The "Veldeev"

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I'm very much interested in history.  It was my minor as an undergraduate; it was my love of writing--and my desire to "become a writer"--that steered me into an English Literature major.  I don't regret that choice because--as you've probably noticed--I love literature, too.  

Sometimes I think another reason I didn't major in history and pursue further formal study in it was that I sensed, somehow, that I would have to learn it on my own.  I knew that even with the best of instructors, so much would be omitted or edited out.  Sometimes, I would learn, the instructors don't even know what was omitted or censored.

Now, of course, the same can be said for literature. The difference, though, is that literature or writing classes cannot, by definition, be all-inclusive.  There are simply too many writers, works, genres and other factors to consider. 

 Also, when we edit or omit a reading list for a literature course, it doesn't have the same consequences as it does with a history class. That is not to say there are no consequences:  As someone who earned her undergraduate degree at a time when "the canon" consisted entirely of DWMs--Dead White Males--I know, at least somewhat, what it's like to be left out of what's considered "culture" or "education".  

Still, my assigning Macbeth instead of Othello or Hamlet in an intro to literature class does not shortchange my students in the same way as, say, teaching students that Hawai'i became our 50th state the year before, ahem, Obama was born in it while failing to tell them something about the Islands' pre-American history.   Or mentioning the times we came to the aid of allies during times of war while failing to point out, say, the US occupation of Haiti (which I learned about from one of my students during my second year of teaching).

OK, so why am I talking about all of this on a bike blog?  Well, it relates to something in my cycling life.  

During my first European bike tour, I passed through Paris before returning to it two months later.  During that first sojourn, I stayed in a hostel just outside the city.  There, I heard someone mention something about "Veldeev". 

A six-day race at the "Veldeev".  By Henri Cartier-Bresson

At first I thought that person was using some sort of slang they don't teach in American French classes.  Indeed it was: the expression was short for "Velodrome d'Hiver".  (The "h" is silent, and the "i" is pronounced like a long "e" in English.)  So I asked that person where I might find it.

"La rue Nelaton, pres de la Tour Eiffel.  La metro Bir-Hakim."

On the rue Nelaton, near the Eiffel Tower.  (She wasn't lying about that!)  And, as people in Paris often do, she gave me the nearest subway station:  Bir-Hakim.  But of course, I didn't take the Metro.  I could see the Tower, about seven or eight kilometers away, from the hostel, so I just pedaled in the direction of it. And, when I got there, a gendarme gave me a clear response to my "Ou est la rue Nelaton?" It must have been clear: At that time, I don't know whether my French or navigational skills were worse, but I still got to the site.

One problem, though:  there was no Velodrome there.  The young woman I met in the hostel, who was from Belgium, probably thought I was on some sort of Holocaust pilgrimage. Perhaps I was, subconsciously.

At one time, "Veldeev" was one of the world's most important bicycle racing tracks.  It had a glass ceiling (How would I have felt about that if I'd had more of a feminist consciousness at the time?) , making it one of the first such facilities capable of hosting events year-round:  hence the name. ("Hiver" means "winter".)  At that time, there was just a non-descript plaque on an even more non-descript building commemorating a non-cycling event that took place there.



I am referring to "La Rafle du Velodrome d'Hiver", or "The Velodrome d'Hiver roundup".  It had been scheduled for 14 July 1942, but apparently someone realized that it would be terrible public relations to hold such an event on Bastille Day.  So, it was postponed by two days, but that re-scheduling did not blunt the horror of what happened there.

For two terrible days, thousands of Parisian Jews were taken from their homes and workplaces and brought--in French buses driven by French drivers and guarded by French police officers, in an attempt to keep up the fiction that these workers, and therefore the nation, was not under the control of the Nazis--to the race track.

It was bad enough that there wasn't enough room for the internees to lie down.  But, as the name indicates, the track, with its glass ceiling, was intended for winter racing.  The captives were held there on some of the hottest days of what was one of the hottest summers in Paris history.  And the glass had been painted dark blue to avoid attracting the attention of bomber navigators.

 As if that weren't bad enough, exits and other facilities (including bathrooms)that could have provided ventilation--in their captors' eyes, a means of escape-- were sealed off.  So, people were getting sick from heat exhaustion, combined with the lack of sanitary facilities and food:  Only food brought by the Quakers and other groups, as well as a few doctors and nurses from the Red Cross, were allowed in.

After their confinement in a facility where motion--in the form of racing--had been celebrated, 13,152 people were herded--in some cases, more dead than alive--onto buses to the Pithiviers internment camp, about 100 km southeast of Paris, then packed into trains, mainly to Auschwitz.  Only 400 survived.

Even that first time I saw the "Veldeev" plaque, I couldn't photograph it or the site.  On subsequent visits, as I came to know more about the event, it became even less possible for me to make an image of it, or the memorial that was built to it on the nearby Quai de Grenelle:  any photo I could have taken would have seemed banal in comparison to the suffering that took place.

As for the Vel d'Hiv itself: Events, cycling and otherwise (There had been everything from circuses to boxing matches to theatre performances inside the track's oval.) were less frequent after the war, and it fell into disrepair.  During the last six-day race (featuring Jacques Anquetil and other top riders) held there, in November 1958, electrical cables hung from loops.  And, before that race, the roof had leaked when rain fell.

The following year, fire destroyed part of the "Vel" and the rest of it was razed.  There has not been a velodrome in Paris proper since then.  

Extra! Extra!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

When you get to be "a certain age", you find yourself making reference to something everyone in your generation understands--whether it's some bit of pop or haute culture, technology or something that was in the news--and young people have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about.

It happens all the time when I teach.  I am thinking now about the time I mentioned Hunter Thompson, just after his suicide.  Although he was hardly forgotten, at least to folks of my generation, my students hadn't grown up reading is articles (mainly in Rolling Stone--yes, we actually thought it was halfway relevant, for a time!) and books.  Explaining him, of course, led to explaining other things my students had heard, but didn't know about, like Watergate and why so many of us thought Richard Nixon was evil incarnate.  (Before he turned into a parody of himself, Garry Wills brilliantly showed how Tricky Dick was a tragically ambitious character who would have fit into Paradise Lost or Macbeth.)  Although I went off the day's ostensible topic--I forget what it was--the discussion proved fruitful for some of the works students read that semester.

Anyway, another time I had to lead my students out of the wilderness, so to speak, was when I said "Extra! Extra!" Since most young people don't read print newspapers, they aren't familiar with many of the tropes of that medium.  Then again, I'm not sure that any newspaper has used "Extra! Extra!" in its banner--or that any hawker has shouted "Read All About It!" in a few decades!

I must say, though, that I am suspicious whenever any bicycle component has "extra" his name.  Perhaps my prejudice stems from the Regina Extra freewheel that turned into a block of six fixed gears during a ride.   In fact, many of Regina's other products--all of which, in my experience, were overrated--had "Extra" in their name.  So did the Campagnolo Valentino Extra, a derailleur introduced about a decade too late.  When it came out, a SunTour or Shimano derailleur that shifted much better could be had for about half the cost of a Campy VE.

Speaking of derailleurs with "Extra" in their name, check this out:

If you are North American--or, in fact, from anyplace besides Europe--you've probably never seen it.  I have seen only one of those derailleurs in person--in Italy about 30 years ago.  For that matter, if you're not in the Euro zone, you've probably never seen anything else made by the company that made that derailleur.

When you think of Spanish bikes and components today, you probably think of Orbea.  If you are my age, you might remember (or perhaps even rode) equipment from Zeus, which made clones of popular European parts like Stronglight and Specialites TA cranks, Weinmann and Mafac brakes--and, of course, Campagnolo derailleurs.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s, they made their "2000" line of components, which include their iconic black-and-gold anodized derailleurs and the hourglass-shaped hubs that would be imitated by other hub-makers.

Zeus was based in Eibar, in the Basque region.  In that same town, another component manufacturer turned out cruder versions of what Zeus made--and the derailleur you see in the photo.  And its name sounds more like a type of luxury condominium than that of any enterprise in the bicycle industry.

Officially, that company was called Industrias Baskaran. But it was better known as Triplex.  Why that name was chosen, I don't know.   It's about as un-Basque (or -Spanish, for that matter) as any name can be.  Then again, the Basque language is completely unrelated to any other in the world.

Although they produced a full range of components and accessories (including water bottles and cages that, not surprisingly, copied Specialites TA and REG designs), Triplex is best known--for better and worse--for its derailleurs.  As far as I know, no American, British or Japanese bike was ever equipped with them.  A number of Spanish and French bikes, however, were adorned with them. 

The reason is fairly obvious.  Take away the screaming red "Extra" emblem and the derailleur looks like--a Campagnolo Sport, at least from a couple of meters (remember, we're talking about European bikes) away.  Other Triplex derailleurs bore an even closer resemblance to Campagnolo's iconic derailleurs, which spawned any number of imitators.

Disraeligears, Classic Rendezvous and VeloBase are among the few sources of information available for Triplex, which seems to have stopped making bike parts some time around 2005.   They have become "Distriplex" (hmm....), an importer and distrubutor of components. Its website is available only in Spanish and French, but its "Nouveautes" (new products) page contains some Latin gibberish!

Then again, more people outside Eibar would understand it than would understand anything in Basque!  And more people would recognize something that looks like a Campy derailleur than something emblazoned with "Extra! Extra!  Read All About It!"

I Love Tires, Too!

Last week, I mentioned John Boyd Dunlop, the inventor of the pneumatic tire.  It is, without a doubt, the single most important innovation in the history of cycling--and one of the most important in the history of technology.  

Supposedly, he invented it to appease his son, who complained about the harsh ride of the tricycle he'd just received for his birthday.  

If that story is true, let's hope the son's reaction is something like this:

Neutral Tones

This semester, and last, I assigned--among other things--Thomas Hardy's poem "Neutral Tones" in my intro literature classes. 

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing …

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

Where I live, and where I rode yesterday, can hardly be compared to Hardy's Wessex countryside--which, actually, wa even deader than the love lamented by the speaker of his poem.  Wessex was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom the Danes invaded a millenium before Hardy started writing.  Today it consists of Dorset, where Hardy lived most of his life, and neighboring counties in southern England.

But we are entering our season of "neutral tones":  the incandescent of Fall has burned away, and even the lastflickering and smoldering hues of dying embers have faded away.  Here in New York, we can see some of those "neutral tones" in the trees, even in the light of the sky--and manmade structures:

It wasn't particularly cold, though the temperature was beginning a precipitous drop, propelled by the wind, that would continue through the night and this morning.  So, I was the only cyclist--and one of only a few people--on the waterfront park just south of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I am not lamenting a lost love--or much of anything, really--right now.  I am just tired from the heavy workload I took on during the past few months--and from the election and the ensuing tumult.  All right, maybe I am ruing the relative civility, and concern for the truth-- or, at least, the appearance of those things-- of the past few years.

The other night, I was having a conversation with someone I've come to know a bit during the past few months.  We both agreed that we are now in a completely different world from the one in which we first met:  as I recall, some time late in the summer.  We can see it in the faces of people; most important, we can feel it, we agreed:  the air of resignation and defeat in places like the neighborhood in which I work, and the belligerence (manifested in an increasing number of attacks against people who are, or look like, Muslims, LGBT people or anyone Trump scorned or mocked) in other places.  

"But you know, we created all of that.  Everyone did.  Just as Americans created the Soviet Union as much as those folks in the Kremlin did."

I reflected on that observation as I stopped along the Brooklyn waterfront.  Obviously, humans created that bridge--which I love.  But we also made the "neutral tones" of that sky and the trees.  The hues were those of winter until we made them neutral--when, as in Hardy's poem, love is lost or, worse, abandoned. 

I had another insight, for whatever it's worth, about why Christian (white ones, anyway) and Jewish fundamentalists voted for Trump.  He famously declared climate change a "hoax".  (His unique spin, of course, was to attribute the ruse to the Chinese.) The religious folk might not like the fact that he made much of his fortune from casinos and other unsavory businesses, and that he's been married three times--or that his views on abortion are those of the last person who discussed the issue with him.  But what he said about climate change aligns completely with the most fundamental tenet of Abrahamic religions (as I understand them, anyway):  that of God's sovereignty.  That notion is challenged, to say the least, if you believe that human-generated pollution can cause a rise in sea levels and average temperatures, and can wipe out entire species. 

And to think that Trump came from the same city I inhabit!

Then again, I don't think he ever took a bike ride along the Brooklyn waterfront on a winter afternoon--and saw what I saw.

Campagnolo's Coelacanth

The first time I saw this, I thought I was looking at the bike of someone whose dollars spent exceeded the number of miles ridden on his bike.  I mean, who else would have a Campagnolo quick-release lever in that position?

A second glance revealed, of course, that it wasn't a quick-release lever.  But could that be...a coaster brake hub?...I wondered.  

I thought I knew Campy stuff pretty well. Even though I never rode BMX, I knew the legendary Italian company made some of the best components available for that kind of riding. I also remember their short-lived mountain bike lineup (Euclid).  I even recalled  that they made parts for aircraft and NASA spacecraft as well as race cars and motorcycles.  And, oh, yes, let's not forget those big corkscrews--the gold plated ones, especially.

It's yoooge.  I mean, BIG.

Still, I had not heard of a Campagnolo coaster brake hub until I saw a photo of it a few years ago.  I have since seen a few more images of it, and a few brief mentions.  I have not, however, found any Campagnolo catalogue or other literature that listed it, or any other information pertaining to it.  When was it made?  Why did Campy begin and cease production of it?  Was its reputation on par with its Super Record racing components?  Or was it like their Delta brake:  a triumph of technology and aesthetics over function?  

Even though the Bike Boom--which made ten-speeds all the rage--exploded during my adolescence, lots of kids still rode bike with coaster brakes.  Even though balloon-tired bikes were falling out of favor with kids my age and adults, lots of kids still looked forward to getting middleweight bikes like the Schwinn Typhoon or Hollywood, which came with coaster brakes.  Even the low-rider "muscle" bikes like Schwinn's Sting Ray were available with coaster brakes as well as with five-speed derailleurs.

Can you imagine kids on some playground trying to one-up each other? "Well, I got a Schwinn!"  "Oh, yeah.  Well, mine has a Campagnolo coaster brake."  What kind of a world would we have?  Hmm...what would the world be like if kids who weren't Italian grew up knowing how to pronounce "Campagnolo"?

From what little I've seen of them, I'd guess that the Campagnolo coaster brake hubs were well-made.  Still, if I were going to build a coaster brake wheel for myself, my first choice would be a US-made Bendix.  I overhauled and fixed enough coaster brakes when I worked in bike shops to see how much better they were than the others, including New Departure or even Sachs-Fichtel or Sturmey-Archer.  Bendix haven't been made in the 'States for about forty years (later ones were made in Mexico), but if you're nice to your bike mechanic, he or she might give you one (or sell it for not very much) out of the parts bin:  Lots of Bendix hubs have been saved from wheels that were otherwise trashed. Still, I've seen them sell for over $100 on eBay!

A few years ago, I briefly rode a Velosteel coaster brake hub.  It's certainly prettier than any other I've seen, even Campy's.   Its beauty is only skin- (or shell- ) deep, though:  Whenever I backpedaled to stop the bike, it seemed that the hub had to find its "sweet spot" before the brake engaged, and when I pedaled again after stopping, I experienced a "dead" stroke of about half a pedal revolution.

If you want a currently-made coaster brake hub, I'd say to buy Shimano's--even though it doesn't have the "cool" factor of Campagnolo's.  Actually, half of the "cool" factor would come from simply finding a Campagnolo coaster brake hub in the first place!