What Are You Wearing For Your Halloween Ride?

Tomorrow the New York City Marathon will wind its way through the Big Apple's five boroughs.  Knowing that, the pub crawls that will snake their way through various Gotham neighborhoods--as well as cities all over North America--today seem oddly appropriate.

Hmm...I wonder how many people will make the rounds of bars today and round the turns of tomorrow's run.

The first time I heard about Halloween pub crawls, it occured to me that it's what people do when they don't want to grow up but are too old for "Trick or Treat."

Most of those becostumed kids who knock on doors are in cities or relatively compact suburbs or towns.  And, of course, all of those pub crawls are in urban enclaves of young professionals.

So what does one do when separated from his or her nearest neighbors by miles of prairie or mountains or soybean fields or whatever?  Do kids in such places go Trick or Treating?  (I'm guessing there aren't many young professionals in such places,and whatever twenty- and thirty-somethings are living in them have other things to do!)  If so, how?

Well...I have a hard time imagining their parents driving them from one potential shakedown site to the next.  Could it be that they're riding from house to house on bicycles?

Why not?  I've seen racer-wannabes in team kit who looked more ridiculous than anything I've shown in this post.

Happy Halloween.

Autumn Twilight In New York

Is the spectacle of day turning into evening the most autumnal part of the day?  Or is Fall the twilight of the seasons?

During my short but exhilirating late-day ride today, the time of day seemed to mirror, perfectly, the time of year.  Day was turning to dusk; leaves were falling and spreading a shawl of deepening hues across the aging, wizening ground just as the setting sun cast its glow across the deepening cold of the river and sky.

Some have said that cycling sharpens our awareness of our surroundings.  I agree that it does, in part because it opens our internal vistas in much the same way skies and trees open before us.

On my way back, I stopped in Queensbridge Park.  The bike path along Vernon Boulevard, which wends its way along the Queens side of the East River, detours into the park and brings cyclists, runners, skateboarders and dog-walkers within the shadow of the bridge for which the park is named.  The park is named for the bridge.  But, while people use the name in reference to the park (and a nearby housing project and subway station that share the name), they never use it to refer to the bridge, which is more widely known as the Queensborough or 59th Street Bridge.

Anyway, the park--about two kilometers from my apartment--is wonderful and interesting in all sorts of ways. One, of course, is the views of the river, harbor, skyline and, of course the bridge--especially when the lights are turned on.  Another is the way that it seems to stand, almost defiantly, against its surroundings.  

As I mentioned, there is the housing project across Vernon Boulevard from its eastern side.  There are also small factories and warehouses.  The bridge looms over park's southern side. But to the north is a Con Ed power plant:

During the summer, the leaves on the trees at least partially obscure those smokestacks, depending on the spot from which you're viewing.  Now, of course, the trees offer no such cover.  However, they seem to be as inseparable in this autumnal vista as this season and time of day.

A Crusader's Bike Lane

Some people have streets named after them.

For the longest time, I hoped to have a bridge named after me.  That dream began during my childhood when, from the roof of the building where my family lived, I watched workers pull cables and link girders that would become the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Sometimes I'd still like to have such a span named after me.  But now, if I were going to have anything named after me, I wouldn't mind a bike lane.  Not too many people have that, at least not yet.

One member of that club is a heroine of mine.  If you weren't living in New York during the 1990s, you probably haven't heard of her:  Julie (J.A.) Lobbia.

Every day, clad in bike gear, she'd roll her wheels into her office, where she'd change into one of the vintage dresses she found in flea markets.  At her desk, she'd write the stories she found while pedaling all over New York City, from the streets of Bed-Stuy to the avenues of Astoria, from East New York to the Upper West Side.

One of her rides uncovered a path of arson that predated the wave of gentrification that spilled over Williamsburg and other parts of Brooklyn. On other rides, she found everything from eviction notices to shards from construction sites led her to her stories.

But she was not a mere reporter or even just a researcher; she was a crusading journalist in the tradition of Jacob Riis, one of her idols.   She was also a kind of Sister of Mercy, if you will:  When an X-ray technician lost his job and home, she got him mattresses, pillows and blankets.  One day, she saw an eviction notice on a Chinese-speaking neighbor's door.  She spent a workday having it translated and later left a note under the door, in Chinese, explaining what that neighbor should do.

At least one of my commenters has said that cyclists have a stronger sense of justice than most people.  In my own unbiased view ;-), said commenters are right.  J.A. Lobbia was proof. 

In 2001, at the age of 43, she died of ovarian cancer. She asked to be buried in her favorite dress and bike shoes.

The sign in the photo stands at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and 33rd Street, just a block east of Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.

The Most Famous, If Not The Better, Mousetrap

You might be riding rattraps.  If you're of (ahem) a certain age and rode them, you may also have ridden with a mousetrap.

No, I'm not assuming that you are, or have ever been, an exterminator.  Instead, I am talking about a type of bicycle component and a style of a certain bike accessory.

Rattraps, of course, are what are commonly called "cage" pedals.  On such pedals, the metal (aluminum or steel) plates have serrated edges on both sides, the better to grip the sole of your shoe.  (I actually rode a pair barefoot. I think I can still see the marks.)  Those cages usually don't have the "quill" common on traditional-style racing pedals.  And, because the cages have the same serrated surfaces on both sides, they can be ridden with or without toeclips.

Examples of "rattrap" pedals include the MKS Sylvan and the Lyotard 460D:

MKS Sylvan

Lyotard 460D.  They were usually silver, but for a time were also available in blue, red or black.

Many different companies make, and have made versions of the "mousetrap".  Some claim to be better versions of the most famous (if not original) one:  The Pletscher Model C.

I bought one for $2.75, new, at Michaels's Bicycle Co. on Route 35 in Hazlet, NJ.  That  rack ended up on about three or four bikes I owned during my youth.  It was actually good for a light load, but would sway a lot when used with panniers. (I don't think most panniers made today would fit.)  Some people didn't like the Pletscher rack because the clamp that held it to the bike chewed up the paint on the seat stays (and, on some bikes, the seat stays themselves).  I think, though, that many people forgot to use the "T" bar that attached to the brake bolt and had two holes for the rack clamp screws.  Also, it helped to cover the stays with tape or a piece cut from an inner tube.

The "mousetrap" clamp on top was good for a baseball glove, a pair of shoes or sandwiches--if you didn't mind eating things in shapes you never saw before.  It also held a soccer ball or basketball firmly.  However, when I tried to carry books in it, they ended up all over the street.  (Ironically, many shops and catalogues sold the Pletscher or its near-facsimiles as "book racks".)  And, when I got my Pletscher, bungees hadn't been invented--or, at least, they weren't available in any place I shopped.  (When I first found them, they were called "sandows".)  So, if we wanted to carry things on the platform that wouldn't fit into the mousetrap, we used string, rope, duct tape and almost anything else you can imagine.

Even if you are young, you have probably seen hundreds of Pletscher racks, or imitations of them.  They have been attached to just about every kind of bike you can imagine:  I have even seen them attached to the struts of "banana" seats.  And--perhaps not surprisingly, given their ubiquity and low cost--people have actually used them as front racks, with varying results.

I wonder what, if anything, the rider of that bike carries on the rack. Whatever it is, it would have to be bound pretty tightly, or it would slide off the rack and into the path of the front wheel. I guess that's one way of making yourself a cold Panini, if that's what you want.

If seeing the on the front, slanted like the right side of an accent circonflexe isn't enough for you, look at how the rack is attached to the fork crown:

We didn't have zip-ties back when I bought my Pletscher rack for $2.75, new, at Michael's.

 

Drillium Jewelry

You might say that I came of age (as a cyclist, anyway) in the late 1970s:  the heyday of drillium.

It seemed that, for a time, everyone was trying to drill as many small holes into whatever bike parts they could.  Even parts that were already ethereally light did not escape the probing and boring of high-speed steel bits.

Some drillium parts were rather lovely; others were just insane.  This, I believe, is beyond either category:

Uploaded to Pinterest by Henrik Jakobsson

I would like to meet the person who gave this Campagnolo Nuovo Record "the treatment".  Did he or she have a regular job (or was this part of that job)?  A family?  I can only imagine how much time that person spent on this project.

And I have to wonder whether that person did the same thing to the bike that this derailleur was hung on.  Or was it ever installed on a bike?

All right, I'll stop the snide rhetorical questions and admit that I actually like it.  No, I take that back:  I love it.  It's over-the-top in its minimalism. (Is that a contradiction?)  I would even say it's jewelry, of a sort.

Same Color, Different Fade

I like the color of your crank.

I heard that compliment while I was parking my LeTour.  Of course, I didn't put the bike together as I did so that people could admire it:  I intended it as a beast of burden that could be parked in urban combat zones.

The person making the comment added, "I've always liked gunmetal grey. It looks good with the color of your bike."

The funny thing is that I hadn't noticed what color my crank is until that person pointed it out.  Or, more precisely, I thought of it as black because that's what color it was when I installed it on the bike.

Believe it or not, the crank and guard were almost exactly the same.  In fact, it almost looked as if the guard was of one piece with the crank and the chainring was bolted to it. Of course, the guard and the ring are bolted to the arms of the crank "spider".

The LeTour is almost always parked on the street; I very rarely bring it inside.  (In fact, I even left it parked in front of Terminal B at LaGuardia for five days while I was in Montreal.)  I have long known that anodizing faded, especially after repeated exposure to the elements. But I never saw two parts in the same color, attached to each other, fade at such markedly different rates.  Or, to be more precise, I never saw one part fade so much and the other so little.

Now, to be fair, the crank is a no-name cheapie.  So far, it's served me well on two different bikes.  But it didn't cost me much less than the guard, on the other hand, was made by BBG.  I know little about how anodizing is done, but I suspect whatever materials BBG uses (in Oregon) in the process are better than the ones used by the (probably Chinese) crank-maker. And, being a smaller operation, BBG probably takes more time to do whatever it does.  Whether that makes a difference in fading (or lack thereof), I don't know.

The chainring is, by the way, a US-made Rocket Ring.  It's very good, better than most inexpensive single-speed rings I've seen.  Being silver, it has not faded.

When It's Harder To Get Out Of Bed Than It Is To Get On My Bike

Now, I hope that, having seen the title, you're not sending me copies of self-help books or the names and numbers of therapists, hypnotists or clergy members.  My reluctance to get out of bed this morning had nothing to do with depression or anxiety.  It just looked particularly gloomy and Max and Marlee were curled up with me.

Mind you, I didn't have any reluctance about riding today.  I have bikes with fenders on them.  I also have a rain jacket.  And it wasn't cold, at least for this time of year, or blustery.  It just that everything looked so heavy and gray.  Somehow the colors of the leaves made everything seem even more so.

In some years, in late October and early November, I experience surges of sadness that have to do with three deaths--one a slow decline, another a sudden demise and the third a suicide--that happened at this time of year.  But--for me, anyway--such sadness is not the same as depression.  It might make me a little slower to get out of bed, but it doesn't derail my life.

Anyway, I'll confess something:  I thought about doing the Tour de Bronx today.  I really don't enjoy big organized rides, but every once in a while I'll do one to, I guess, show solidarity with other cyclists.  I've done the TdB a couple of times--the longer version, of course--and enjoyed it.  Everybody, it seems, does the Five Boro Bike Tour, but most who ride it never see any of the Bronx besides the few blocks of it that are part of the ride.   I always liked that the TdB took riders through neighborhoods and to sites that those unfamiliar with the Bronx would not expect to see there.

But I got up after the check-in time for the ride.  Now, if you think I was looking for an excuse not to do the ride...well, maybe subconsciously, I was.  Subconsciously, I tell you.

I did a ride of my own.  It's one I've done before.  It wasn't as hard as getting out of bed.

From Macbeth To Il Campione Del Mondo

I swear, I was looking for films to show my Lit class.  Really, I was trying to decide between Roman Polanski's or Orson Welles' version of Macbeth.  And I was browsing all of the other film and television adaption of the Bard's classic when...

The YouTube browser took me to videos of The Third Ear and other progressive-rock bands.  From Renaissance's Prologue, it led me through recordings of vocal pieces used in videos.  I swear, it's true.

And then browser took me to this:



Honest, I wasn't looking for bike videos.  But I couldn't stop looking at it.

You've seen a million Bianchis before.  If you are of a certain age, you remember when they all came in some version of the color ("Celeste") you see on Fausto's bike.  Something about this video makes it seem as arresting as it was the first time you saw it.

And the bike...Why, it has--gasp--cottered cranks.  And exposed bolts on the stem.  Everything's so low-tech.

But what a thing of beauty!  And Fausto himself, even when he was wearing a plain white polo shirt, just reeked style. Check out 0:43 into the video.  Those people look like they actually know him; they're not just props or backdrops. 

As for the bike--Check out 2:15 to 2:22.  If only today's integrated headsets looked like that! 

Now I'm going back to work.  I swear, I didn't look for that video.  I was brought to it.

Sign Of The Times

Today I walked by my "go-to" takeout (and, sometimes, eat-in) Chinese restaurant.  Fatima hasn't changed much, at least in food (fortunately), decor (such as it is) or personnel (again, fortunately) since I first started patronizing it.  The changes, it seems, are taking place on the outside.

No, they haven't changed their sign, either.  Rather, I am talking about this:

Now, if you live in any large (or, possibly, not-so-large) city, you wouldn't think this scene is remarkable:  Three electric bikes (or scooters) parked outside a Chinese restaurant.  It's no more unusual than what I saw at the Chinese restaurant across the street, which I go to when Fatima is closed:

These days, electric bikes and scooters are found by most restaurants that offer take-out or delivery service.  The most notable exceptions seem to be pizzerias because it's difficult to those wide pizza boxes on an "e-bike".  Also, traditional delivery bikes, like the ones made by Worksman, usually have front carrying boxes big enough for pizzas--and wide baskets or Porteur-style racks can be fitted to other kinds of bicycles. It seems that similar boxes, baskets and racks can't be fitted on, or simply not available for two-wheeled vehicles with electric motors.

Compare the first two photos I posted to a couple from the early days of this blog:

Four years ago, most restaurants--like the Bel Aire Diner, where I took the above images--had ragtag fleets of the sorts of bikes one could lock up without fear:  everything from old three-speeds, bike-boom era ten- and twelve-speeds and mountain bikes from the '80's and '90's.  

Of the bikes parked in front of restaurants, typically, at least one was a "donor" bike, cannibalized for parts that might or not fit on the "receptor" bikes.  But somehow those delivery men (Yes, almost all of them are male), who probably knew no more about bike mechanics than I did the day before I opened the pages of Anybody's Bike Book, would find a way to make the brakes from an old Peugeot ten-speed or Raleigh three-speed "work" on a mountain bike--or fit mountain bike wheels and tires on those old Raleighs and Peugeots.

Some might scoff or gasp in horror at such "Frankenbikes".  But they at least showed attempts--some successful, or at least admirable--of solving problems with the materials at hand and the limited knowledge most of those delivery men had.

I sometimes see e-bikes similarly cannibalized for other e-bikes.  I'll admit I know almost nothing about e-bikes, but I still believe it's safe to assume there isn't nearly as much variation in e-bikes as there is in pedal-powered bikes.  If there isn't, I wonder what "Franken e-bikes" (Doesn't have quite the same ring as "Frankenbikes", does it?) will look like.

Probably the most interesting and disturbing thing about this phenomenon of electric two-wheelers is that they constitute, at least in this city, a kind of modern-day Prohibition.  No, their riders aren't bringing bootleg gin to clubs (though I wouldn't doubt they're toting other kinds of contraband). Rather, the explosion in the number of such bikes--and the shops that service and sell them--continues even though e-bikes are still illegal here in New York City.  

That, ironically, might be a reason why couriers in Manhattan still ride bicycles, most often the fixed-gear variety.  Messengers have, shall we say, a bit of a PR problem and the police target them.  Even though some messengers take pride in their "outlaw" attitude, they don't want something that subjects them to more scrutiny than they already get.

Also, e-bikes aren't as maneuverable in city traffic, or as easy to park along city streets, as regular bicycles.  Thus, whatever advantage in speed e-bikes and scooters might have is negated, especially in heavily congested areas like the Financial District of Manhattan.  

It will be interesting, to say the least, to see whether a proposal to allow electric bikes for businesses will ever pass in the City Council. (It's been introduced several times.)  I suspect that the Council's vote will not have any influence on whether large numbers of bike messengers abandon their "fixies" for e-bikes.

If Brooks Really Wants To Do Fashion Accessories

I love Brooks saddles--at least, certain models.  (I don't think anyone can love all of the saddles that any company makes!)  I like their bar wrap, and their traditional seat bags look nice, too.   

However, sometimes it seems that they're turning into a fashion-accessory company.  I mean, it's one thing to offer stylish saddlebags, panniers and other luggage that attaches to bikes.  I even think it's fine that they're offering backpacks and messenger bags:  They look nice, but I doubt I'll ever buy them because I hardly ever use such bags anymore.

But I have to wonder when Brooks England (the name of the company) offers ladies' and gents' "cycling jackets" that look--and are priced--more like trench coats or safari jackets from Brooks Brothers.  How many cyclists are going to buy something like that?  

Then again, BE might be trying to develop non-cycling customers.  After all, we tend not to replace our Brooks Professionals or B17s very often!  

If Brooks England really wants to become the world's first bicycle fashion house, it should consider offering things like these:

From Voochee

What's more of a "gents'" accessory than cufflinks?  (I had four pairs of cufflinks, all of which were gifts.  I never wore any of them. Perhaps that's proof I was never a "gent".)  

The part of me that still loves the Sex Pistols wants to see those cufflinks made from the dirtiest, greasiest chains and used on the most pristine white shirts.  That's the sort of thing that, perhaps, a guy would wear if he'd just won the Lotto jackpot and was going to tell his boss what he really thought of the job and company.

Now, here's something Brooks could make for the ladies:

From Chainspirations

To make this "blossom" pendant, individual chain links were disassembled and the parts cleaned and anodized.  It's offered in a number of different main and accent colors, and with several different lengths of chain.

We've all seen bracelets made from lengths of bicycle chain.  For a time, it seemed as if every bike shop employee wore them.  Here's an interesting take on them:

From Winterwomandesigns

From a meter or two away, it looks like butterflies.  And butterflies rank right up there with cats and dolphins for my favorite animal motifs.

Somehow, I think it's tasteful enough even for John Boultbee--or a woman or girl in his life, anyway.