Bike thoughs and projects
-------------------------
I read that Jynx (recent master of the tabletop RPG!) is thinkig of
getting a bicycle[1], based in part on the influence of SparcIPX.
This is great! SparcIPX also bears some small part of blame for my
own recent bike madness, after he helped me through a minor adjustment
to the front brake on my main bike.
I find bicycles tremendously attractive, conceptually. The degree to
which they expand your personal mobility, and increase the physical
area in which you can realistically live your life, is absolutely
incredible when weighed against their cost, mechanical complexity and
maintenance requirements. This alone makes them an attractive
alternative to cars for me, even independent of the environmental and
health reasons to prefer them (which are also extensive). I think
you'd have to be mad not to have this preference, at least in
principle.
Despite this, I've hadn't owned a bike or ridden as an adult until I
movied here, and the reason is very simple. Unless you live
somewhere with both the infrastructure for and the culture of cycling
as a perfectly ordinary every-day method of transportation, riding
can easily be such a dangerous experience that all the above benefits
fade into irrelevance. You couldn't pay me to cycle around Auckland,
NZ. I consider myself very lucky to live somewhere where cycling is
so easy and effortless.
For the past few weeks I've been spending a lot of time reading up
on bikes, their history, a lot of mechanical and maintenance stuff,
and even though I've become quite an enthusiast I've also realised
that I am relatively abnormal in my feelings and it makes me
reluctant to self-identify as a bike nut. The cycling industry is
driven by, and cycling forums etc. are inhabited by, people who in
my opinion (they, and you, are of course entitled to your own) have
such a warped view of cycling that they destroy a lot of the beauty
in it.
I'm talking about people who think it is an excellent idea to make a
bike 10 times more expensive, 10 times more fragile and 10 times
harder to work on in order to make it 10% lighter or 10% more
aerodynamic. These people have very strange ideas. They will
happily make their bikes super expensive, so that they are very
appealing to thieves, and make their bikes *easier* to steal (by
putting "quick release" fittings, designed and useful primarily for
racers, not everyday people, on everything), thus forcing themselves
to put big expensive heavy locks on them, which partially negate the
weight savings they paid so much for in the first place.
My ideal bike is as close as practical to indestructable, and can be
maintained entirely or almost entirely at home by any vaguely
technically minded person, using generic tools which are not
bike-specific and can be used for other things around the home as
well. It should be as inexpensive as possible in light of the above
requirements. Rider safety and rider comfort take priority over
weight and aerodynamics. Afterall, even the heaviest bike that
hasn't been deliberately weightened is going to weight less than
half what I do. I am especially inspired by old English 3-speed
roadsters[2] and by China's Flying Pigeon[3] (literally the most
numerously manufactured vehicle on the planet).
I don't, for the record, have anything against people who actually
race bicycles, or realistically aspire to race bicycles. That's a
perfectly fine thing to do. Rather, I am confused and frustrated
that the "thought leaders" and market-steering enthusiasts in many
parts of the world forcefully embrace bicycle designs and riding
techniques developed for racing that make no sense in any other
context, and look with scorn on anything that is more in the
direction I outlined above, even though something like a Flying
Pigeon is tremendously more affordable and useful for 99% of the
human race.
The housing complex I live in recently had a big clean-out of the
communal bike/tool shed, which revealed a number of seemingly
abandoned bikes. These were displayed prominently in the shared
courtyard for a week for owners to claim, after which people were
allowed to help themselves, with the leftovers taken away to be
recycled. Since I'm keen to get as much hands on experience
mucking around with bikes as possible, I salvaged a bike, which I
suspect the previous owner had abandoned after crashing, at fairly
low speed, into something head-on. The front wheel had broken
spokes and a badly deformed rim, but everything else seems in
working order, although the rear wheel is badly out of true, but I
think it can be salvaged.
It's an old Finnish bike, made by a company started in this very
town and, I think, it's probably old enough (60s?) that it was
actually made here, too. It's very much made in the "heavy,
bomb-proof, easy to work on" mentality I outlined above, and I'm
pretty enthused about putting some much-needed love and care into
it when I get back from my holiday. Everything on it is steel,
and it has one-piece (or "Ashtabula" cranks). I don't think there
is anything on it which couldn't be taken apart with a screwdriver
and a shifting spanner. It's a single speed bike, with a
freewheel and coaster brake hub made by a Czech company using
tooling bought from the old German company Fitchel and Sachs,
after the latter was bought out by Taiwanese SRAM. A lot of the
older Finnish and Swedish made bikes people ride around here have
Sachs hubs, and this bike obviously is older than the SRAM buyout,
so possibly the hub has been replaced. The bike has obviously had
some rough and ready work done on it in the past (e.g. the kick
stand attachment appears to have been cut off another bike and
welded to the frame), so this wouldn't surprise me. A lot of
people would think the bike not worth any time or effort, but
bugger that. I can get a used replacement steel front wheel for
it cheaply and easily. I'll sand the frame right back, remove as
much rust as possible, paint it all black, then replace and
re-grease all the bearings, and put a nice basekt on it (it
already has a beefy rear rack). It will be a great "beater" bike,
totally uninteresting to theives and plenty rugged enough to be
ridden over cobbled streets and in bad weather. It will never set
any speed records, but it will do a perfectly fine job of carrying
me and my stuff to and from the grocery stores, library and garden
allotment. Not that my current bike (a later product of the same
company) doesn't, but it will be nice to have something that has a
little bit of me in it, and also that looks a little more like a
traditional roadster.
I am also working on another bike project, building one from
scratch out of random parts found at the local bike co-op. This
will be something a little bit sportier and sexier than the
"Finnish Pigeon" above, although I'm still striving to make it a
practical bike. I found a nice (and large!) Peugeot road frame
(I have had no luck identifying the model, despite many literal
hours of obsessive searching), made of lugged steel, and also a
pair of the legendary Mafac Racer[4] center-pull cantilever
brakes. One of my neighbours, who is also a bit of a bike
tinkerer, added a box of unwanted parts to the pile of abandoned
stuff that came from the shed clean out, and from there I grabbed
a nice set of aluminium mustache handlebars. I'm going to make a
slightly nimbler single speed machine out of all this, for taking
longer "just for fun" rides in good weather. My inspiration here
is coming from French randonneur bikes and from the Bridgestone
XO-1.
I may eventually get photos of both bikes up on Gopher.
[1]
gopher://gopher.leveck.us:70/1/phlog/20180528a.post
[2]
https://sheldonbrown.com/english-3.html
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Pigeon
[4]
http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/icons-of-cycling-mafac-racer-brakes-206323
