Finishing Their Ride

Today their friends will finish the ride.

One year ago today, Deborah Bradley, Melissa Ann Fevig-Hughes, Fred Anton ("Tony") Nelson, Lorenz John ("Larry") Paulik and Suzanne Joan Sippel--members of the "Chain Gang" bicycle club--went out for late-afternoon ride.  Fellow Chain Gang members Jennifer Lynn Johnson, Paul Douglas Gobble, Sheila Diane Jeske and Paul Lewis Runnels joined them.

All were experienced cyclists who'd been riding together for over a decade.  They were a familiar sight to locals, who described them as well-mannered, law-abiding and friendly.

Debbie Bradley

As they were pedaling near Kalamazoo, Michigan, police were looking for a blue Chevy pickup truck.  During the previous few minutes, three different people called in to say that it was being driven erratically.

In spite of their efforts, police officers didn't catch up with it until it plowed into the backs of the nine cyclists I've mentioned.  

Melissa Fevig-Hughes

While Paul Gobble is riding again, he still deals with the physical and psychological aftermath of that crash.  So do Johnson, Jeske and Runnels.

Tony Nelson

Unfortunately, Bradley, Fevig-Hughes, Nelson, Paulik and Sippel cannot join them.  They, riding behind Gobble, Johnson, Jeske and Runnels, bore the worst of that Chevy pickup and did not survive.

Larry Paulik

Today, the Chain Gang will hold two rides to commemorate their lost riding partners.  One, called "Finish The Ride", will follow the 28-mile route they took through back roads in western Michigan.  The other, twelve miles long, will take cyclists to and from the "Ghost Bike" memorial to the riders. 

Suzanne Sippel

The chain gang is requesting a donation of $20 from each rider. Funds will go to Kalamazoo Strong.  Also, a memorial mass will be held at St. Thomas More Catholic Parish before the rides and riders will meet for post-ride fellowship at Bell's Brewery.


Oh, about the driver of that Chevy pickup:  Charles Pickett Jr.'s trial had been scheduled for April but has been pushed back to September.  His lawyer plans to use an insanity defense.  The judge is deciding whether the prosecutor can use a previous DUI as evidence.  A Kalamazoo Township police officer at the scene said Pickett seemed "out of it" and "under the influence of something."  Later, his girlfriend said he'd downed "handfuls" of pain pills and muscle relaxants before getting behind the wheel.

Boosting An "Innovation"

Although I remained, first and foremost, a road cyclist, I did a pretty fair amount of mountain biking during the '90's.

It seemed that every week, someone or another was coming up with an "innovation".  Many of them were in the area of suspension:  springs, elastomers, even air- and water-filled cartridges were employed in telescoping front forks as well as suspension systems on the rear of the frame.  And, of course, there were seatposts and even stems with suspension devices built in. E-bay is full of such stuff.

Some of those "innovations" have evolved and exist today. Others, thankfully, have been relegated to the dustbin of history, to paraphrase Marx.  (Karl or Groucho--take your pick!)  Among the latter category are almost any suspension system that relied on elastomers (as well as a few other components, such as clipless pedals, that substituted them for springs) as well as U-brakes and the lamented or lamentable (depending on your point of view) Tioga Disc Drive.

Now, as I have said in earlier posts, these "innovations", and just about every other I've seen in four decades of cycling, had been done before--in most cases, long before--they were introduced as the latest new thing.  Suspension systems of one kind or another have been around for as long as anything we would now recognize as a bicycle, as have alternatives (or things that aspired to be such) to conventional spoking for wheels.  Other "innovations" that weren't new when they were introduced include indexed shifting and hubs with integrated cog carriers--or, for that matter, just about any alternative to screwed-on freewheels that's come along.  

Another "great new" idea that came along during my mountain bike days was the "brake booster".

  


Until Shimano introduced linear-pull, or "V", brakes in 1996, mountain bikes used cantilever brakes, which mount to brazed-on bosses.  "Cantis" had been used on touring bikes and tandems for decades before that, but some mountain bikers--especially in the then-nascent subgenre of downhill riding--complained about their flexiness, fussiness and propensity for collecting mud.  The booster was an attempt to address that first complaint.  

Even after "V" brakes were introduced, some riders continued to use "boosters".  While "V"s are simpler to set up and adjust (on some bikes, anyway), they still shared the same problem with cantis:  They mounted on bosses that were rather small.  That is where most of the flex--and, in a few cases, breakage--occurred, especially with the hard,sudden braking that's so often a part of off-road riding. 

While some riders had legitimate use for boosters, I suspect others used them as fashion statements, as the boosters--like so many other mountain bike parts and accessories of that time--were available in a rainbow of colors.

Or, if you cared more about weight than color, you could get your booster in titanum:

To me, titanium boosters never made sense because, as strong as titanium is, it's more flexible than steel or aluminum alloy.  But, if you had other titanium parts--or a titanium frame--you didn't want anything that clashed!

As with so many other "innovations", brake boosters weren't an innovation.  Indeed, back in the 1960s and 1970's, Spence Wolf was making them for the center-pull brakes found on most touring bikes of that time:

Yes, he is the same Spence Wolf I mentioned a few days ago:  the one who retrofitted Campagnolo Nuovo Record derailleurs with extra-long cages he made.  He founded Cupertino Bike Shop in the 1950s and presided over it for a quarter-century.  He was main importer and vendor of Alex Singer frames in the US, and he and "Fritz" Kuhn of Kopp's Cycles were probably the leading Cinelli dealers.

I suspect that most of the mountain bikers with whom I rode--indeed, most mountain bikers--had no idea of who Spence Wolf was, let alone that he was responsible for one of the "new" ideas some of them adopted!

A Tax On Bicycles?

Oregon state legislators are debating the idea of levying a tax on new bicycle purchases.  

Now, my younger self--the teenage Ayn Rand acolyte--would have winced at the idea.  But my older, more radical self--what I am today--can see the need for civil rights legislation and--egad!--even the need for a single-payer healthcare system.  Still, I'm not sure how I feel about a tax on bicycle sales.

According to lawmakers, the money raised would be used to pay for improvements to the state's bicycle infrastructure, commonly regarded as among the best in the USA.  That, on its face, sounds both good and fair.  Or does it?

State Senator Lee Beyer (D) is one of the authors of the proposal.  He says he helped to create it in response to a common refrain among his colleagues:  that bicycle owners "ought to contribute to the system."  Sen. Beyer thinks that's a good idea, except for one thing.  He says that this idea ignores this fact about cyclists in The Beaver State:  "most of them also own a car".  That means, of course, that they are already paying taxes and registration fees which, ostensibly, help to improve and maintain the state's transportation system--of which the "bicycle infrastructure" is a part.  At least, that would be, in effect, its status if such a proposal becomes law.

That leads me to a question:  What, exactly, do they mean by "bicycle infrastructure"?  Are they talking about bike lanes and paths? If so, will engineers and planners who are actually cyclists be recruited to conceive and build them?  Or, is the legislature thinking about bicycle education classes?  For whom--cyclists? drivers?  kids?

Pardon my cynicism, but I have seen too many poorly-conceived, -built and -maintained bike lanes, and have encountered too much ignorance about laws and policies--let alone the actual experience of cycling--among law makers, law enforcement officials, planners and members of the media to have much faith in any government's intention or ability (at least the way things are currently done) to make their jurisdictions more "bicycle friendly".

Also--again, please pardon my cynicism--I don't believe (until I see otherwise) that the tax money will actually go to "improving or maintaining bicycle infrastructure" or making a place more "bicycle friendly", whatever those things mean.  I have seen too many instances in which money that a government takes from its people for some purpose doesn't go to that purpose.  One of the best examples are state lottery systems, which were supposed to supplement budgets for education and other purposes.  Instead, money raised from state-sponsored gambling has been used in lieu of money that had been raised through other taxes and budgeted.

Then, of course, there is the matter of how this will affect bike shop owners.  At one point in my life, I had the opportunity to open a bike shop:  A couple of people would have provided the money.  Working in a couple of bike shops convinced me not to do it:  My would-be investors, who made money in other industries, were astounded that profit margins were as small as they were--and that the profits were even smaller on high-end bikes than on cheaper bikes.

(There's an old joke that goes something like this:  Go into the bike business, and you can end up with a small fortune.  How?  Start with a big one.)

The tax proposed in Oregon would be levied on bikes costing $500 or more. These days, that amount of money hardly buys what most of us would consider a "high performance" or "high end", let alone "luxury", machine.  If you are going to commute every day and want something reliable--let alone something you might enjoy riding on your day off--you need to spend at least that much, at  least if you are buying a new bike.  

But even if that tax is paid by cyclists lower on the cost and income scale than lawmakers intended, it will still affect a fairly small number of bicycles.  One of the factors that keeps automobile sales as high as they are is that many drivers replace their cars every few years, whether or not they need to.  While there are cyclists who want to have whatever they saw in the latest edition of a bicycle lifestyle cycling magazine, most cyclists tend to stick with a bike that serves them well for a long time.  We replace a tire here, a chain there, maybe a more major component after a few years (or more), but a bike that isn't crashed can be ridden for decades with relatively little care.

So, in brief, you have to wonder just how much money a tax on new bicycles costing $500 or more would actually raise.  And you should be very, very skeptical about what is done with that money--especially when terms like "bicycle friendly" and "bicycle infrastructure" are tossed around.