You're Definitely Not Square If You Use This Cage!

If you were riding before the 1990s, chances are that you used a water bottle cage that looked something like this:

You might still be carrying your libations in such a cage.  There's no reason why you shouldn't.  That you and other cyclists are still riding with such cages is a testimony to their design.

If you have been riding with such a cage for so long, you probably know its design was based on this:

Specialites TA Ref 215

Made by Specialites TA of France, it holds a distinction very few bicycle accessories--and only a few components--can claim:  It was the choice of racers, tourists, "rough stuff" and recreational riders alike.  Whether you pedaled your Cinelli in the peloton, your Herse over the hills or your Mercian through the moors, you used the TA Ref. 215 cage--or, later, the alloy 417. (The 215 was made from chromed steel.)  

Ref. 213

For a time, TA's Ref. 213 cage was also popular until handlebar-mounted cages fell out of favor.  And, in the 1970s, the single-clamp 216 became popular with cyclists whose frames didn't include brazed-on bosses for bottle cages.

Ref 216

I thought I knew the Specialties TA line well.  (After all, when you get to be my age, and cycle for as long as I've been riding, there are times when you think you've seen it all!)  But, in hunting for small parts and accessories for the Trek I'm building, I came across this:

Ref. 218

I have to admit that I have never seen one in person.  I tried to find more information about it, but all I could find was a listing on the Blackbird website.

The eBay listing describes the cage--Ref 218-- as having "an unusual rectangular shape."  Apparently, it was made to fit the Ref. 220 and 222 "randonneur" water bottles, which look like old-fashioned milk bottles rendered in blue anodized aluminum rather than glass. 



Ref. 222 (1 liter; Ref 220 was the .75 liter version)

Someone--Fred "Fritz" Kuhn of Kopp's Cycles, I believe--told me that TA stopped making aluminum bottles because they would oxidize on the inside and poison their users.  I wonder, though, what it was like to use bottles in that shape.  How easy or difficult were they to pull out, or push back in, the cage?

The seller says that modern Fiji water bottles fit into those cages nicely.  I'll take his/her word, though I generally don't buy Fiji, or any other water transported from the ends of the Earth.   I feel certain, however, that the 218 is bomb-proof, as all of the other TA cages were!

In Any Language, It's Just A Snow Day

Bonjour, Maman.  Comment ca-va?

Where are you calling from?  France?  Canada?

Oui.  Je suis sorti des Etats-Unis.

My mother doesn't speak French.  So she knows that when I say anything in the language, I am:  a.) recounting a conversation with one of my friends in France, b.) recalling some other encounter in a Francophone land or c.) playing a joke.

Today, she knew it was "c" but she confessed that, for a moment, I'd "flown the coop", if you will.  And, if I did, she probably wouldn't blame me, as she shares my disdain for the President whose name I dare not say.

Montreal sous la neige

Then, after telling her I am in Canada, I laughed.  "Well, not quite.  But the conditions at the moment aren't much different.

Yesterday afternoon, students e-mailed to ask whether my classes would be in session today.  My response, of course, was that they would be if the college were open.  I knew that snow had been predicted, but I didn't know that by mid-afternoon, the National Weather Service was predicting blizzard-like conditions.

Astoria under the weather

Last night, the decision was made to close the college, and the university of which it's a part, today.  And the snow is even more intense than what was predicted last night.  It's all the more amazing when one considers that yesterday afternoon, it was sunny and the temperature reached 17C (64F).  

How much is it snowing?  Even Citibike, this city's bike share program, shut down.

Citi BikeVerified account‏@CitiBikeNYC

System Alert: Due to heavy snow in the forecast, the Citi Bike system is currently closed. Stay tuned for updates on the system reopening.

• RETWEETS16
• LIKES12
• 

8:04 PM - 8 Feb 2017

4 replies16 retweets12 likes

 

 

Hmm...Maybe they have to allocate part of their budget for studded tires or tires with chains.

From A Late Night, Into The Mists

Last night, I stayed at work a bit later than I expected.  What that meant was, among other things, encountering less traffic than I usually see.

It also meant dealing with a change in the weather.  In the morning, I rode to work in a drizzle that occasionally turned into rain.  But, by the time night rolled around, a dense fog blanketed the city.

Normally, I can see the towers on the Queens spur of the RFK Memorial Bridge as soon as I make the turn from 132nd Street onto the Randall's Island Connector.  At that point, the entrance to the RFK Bridge lane is about 1 3/4 miles, or about 3 kilometers, away.  

Last night, though, I could not see the towers or cables until they were right in front of me--when I was in the lane.

When I reached the middle of the bridge, over the waters of Hell Gate (which I couldn't see), I looked back at the soccer field on the Randall's Island shore:

and ahead to the Queens side

My apartment is in there, somewhere!

The Limit: Whether Or Not You're Detected

In your travels, you have no doubt seen something like this:

Such speed limit detectors usually show your speed in amber lights, unless it is over the limit, in which case the number flashes in red.

Have you ever noticed that these devices sometimes register your speed when you are riding a bicycle--but sometimes they don't?

Those of you who are engineers (or simply more tech-savvy than I am) may be able to provide an explanation of why.  I have always surmised that it had something to do with the position of the speed detector:  The ones placed above the traffic lanes don't register bikes riding on the shoulder or even the far right side of the traffic lane.   Then again, I've seen detectors on the side of the street or road--and, in a couple of cases, right in the middle of a bike lane!--that did not track me.

An article in the IEEE Spectrum--the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers--may shed some light on why this is so.  

In it, Spectrum contributing editor Peter Fairley describes the advances made in detection systems used in robotic (self-driving) cars.  The best such systems could spot only 70 percent of cars just a few years ago.  Now that figure is nearly 90 percent.  Similar improvements in noticing pedestrians, and even birds and squirrels, have come.

In contrast, those same systems can detect a bicycle from 59 to 74 percent of the time.  While that is an improvement from a few years ago, the advancement doesn't come close to what has been accomplished in tracking other beings and objects.  

According to University of California-Berkeley research engineer Steven Shladover, "Bicycles are probably the most difficult detection problems autonomous vehicle systems face".  Down the coast, in UC's San Diego campus, visual computing expert Nuno Vasconcelos offers a possible explanation as to why:  "A car is basically a big block of stuff.  A bicycle has much less mass" and, he says, "there can be much more variation in appearance--there are more shapes and colors and people hang stuff on them."

Vasconcelos' explanation makes sense, as far as it goes.  In the article, however, Fairley posits that part of the problem is how those systems are "trained".  Actually, they "train themselves", if you will, by studying thousands of images in which known objects are labeled.  Most of the training, Fairley says, has concentrated on cars, with very little on bicycles.  

I will not address the question of whether robotic technology can or will replace human drivers:  Folks like the ones Fairley cites (or, for that matter, Fairley himself) can say far more about it than I can.  From what I've read, however, I believe I can surmise that self-driving technologies have a better chance of working on Interstates, Autobahns, Autoroutes or other high-speed, multi-lane highways where bicycles are seldom seen, or are banned outright. 

Likewise, detection technologies have a better chance of detecting speeders on such highways than they have of catching me riding my bike over the speed limit on city streets!

Riding With And Without Trigger

Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when I could hear the word "trigger" and not think about shifters.  For that matter, there was even a time when that word would not bring firearms to my mind.

The reason for that is that I was born a little too late to watch '50's TV shows and movies when they first ran.  I did, however, get a fairly steady diet of them in reruns.  It seemed that whenever you flipped the channels, you could find an episode of  "I Love Lucy" or "The Honeymooners".  Or "Lassie" or "Dragnet".  And, of course, there were the shows that continued to produce original episodes well into my childhood, and even on the eve of my puberty:  I am thinking now of "Perry Mason" and "Leave It To Beaver".

It also seemed impossible to escape from showings of  films like "The Ten Commandments" or "Ben Hur".  Another movie that, as I recall, often showed on the small screen was "Son of Paleface."

In the latter, one of the "stars" was a Palomino horse named--you guessed it--"Trigger".  Astride him in "Paleface", and in many other movies, was none other than Roy Rogers.  
Because he and his cinematic (and real-life) partner Dale Evans so often appeared with their equine companion, it's not easy to imagine either of them riding anything else. But, apparently, they did, every now and again, trade their spurs for pedals and hooves for wheels:

If You Had This, Would You Care About The Super Bowl?

Today is Super Bowl Sunday.

It's been years since I actually paid attention to what happens between commercials and performances by has-been entertainers--I mean, the game.  (That I haven't referred to it as The Game should tell you something.)

It's in Houston this year.  I have to admit it's been a while since I've been there, so it might be very different from my memories of it:  a city that seemed to be bigger than a few states and countries I've visited, hotter and more humid than the most brutal summer days in New York and with less mass transportation than on one block of the Big Apple.  In fact, it reminded me of the stereotype of LA in that everything was connected--by freeways.

Anyway, I see they have a bike share program, called B-cycle.    For the past week, shares have been free for those who reserved.  After the Super Bowl, it will offer "Bike Share Free Fridays" through February and March.

Now, if you could go for a ride and see this, why would you want to watch the performances--of the athletes or the entertainers?

My Personal Track

It was cold ,at least compared to the weather we've had.  It was windy.  

So what did I do today?  I went for a bike ride.

That is not, in itself, so unusual (at least for me).  For one thing, the cold and wind were balanced out by the bright sunshine.

So, perhaps, you can understand why I rode along the bay and the ocean:  to Howard and Rockaway Beaches, then to Breezy Point (which certainly lived up to its name!) and Coney Island, from which I pedaled along the Verrrazano Narrows and under the bridge named for it.

The funny thing about the beach areas, at least around here, is that they are usually a couple of degrees warmer than the areas only a couple of miles inland.  The wind, however, makes it feel colder, which is why I had long stretches of shore, beach and boardwalk almost entirely to myself.

Even on Coney Island, where I often find couples, young and old, strolling in the shadow of the Parachute Jump and and men fishing from the pier, I felt as if the boardwalk was my own personal track.

Speaking of which:  I rode Tosca.  Yes, my Mercian fixed-gear.  Pedaling into the wind on a fixie is good training, to say the least.  But riding with it--especially on such a flat ride--feels almost like cheating! 

These Flytes Never Took Off

When you think of high-quality bicycle tires, some names that might cross your mind are Michelin, Continental, Panaracer, Schwalbe and Vredestein.

Panaracer is a subsidiary of the Panasonic corporation.  People who aren't familiar with the brand, or cycling, might think it odd that an "electronics company" makes bike tires--and some very nice ones, at that.  Or, for that matter,  bikes, which is probably the reason why they didn't sell as well in the US as, say, Fuji.

Schwalbe doesn't seem to be similarly connected to some larger industrial concern.  At least, I couldn't find any such connection.  All of their tires, it seems, are made for bicycles, e-bikes, scooters or wheelchairs.

The other three brands I mentioned--Michelin, Continental and Vredestein--make tires for motorcycles, automobiles and other kinds of motorized vehicles (including industrial machines) as well as bicycles.  In an odd way, their practices parallel those of North American manufacturers in the days when few adults rode bicycles--and, as a result, demand for high-performance bikes and tires was minimal--on this side of the Atlantic.

If you rode a balloon-tired cruiser, whether from Schwinn, Columbia or Huffmann (Huffy) or long-gone marques like Elgin, Rollfast or Monark, it probably was shod with rubber from Goodyear, Goodrich or one of the other companies that made tires in the US for motorized vehicles.

(In fact, B.F. Goodrich also marketed bicycles, manufactured by Schwinn and other bike-makers, under their own name before World War II.)

Another of those US-based tire manufacturers was Carlisle.  From what I could tell, they were the only one of those manufacturers to make the transition from heavy balloon tires to lightweight high-performance tires.  In fact, not long after Michelin introduced the "Elan"--widely considered to be the first high-performance clincher tire-- in the mid 1970s, Carlisle produced its own narrow low-profile clincher tire, available with a folding or wire bead, called the "Flyte".

I never rode Flytes myself, but they seemed to be of good quality, if a bit heavier than Elans and their imitators.  I had not thought about them for a long time until I came across a listing on eBay:

The tire for sale is wire-beaded, though a folding version was also made.  My impression of Carlisle 700C and 27 inch tires comes entirely from the ones I saw in the shops in which I worked.  I don't recall selling, or knowing anyone who rode, them.  

Part of the reason they didn't catch on, I believe, is that most cyclists who were looking for high-performance clinchers were, by that time, riding European and Japanese equipment.  We were, by then, already accustomed to looking toward companies like Michelin--and Wolber, Clement, Panaracer and IRC, which would adapt and, in some cases, improve upon, the design of the Elan--for our pneumatic needs.  

Panaracer and IRC, Japanese concerns both, would also make tires for a then-fledgling company called Specialized Bicycle Imports.  Today, of course, you know it as "Specialized", and its "Turbo S" tire was probably the first to weigh (with the tube made for it) less than most racing tubulars while offering most of the ride quality of such tires.

By that time--the early 1980s--Carlisle was just barely hanging on in the bicycle world.  In fact, it was the last company to manufacture tires for non-motorized two-wheeled vehicles in the USA.   Today it is part of a group called Carlstar, which makes tires for industrial and agricultural vehicles and machines, ATVs and other outdoor vehicles--but not for bicycles.  Interestingly, they also seem not to be making car tires, but they offer after-market and custom car wheels under their Cragar, Black Rock and Unique brands.

Did You See Your Shadow?

Today is Groundhog day.

As you know, if the motley marmot sees his or her shadow, there will be another six weeks of winter.  If he or she doesn't, spring will arrive early.

The most-watched woodchuck of them all, Punxsutawney Phil, saw his profile.  His New York cousin, Staten Island Chuck, didn't see his.  

So what am I to make of it?  Well, while pedaling to work this morning, I didn't see my shadow.  Did you see yours?  Did other cyclists see theirs?

This fellow was riding the TransAmerica.  What did his profile portend for the road that lay ahead?

These guys, apparently, didn't see theirs.  Does that mean the rest of their race was "smooth sailing"?  

Then again, those guys were in England.  If Phil or Chuck or any of the other furry forecasters were there, would they see their shadows?

This Winter, You Could Ride A Sladda

Back in April, I wrote about the Sladda, Ikea's foray into the bicycle market.

Well, perhaps not into the bicycle market, per se. The company recognizes that the majority of its customers are young or youngish urban dwellers, many of whom are living in very small spaces.  And, although they might ride to work or the farmer's market--or even, on occasion, for pleasure--they don't necessarily identify as cyclists.  Certainly, most don't know how to do even the most cursory sorts of bike maintenance and, even if they knew how, they probably wouldn't do it.

So how does this bike fit its intended demographic?  Well, for starters, it's made to pack flat, so that it fits as a layer in one of the Swedish retailer's shipping containers.  So it fits alongside or behind their Burrow sofas.  

Another way in which the Sladda would appeal to such customers is that its accessories--which, for the moment, include a front basket, a rear rack and a cart--are all easily attachable to the bike's "click system" ports.  The bike's designers say that more accessories are in the works and liken them to "tablet apps".

Finally, as for the maintenance issue:  The Sladda has an internally-geared hub that is driven by a belt rather than a chain, much like the drivetrains of the Trek District and Soho.  They do not require oiling and, according to Ikea's literature, are good for about 15,000 kilometers (9,320 miles).  The company is offering a ten-year warranty on it (and 25 years on the rest of the bike), which tells me that the bike is not designed with a high-mileage rider in mind.

The Sladda has been available in Europe for about a year.  When I wrote about it in April, IKEA planned to release it in North America in August.  Well, a couple of weeks ago, the company announced that the date has been rolled back to February--i.e., this month.



I don't think I'll buy one:  I already have a few bikes and ride each of them more in a year than most of Sladda's intended customers will ever ride it.  Plus, my apartment doesn't have the Millenial Urban aesthetic, so the bike wouldn't fit.  (Then again, my apartment could be described as "chaotic" or "eclectic", depending on your point of view.  So anything--or nothing--might fit!)   But if I am near an IKEA store, as I occasionally am, I might just stop in to take a look at it.