Seeing Red In The Gray Before The Neon: 1983 Miyata 310

You know the '80's were, like, totally, about big hair and leg warmers.  Yeah, totally.  And neon.  Neon, totally.  The '80's were just awesome!

All right.  I didn't talk like that in the '80's.  Even though I was, like, young enough.  

That is the '80's everybody seems to remember.  Or, at least, that's the stereotype of the decade.  You had to love it, though.  In what other decade could The Cosby Show and Miami Vice have made their debuts during the same week?

Those '80's really began, I think, around 1984.  Before then, during the early part of the decade, the '70's were hanging on:  Men were wearing ridiculous moustaches and even more ridiculous sport coats and ties, and young women could be seen in butterscotch-colored leather jackets and boots.  But leisure suits were gone--thankfully!--along with men getting perms.  

And--something else for which I'm thankful--some very, very tasteful and functional bikes were being made.  In 1983, while I was working at Highland Park Cyclery (before I embarked on life as a New York City messenger), it seemed that every bike manufacturer--at least the ones whose bikes I assembled and we sold--offered at least one model in charcoal gray with red highlights--whether the decals or transfers, head tube, seat tube panels or bands, or some combination thereof.  The red really was a highlight:  It accented the understated nature of the gray finish rather than called attention to itself, as the red-white-and-black blocks and and bands on every other new bike sold today seem to do.

That year, I assembled bikes from Panasonic, Motobecane, Trek, Miyata, Peugeot and Ross--the latter's "Signature" series as well as their cheaper bikes.  I saw red and gray in every one of those brands' gray bikes.  But I didn't get tired of it:  Those bikes all seemed tastefully finished, especially this one:

The 1983 Miyata 310 was--is-- a very nice bike.  I think they, along with Panasonic, made some of the best mass-market bikes I've ever seen.  Their lugwork was on par with all but the small builders.  Their component choices always seemed to be made with function and value in mind:  lower- and mid-priced alloy parts from Shimano, SunTour, Dia Compe, Sugino, KKT, MKS and the like.  And, of course, SR Laprade seatposts.

It seemed that every bike and component maker had a product or line called "signature".  I know, it was a marketing gimmick, but it was pretty inoffensive, I think, compared to some that I've seen since.

Shmano made derailleurs with the "arrow" you see.  This version, as far as I know, was made only for the Miyata 310 and a couple of other manufacturers' models:  The derailleur was usually finished in silver and the arrow was gold-toned.  Shimano didn't call them "arrow"; they just had some boring numerical designation.  Nobody--not even the Shimano sales rep who came to our shop--seemed to know what, if anything, the arrow meant.

Sarcasm aside, seeing the bike reminded me--in good ways--of what bikes used to be:  nice lugged frames and components that had real functionality.  Today you have to go to small builders like Mercian or Royal H to get new bikes like them.

I wish that Miyata weren't locked up behind a fence:  I would've liked to have taken better photos.  I hope that I still managed to give you a taste of what people could buy off a showroom floor in the moment before reason and taste vacated much of the bike industry.

Note: There's one thing I don't like about the 310:  the shift levers.  But they're forgivable on a bike that has so much else going for it!

What Cycling Can Teach Your Children

I have no children and don't plan on having any.  Still, I sometimes look at one thing or another and wonder what children or young adults might learn from it.  Perhaps that is a consequence of my being an educator.

(By the way, it's also one of the reasons why I find the Trump presidential campaign so abhorrent.  How can you teach your kids about honesty, respect and just plain good behavior, when someone like The Donald is one of the wealthiest people in the world and might become the most powerful?)

Anyway, I would like to think that if I had kids, they would learn a lot of good things from seeing me ride to work, and for pleasure.  I am sure that there are kids who are learning all sorts of great lessons from parents who ride bikes.    One might be simply that you're never "too old" to ride a bike.  Another is that you can have fun while doing (or getting to) the things you have and need to do.

From Kidical Mass Rockville

The author of the Bike to Work Blog once wrote about the "5 Things Your Bike Commute Teaches Your Children".  I might have come up with numbers 1,2, 3 and 5, or things like them.  But I'm not sure that I would have come up with number 4 unless I'd had kids.

Anyway, here they are:

1. Think outside the box. Riding bike to work is powerful because so few others are doing it. When you bike to work, you are teaching your children that there is more than one way to do something–even something as mundane as the daily commute. In a world in which the jobs your kids will have haven’t been created yet, the ability to “Think Different” is a powerful key to success.
2.  Be Frugal. We try to teach our children to understand value, thrift, and priorities but the average American family spends more on transportation than on food. For most of us, that means a car that sits in an expensive garage all night and in an expensive parking spot all day. By not spending a lot of money on a car, I am powerfully teaching my children what I value.
3. Be Active. We tell our children to eat right and be active (“go out and play!”), but we gain five to eight pounds each year. Many of us exercise before the kids get up or after they go to bed and they don’t see it. When you ride a bike your kids see you leave and come home under your own power; they know you value exercise and a healthy, active body.
4. Be Proactive and Self-Reliant. We want our children to anticipate problems and opportunities and we strive to empower them. When my daughter once asked why I was a little late getting home, I told her that that I had a flat tire. She seemed surprised and asked how I got home; I responded that I had “fixed it.” Watching her face as she processed the lesson that such a thing was fixable was priceless.
5. Tread Lightly. Regardless of your views on climate change, the excesses of the 20th century have to be recognized as unsustainable. I don’t consider myself to be a tree-hugger, but I want my children to recognize that we must consume less and think more. By choosing a bicycle over a car, I am demonstrating an awareness of my impact on the planet that I know my children are absorbing.

Paris. Then Istanbul...And Brussels. Where Does It End?

Sometimes even I can't talk about bicycles or bicycling.  Some things are bigger, sometimes.

So it was back in November, after the attacks in Paris. They had a personal meaning for me, as I had cycled or walked the streets, and sat at a sidewalk table in the café, that bore the onslaught.  Thankfully, none of my friends were hurt, though I still felt badly for those who were, or who lost loved ones.



Last week, suicide bombers struck on Iskital Caddesi (Iskital Avenue) in Beyoglu, a quaint shopping and tourist area of Istanbul.  I spent nearly two weeks in Istanbul and a month in Turkey ten years ago.  While I don't have quite the same connection to it that I do to Paris or France, I still feel as if a part of me had been attacked.  Even in such a heavily-visited area, the warmth and hospitality of local people--I'm not talking only about store and café owners and workers, though I include them--is unmistakable. 

An attack in such a place is also an attack on those people, and the beautiful people I met in other parts of Turkey.  I do not know the victims, but it is hard not to think that at least some of them, had I ever met them, would remind me of some of those friendly faces and incandescent eyes I saw along the Aegean coast and in the countryside.



Now sudden, random death has struck Belgium--specifically, Brussels.  I have not spent a lot of time in the nation or its capital, but I have deep and pleasant memories of both.  Most important, as in Istanbul and Paris, innocent people who were simply going about their lives and lost them, seemingly out of nowhere.

My heart goes out to all of them.