in my research, it now looks something like it would've looked the day it left CB's shop.

All of the components are period-correct.  I wondered about the Bluemels fenders, but a bit of research showed that they were making plastic (celluloid) fenders (mudguards) and flaps, side guards, handlebar coverings and gear cases as early as 1908.  They also made a pump with a press-fit nozzle (like Silca or pre-HPX Zefal) that eliminated the need for a connection that needed to be screwed onto the valve.

Everything on the bike is British, with the exception of the French-made Rigida alloy rims.  One part I find truly interesting is the Lauterwasser bars.  To me, they look like inverted North Road bars with more drop--which, I would expect, would make them more appropriate for a "path racer" than North Road or moustache bars.  A few years ago, Soma introduced a bar with the same name.  It seems to have less drop, but a little bit more of a forward bend, than the original Lauterwasser.

This bike would be quite the conversation-starter, wouldn't it?


 

The Day Begins; It Is Dawn--For Whom?

This semester, I've been teaching early morning classes.  When the term began, I was pedaling in bright, often shadowless, pre-dawn light.  But as the season deepened into fall, I was seeing sunset and, after Daylight Savings Time ended, I was getting to work just as the sun was rising.  

All of that has meant seeing what people don't.  You've seen some examples in some of my earlier posts.  Some of the sights were just lovely; others had their own grittier kinds of poetry.  This morning I saw an example of both:

Speaking of gritty poetry:  As I took this photo--with my cell phone, on Randall's Island near the Bronx spur of the RFK/Triboro Bridge--some verses streamed through my mind:

La aurora de Nueva York gime
por las inmensas escaleras 
buscando entre las aristas
nardos de anguista dibujada.

It's the second stanza of Federico Garcia Lorca's "La Aurora" ("The Dawn") and can be translated something like this:

The dawn in New York grieves
along immense stairways
seeking among the groins
spikenards of fine-drawn anguish.

Perhaps recalling those verses was a harbinger of what I would see as I descended the ramps on the Bronx side of the spur:

I've seen him before.  Actually, I've never seen him:  I've only seen the blanket and recognize the way he swaddles himself in it.  Once, I got a glimpse of his face poking out of his bundle.  I don't think he knows:  He was still sleeping, as he was today.


Usually, he's in the corner, curled up as if he were in the womb, his first--and, perhaps, only--home.  I had never seen him unfurled until this morning.  And, even though he was less than a meter from his usual spot, it was startling to see him there.  I can't blame him for moving there:  It rained heavily a couple of hours after midnight, and spot is probably the driest place he could find outside of a building that wouldn't allow him in.  

At least it wasn't difficult to see him.  So, I was able to stop, dismount, lift my bike and tiptoe around him.  I did not want to wake him, let alone rend one of the few shreds of dignity he has left.

Unfortunately, he's far from the only homeless person I see during my commutes.  He's just the one I've seen most often, I think.

Ugly Christmas Sweater For Cyclists (Pity The Poor Reindeer)

I can say, in all honesty, that I do not have an ugly Christmas sweater.  Really, I don't.

OK, I have a tacky Christmas sweatshirt.  Don't ask how long I've had it.  I think I wear it once or twice every year, before the holiday.  I make a kind of game with it:  I try to sneak through some part of my daily life--going to a store, seeing a friend or even going for a bike ride--just to see whether anyone notices.    As far as I know, no one has a photo of me donning that dreadful vestment.

I assure you that my gaudy garment is far more of an offense against any known aesthetic than this:

Available from lastearth on Etsy.

Still, whoever transposed those unfortunate ungulates onto that ugly garment should be arrested for cruelty to animals, even though the poor deer are animated or inanimate, depending on your point of view.

Oh, and the uncomely chemise is available in two other colors--Smurf blue or a shade of red even Taylor Swift wouldn't allow to be painted on her nails--if the shade of green you see in the photo is too much--or not ugly enough--for you.

Fantasies On Speed, Not Steroids

The other day, and the day before that, I wrote about vintage bike parts that were (and, in some cases, still are) elite, if not sublime.

Now I have to balance it out with the thoroughly ridiculous.  Also, I feel an obligation to show that not all crazy, impractical ideas are being conceived and carried out (of what?) today.

Specifically, I am going to write about a totally ridiculous shift lever.  Having been a cyclist for four decades, and having worked in bike shops, I've seen some doozies, including ones longer and wider than railroad spikes--mounted on top tubes, no less.  (Could that be a cause of the decrease in fertility?)  They are in the category of, "They don't make them like that anymore--thank Goddess!"

So is this shifter I found on eBay:

I mean, in what universe is a shifter shaped like that?  Or, for that matter, in what reality does one combine it with a speedometer.

I'll tell you what milieu I'm talking about, because I spent part of my childhood in it.  It's the decade or so--roughly from the mid-1960s until the mid- or late 1970s--when bikes were designed for boys who, from atop their banana seats and behind their "ape hanger" bars, dreamed of driving "muscle cars" on the Daytona flats.   

Said bikes were designed by like-minded boys, some of them in the bodies of 40-something men.  And the boys of that time are now the 40-, 50- and even 60-something men who still are driven (pun intended) by such fantasies.

I'll bet that someone like that will buy the shift lever/speedometer I found on eBay.  I mean, who else would?

Black And White On The Point

After the horrible deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the last thing in the world we need is more segregation.

Call me paranoid, but that's what I thought I was seeing when I got to Point Lookout.

On the south side of the cove:

and the north:

Did someone hang a "whites only" or "colored entrance" sign someplace?

Tosca is watching from a perch between the two groups.  Normally, she cares only about the ride, but she isn't liking what she's seeing.


Secretly, she's rooting for one side.  So she's happy when it starts to make an incursion.

Could this be the beginning of a white flight?  If so, it won't be the first on Long Island!

In Living Color

Black-anodized components, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, have waxed and waned in popularity during (and before) the four decades I’ve been a cyclist. I hope I did not convey the impression that all components were black or silver.  At various times during my years on two wheels—and throughout the history of cycling—bike parts have been anodized in a spectrum of colors. 

Today, most of the parts available in a rainbow of hues are intended for fixed gear or single speed bikes.  While cranks, chainrings, pedals, cogs and even chains are available the Roy G. Biv range for bikes designed for the velodrome or urban hipsters.  But cranksets with more than one chainring, derailleurs, brakes and other parts made for road, touring or mountain bikes are usually made in either silver or black, with the latter shade becoming more dominant as carbon-fiber bikes gain popularity.  One of the few notable exceptions to the hegemony (or tyranny, depending on how you look at it) of silver and black in road and off-road bike parts is Velocity rims.

Weinmann Vainqueur 999 brakes.  Red and blue were offered only from 1961 to 1964.

However, in decades past, parts for road, touring and sport bikes have been finished in other colors, red and blue being the most common.  Weinmann and Mafac made their center-pull brakes in those colors for brief periods during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.  Mafac, in their last years (the early 1980’s), also made their cantilever brakes in a variety of colors.

Modolo Professional brake, circa 1983.  And you thought white components were sooo 2009?

Ofmega Maglia Rosa rear derailleur.  You can't make this stuff up!

The component makers that became most noted for their color palettes were Italian and offered the greatest variety during from the late 1970’s until the mid 1980’s.  Perhaps the most prominent of them were Modolo and Ofmega.  The former finished their “Professional” brakes—found on otherwise all-Campagnolo bikes—in red, blue, green, gold and white, as well as the traditional black or silver.  The latter company finished their derailleurs, which were essentially Campagnolo Records rendered in plastic, in the rosa hue of the Giro d’Italia leader’s jersey as well as the jaune of its Tour de France counterpart, and just about every other color imaginable.

Colnago C60 with 24 karat gold-plated Campagnolo parts

Other companies did not offer such a wide range of tones but nonetheless parted, at least to one degree or another, from the silver/black binary.  I have ridden gold-anodized Mafac 2002 and Galli brakes; Zeus, Sugino and SunTour also made derailleurs, cranksets and other parts with gold anodizing.  Of course, if really wanted bling, you went for the gold-plated (24 karat) parts Campagnolo briefly made before the price of the precious metal skyrocketed around 1980.

Galli rear derailleur in "midnight blue"

In addition to gold, Galli offered one of the most distinctive finishes in the history of bicycle componentry:  “midnight blue”.  It was, of course, darker than most other blue parts but was more complex and richer than navy or black.  In addition to brakes, derailleurs, cranksets, hubs and other traditional “gruppo” parts, Galli offered rims (made for them by FIR) and retrofriction shift levers (manufactured by Simplex) in midnight blue.  Galli were even finishing 3TTT stems, bars and seatposts in their trademark finish.  Such an ensemble looked absolutely fabulous on a white Olmo of that period, but it also looked great on celeste Bianchis and just about any silver bike.

Kooka crank, circa 1992

Probably the last time components made for bikes with more than one gear or to be ridden by anyone besides Keirin racers or hipsters was the early- to mid-1990’s, when it seemed that every twenty-something in California whose father had a lathe in his garage was making parts, mainly for mountain bikes, that were lighter and more expensive than everything else on the market.  Kooka and Topline crankset, which I mentioned in an earlier post, are examples of that genre.  Interestingly, survivors of that time, like Paul Components and White Industries, are now making their (admittedly fine) stuff in silver and black.  Chris King may be the only exception:  His headsets, hubs and other parts are finished in even more colors than they were two decades ago.

These days, all of my bike components are black or silver.  Part of the reason is that most of the stuff I use is available only in those colors.  But another is that I don’t want parts that detract from the kinds of finishes I like on my frames.