Can You Hold It?

Do you really need to blow your nose right now?

Chris Froome probably wishes he'd asked himself that question--and, more important, answered it with a firm "No!"

For unexplained reasons, he blew his nose during the time trial of the Criterium du Daphine last week.  He may have breathed (That's the first time I've ever used that verb in the conditional present perfect tense) easier, but only for a brief moment.  A very brief moment.

He crashed.  That left him with a fractured femur, elbow, neck and ribs and with two liters less blood than he had before he blew his nose.



The result:  Not only was he out of commission after the fourth stage of the race; he has also forefitted much of the remaining season.  At any rate, he won't get to ride in the Tour de France, which he's won four times.

That, of course, has led to more than a few conspiracy theories.  After all, the record for TdF victories is five.  And the four cyclists who share the record are Continentals: Eddy Mercx is Belgian, Miguel Indurain is Basque/Spanish and Bernard Hinault and Jacques Anquetil are French.

I mean, how would that look if a Brit entered that lofty company--just as his country was pulling out of the European Union.

Hmm...Could some anti-Brexiteer have dusted the air in front of him?

(I confess! ;-)

Bike Biennale

Say "Biennale" to intellectual snobs like me (We're the kinds of people who tap our index fingers to our chins and say, "Interesting" when we're looking at something we don't quite understand.) and we think of an art exhibition that takes place every two years in Venice--or other exhibitions that have stolen appropriated the name.

Now there's another kind of Biennale--one for bicycle architecture.  Even for someone who's as jaded as I am has as realistic expectations as mine for bicycle infrastructure, it looks like an enlightening (no, I won't say "interesting") exhibit.  And it would be even more enlightening for most of the folks charged with planning and executing bicycle infrastructure in most places.

This Biennale, which opened in Amsterdam (where else?) the other day, features bicycle infrastructure that's recently been built as well as design proposals.  In the former category are two lanes in Limburg, Belgium I'd want to ride because they seem so other-worldly. One slices directly through a pond, so that cyclists are riding at eye level with the water. (I think now of tour buses "parting" the "Red Sea" during the Universal Studios tour.) The other rises as high as 32 feet into the canopy of a forest.  Both of those lanes are intended to entice more people to ride.  

Among the proposals is one that, if built, I would be able to experience regularly.  It would be built on an abandoned rail line in my home borough of Queens.  In its path, an "upside down bridge" would feature a community center at the base, a "floating forest" at each end of the top and bike paths along the side.

I hope that this Biennale will show not only can bike infrastructure be both practical and beautiful, but can be built in places not called Amsterdam or Copenhagen.
  

Trade War Sends Giant Back To Its Roots

When Trumplethinskin announced tariffs on goods from China, one thing was clear to anyone with an IQ of room temperature or higher:  Jobs would not suddenly re-appear in Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania.  Of course, El Cheeto Grande, not being a member of that exclusive club, went ahead with his move.  

Maybe I am not giving him enough credit for his intelligence:  After all, sold the promise of jobs returning, as if they'd simply migrated for a season, to large numbers of people.  Then again, at least some of those people are as desperate as he is avaricious or delusional, depending on what you believe.

So what are the results of those tariffs, so far?  Well, for one thing farmers--many of whose livelihoods are tied to exporting what they grow--are losing sales.  And it doesn't look like jobs are coming back to the US, at least not in the bicycle industry.

Prices are already increasing for many bikes and related goods.  But the world's largest bicycle producer found another way to deal with those new import taxes:  going back to its roots.

I am talking about Giant.  Chairwoman Bonnie Tu said, "we took it seriously," when Trump announced a 25 percent surcharge on almost everything coming from China.  "We started moving before he shut his mouth."

Giant's factory in Taichung City, Taiwan

That meant, of course, she had a very short window of time in which to act.  But act she did:  She shifted production of the company's US-bound bikes from its Chinese factories to the company's headquarters in Taichung City, Taiwan.

The first Giant bikes sold in North America during the 1980s were made in Taiwan.  So were all of the products the company exported to the America, and most to the rest of the world, during the 1990s and early 2000s.  

Bonnie Tu

Ms. Tu says, though, that the company's long-term plan involves moving as much production as possible as close to the markets as is feasible.  Right now, in addition to its Taiwanese facility and the five factories it operates in China, Giant also has a plant in the Netherlands and has announced they are building another in Hungary.

Will Giant start making bikes in the US?  Ms. Tu hasn't said as much, but it wouldn't surprise me if they set up shop in some low-wage "right to work" state in the South.  If they do, I just hope the bikes are better than some of the stuff that came out of Schwinn's since-shuttered Greenville, Mississippi plant.

Keeping Out The Hordes Of Bikes From Canada

The US Department of Homeland Security's mission statement begins with this:

  The vision of homeland security is to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure and resilient against terrorism and other hazards.  

  Three key concepts form the vision of our national homeland security strategy designed to achieve this vision:

• Security,
• Resilience, and 
• Customs and Exchange.

In their efforts to achieve that vision, the DHS has helped to keep out all kinds of threats, including would-be terrorists and weapons.

And, now, bicycles.

One mile separates Prescott, in the Canadian province of Ontario, from Ogdensburg, in the US state of New York.  That mile is the width of the St. Lawrence River. 

Until 1960, ferry service linked the two cities.  That ended when the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge. The US side of the bridge is indeed in Ogdensburg, but the Canadian side funnels vehicles into Johnstown, a few kilometers east of Prescott.

There has been talk of reviving, not only a ferry service for vehicles, but of boat crossings for cyclists that would take 12 passengers and bikes on each trip.  

In fact, Brett Todd, the mayor of Prescott, has met with the Ogdensburg City Council to seek support--which he already has in his hometown--for a pilot project that would shuttle bicycles two weekends this summer.  He suggested the 19-21 July, which is Founders' Weekend in Ogdensburg, and 2-4 August, which is a civic holiday in Ontario.

Apparently, the folks on the New York side of the river are in favor of the project.  But their city council hasn't been able to do something that Todd has managed to do in his town.  He met with Canada Border Security, and they offered to support the pilot project, free of charge for two years. On the other hand, he explains, "Requests made by Ogdensburg city officials have not been met with quite as keen a response."

Those requests to the US Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland Security, he recalls, came back asking for new facilities and manpower the committee saw as excessive, especially considering how few passengers and bikes would be involved.  "An average family with a pontoon boat could bring that many people into the country," he said.

And they could start a chain migration of more people--and bicycles. Oh, my!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day!

This is a tribute, my father, or to fathers in general, but to all of the men who are partners or friends in one way or another.

And, of course, to the dads who ride bikes.

Now, I know that sometimes parents will "sneak" out for a ride on their kid's bike--at least, if the kid is of a certain age.  But it's not often we see a dad on a bike designed for a seven-year-old girl.

What made Peter Williams all the more incongruous on his daughter's little pink bike is that he's six feet tall.  But he didn't just toodle around the block on his kid's toy:  he pedaled it 211 miles from Bristol to Land's End, the farthest point on England's west coast.

His ride raised over 52,000 GBP--more than five times his goal--for research into brain tumors, the cause of his daughter Ellie's death at age 7.

He and his wife, Kaz, had given Ellie the bike for what would be her last Christmas, though neither of them realized it at the time.  He and Kaz would soon notice, however, that her eye started to cross and that "it wasn't just a facial gesture."  Soon after, the once-athletic girl started to lose her balance, and her confidence.  They brought her to a doctor, who ordered an MRI.  The results revealed the frightening news:  Ellie had a brain tumor and only months to live.

She was diagnosed in Bristol, where Peter started his ride.  Although he and Kaz have their own bikes and regularly participate in group rides, he rode his Ellie's bike because seeing it made him sad and he realized that the best way to deal with his feelings was to "put it to good use."

That, he did.  

They Got It Back--Wrecked

In another era--or was it another life?--I wrote for small-town and community newspapers.  In that role, I looked at police reports and blotters. It's a vice in which I still indulge, occasionally.

Sometimes those reports make me laugh.  How else could I react upon reading something like "a caller reported a man yelling and swearing on Street X"?  

On the other hand, I mutter "What fools!" when I read some items, like the one about the woman who left her wallet in a shopping cart.  (It didn't stay there for long.) Or the one about the woman who reported that checks and deposit slips were stolen from her car.  

Then again, I'm from New York, where one of the first things you learn is not to leave anything in your car, or cart!

Perhaps my Big Apple-induced jadedness extends even further than I thought.  In the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune, the police blotter reported that a caller complained about "kids on bicycles who kept on going into dumpsters." (Someone called the cops for that?)  But my favorite item is this:  "A Wisconsin Rapids man reported someone stole his child's bicycle...and then brought it back destroyed."

Hmm...Taking something from someone and giving it back destroyed.  For a moment, I thought, "That's what my country did to Iraq." 

(Also check this out.)

 

Bike Infrastructure: A Path Out Of Poverty And Pollution

I share at least one attitude with poor black and brown residents of New York, my hometown:  a dislike of the bike lanes.

Our reasons, though, are very different.  My criticisms of those ribbons of asphalt and concrete are that too many of them are poorly conceived, designed or constructed.  The result is that such paths start or end without warning, aren't really useful as transportation or recreational cycling conduits or put us in more danger than if we were to ride our bikes on nearby streets.

On the other hand, members of so-called minority groups see bike lanes as "invasion" routes, if you will, for young, white, well-educated people who will price them out of their neighborhoods.  I can understand their fears:  When you live in New York, you are never truly economically secure, so you always wonder whether and when you'll have to move. (Those Russian and Chinese and Saudi billionaires with their super-luxe suites don't actually live here; when Mike Bloomberg famously called this town "the world's second home," I think he really meant the world's pied a terre.)  Also, as I have pointed out in other posts, cycling is still a largely Caucasian activity, or is at least perceived as such.  

My experiences and observations have made, for me, a report from the United Nations Environment Programme's "Share the Road" report all the more poignant, and ironic.  In one of its more pithy passages, it pronounces, "No one should die walking or cycling to work or school. The price paid for mobility is too high, especially because proven, low-cost and achievable solutions exist."  Among those solutions are bike lanes and infrastructure that, in encouraging people to pedal to their workplaces and classrooms, will not only provide cheap, sustainable mobility, but also help to bring about greater social and economic opportunities as well as better health outcomes.

Tanzanian girls ride to school on bikes provided by One Girl, One Bike, a non-governmental initiative.

All of this is especially true for women and girls in developing countries.  Far more women are the main or sole providers for their families than most people realize.  I think that in the Western world, we think of such domestic arrangements as a result of marriages breaking up or the father disappearing from the scene for other reasons.  Such things happen in other parts of the world, but in rural areas of Africa, Asia and South America, for example, a father might have been killed in a war or some other kind of clash.  As for girls, very often they don't go to school because a family's limited resources are concentrated on the boys--or because it's not safe for girls to walk by themselves, or even in the company of other girls.

Now, of course, bike lanes in Cambodia or Cameroon are not a panacea that will resolve income and gender inequality, any more than such lanes by themselves will make the air of Allahabad, India as clean as that of Halifax, Nova Scotia.  But bike infrastructure, as the UN report points out, can help in narrowing some of the economic as well as environmental and health disparities between rich and poor countries, and rich and poor areas within countries.  

Of course, it might be difficult to convince folks of such things in non-hipsterized Brooklyn or Bronx neighborhoods.  Really, I can't blame them for fearing that, along with tourists on Citibikes and young white people on Linuses, those green lanes will bring in cafes where those interlopers will refuel themselves on $25 slices of avocado toast topped with kimchi and truffle shavings glazed with coriander honey and wash them down with $8 cups of coffee made from beans fertilized by yaks and infused with grass-fed butter and coconut oil.

(About the avocado toast:  I can't say for sure that anyone actually makes the combination I described, but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody does.  On the other hand, the coffee concoction is indeed mixed in more than a few places.  I tried it once.  It tasted like an oil slick from the Gowanus Canal.  Or maybe I just couldn't get past the oleaginous texture.) 

The Sacrilege of Cycling In The Park

Once, I rode through a gate of Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.  I'd visited the necropolis before:  Two of my relatives, as well as some far-more-famous people, are buried there.  Being the naif I was, I figured that if pedestrians and motor vehicles were allowed, so were bikes.

Well, I was a few bicycle lengths into the graveyard when someone on a motor scooter pulled up alongside me.  "No bikes allowed," he bellowed.

"Oh, sorry.  I didn't know..."

"This is sacred ground, you know."

Well, that part I didn't know:  I figured that since Greenwood was non-sectarian, it wasn't "sacred."  Also, since I've slept in graveyards twice in my life and the residents didn't seem to mind, it didn't occur to me that any of Greenwood's denizens would object to my quiet two-wheeled vehicle.

Apparently, that "sacred ground" rationale is used to ban bikes from cemeteries all over the world.  I don't understand how a bicycle is more sacrilegious than, say, a van with "Puppies" and "Free Candy" painted on its side. 

It's also the so-called reasoning behind the Frankfort (KY) city commission's vote to ban bicycles from Leslie Morris Park, the site of the US Civil War site of  Fort Hill .  The Commissioners, with Mayor Bill May casting the deciding vote, cited Fort Hill's status as "hallowed" ground: A local militia deterred an attempted raid by a Confederate cavalry unit in 1864.  Although Kentucky didn't secede from the Union during the Civil War, an attempt was made to set up a Confederate government in Bowling Green.  Had the raid succeeded, Frankfort--which was staunchly pro-Union--could have fallen to the Confederates, and Bowling Green would then have been the capital of the Confederate State of Kentucky.  While such a turn of events might not have tipped the war to the Confederates, it almost certainly would have prolonged the war and delayed a Union victory.

In any event, cyclists had been riding on the rudimentary trails around Fort Hill.  Some of those trails were little more than traces formed by deer that populate the 120-acre park, and most were laced with thorny bushes.  Some cyclists, like Gerry James, enjoyed the challenge they posed.  More important, he says, was the opportunity to ride so close to his downtown home.

What makes the new ban so galling to him and others is that it came in the wake of another plan, recently scuttled, to develop those paths so they could be used by runners and joggers as well as cyclists and others who want to spend some time outdoors.  In fact, an elaborate plan was developed that would have kept those lanes at least 300 feet from any historical, environmental and archaeological sites.  Moreover, its costs were minimal and some of the work would have been done by volunteers, including Scouts who were trying to attain the Eagle rank.

A Civil War commemoration at Leslie Morris Park, site of the Fort Hill monument.  From the Frankfort State Journal.

The project, which had many proponents, was seen as a way to make an historic site accessible to more people and connect it to the downtown area.  It was also viewed as a way to encourage exercise in a state with some of the worst health outcomes (though, interestingly, one of the lowest rates of chlamydia) in the nation.  Business leaders, too, liked it because they believed that it would bring investment to an area that, while economically stronger than the rest of the state, still does not attract or retain young talent.

One reason why the young leave the city and state is because projects like the Fort Hill trails are cancelled, or aren't even conceived in the first place. Of the vote, James--who founded the Explore Kentucky initiative--said, "It makes Frankfort look like an anti-progress city."

His Way In L.A.

In March, I wrote about a guy on a bicycle who wove in and out of traffic on Interstate 95.

"Only in Miami!" exclaimed the driver who recorded the scene.



Well, it seems that "Magic City" isn't the only place where a cyclist might pedal among cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles doing 120 KPH (75 MPH).  Last Monday, a man was seen riding down the 101 Freeway near downtown Los Angeles--during rush hour.

"Only in LA!"  That was the response of the driver who recorded the scene.  

That driver ought to know a thing or two about crazy scenes in LA:  He's Jake Asner.  Yes, the grandson of legendary actor (and activist) Ed Asner.  

The cyclist, though, is not unique to the City of Angels.  The California Highway Patrol reports that last year, it received more than 1200 calls about people walking or cycling on freeways near the city.  

But the guy who rode on I-95 may remain unique to Miami, or anywhere, for some time:  He had nothing but a headband, hot pink socks and a thong protecting him against the Florida sun.  (Hmm...Maybe that should be the uniform of some team.)  

And he was riding backwards.  All of those cyclists on the LA freeways haven't done that yet!

R.I.P. Bruce Gordon

I had been cycling just long enough to know that the frame was different from any other I had seen.

Like nearly all quality lightweight bicycles of the time, it was built from high-grade steel tubing (in this case, Reynolds 531) joined by lugs.  And there was nothing unusual about the finish, a pleasing but not flashy bluish-green, unadorned by pinstripes, bands or any other kind of markers.  It didn't even have a decal bearing the name of its maker.

What I could see, though, were that the lugs--the longpoint "fishmouth" style popular at the time--were more meticulously finished than on any other frame I'd seen.  And the paint had a "quality" look that made my Peugeot PX-10 seem about as refined as a tank.

That frame's owner had brought the frame, built with Campagnolo components, to Highland Park Cyclery, a New Jersey shop in which I would later work. I would ride with him later.  I wasn't impressed with his riding (You might say I was a snot-nosed kid), but I liked his taste, at least in bikes.

As it turned out, that frame was built by Bruce Gordon.  He was one of a group of builders, which included Mark Nobilette, who trained with Albert Eisentraut, possibly the first of the wave of American builders who would ply their craft in the 1970s.  Eisentraut would stop building frames, and leave the bike industry altogether, a few years after I saw that frame.  

Well, I have just learned that Bruce Gordon--who would go on to design and make racks as well as other parts and accessories for bikes--was found dead in his Petaluma (CA) home on Friday.

Bruce Gordon, 2010

While he gained renown for his touring and racing bikes, he also was building 29ers and "gravel bikes" before they were called 29ers and "gravel bikes."  He realized that some cyclists, particularly those accustomed to road bikes, wanted a bike that could be ridden on what the English call "rough stuff" but didn't want the width or weight of mountain bikes.  Also, such bikes are more versatile than mountain or road bikes.

Gordon stopped building frames a few years ago.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, building frames is hard on the body, and builders often quit after developing arthritis, carpal tunnel and other ailments.  Two years ago, he tried to sell his business.  A crowdfunding campaign was launched to buy his framebuilding shop and retail store.  Apparently, it didn't work:  Because of the large amounts of money needed to rent a space large enough for a shop, and for all of the other expenses (including inventory that may sell slowly), the bike business rarely proves lucrative.  Custom frame building is even less so:  It seems that those who don't retire from the trade for health reasons end up leaving it because, paradoxically, higher-end frames, bikes and parts have smaller markups, and sell more slowly, than mass-market stuff.

So, since he closed his shop, he had been selling his remaining inventory, equipment and intellectual property.

Although I never owned one of his frames, I will miss him, if for no other reason that he made what might have been the first unique bike I ever saw.