My Two-Bit Observations Of A "Smart" Lock

A few years ago, it seemed that if you were a Smart Young Person --or just wanted to look like one--you came up with an idea for some tech gadget that did nothing you couldn't have done without it.  

And you "crowdsourced" it through a Kickstarter campaign.

Some of those ideas never came into fruition.  Others took longer to execute and deliver than anyone anticipated.  Many more, though, simply were not what they were hoped or hyped to be.

Nearly three years ago, some folks in San Francisco (where else?) concocted the Bitlock, which promised "keyless bike security" and "low-cost bike sharing", and launched a Kickstarter campaign to pay for its initial development and manufacturing costs.  

According to its developers, Bitlock allows users to lock and unlock their bikes based on the proximity of their smartphones to their bikes, or directly within the app.  That, of course, allows users to ditch those clangy, clunky metal keys they've been carrying.  It also allows users to share bikes by allotting and revoking digital keys as they see fit.  

Upon launching their campaign, Bitlock's developers promised that their product "cannot be defeated using any kind of bolt cutter or hacksaw" and that its internal electronics were sealed and waterproofed to operate "under an extended temperature range".  Perhaps best of all, its projected battery life was five years, based on five locking/unlocking motions a day.

According to the company's initial press release, the program for the lock also show the location (based on the smartphone's GPS) where the bike was last locked, as well as activity data such as time and distance ridden.  And if a user loses his or phone, there were other alternative ways of opening the lock available.

Well, it seems that three years later, Bitlock has experienced many of the problems that have bedeviled other Kickstarted tech gadgetry:  delays in manufacturing and shipping, poor quality control (at least in early batches) and issues with suppliers.  This, naturally, has led to customer complaints  and the company trying to do damage control.

While I respect the efforts of the Bitlock's makers, I still have to wonder why, exactly why anyone still wants one.  More to the point:  Who needs it?  

Perhaps even more to the point:  I have to wonder whether this lock--or any other electronic lock--is actually more vulnerable than a lock with a metal key.  After all, hackers have found ways to break into "keyless" cars.  Perhaps I am uninformed about such matters, but I would think that it would take more time to pick a lock with a conventional key than it would to hack a "smart" lock.  Also, to pick a conventional lock, the would-be thief would have to put his or her hands on it, while a hacker does not have to be in such proximity as long as he or she has a way to replicate or bypass a code or password.

Even if the flaws of Bitlock or other electronic locks are worked out, I don't anticipate buying one:  I don't have a Smartphone and don't plan on getting one any time soon!

Off The Railroad And Onto Bikes: Reading, Pennsylvania

Whenever a city builds bike lanes or starts a bike share program, there is resentment.  As often as not, it's voiced as a class argument:  Cyclists are seen as young, rich and "privileged", and that poor working blokes are subsidizing their fads and fetishes.

One reason for this, I believe, is that most urban bike lanes have been built, and most bike share ports installed, in central downtown areas or in nearby areas where the young and affluent (who, as often as not, come from someplace else) congregate.  As an example, here in New York, the first Citibike ports installed outside of Manhattan were placed in the Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods closest to Manhattan:  the "Hipster Hook" communities situated directly across the East River and at the ends of bridges.  You won't find many marked paths or  Citibikes in East New York or South Jamaica, or even in relatively affluent (but further from Manhattan and less hip) areas like Mill Basin and Fresh Meadows.

What is often forgotten, however, is that in neighborhoods like the South Bronx and East New York--and in cities like Newark--there are people who ride to work, or wherever else they need to be, not because it's fashionable, but because they can't afford any other way besides walking.

They don't have the funds or a credit card to buy a new Linus "Dutch" bike or a Trek Chelsea.  The bikes they ride, in fact, may have come from tag sales or dumpsters, or been given to them.  Those machines may have parts that were not intended for them:  For example, a wheel may have been replaced by one of a different size.  And those riders aren't stopping in the trendy bike cafes for Marin Macchiatos or Linus Lattes.  If anything, they might be holed up in the local Dunkin' Donuts, if they can afford even that.

The communities in which they live have low percentages of people who ride to work.  Part of the reason for that is, well, a lot of them don't work:  They lost jobs and weren't able to find others, or they didn't have jobs in the first place.  

Many of them live in areas where there is little or no mass transit--and, even if it was available, it would be a strain on their budgets, if not financially out of reach altogether.  Or the nearest bus stop or train station is, say, a 45-minute walk away (as is the case for some residents of Red Hook, Brooklyn).  That makes it difficult, to say the least, to keep appointments with doctors, government agencies and the like, let alone get to work on time and have any time left for anything besides commuting and working.

Reading resident Harrison Walker doesn't own a car and bikes everywhere.

Almost everything I have said in the previous four paragraphs can be said about the city of Reading, Pennsylvania and its people.  Once a thriving railroad hub (If you've played the classic version of Monopoly, you've bought and/or sold the Reading Railroad!) situated halfway between the anthracite coal mines of central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, this city was beset by many of the problems older industrial cities like Detroit and Cleveland experienced when their industries died or moved away.   

Five years ago, the New York Times published an article declaring Reading the poorest city (of 60,000 or more people) in the United States.  More than 40 percent of its residents were living below the Federal poverty line.  Things seem not to have changed much:  While the official unemployment rate has dropped, at 8.3 percent it still is three percentage points higher than the national average.  And, of course, that number doesn't include the people who gave up on trying to find a job or whose unemployment benefits ran out--or those who returned to school or entered some sort of retraining program after they could not find jobs in the industries in which they had been working.

Those un-, under- and never-employed Reading residents make up most of the city's cyclists. "Reading's poor, and a lot of people who live here are poor," explains Dani Motze of ReDesign Reading, a nonprofit group that's trying to revitalize the city.  "[S]o bike riding is how they get from place to place."  

The demography of Reading's cyclists may be a reason why the city hasn't attracted the attention of urban planners involved with cycling infrastructure--until now.  Craig Peiffer became the city's zoning administrator a few years ago.  He was shocked at what he found.  "As a planner here in Pennsylvania," he relates, "I've seen smaller towns--significantly smaller towns--where they were already putting in designated bike lanes."

He and a colleague decided they were going to make Reading a more hospitable place for cyclists. However, their aim in doing so would be different from what has motivated officials in other cities to make them more "bike friendly."  In those communities, bike amenities are often used to attract outsiders--especially affluent millennials and sustainability advocates.  "Other cities have used biking because biking is cool and hip," declares Brian Kelly, executive director of ReDesign Reading.  He has no problem with that, he explains, but that is not the point of what he, Peiffer and others are trying to do in Reading.  

Jason Orth, manager of the Reading Bike Hub, fixes a bike for a customer.

Instead, they are--in addition to working on acquiring the money for bike lanes--making cycling more affordable and convenient for the city's residents.  Bike racks have been installed on all of the city's buses.  The city has also launched a bike-share program.  But, perhaps most important of all, it opened Reading's first bike shop. Unlike the bike boutiques of trendy neighborhoods, the Reading Bike Hub, in addition to conducting safety workshops, sells used bikes and affordable parts--and loans tools.  "If I were to go buy this tool, I'd have to go to Sears,"  says Harrison Walker, who rides his bike "everywhere".  The tool he had just borrowed from the Hub would "probably cost upwards of $20 just for this one wrench," he observes.

I am glad that the folks at National Public Radio, where I learned of Reading's programs, were able to see and communicate some of the challenges faced by people who are forced to rely on their bicycles for transportation.  It is only with such knowledge that American cities can make bicycles a viable transportation option for all of their citizens.

The 9/11 Memorial Trail

You all know what happened fifteen years ago today.  In fact, you probably remember where you were that day.  Perhaps you knew someone who lost a family member or someone else he or she loved; you may know someone who was affected in some other way, whether physically or emotionally.

On this date last year, I wrote about a particular source of the shock and grief that day's events generated:  a lot of people, including a messenger whose bike was found a month later, went to work but never made it home.  As terrible as the deaths of firefighters and police officers were, they go to work every day with the knowledge they might not see their families or friends at the end of the day.  Messengers, as well as accountant, lawyers, maintenance mechanics and most other kinds of workers and professionals, do not have that spectre hanging over them:  They know that, barring some sort of accident, on any given day they are unlikely to encounter any situation that will end their lives before the day is over.  

I have been fortunate in that sense:  Through nearly all of my working life, I have been in jobs and professions where there was little chance of encountering any life-threatening danger.  Even when I was a bike messenger--arguably the most dangerous job I had--my situation was safer than that of any police officer or firefighter.  Even though I was living alone, there are people who would have been shocked by my not making it through the day.

On this date two years ago, I wrote about a bicycle rack recovered from the ruins of the World Trade Center.  When I learned about it, all I could think about were the people who rode the bikes locked to it. (At the time I wrote, only one bicycle had been claimed.)  Did they commute to offices in the Towers?  Did they live or work in the nearby buildings, stores, coffee shops or other businesses that served the ones high above lower Manhattan?   Were they among the ones who never made it home?  Or were they so traumatized that they didn't retrieve their bikes--or that they left New York altogether?

In the end, there really is no way to ameliorate or memorialize not only those for whom, to paraphrase Albert Camus, death came out of the clear blue sky, but those who have yet to recover the possessions, jobs, lifestyles and sense of themselves they might have had before disaster struck.  And that is exactly the reason why we try, and must continue to do so, in whatever ways we can.

One group of people who is commemorating the tragedies of that day fifteen years ago is doing so in a unique way:  They are creating the 9/11 Memorial Trail, which will connect the World Trade Center  with the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania:  the sites of that day's attacks.  Some of the network will consist of already-existing lanes such as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath, the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath and sections of the East Coast Greenway.  When finished, the network will be a 1300 mile (2100 kilometer) triangle linking the three sites.

Along the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath, which would become part of the 9/11 Memorial Trail.

As much as I love the idea of the trail, and hope to pedal the parts of it I haven't already ridden, I also hope that no more such memorials will be necessary.

The Real Presidential Race

I'm going to say something you've heard before:  This year's US Presidential campaign is the most dispiriting I've ever seen.  Perhaps it's the most depressing in history:  The only one I can imagine being worse is that of 1852, in which Franklin Pierce--probably the most undistinguished individual to occupy the White House--defeated Winifield Scott. (Quick question:  To which party did Scott belong?)  Tell me:  Would you have voted for either of those guys?

That contest, like this year's, features two major-party candidates that generate almost no enthusiasm:  People support one or the other, to the degree that they do, only because they think the other is worse.  Even the 1984 election, which ended in a landslide re-election for Ronald Reagan, wasn't nearly as soul-crushing:  At least his opponent, Walter Mondale, actually stood for some positive things.  And Reagan himself wasn't the volcano of bile and venom Trump has been on the campaign trail.

I also realize a reason why this year's election is so alienating:  It's the first in a long time in which neither candidate was seen on a bicycle.  In fact, it's difficult to imagine either of them ever having been on a bicycle.  Even Reagan seems to have had a more recent two-wheeled history than Hillary or Donald.

The 2004 election was another story.  I wasn't happy with the outcome, but at least I didn't cringe while voting for John Kerry.   And, quite honestly, this year's candidates almost make George W. Bush look good, at least to me.

John Kerry on his Serotta road bike during the 2004 campaign.

From a cyclist's perspective, though, that election was the best in recent memory.  Both candidates are avid cyclists, though Kerry is mainly a road rider while Bush favored mountain biking.  

George W. Bush on  the trail during the 2004 campaign.

Hmm...What if Bush had been a roadie or Kerry an off-road rider.  Now that would have made for a race!  I think Kerry would have won whether or not Bush cheated!

A yellow dog.

A Columbia Folding Bike--From England?

I came of age as a cyclist during the '70's Bike Boom of North America.  Ten-speeds were the bikes of choice.  Of US bike manufacturers, only Schwinn had been producing derailleur-equipped bikes in the years before the boom.  Other manufacturers--such as Columbia, Murray and AMF--began to offer "lightweight" bikes made of flash-welded gaspipe tubing with derailleurs and hand brakes.  To be fair, Schwinn's "lightweights"--with the exceptions of the Paramount and Superior--were also tanks with derailleurs fitted to them.  

AMF Hercules three-speed, made in England

A similar scenario played out during the 1950s and 1960s.  While the number of adult cyclists--and the demand for adult bicycles--were nowhere near as great as that of the 1970s, both increased gradually during those two decades.  And American bike manufacturers were not ready to produce the bike requested by adults:  three speed "English racers".  None--not even Schwinn--had ever made such a bike.

Schwinn responded in the way they would to the demand for ten-speeds in the 1970s:  they fitted their heavy frames with Sturmey-Archer three-speed hubs and called those bikes "lightweights".  On the other hand, other American bike companies did something that would have, in an earlier decade, seemed unthinkable:  they imported bikes and re-badged them.  

So, English three-speed bikes were sold under the brands of AMF (Hercules), Huffy and other American companies.  Strip away their decals and they are indistinguishable from Raleigh, Rudge or other English three-speed bikes of the time.

Columbia was another American manufacturer who imported English three-speeds.  That fact leads me to believe that this Columbia might also have been made by one of those British manufacturers:

The tell-tale signs of a Raleigh folding bike are there:  the brakes, the Sturmey-Archer hub, the cottered crank (at least in the style seen on that bike).  But the frame doesn't look like any of the folding or "shopper" bikes Raleigh was making at the time.  The frames of most such machines had, in essence, a down tube but no top tube.  The reverse is true on the Columbia in the photos. I wonder how that affects the ride.

I watched the bike on eBay a few months ago. No, I didn't buy it!  I admit, I was tempted: It would have been an interesting project.  Apparently, not many of those bikes were made, and from what I could find, Columbia offered them in only one year:  1966.

Fifty years later, no bike like it--or, for that matter, the old English three-speed--is made today.  And, of the bike brands mentioned in this post, only two exist today:  Schwinn and Raleigh.  Both are owned by conglomerates and their bikes are made for them in China or Taiwan.  Which means, of course, that it's unlikely that any bike like the Columbia folder will be made any time soon.