Nonpareil: Nothing Like It, Ever

For many years, my favorite candy was the chocolate nonpareil.  During my childhood, they usually came on waxed-paper sheets.  I think part of the appeal (pun intended) of the nonpareil was peeling it off the sheet.  It was sort of like pulling a button off a shirt.

I haven't eaten those candies in years.  Now I see they're sold in little bags for about five dollars.  I'd probably like them if they were made from really good dark chocolate, which would be a nice counterpoint to the sugar pearls that coat them.

(I've often wondered whether I'd like some of my other favorites from childhood--like Nestle's Crunch and Kit Kat--if they were made with high-quality dark chocolate. The dark-chocolate Kit Kat that's sometimes sold in the US seems to be just a Hershey bittersweet bar with wafers in it.)

Back when my grandmother was bringing those sheets of nonpareils, I didn't know any French.  Later, I'd learn that "nonpareil" means "without parallel"--or, if you like, "There's nothing like it", which is how I probably described my favorite candy at one time or another.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that this is also called "nonpareil":

 

The Classic Cycle website describes it as "the missing link in the evolution of the bicycle".  Apparently, it was built around 1890, after bike makers moved away from the "hobby horse" design and had been making "penny farthings" (high-wheelers) for a decade or so.  

The Nonpareil seems to have been one of the first bikes with wheels of equal size.  Most likely, it's also one of the first chain-driven bikes.  I must say, though, there's nothing remotely like its chain on modern bikes:

 

For that matter, there's nothing like that frame, either.  Given that everything that's been done (in bike design, anyway) gets done again,  I have to wonder whether someone's designing a frame with a single tube that slopes from the front to the rear stays.  It eliminates the top or down tube, depending on how you look at it.  Can you imagine how much weight that saves?  I'd bet that, rendered in carbon fiber, such a frame could be built into a complete bike that weighs less than 5 kilograms.

Of course, unless the UCI changes its rules, no racer could use such a bike in competition.  But someone would want it anyway just because it's, well, nonpareil.

 

P.S.  I'd love to find the oil lamp that fit on the fork.  There's definitely nothing like it made today! 

Past The Max

Today I rode to test a new electronic device and, well, ride.  It was a perfect day for both.

But I had to test the electronic device before I could out of the house, let alone get on my bike.  To be fair, Max has never given me as hard a time as former partners, roommates and others (including an ex-spouse) have about going out without them.


He didn't say "Vous ne passerez pas!" mainly because he doesn't speak French (though he understands some).  But he insisted that my first photo on my new camera would be a portrait of him.

Anyway... Today was another near-perfect day for a ride. The temperature reached 30C (86F), but it dropped as I neared the water.  The humidity was low and the clouds were high and sparse.

Actually, I didn't take a direct path to the water:  I wandered through various parts of Queens and Nassau County before heading toward the southern bays of Long Island.

For a moment, I wondered whether those folks might be in trouble.  I couldn't see what, if anything, was propelling their watercraft.  (I'm not sure of whether to call it a boat or something else.)  From my admittedly limited perspective, they didn't seem to be in any distress.   

One thing about the ocean: It's pretty easy to tell whether the tide is in or out, and its clock, if you will, is fairly predictable.  On the other hand, the bays and inlets from East Rockaway to Freeport can ebb or swell in an instant, and the tides and currents seem to have even more random effects than those of the ocean.  You can see the results of what I'm talking about in the waterfront residential areas:  One home seems to have been untouched by Superstorm Sandy or any other natural phenomenon, while a house next to it looks, nearly three years after the storm, as if it's being held up by the boards nailed over its windows and doorways.

On this day, however, almost nothing besides those houses even hinted at one of the worst natural disasters this area has experienced in its recorded history.  Looking at the sky and the sunlight, such a catastrophe doesn't even seem possible, let alone probable.

Vera knows all about those things, but she rode like a magic carpet.  She almost always does.

P.S.:  I bought the camera because of something I'm going to talk about a couple of posts from now.

 

Riding On Rails

Today I took Tosca, my fixed-gear Mercian, for a ride.  

Sometimes people who haven't ridden a track bike or a "fixie" ask me what it's like.  One description I've given is that--if you'll pardon me a cliche--it's like "riding on rails".

Perhaps that's what, subconsciously, led me along the South Shore of Nassau County, Queens and Brooklyn to Coney Island:

Now, if you want to talk about "riding on rails", you have to think about the Thunderbolt.  

If you ask most people to name a roller coaster on Coney Island, they'll say "Cyclone", with good reason:  Few amusement-park rides, anywhere, are better-known.  Even if you've never been to Coney Island, you've probably seen it in movies (such as The Wiz and The Sting II), Beyonce's video XO or in Grand Theft Auto IV (in which it's called The Screamer).  Roller-coaster aficionados still rate it as among the best; it's almost certainly one the most thrilling rides to be had anywhere and one of the best remaining examples of a wooden-car roller coaster.

The current Thunderbolt, by contrast, opened only last year.  It's more like a modern mega-amusement park ride, with its twists and turns.  What most people under a certain age don't realize is that there was another Thunderbolt, which opened in 1925 (two years before the Cyclone) and closed in 1982.  The Cyclone very nearly met the same fate in the late 1960s, when attendance at Coney Island's amusement parks and beaches declined sharply with the opening of newer parks and beaches, accessible by expressways, and the deterioration of the neighborhood around the roller coaster.  (In the 1980s, Coney Island was often referred to as "Crack Island"; since the late 1990s, the area has been rebuilt, bit by bit.) Today I saw crowds like I've never before seen; kids of various ages screamed with terror or squealed with delight as the the Thunderbolt rose and dropped.

Speaking of dropping:  For the past half-century or so, the Parachute Jump (the "umbrella" you see in the background) has been closed.  There have been rumors about reopening it.  Perhaps there could be some way to connect it to the Thunderbolt:  When it reaches the peak of the loop, riders could "bail out".  

Hmm...I wonder what the city Parks Department would think of that.

As for me:  I'll stick to "riding on rails"--on Tosca.

 

Fixtures In The Landscape

Have you ever gone someplace--particularly a place very different from the one in which you were born, raised or lived--and felt as if the people there were always there, as if they were part of the land, sea, wind, stones or sky--or as if they were forms of the very light in which you were seeing them?  

I hope that I don't seem to be dehumanizing or merely trivializing him, but this fisherman, when I first looked at him, seemed to be part of the rocks and concrete slabs on the beach:

Perhaps he looked that way because I'd pedaled against the wind all the way from my apartment to Point Lookout before I saw him.  I wasn't tired:  I've been feeling really good on my bikes--especially Arielle, my Mercian Audax, which I rode today--lately.  If anything, I was feeling pretty giddy.  For some reason (or perhaps no reason), I've often felt that way while and after riding.


Somehow I felt that man will be there again the next time I ride to Point Lookout, along with all of those slabs and stones, and the tides, whether they're in or out--and, oh, yes, the Point Lookout Orca.  

I assured Arielle that she didn't have to become part of the rocks, or part of any art installation.  All I wanted was for her to take me back--with the wind at my back, all the way to my apartment.  After you're giddy, you get to exhale.

Shin's Tricycle

On this blog, I have written several posts about bicycles, and the ways they have been used, in war.  It may surprise you to learn that the reason why I am interested in such things--and in military history, with an emphasis on the history--is that I am anti-war.  In fact, I believe that the only chance the human race has of surviving-- let alone becoming a better, more enlightened species--is to render war obsolete.  Only then will we be truly able to address issues of environmental degradation and economic injustice.

That last sentence also explains why I am anti-war and pro-veteran:  To me, few things show how pointless war is than seeing a veteran sleeping under a bridge, highway overpass or train trestle, as I sometimes see on my way to work. It also explains why I see bicycling to work and school, and even for recreation --and not as a self-conscious fashion statement or a callow attempt at irony (Can it really be irony if you're trying to achieve it?)--as an instrument for attaining peace and justice.

So, in that spirit, I am posting this photograph:

Why?, you ask.  Well, on this date 70 years ago, a boy named Shin and his best friend, a girl named Kimi, were playing with it when--to paraphrase Albert Camus in The Plague--death rained on them from the clear blue sky. 

When Shin's family found him under a house beam, he was too weak to talk.  But his hand still held the red grip of that tricycle.  And Kimi was nowhere to be found.

Shin would not survive that night.  Nor would Kimi, who was found later.   Shin's father could not bear to leave him in a lonely graveyard, so he was interred--along with Kimi and the tricycle--in the family's backyard.

In 1985--forty years after the first atomic bomb leveled their home town of Hiroshima--his father decided to move his remains to the family's gravesite.  He, with the help of his wife, dug up the backyard burial ground.   There they found "the little white bones of Kimi and Shin, hand in hand as we had placed them," according to the father.

Also present was the tricycle, which the father had all but forgotten.  Lifting it out of the grave, he said, "This should never happen to children.  The world should be a peaceful place where children can play and laugh."

The next day, he would donate the tricycle to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where it is exhibited with other artifacts, as well as drawings, photos and stories from survivors of the first atomic bomb, exploded over the city 70 years ago today.

The tricycle inspired a children's book written by survivor Tatsuharu Kodama.  Published in 1995, Shin's Tricycle is narrated by Nobuo Tetsunani, Shin's father.  It's as painful as it is beautiful.  I urge you to read it--and to take a good look at those stark drawings!  
 

The Life Of Carbon

Yesterday, I paid a visit to Bicycle Habitat in Soho.  Hal Ruzal is one of the mechanics I go to when I don’t have the time or tools—or am too lazy—to build or fix something.  As he was fixing another customer’s bike, I noticed a bike in his work station.

 

“Wow! That’s a really early Trek carbon fiber bike.”

He nodded.  “It’s hardly been ridden at all,” he said.

The bike certainly didn’t look any older than it did the day it rolled out of the showroom in 1990 or thereabouts.  That’s not to say it’s timeless:  While it looked new, it was certainly dated.

Although I was never tempted to buy one, I rather admired them back in the day.  They were sleek, almost elegant, in a high-tech sort of way, with purple lettering and graphics on a graphite-grey frame.
 

Aside from the color combination, the bike had an almost-classic look because its frame tubes were more or less the same diameter as those on steel frames.  Also, it had the slender joints found on classic frames, although it didn’t have the nice lugwork one finds on the best European and Japanese frames—or even the bikes Trek was building before they started making carbon frames.  

At least the frame, unlike too many of today’s frames, didn’t seem to have been built my melting frame tubes together in a microwave oven.  Then again, the way the bike is built might be the reason why so few of them are seen today—or that the one I saw  has survived as long as it has only because it hasn’t been ridden very much.

Hal reiterated something he and others “in the know” have said before:  Carbon-fiber bikes aren’t made to last.  Then again, the same thing can be said about most super-light aftermarket equipment:  something I learned from experience.  As I mentioned in another post, a hub with aluminum flanges bonded to a carbon fiber body collapsed one day while I was riding a smooth road.  I also broke a carbon fiber handlebar, and other riders I knew destroyed expensive lightweight CNC-machined parts as well as stuff made from carbon fiber.

Yet there are people who will—as I did in my youth—ride, or simply buy, such stuff “because the pros use it”.  While those carbon-fiber bars or magnesium wheels (or, ahem, non-round chainrings) might actually give some racer an edge in a World Cup event, said racer doesn’t have to buy, install, fix or replace it.  These days, the stuff sponsors give to top-level pros is intended only for one season; the following year, they get new bikes and parts.  And their teams’ mechanics keep everything running for them.

(Now I am thinking about Miguel Indurain, who won the Tour de France five times during the 1990s.  After he retired, he went shopping for a bike.  He all but fell over when he saw the price tag on a machine like the one he rode: During his two decades as a professional cyclist, he never had to buy a bike or any of the kit he wore.)

From what Hal and others have told me, things haven’t changed.  Yes, today’s bikes are lighter, and probably stiffer (if not stronger) than those of the past.  But carbon fiber frames and parts don’t last any longer than they did in those days—unless, like the Trek I saw the other day, it isn’t ridden.

Your Secret Is Safe With Me

Nearly every one of us has done something we won't admit--except, perhaps, under extreme duress-- to having done.

People have confided such misdeeds to me. Back when I was a Rutgers student and riding with the Central Jersey Bicycle Club, a ride leader about three times my age whispered to me that he voted for Richard Nixon.  One of my fellow students, who wanted to be the next Sir Kenneth Clarke, confided to me that he once paid full price for a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet--in hardcover, no less!  And a woman I dated tearfully related how, around the time she was entering puberty, she had a crush on David Cassidy, a.k.a. Keith Partridge.

Of course I assured them their secrets are safe with me.  I am not breaking my promise:  I am sure that none of them read this blog.  In fact, I know the Nixon voter never will, unless he can see it from that great bike path in the sky.

Now it's time for me to come clean.  No, I won't tell you about the things I've done behind closed doors:  Some things are best left to the imagination.  (I assure you, though, they were done only with consenting adults and no endangered species were harmed.)  I actually had a Members Only jacket--and copy of Spandau Ballet's True. (The latter was a gift--I swear!)  I also straddled the 80s trends of camouflage and neon colors:  When I wanted to look tough and macho, I did camo, but in my heart of hearts, I loved that neon pink, especially my Italian winter cycling jacket in that color. 

And I also--please, please don't tell anyone--wore something that looks even more ridiculous now than Duran Duran's hairdos: 

So you wore them, too?  OK, I promise not to tell.  I had a pair of those Oakley Factory Pilot goggles, circa 1985, in--you guessed it--neon pink. 

To be fair, they were more practical for cycling, in a number of ways, than traditional sunglasses.  For one thing, they had interchangeable lenses. So you could wear smoke-gray on sunny days, the amber lenses on cloudy days and clear ones at night.  Also, because they wrapped around the temples, they provided protection from wind and insects as well as sun.  (I really appreciated them the time I got caught in a sleet storm during a ride!)  Finally, they weren't as fragile as other sunglasses were.

But they seemed to cover the face of just about anyone who wore them. 

Now that's a strange combination:  Oakley Factory Pilots with a "leather hairnet".   But he needn't worry:  His secret is safe with me!  ;-)

 

They Have Been Done; They Will Be Done Again

Who made the first dual-suspension folding bike?

No, it wasn't Dahon.   Nor was it Montague.  Even Moulton's double-shock folder has antecedents.

We may not ever know for sure who made the very first bike of this type.  I did find out, though,that one was made 100 years ago by a company that's still making bikes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was developed for use in war.  Some of the earliest foldable or collapsible bikes were made for soldiers to carry on their backs. Some, like the one I'm about to mention, even had mounts for guns or rifles.

In 1915, all of the major European powers were embroiled in World War I.  Some of the best-known developments of that conflict are the machine gun (which is said to have inspired the ratcheting freewheel) and chemical weaponry.  It may also have spawned bicycles with suspension and some of the earliest foldable bikes.

Bianchi Dual-Suspension Folding Bike, 1915

A bike that could both bounce and fold was created for the Italian Army by--you guessed it--Bianchi.  The company claims that it was the first of its type.  That may well be true, but it's always difficult to say that anything was a "first" in cycling because so many designs simply disappeared without a trace only to be resurrected, sometimes by "inventors" who had no idea of their previous existence.

Still, I don't think folks at Bianchi are stretching the truth very much, if at all, when they say the dual-suspension folding bike they created for the Italian Army in 1915 was the first of its kind. There don't seem to be any records of bikes with dual suspension or folding bikes much before that date. Also, it's hard to imagine that the technology of the 19th Century--in bikes as well as manufacturing techniques--could have made suspended or folding bikes practical or widely available much before that date.

Whether or not it was the first bike of its kind, it's yet another example of how this passage from Ecclesiastes applies to the bicycle world:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. 

She Rides In Australia

A friend expressed consternation that today I cycled to Connecticut alone,  something I've done before.

I have also done that ride, and others, with friends.  But, she says, she wonders how I can ride alone.  

She is about a decade and a half older than I am and has not ridden a bike since she was a teenager.  That was typical for the place and time in which she grew up.  She says she'd thought about riding again but had difficulty finding other riders, particularly female ones.

"And the roads are so dangerous.  Don't you worry?"

I explained, as I've explained before, that I am careful but that cycling, while it has its risks, is really no more dangerous than any number of other things people do.  "To tell you the truth, I feel less safe crossing some streets--especially Queens and Northern Boulevards--as a pedestrian than I feel when I'm biking," I elaborated.

Her fear is a common one. In fact, a recent study shows that it's the main reason why women don't ride bikes.  To address that fear or reality, depending on one's point of view, Cycling Australia has initiated the "She Rides" program to get women to take to the same roads men ride every weekend.

Participation Coordinator Alex Bright said that while most women cycled as children, getting them back in the saddle as adults had been difficult.  In the hope of encouraging more women to ride, "We wanted to create a program that connected them with like minded women to help them get going and riding," she explained. "We wanted to provide a way to support women to get on their bikes because a lot of women feel unsafe on the road."

Members of a She Rides group in Parramatta, New South Wales

That program includes an eight-week course that now operates in 46 locations throughout Australia.  Charlene Bordley has coached three She Rides programs and says that while physical fitness is a benefit of riding, "it's also about mental fitness."  Riding for the first time in their adult lives--or, in some cases, for the first time in their lives, "is freedom for some people," she said.

Bordley, Bright and others involved with the program are doing something right:  Ninety percent of the women who have participated say they are more likely to ride on bike lanes or quiet roads than when they started, while 78 percent are more likely to ride busy streets.  

Manju Prajesh is one of those participants.  Even today, she still can't believe she now has the confidence to ride on the road.  "We have totally lost our fear," she says.

 

Saturday Sillies: What If Charlton Heston Had Ridden A Bicycle In "The Ten Commandments"?

I have always known that we, as cyclists, can change the world around us. 

We all know about the ecological effects:  If we get to work or school, or take joyrides, on our bikes, we don’t use the gasoline and other resources used by, or cause the pollution made by, automobiles.  We also know about the health benefits:  The exercise of pedaling makes our bodies stronger and the emotional release of being on a bike makes us saner. (Notice that I used the comparative rather than the absolute form of the word “sane”.) 

I believe many of you also know that we can also be agents of peace.  Although we can be competitive with each other and get angry with motorists who cut us off or pedestrians who step into our paths while they’re texting someone, for the most part, we’re calmer than most other people.  That, I believe, has to influence the people around us in one way or another.

That got me to thinking about how my riding, or cycling generally, might have influenced the drivers of these vehicles I encountered on my ride today:

Did I have the kind of influence Charlton Hestonhad in The Ten Commandments?  Am I such a powerful cyclist that I can cause two cars to part and let me pass?

Or, could it be that the police officer and taxi driver were so in awe of a woman in late middle age riding her bike—and passing a guy half her age—that they stopped dead?

Perhaps my riding so roiled their competitive juices or stimulated their production of testosterone (Wouldn’t that be ironic?) that they stopped each other in each other’s tracks?  On the other hand, something about me might have caused each of them to recognize something about each other and meet each other in the wilderness of Randall’s Island? 

Hmm…Maybe they, in the tedium and stress of their jobs, they were simply seeing so struck by seeing someone happy—positively giddy, like a lovestruck teenaged girl—that they simply had to stop?

And, dear reader, I’m still feeling giddy.  I’m not sure of why:  The ride, while pleasant and invigorating, was not exceptional.  I did nothing exceptional before or after the ride and I ate foods that, while both healthy and tasty, had no mind-altering chemicals of which I’m aware.

If you’re giddy, how can you not change the world around you—or, at least, some part or some people in it?

Giddyup!  I’m going to keep on riding.  Maybe I’ll stop some more traffic.

(As I type this, the Beatles’ Hey Jude is playing on the radio. Somehow that seems exactly right.)