C'mon in. Make yourself comfortable. Can I put on the kettle? I'm a little nervous, introducing you to the family like this. Mom? No she's not here...what are you talking about? No it's not like that. I mean, I like you well enough. But I'm not introducing you to my mom and dad. No, it's not about you. But this is a bicycle blog.
When you mention it, I'm not sure me father had ever ridden a bicycle. Pa (yeah, that's what I called him, just like on Little House on the Prairie) grew up not just poor but dirt poor. Grandfather Autrey mined coal, lived in the company town, and died with the company's coal dust clogging up both lungs. He carried a walking stick made of spring steel--it would bend right over if you leaned on it, and break a rib or a shinbone with a flick of the wrist. If they'd had enough money for a bicycle, they'd have bought coffee and meat first.
The war saved them though. Thirty million people died bringing Adolf and Tito to heel, but war fixed my family's problems. Grandfather, Grandmother, and all five kids trekked from south Alabama to metro Atlanta, for jobs in an army boot factory. When the boys turned 17, they joined the Marines, because the Corps will take you a year younger than the other services. One girl, Melba, died young, of something probably related to her various birth defects. Helen got a job at the bomber factory, and climbed the corporate ladder. She spent a lifetime lunching with the ladies and driving new Cadillacs. The boys used the GI Bill when they got home, my dad learning to fix commercial refrigeration units. Their folks got to retire, not for long before their health failed, but in a house they owned and in a town with more than one landowner.
Helen drove a Cadillac, Pa drove a Chevy pickup with all the engine options. It's the way of poor folks who make good. They were tired of making do and didn't want their kids to scratch and scrabble either. So in spring of 1974, when my tenth birthday rolled around, it was decided that I needed a new seat for my bike.
Like Ceasar, the dog whisperer who believes that there are no bad dogs, I maintain a generally high opinion of bicycles; but I've never owned or even known one with fewer redeeming features than my ride. It was a Stingray knockoff, bought originally at Sears and passed to me by a neighbor. Fenders were long gone, the tires were worn to the cord, and it rode as though made of lead. The giant chainring gave it a theoretical high speed, but I couldn't ride up the one hill on my dead end street. The purple glittery vinyl saddle had long ago split its seams and been mummified in duct tape. I didn't hate it. But it was useless--unlovely and unworkable.
When Pa suggested we get a new seat for my bike, I knew better than to demure. We are old south, and we know the value of good manners. But I couldn't get excited, because that bike needed more than a saddle. The previous owner had rattle-canned it several times, each one worse than the last, and the finish resembled Jackson Pollock in his rust and shit period. A new saddle would be a waste of a new saddle. Not to mention the waste of a perfectly good birthday.
But Sis and I piled into Pa's pickup with him. I got the window seat and the seatbelt, what with it being my birthday, and we rode to a Schwinn shop on West Paces Ferry. We walked in and the shop man rolled out a yellow Sting Ray. Pa spoke. "You like the seat on that bike/" "I guess." "Well go over there and look at the name on that bike." I read the tag on the top tube--my name.
The Krate era had slipped past a little before, when a few little boys had ripped their scrotums on top tube mounted Stik-Shifts. (Bad spelling was part of the allure.) The Apple Krate, Grey Ghost, Pea Picker, and Lemon Peeler had withered to just the yellow Sting Ray. A single Huret thumbshifter hung above the right handgrip, and controlled a Schwinn-approved derailleur and a five speed freewheel.
I didn't learn proper shifting until the next bike, but I did learn a few other things. I learned how to keep a chain lubed, and to pick the grease off the tension pulleys with a screwdriver. I got a speedometer and learned to covet the miles, riding endless laps to the dead end and back. (I had no trouble with the hill now.) I learned to use my front brake, and to trust both of them. I learned to wake up early and ride before the sun got angry.
When I started this post, I'd planned on introducing the bikes in my stable, not because it makes interesting reading, but because I'm missing being with my pack and wanted to think about them. They're just in the garage, or the attic over the garage, but we've been estranged for a while.
I ended up following a different thread back to its source, and got to think about some things that don't come up often. Thanks, Pa.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Heading home
I'm heading home.
It sounds strange to say that, and anyone looking over my shoulder at the moment would think I've finally left my senses. Fresh snow blankets the yard deeply enough that not only is the grass concealed, but the driveway and even the street have blended into its homogenous whiteness. No tire tracks mark it, and the weather report suggests that we should all get comfortable.
More to the point, I haven't left the house, even for the mailbox, in twelve days; and most of those twelve have been spent perched in my Lazy-Boy and swaddled in oxycodone. The swirling snowstorm outside is matched by another in my head. But it's okay. I'm heading home.
Back in 2006 or so, I headed out for an early morning ride one Sunday, to an abandoned golf course near my house. The smart money in Atlanta has been migrating north for years now, and the country club community where the ball playing heroes lived in the 80s has withered. The big houses are mostly still occupied, but the golf links turned yellow and weedy and they boarded up the clubhouse.
But the cart paths! The perfect combination of road and off road, not five miles from home. The architect laid them out with a nod to forest elves and low speed buggies. They wind, they twist, they fill up with dirt at the low spots, and all the bridges have black timbers and humped backs. The perfect spot for an hour of full tilt boogie, without the hassle of loading a bike in the truck.
The crash came so suddenly I didn't realize I was falling until I'd already hit the ground. I'd spun the pedals up fast on the approach to a short bridge, caught air off the back side...and found myself on the ground, with the wind knocked out in a way that I'd never felt before. Figured I'd lay there for a while, til I got to feeling better, then I'd ride home and get an ice pack.
But I kept not feeling better. I'd close my eyes for a second, and when I opened them the shadows had moved. I closed them once, and when I opened them again, a deer, a big ten point buck, was sniffing around my head. Shit, I'm getting shocky. It's 25 degrees, and my phone is on the charger at home. It's move or die.
My left leg was strangely unresponsive. My toes wiggled just fine, my ankle rolled, but I couldn't weight it or raise my knee. When I used the bike like a fence gate to pull myself up on, that leg didn't quite reach the ground.
I lowered the seatpost until the saddle touched the top tube, and standing fully on my right leg, pulled the bike back under me. Lifted my left foot and dropped it on the pedal until the cleat clicked in. Pushed off hard with the right, clicked in, and pedaled. Pain? Plentiful, but it seemed a long way away, like someone was telling me about it.
I rode home, just a couple of miles on empty roads, up my front steps that I'd ramped the year before, and through the front door that didn't lock, and made the call. Five titanium screws put the doorknob back on top of my femur. A year with a walker and a wheelchair got me moving again. But I never got back to full speed.
Muscle and fat and brains live off a network of arteries and veins, little rubbery tubes that blood runs through. They stretch and move and occasionally get pinched shut, like when you cross your legs wrong and your foot goes to sleep.
Bone's not so forgiving. The blood runs through vessels in it too, but they're carved in the bone itself, like caverns in limestone. When it gets broken, no matter how carefully the doctor lines the pieces back up, a lot of the vessels aren't going to line up.
My hip eventually healed, and with the screws still in place, actually became stronger than it had been before the fracture. But the blood supply withered gradually, as the vessels that only half matched became blocked by clots, and the doorknob went from living bone to calcified stone.
You could pick a worse material than stone, if you wanted to build something to last. For the first five years or so, the CAT scans and PET scans and x-rays showed an inert mass of bone, bearing up to the physically vigorous lifestyle of a construction worker and cyclist. But in 2012, standing up and walking started taking longer and making more noise than before. Sometimes a pop, occasionally the sharp crack of a gunshot. More pain, too: a dull ache in the morning, that sharpened with exertion. Enough that rolling over in bed woke me up every time.
Anyway, the doc who reduced the fracture the first time took new films and when he put them up on the light box, stood back and whistle. Stone may be long wearing, but it's not immortal and it doesn't grow back. The weight bearing part of the door knob had worn all the way through and shards had split off it. There was a hole the size of my thumbnail going all the way through. Time for a new hip.
Which brings us to the present day. This is actually my second artificial hip, after the first one got installed wrong, and gave me a leg 30mm too short. One scar is a hand's length, purple, and stands proud of the flesh like a pinky. The new one runs from waistline halfway to my knee, and has 45 gleaming staples that look like an upholsterer's tool.
But I can walk. The pain never goes away, but it never gets too close either, a dull thudding ache that physical therapy blames on post-op swelling. Both feet are equally far from my nose too, and my ankle bones bump together in bed just like I'm used to. My walker, an old friend festooned with Dirt Rag stickers and a bicycle bell, carries me from bed to chair to bathroom as fast as you could walk.
So what's all this talk about Home?
Bicycles form the one constant in my life. I got serious about my riding in 1980, as a tenth-grader, and even though I've never gotten good at it, have never quit trying. I raced NORBA and USCF, trials, time trials, criteriums and road races. Never won anything more valuable than a bottle of chain oil, and never valued anything more than that bottle of chain oil. I've been spit out the back of some pretty good packs, and led them briefly when they lapped me.
When I wasn't riding bikes, I wrote about them. In between construction jobs, I scribbled articles for Dirt Rag and Bicycle Times, covering shows for handbuilt bicycles, and project bikes and a few new products. I belonged to news groups, and web forums, and cycling clubs. I owned thirty-odd bikes, not counting the cadavers under the deck. I've got shelves of cycling books, a complete set of Dirt Rag back issues, and most cycling magazines going back to the early 1990s. It was a snug, happy way to live, where most of my reading for pleasure could construe as research for an article, where every weekend trip became tax-deductible because it would sell a magazine piece, and pleasure led to pleasure led to pleasure.
Unfortunately, when you can't ride a bike, it's hard to write about a bike. Hell, it's hard to look one in the face. And the more I rode, the less able I became. Training isn't supposed to work that way. It was all pain, no gain.
When the doc scheduled my surgery, I celebrated by sending a double sawbucks to Randonneurs USA, and a C-note to Compass Bicycles, for, respectively, a year's membership, and brake shoes, taillight bulbs, and tires. I bought a pair of string backed gloves from Bicycle South, and squeeze tube for GU from REI. I started reassembling my long miles bike, a project that hadn't seemed worth it a year ago.
Thomas Wolfe famously said that you can't go home again; that home changes while you're away and you probably change too. Bikes have always been the home for my soul, a comfortably familiar place, a place where I felt competent. I couldn't go there for a long time. I'm going there again. I'm going home.
It sounds strange to say that, and anyone looking over my shoulder at the moment would think I've finally left my senses. Fresh snow blankets the yard deeply enough that not only is the grass concealed, but the driveway and even the street have blended into its homogenous whiteness. No tire tracks mark it, and the weather report suggests that we should all get comfortable.
More to the point, I haven't left the house, even for the mailbox, in twelve days; and most of those twelve have been spent perched in my Lazy-Boy and swaddled in oxycodone. The swirling snowstorm outside is matched by another in my head. But it's okay. I'm heading home.
Back in 2006 or so, I headed out for an early morning ride one Sunday, to an abandoned golf course near my house. The smart money in Atlanta has been migrating north for years now, and the country club community where the ball playing heroes lived in the 80s has withered. The big houses are mostly still occupied, but the golf links turned yellow and weedy and they boarded up the clubhouse.
But the cart paths! The perfect combination of road and off road, not five miles from home. The architect laid them out with a nod to forest elves and low speed buggies. They wind, they twist, they fill up with dirt at the low spots, and all the bridges have black timbers and humped backs. The perfect spot for an hour of full tilt boogie, without the hassle of loading a bike in the truck.
The crash came so suddenly I didn't realize I was falling until I'd already hit the ground. I'd spun the pedals up fast on the approach to a short bridge, caught air off the back side...and found myself on the ground, with the wind knocked out in a way that I'd never felt before. Figured I'd lay there for a while, til I got to feeling better, then I'd ride home and get an ice pack.
But I kept not feeling better. I'd close my eyes for a second, and when I opened them the shadows had moved. I closed them once, and when I opened them again, a deer, a big ten point buck, was sniffing around my head. Shit, I'm getting shocky. It's 25 degrees, and my phone is on the charger at home. It's move or die.
My left leg was strangely unresponsive. My toes wiggled just fine, my ankle rolled, but I couldn't weight it or raise my knee. When I used the bike like a fence gate to pull myself up on, that leg didn't quite reach the ground.
I lowered the seatpost until the saddle touched the top tube, and standing fully on my right leg, pulled the bike back under me. Lifted my left foot and dropped it on the pedal until the cleat clicked in. Pushed off hard with the right, clicked in, and pedaled. Pain? Plentiful, but it seemed a long way away, like someone was telling me about it.
I rode home, just a couple of miles on empty roads, up my front steps that I'd ramped the year before, and through the front door that didn't lock, and made the call. Five titanium screws put the doorknob back on top of my femur. A year with a walker and a wheelchair got me moving again. But I never got back to full speed.
Muscle and fat and brains live off a network of arteries and veins, little rubbery tubes that blood runs through. They stretch and move and occasionally get pinched shut, like when you cross your legs wrong and your foot goes to sleep.
Bone's not so forgiving. The blood runs through vessels in it too, but they're carved in the bone itself, like caverns in limestone. When it gets broken, no matter how carefully the doctor lines the pieces back up, a lot of the vessels aren't going to line up.
My hip eventually healed, and with the screws still in place, actually became stronger than it had been before the fracture. But the blood supply withered gradually, as the vessels that only half matched became blocked by clots, and the doorknob went from living bone to calcified stone.
You could pick a worse material than stone, if you wanted to build something to last. For the first five years or so, the CAT scans and PET scans and x-rays showed an inert mass of bone, bearing up to the physically vigorous lifestyle of a construction worker and cyclist. But in 2012, standing up and walking started taking longer and making more noise than before. Sometimes a pop, occasionally the sharp crack of a gunshot. More pain, too: a dull ache in the morning, that sharpened with exertion. Enough that rolling over in bed woke me up every time.
Anyway, the doc who reduced the fracture the first time took new films and when he put them up on the light box, stood back and whistle. Stone may be long wearing, but it's not immortal and it doesn't grow back. The weight bearing part of the door knob had worn all the way through and shards had split off it. There was a hole the size of my thumbnail going all the way through. Time for a new hip.
Which brings us to the present day. This is actually my second artificial hip, after the first one got installed wrong, and gave me a leg 30mm too short. One scar is a hand's length, purple, and stands proud of the flesh like a pinky. The new one runs from waistline halfway to my knee, and has 45 gleaming staples that look like an upholsterer's tool.
But I can walk. The pain never goes away, but it never gets too close either, a dull thudding ache that physical therapy blames on post-op swelling. Both feet are equally far from my nose too, and my ankle bones bump together in bed just like I'm used to. My walker, an old friend festooned with Dirt Rag stickers and a bicycle bell, carries me from bed to chair to bathroom as fast as you could walk.
So what's all this talk about Home?
Bicycles form the one constant in my life. I got serious about my riding in 1980, as a tenth-grader, and even though I've never gotten good at it, have never quit trying. I raced NORBA and USCF, trials, time trials, criteriums and road races. Never won anything more valuable than a bottle of chain oil, and never valued anything more than that bottle of chain oil. I've been spit out the back of some pretty good packs, and led them briefly when they lapped me.
When I wasn't riding bikes, I wrote about them. In between construction jobs, I scribbled articles for Dirt Rag and Bicycle Times, covering shows for handbuilt bicycles, and project bikes and a few new products. I belonged to news groups, and web forums, and cycling clubs. I owned thirty-odd bikes, not counting the cadavers under the deck. I've got shelves of cycling books, a complete set of Dirt Rag back issues, and most cycling magazines going back to the early 1990s. It was a snug, happy way to live, where most of my reading for pleasure could construe as research for an article, where every weekend trip became tax-deductible because it would sell a magazine piece, and pleasure led to pleasure led to pleasure.
Unfortunately, when you can't ride a bike, it's hard to write about a bike. Hell, it's hard to look one in the face. And the more I rode, the less able I became. Training isn't supposed to work that way. It was all pain, no gain.
When the doc scheduled my surgery, I celebrated by sending a double sawbucks to Randonneurs USA, and a C-note to Compass Bicycles, for, respectively, a year's membership, and brake shoes, taillight bulbs, and tires. I bought a pair of string backed gloves from Bicycle South, and squeeze tube for GU from REI. I started reassembling my long miles bike, a project that hadn't seemed worth it a year ago.
Thomas Wolfe famously said that you can't go home again; that home changes while you're away and you probably change too. Bikes have always been the home for my soul, a comfortably familiar place, a place where I felt competent. I couldn't go there for a long time. I'm going there again. I'm going home.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Golden Age
This is, my sister informs me, the Golden Age of Military Surplus. You can almost hear the capital letters when she says it. Laurie's got an IQ that makes mine look like a shoe size, and enough research time to fill those of us with day jobs fill with bile and envy. So if she wants to pass the pronouncement to me, I'll give it the proper emphasis.
Her logic runs like this: We've been at war for a decade now, and thousands of soldiers have cycled through training camps and combat bases. They use a lot of gear, but don't always use it up. Moreover, the army has switched from the green blotchy camouflage to what's called digital camo, which makes the leafy patterns our of quarter inch squares. It makes a uniform shirt look like a screen capture off a Jumbo-tron. That means all the old style has to be turned in, worn out or not. (They call them 'uniforms' for a reason.) And lastly, they've swithced from A.L.I.C.E. (All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment) to MOLLE (MOdular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment). While the ALice to Molle switch sounds a lot more interesting than it is, it means thaat the old stuff has gotten even cheaper. And a quick look at Ebay proves the point.
I used to ride a lot more miles than I do. Back before they had drugs to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, I logged six hours in the saddle most days. And when the Paxil fixed that, and I didn't know what to do with myself, it was what my body expected and needed. So I still ride a lot, and think randonneuring and endurance mountain bike races are a lot cooler than they really are.
My first Camel-Bak lasted four or five years and a couple of restitchings before it got pilfered. THe second one made it two years, and the third I gave away because I couldn't stand its tiny capacity, crinkly nylon, and graphics that looked like a Mountain Dew can. Oh, and each of these cost more than a C-note each. My most recent one came from Palmer Tactical, a local cop shop, and is made for SWAT team use. It's black canvas, has all the little lanyards and lash points, and almost contains all my gear. But after two years, the shoulder straps are ripping out and it doesn't look repairable.
Laurie introduced me to the fave of the survivalist set, the army's tactical load carrying vest. It looks kind of like a photographers vest, only better ventilated. It adjusts for sizing with drawstrings, has pouches for ammo clips and grenades on the front, and ALICE straps on the back. It will accommodate a variety of packs, from overnight to campaign size, plus a hydartion bladder sleeve, and other pouches as you see fit to purchase. You can get them on ebay, used and marked with someone else's name, for 15 bucks. The hydration sleeve, made by Camel-Bak, is five. Even if I went back to my 1992 mileage, I couldn't wear this stuff out in a lifetime.
Now the GI Joe aesthetic is one I've never cared for. When you see a young man with a neat haircut and proud bearing in camo, you're proud to know him. WHen you see someone as dissipated and middle-aged as me, you either expect that I've got a bible with the entire book of Revelations highlighted, or else a self-written screed with the word 'manifesto' in the title.
Anyway, I'm going to test this new gear out, and report back.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Godamn kids
I rodde out from the house this evening, in a desperate attempt to get some after-work miles and maybe spend a day not getting any older. Neither one worked out quite.
A couple of miles from Stone Mountain, I noticed a couple on the side of the bike path, one bike turned upside down. I slowed down, as as is my habit, asked if they had all they needed. Most people, similarly stopped, are just resting or looking for that Heath bar in the backpack and send me on my way.
"Actually," said the young man, we don't." It turned out that Her rear tire had blown, and the had no spare tube. I always carry a couple of tubes, in the Forty Pound Camelbak, so fishing one out and handing it over wasn't much trouble. "Uh, do you have a pump?" They also had neglected to bring tire levers, not that I had any room to talk. Mine were still in the bottom of my suitcase, underneath the Dahon. So I showed Him the trick where you take out a QR skewer and pry the tire bead off with it.
While He struggled to tuck the tube in the tire and worry it back on the rim, I took a look at His bike. White Indy Fab, set up as a singlespeed. Paul's canti's, and DUgast sewups in 35mm. I looked closer. The Paul's angled upward, the arms pointing to 10 o'clock and 2, not the 3:30 and 8:30 that God and Mafac intended.
If you've read this blog before, you probably know that I've got an obsession with brakes. I went through a long study period with the early V brakes on my Bontrager, and eventually repalced them with very old style Dia Compes, and for one reason: the Compes work. So do Mafacs, and their modern Paul clones.
Th reason is the geometry. When the arms pointslightly below the horizon, then the pads move toward the rims quite fast as they pass through horizontal, and the long arms make them grip quite hard. When they're positioned above horizontal, the leverge just drops off the tighter they're squeezed.
My question is: who set up this bike? I haven't looked up Indy Fab's prices (and won't), but I doubt that even a very simple TIG frame runs less that a grand and a half, and just the two Dugasts are a couple of bills besides. So let's call the whole build a minimum of $2500. Who buys a bike of that quality and expense, and doesn't know how the brakes work? Who buys a singlespeed 'crosser and puts a cowhorn bar on it? Who needs a custom bike and has that little knowledge?
When I was a twenty-something, my dearest ambition was to be something like This Guy. I wanted the disposable incoome to ride a resepcted brand, and to have the sort of girlfriend that other riders undressed with their eyes. In those days, I was a shameless decal-sniffer, and honestly believed that because John Howard rode a Raleigh Professional, that I should too. (I didn't know then that John Howard actually rode an Eisentraut A, that changed its plumage every time Long John changed sponsors.) So I would have bought a boutique-corporate bike like an Indy, and set it up with arcane and less-than optimal parts. But I would have gotten the brake geometry right.
But what's going to happen to this guy when he catches a shard of glass in one of those high-buck tubulars? As much trouble as he had with a tube change, I can't imagine him regluing a sew-up on the road. And I sure can't imagine him restitching one. Hell, I can't imagine ME restitching one either, or at least not restitching one right.
So, after They got the tire changed, and thank yous and you're welcomes had been exchainged, I set off again. I rode my one lap of the mountain, then headed back. I never saw them, even though they'd said they were going the same way I was. I suspect that He pinched the new tube between the tire bead and the rim and split it, or that the piecce of glass that punctured the original tube was still inside the tire and killed the new tube as well. I realized this on the way home, after I'd taken a different route from the one I'd used inbound. They' were probably right in the same spot I'd left them.
And no, I didn't go back to look.
A couple of miles from Stone Mountain, I noticed a couple on the side of the bike path, one bike turned upside down. I slowed down, as as is my habit, asked if they had all they needed. Most people, similarly stopped, are just resting or looking for that Heath bar in the backpack and send me on my way.
"Actually," said the young man, we don't." It turned out that Her rear tire had blown, and the had no spare tube. I always carry a couple of tubes, in the Forty Pound Camelbak, so fishing one out and handing it over wasn't much trouble. "Uh, do you have a pump?" They also had neglected to bring tire levers, not that I had any room to talk. Mine were still in the bottom of my suitcase, underneath the Dahon. So I showed Him the trick where you take out a QR skewer and pry the tire bead off with it.
While He struggled to tuck the tube in the tire and worry it back on the rim, I took a look at His bike. White Indy Fab, set up as a singlespeed. Paul's canti's, and DUgast sewups in 35mm. I looked closer. The Paul's angled upward, the arms pointing to 10 o'clock and 2, not the 3:30 and 8:30 that God and Mafac intended.
If you've read this blog before, you probably know that I've got an obsession with brakes. I went through a long study period with the early V brakes on my Bontrager, and eventually repalced them with very old style Dia Compes, and for one reason: the Compes work. So do Mafacs, and their modern Paul clones.
Th reason is the geometry. When the arms pointslightly below the horizon, then the pads move toward the rims quite fast as they pass through horizontal, and the long arms make them grip quite hard. When they're positioned above horizontal, the leverge just drops off the tighter they're squeezed.
My question is: who set up this bike? I haven't looked up Indy Fab's prices (and won't), but I doubt that even a very simple TIG frame runs less that a grand and a half, and just the two Dugasts are a couple of bills besides. So let's call the whole build a minimum of $2500. Who buys a bike of that quality and expense, and doesn't know how the brakes work? Who buys a singlespeed 'crosser and puts a cowhorn bar on it? Who needs a custom bike and has that little knowledge?
When I was a twenty-something, my dearest ambition was to be something like This Guy. I wanted the disposable incoome to ride a resepcted brand, and to have the sort of girlfriend that other riders undressed with their eyes. In those days, I was a shameless decal-sniffer, and honestly believed that because John Howard rode a Raleigh Professional, that I should too. (I didn't know then that John Howard actually rode an Eisentraut A, that changed its plumage every time Long John changed sponsors.) So I would have bought a boutique-corporate bike like an Indy, and set it up with arcane and less-than optimal parts. But I would have gotten the brake geometry right.
But what's going to happen to this guy when he catches a shard of glass in one of those high-buck tubulars? As much trouble as he had with a tube change, I can't imagine him regluing a sew-up on the road. And I sure can't imagine him restitching one. Hell, I can't imagine ME restitching one either, or at least not restitching one right.
So, after They got the tire changed, and thank yous and you're welcomes had been exchainged, I set off again. I rode my one lap of the mountain, then headed back. I never saw them, even though they'd said they were going the same way I was. I suspect that He pinched the new tube between the tire bead and the rim and split it, or that the piecce of glass that punctured the original tube was still inside the tire and killed the new tube as well. I realized this on the way home, after I'd taken a different route from the one I'd used inbound. They' were probably right in the same spot I'd left them.
And no, I didn't go back to look.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Day one in Austin
At least I got my miles in.
I probably rode 12 or 15 miles today. That's not counting the 811 aboard a DC-9, the forty or so of Laurie driving me to the airport, or the trips scurrying around in the truck this morning, mailing mail and accumulating the ephemera that any trip out of town seems to require.
Being a bike geek, and in town for a bike show, I would have felt foolish renting a car. THat would be like hiking the Grand Canyon on a Segway, or buying a ticket to Carnegie Hall and keeping your earphones in. It would have marked me as a faker, a charlatan, and even more of a loser than God made me. ANyway, the books aren't balancing so well on this trip, and parking at the convention center was roundly scorned online. So I brought a bike.
SO you think you've got it tough, bunkie? 'Cause it costs extra to check a suitcase, and Pan-Am discontinued its Clipper Service? Bicyclists have been taking it up the ass for years, and it's got nothing to do with those narrow saddles. Domestic flights charge as much as $250 each way to carry a bicycle as checked baggage, and they require it to be disassembled and boxed. Most of my bikes aren't worth $500, and like I said, the books weren't balancing too well to start with. So I brought the Dahon.
Dahon bicycles are a triumph of design over manufacturing, ideals over reality. Designed for Asian commuters, these Korean clown cycles feature 16" wheels, a band brake and a hinge in the middle. WHen the seatpost is telescoped, the bars turned down and to the side, and the frame catches opened, it folds into a package small enough to fit in the kneehole of a salaryman's desk. Or in a suitcase.
I had to buy a slightly bigger suitcase, after all, and sit on it to make the zipper zip, but it went in, along with a U-lock, patch kit, tube and pump. Delta body slammed it enough times between Atlanta and Austin that on arrival, the frame was tweaked just enough that the hinges wouldn't seat fully. Anyone who has ridden a Dahon for long knows that eventually it comes unlatched in flight. I generally try to slam it shut with a couple of hard turns, like you might with a car door that opened at high speed, except that it never works.
Bed time. To be continued
I probably rode 12 or 15 miles today. That's not counting the 811 aboard a DC-9, the forty or so of Laurie driving me to the airport, or the trips scurrying around in the truck this morning, mailing mail and accumulating the ephemera that any trip out of town seems to require.
Being a bike geek, and in town for a bike show, I would have felt foolish renting a car. THat would be like hiking the Grand Canyon on a Segway, or buying a ticket to Carnegie Hall and keeping your earphones in. It would have marked me as a faker, a charlatan, and even more of a loser than God made me. ANyway, the books aren't balancing so well on this trip, and parking at the convention center was roundly scorned online. So I brought a bike.
SO you think you've got it tough, bunkie? 'Cause it costs extra to check a suitcase, and Pan-Am discontinued its Clipper Service? Bicyclists have been taking it up the ass for years, and it's got nothing to do with those narrow saddles. Domestic flights charge as much as $250 each way to carry a bicycle as checked baggage, and they require it to be disassembled and boxed. Most of my bikes aren't worth $500, and like I said, the books weren't balancing too well to start with. So I brought the Dahon.
Dahon bicycles are a triumph of design over manufacturing, ideals over reality. Designed for Asian commuters, these Korean clown cycles feature 16" wheels, a band brake and a hinge in the middle. WHen the seatpost is telescoped, the bars turned down and to the side, and the frame catches opened, it folds into a package small enough to fit in the kneehole of a salaryman's desk. Or in a suitcase.
I had to buy a slightly bigger suitcase, after all, and sit on it to make the zipper zip, but it went in, along with a U-lock, patch kit, tube and pump. Delta body slammed it enough times between Atlanta and Austin that on arrival, the frame was tweaked just enough that the hinges wouldn't seat fully. Anyone who has ridden a Dahon for long knows that eventually it comes unlatched in flight. I generally try to slam it shut with a couple of hard turns, like you might with a car door that opened at high speed, except that it never works.
Bed time. To be continued
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Bicycles are like porn stars
Bicycles are like porn stars. Okay, this sound like a setup for a litany or borsch-belt zingers about hard rides and things between your legs. About expensive rides and too much effort. But I mean it seriously, and if you ride and watch porn, I think you'll agree with me.
They're like porn stars because we have opinions about them, even though we've never met them. Gentlemen, you can go to big-time strip clubs, buy all the DVDs, and even get your copies autographed at the Playboy Club, but the chances of having an intimate interaction with Miss January are represented by one of those mathematical functions that approaches zero.
It's the same with quality bikes. Especially if you're a bike magazine geek like myself, you've read plenty of road tests, from the mid-line all the way up to cost is no object artwork. You may have discussed relative strengths and weaknesses with your geek buddies. But even if you're in the position to afford a $12,000 Pinarello Prince, it's very unlikely that you've ever seen one. Bob's Bike Shop can't keep sstuff like that on the floor--hell, even if they did, what makes you think it'd be the right size? It's all special order, and you're going to buy it blind, or on the strength of a factory test ride. Magazines are the only bridge across this divide for most of us, and often the expensive bikes are not just a dream of how we wish to ride, they're a fantasy of who we want to be.
My dream bike for a time was a John TOmac Raleigh. Titanium frame, disk rear wheel, fork that changed, chameleon like depending on who his sponsor was that week. But most importantly, it had a head angle of 72 degrees. This is pretty normal for a road bike, but extremely quick steering for a off road. I wanted to see myself as someone quick enough, skilled enough to keep an expert's bike reeled in: to ride that bull, not the sleepy mare.
The reality of my bike handling skills was less glorious, and the quick-steering bikes I've ridden in the years since have spit me off the side more than once. It's a good thing that 1991 didn't leave me with that kind of cash, because I would have bought nothing with it but crashes.
But that didn't stop me dreaming. I dreamed of Bontragers, with the front wheel tucked so far back that it couldn't wash out on hard turns. I dreamed of Moots, especially after they switched to Ti only. I dreamed of a Ti Xixang, assorted Litespeeds, Steve Potts. Ti turned me on, because of its alleged anti-vibration qualities, not that I'd ever ridden it. My list of two wheeled porn stars started with a Bontraager Ti-lite and a Moots Ybbeat.
Its nearly twenty years since my last race, but reckless financial choices and a much better paycheck have let me buy some of the bikes I'd dreamed about, especially the first two from the list. My Moots was built to order for me, with the soft tail rear and a greasy smooth 80mm fork. The Bon came from Ebay, with a somewhat decrepit Judy but a mixed XTR/XT group. So now the dream begins: time to ride.
The Bon has been my everyday off-raoder for all of this year as I dialed in its fit. I swapped out the ridiculous, complicated Vee brakes for cantilevers, and the oxidized tires for a pair of Velociraptors.
THe Moots came with an LX group, but upgraded (Nukeproof )wheels, and the rear derailleur was upgraded to an XTR. The fork needs service and the chain is worn. The tires, giveaways I recieved for re-upping a magazine subscription, have worn nearly slick and drift alarmingly.
So, I'm going to bring the Moots up to fighting trim, and test it back to back with the Bon. I may be old, and too sorry to race, but it's never too late to dream.
They're like porn stars because we have opinions about them, even though we've never met them. Gentlemen, you can go to big-time strip clubs, buy all the DVDs, and even get your copies autographed at the Playboy Club, but the chances of having an intimate interaction with Miss January are represented by one of those mathematical functions that approaches zero.
It's the same with quality bikes. Especially if you're a bike magazine geek like myself, you've read plenty of road tests, from the mid-line all the way up to cost is no object artwork. You may have discussed relative strengths and weaknesses with your geek buddies. But even if you're in the position to afford a $12,000 Pinarello Prince, it's very unlikely that you've ever seen one. Bob's Bike Shop can't keep sstuff like that on the floor--hell, even if they did, what makes you think it'd be the right size? It's all special order, and you're going to buy it blind, or on the strength of a factory test ride. Magazines are the only bridge across this divide for most of us, and often the expensive bikes are not just a dream of how we wish to ride, they're a fantasy of who we want to be.
My dream bike for a time was a John TOmac Raleigh. Titanium frame, disk rear wheel, fork that changed, chameleon like depending on who his sponsor was that week. But most importantly, it had a head angle of 72 degrees. This is pretty normal for a road bike, but extremely quick steering for a off road. I wanted to see myself as someone quick enough, skilled enough to keep an expert's bike reeled in: to ride that bull, not the sleepy mare.
The reality of my bike handling skills was less glorious, and the quick-steering bikes I've ridden in the years since have spit me off the side more than once. It's a good thing that 1991 didn't leave me with that kind of cash, because I would have bought nothing with it but crashes.
But that didn't stop me dreaming. I dreamed of Bontragers, with the front wheel tucked so far back that it couldn't wash out on hard turns. I dreamed of Moots, especially after they switched to Ti only. I dreamed of a Ti Xixang, assorted Litespeeds, Steve Potts. Ti turned me on, because of its alleged anti-vibration qualities, not that I'd ever ridden it. My list of two wheeled porn stars started with a Bontraager Ti-lite and a Moots Ybbeat.
Its nearly twenty years since my last race, but reckless financial choices and a much better paycheck have let me buy some of the bikes I'd dreamed about, especially the first two from the list. My Moots was built to order for me, with the soft tail rear and a greasy smooth 80mm fork. The Bon came from Ebay, with a somewhat decrepit Judy but a mixed XTR/XT group. So now the dream begins: time to ride.
The Bon has been my everyday off-raoder for all of this year as I dialed in its fit. I swapped out the ridiculous, complicated Vee brakes for cantilevers, and the oxidized tires for a pair of Velociraptors.
THe Moots came with an LX group, but upgraded (Nukeproof )wheels, and the rear derailleur was upgraded to an XTR. The fork needs service and the chain is worn. The tires, giveaways I recieved for re-upping a magazine subscription, have worn nearly slick and drift alarmingly.
So, I'm going to bring the Moots up to fighting trim, and test it back to back with the Bon. I may be old, and too sorry to race, but it's never too late to dream.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
January 13, 2010
A couple of years ago, I was talking with a guy who knows a lot about old bikes. He’s got multiple degrees, in disparate subjects like mathematics and geology, and he knows how to do a good scientific analysis. But he loves old bicycles, and he loves good bicycles (not that the two are necessarily the same thing), and he knows what makes a good bike good.
He’d been telling me about Rene Herse and Alex Singer, and building up a pretty good head of steam enthusing over these guys, and over the evolutionary approach that they took to bicycle design. They’d each sponsor a team of fast sport riders and build bikes for them. Then the riders, experienced men (women too—Lyli Herse could ride my legs off and yours too, and she’s reached an age and class where garden trowels and triangular sandwiches are more the norm) would tell them what worked and what didn’t. The result was bikes of integrated design, with racks and generator lights, with hubs that allowed a spoke replacement without removing the wheel, and fenders that didn’t rattle. I knew that a new Singer (pronounced Saun-zher) goes for 6900 Euros, not including the trip to Paris to get measured up.
So I asked him, speaking as a poor scribbler, what builder could approximate Singer or Herse performance, but at a price more associated with PayPal than a mortgage. He didn’t hesitate: Jack Taylor, he said. They got the geometry right.
So I did my research. If you know anything at all about old bikes, you know the Taylor brothers story, how they built a frame shop in a tiny, urban-blighted English town; that Norm (a hard man on the road, gentle in person) brazed the frames, Jack designed and painted, and Ken built up the wheels and bikes. They used French-dimensioned tubing, and rode hundreds of miles a week to figure out the fine points. Over four decades give or take, they built close to ten thousand bikes, including unicycles, BMXers, and youth. But mostly they were touring, racing and sport riding bikes, with geometry that let you stay in the saddle all day, take both hands off the bars to grab a bite or pull off a sweater, or choose a road with decaying pavement.
Being a good little rabbit, I immediately started searching EBay, Craig’s, and Classic Rendezvous for a Jack. I wanted one with a compliant frame, 700c wheels, and a front rack. Paint didn’t matter, as all my bikes get ugly in a hurry; size 58 please.
With nearly ten thousand of them out there, I could afford to get picky. This one was too much money, that one too small. (You can find anything in 56cm, but 58s are a lot more scarce.) Another came with sew-ups, one more with Super Tourist tubing. Sigh. All these choices, no perfection.
One seller had been present when the Taylor works closed down, and bought Norm’s repair stand. It’s the old kind, with a cradle for the bottom bracket and a spar running up to catch the down tube. The base is just a big can that you fill up with sand, and it was plastered with decals, for Jack Taylor bikes, local bands, and television characters. While he didn’t have the Taylor bike that I wanted, he did offer to sell me this stand, which I jumped all over. At the time I was fantasizing about becoming a frame builder, and I assumed that if Norm Taylor had used it, it would be useful to me.
In between the time that I wrote the check and the stand arrived, Norm Taylor, aged eighty-something, slipped away for that ride that you don’t come back from. And just as immediately, all the Jack Taylor bikes disappeared out of the market.
Obviously, there weren’t going to be any more Jack Taylor bikes. But there weren’t going to be anymore anyway. Norm had been living in a nursing home, Jack was too feeble to travel, and all three of them had been happy to close the shop and retire. Ten thousand of anything, whether it’s bicycle frames or French fries, is enough for a lifetime, and if the world wants more, then it’s probably too greedy.
I turned Norm’s stand into a bedside lamp, by clamping a photographer’s clamp-lamp to it and filling the base with non-authentic sand. I mean, now it’s a collector’s item, and I dare not pollute its patina with my own brazing fumes. And the price of Taylors, one and all, has jumped from ‘enough money to notice’ to ‘too much to think about.’
I’m reminded about all this by a posting on the iBob list yesterday, where a fellow was selling a 700c Taylor frame, size 57, with fenders and racks, for 300 dollars. The paint looked like the bottom of a city garbage can, and the derailleur hanger was for one of those long-extinct Cyclos. And it was gone before I could send the email, likely gone in the first five minutes.
As cyclists, we like to pretend to be complete pragmatists, justifying titanium bolts and 125lb tires for speed, and a stable of bikes for varying conditions. The reality is, the fashion market is as absurd here as it is for antique cars that you can’t actually travel in, or stamps that won’t carry a letter. Two years ago, nobody could spell ‘randonneur.’ Now Vittoria has a tire with that name, and an EBay search turns up two pages of bike items.
But when you boil it down, I’m not hurt by my lack of a Jack. Yeah, after talking with the Doctor of Old Bike Science, I wanted to start training for Paris-Brest-Paris. I wanted a Jack Taylor to hold me over ‘til I could get a Singer. And I wanted to ride those bikes like a champion. The reality is that I work out of town for a year at a time; that I’m forty five, and that this year’s goal of riding a double metric, without dying, is no more likely to be attained than it was last year. In a way, having a randonneur bike is no different than riding a Trek Madone, or the Raleigh 753 I drooled over as a teen. It’s just a form of posing, albeit in wool instead of Lycra. You can call it hope, or a dream, or a useless fantasy. But it all starts with actually riding, with using all those bikes that are choking my front bedroom, your garage, our imaginations. So I hope you’ll excuse me now. It may be twenty degrees here, but I need to get some miles.
He’d been telling me about Rene Herse and Alex Singer, and building up a pretty good head of steam enthusing over these guys, and over the evolutionary approach that they took to bicycle design. They’d each sponsor a team of fast sport riders and build bikes for them. Then the riders, experienced men (women too—Lyli Herse could ride my legs off and yours too, and she’s reached an age and class where garden trowels and triangular sandwiches are more the norm) would tell them what worked and what didn’t. The result was bikes of integrated design, with racks and generator lights, with hubs that allowed a spoke replacement without removing the wheel, and fenders that didn’t rattle. I knew that a new Singer (pronounced Saun-zher) goes for 6900 Euros, not including the trip to Paris to get measured up.
So I asked him, speaking as a poor scribbler, what builder could approximate Singer or Herse performance, but at a price more associated with PayPal than a mortgage. He didn’t hesitate: Jack Taylor, he said. They got the geometry right.
So I did my research. If you know anything at all about old bikes, you know the Taylor brothers story, how they built a frame shop in a tiny, urban-blighted English town; that Norm (a hard man on the road, gentle in person) brazed the frames, Jack designed and painted, and Ken built up the wheels and bikes. They used French-dimensioned tubing, and rode hundreds of miles a week to figure out the fine points. Over four decades give or take, they built close to ten thousand bikes, including unicycles, BMXers, and youth. But mostly they were touring, racing and sport riding bikes, with geometry that let you stay in the saddle all day, take both hands off the bars to grab a bite or pull off a sweater, or choose a road with decaying pavement.
Being a good little rabbit, I immediately started searching EBay, Craig’s, and Classic Rendezvous for a Jack. I wanted one with a compliant frame, 700c wheels, and a front rack. Paint didn’t matter, as all my bikes get ugly in a hurry; size 58 please.
With nearly ten thousand of them out there, I could afford to get picky. This one was too much money, that one too small. (You can find anything in 56cm, but 58s are a lot more scarce.) Another came with sew-ups, one more with Super Tourist tubing. Sigh. All these choices, no perfection.
One seller had been present when the Taylor works closed down, and bought Norm’s repair stand. It’s the old kind, with a cradle for the bottom bracket and a spar running up to catch the down tube. The base is just a big can that you fill up with sand, and it was plastered with decals, for Jack Taylor bikes, local bands, and television characters. While he didn’t have the Taylor bike that I wanted, he did offer to sell me this stand, which I jumped all over. At the time I was fantasizing about becoming a frame builder, and I assumed that if Norm Taylor had used it, it would be useful to me.
In between the time that I wrote the check and the stand arrived, Norm Taylor, aged eighty-something, slipped away for that ride that you don’t come back from. And just as immediately, all the Jack Taylor bikes disappeared out of the market.
Obviously, there weren’t going to be any more Jack Taylor bikes. But there weren’t going to be anymore anyway. Norm had been living in a nursing home, Jack was too feeble to travel, and all three of them had been happy to close the shop and retire. Ten thousand of anything, whether it’s bicycle frames or French fries, is enough for a lifetime, and if the world wants more, then it’s probably too greedy.
I turned Norm’s stand into a bedside lamp, by clamping a photographer’s clamp-lamp to it and filling the base with non-authentic sand. I mean, now it’s a collector’s item, and I dare not pollute its patina with my own brazing fumes. And the price of Taylors, one and all, has jumped from ‘enough money to notice’ to ‘too much to think about.’
I’m reminded about all this by a posting on the iBob list yesterday, where a fellow was selling a 700c Taylor frame, size 57, with fenders and racks, for 300 dollars. The paint looked like the bottom of a city garbage can, and the derailleur hanger was for one of those long-extinct Cyclos. And it was gone before I could send the email, likely gone in the first five minutes.
As cyclists, we like to pretend to be complete pragmatists, justifying titanium bolts and 125lb tires for speed, and a stable of bikes for varying conditions. The reality is, the fashion market is as absurd here as it is for antique cars that you can’t actually travel in, or stamps that won’t carry a letter. Two years ago, nobody could spell ‘randonneur.’ Now Vittoria has a tire with that name, and an EBay search turns up two pages of bike items.
But when you boil it down, I’m not hurt by my lack of a Jack. Yeah, after talking with the Doctor of Old Bike Science, I wanted to start training for Paris-Brest-Paris. I wanted a Jack Taylor to hold me over ‘til I could get a Singer. And I wanted to ride those bikes like a champion. The reality is that I work out of town for a year at a time; that I’m forty five, and that this year’s goal of riding a double metric, without dying, is no more likely to be attained than it was last year. In a way, having a randonneur bike is no different than riding a Trek Madone, or the Raleigh 753 I drooled over as a teen. It’s just a form of posing, albeit in wool instead of Lycra. You can call it hope, or a dream, or a useless fantasy. But it all starts with actually riding, with using all those bikes that are choking my front bedroom, your garage, our imaginations. So I hope you’ll excuse me now. It may be twenty degrees here, but I need to get some miles.
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