I haven’t been writing a ton about cycling lately, because it’s been a mess lately — a few weeks ago I crashed and strained my intercostal muscles, which left me pretty much unable to breathe hard enough to actually ride my bike, then, when that started to get better, my bike started going nuts, ending up only marginally rideable until I can get myself a new rear derailleur (my potentially-imploding wheels aren’t helping either).
But I did have one really good ride this week where I made it down to the Inclined Plane of Ronquières which is one of the more bizarre and amazing engineering projects I’ve ever seen. Check back here for the whole story on that in a couple of days.
For now, I’ve got to share this completely awesome video — Abbey Road and London Calling in Rubik’s Cubes. Art does not get any better.
Back when I was in college I played drums in a few different little jazz bands and combos. I don’t think we were great, but we had some steady gigs and, unbelievably, actually got paid to play. Mostly for dances and stuff, plus the occasional couple of songs as the opening act for the big college jazz ensemble. And in these little combos, we sounded pretty good, because we picked stuff that we could actually, you know, play.
But every once in a while I’d have to sit in with the big jazz band, or some famous jazz figure would come to town and do a workshop or something. And this is always what happened…
Want to ride in the bike lane everywhere you go? Now you can.
(Cool concept if you ignore the fact that drivers might be so distracted by your amazing laser bike lane that they don’t actually pay enough attention to pass you safely. But this IS a step in a positive direction.)
Pardon my language (but I live in Belgium where people really don’t get remotely riled up by supposedly ‘bad’ language, and, anyway, there’s no better way to put this) but this shit just sucks. I’d love for somebody to explain to me how, exactly, cyclists “endanger” drivers.
This nonsense just blows my mind. But I suppose there’s bound to be some blowback as communities around the country take serioussteps to make cycling safer (setbacks & disappointments aside) and many more people continue get involved as racers, commuters, or recreational riders.
Anyway, all this is moot over here. I’ve never had trouble with a driver while out on my bike. Not one single time (which is not to say that riding on Brussels’ streets is a picnic, just that people don’t go out of their way to intentionally harass you if you’re on a bike.) Once a truck came a little too close to hitting me for comfort when he didn’t see me in an intersection. The guy actually went out of his way to chase me down and apologize! (In the US he probably would have just thrown a nice ‘apology’ rock at me and moved on.) The only other time I had to actually interact with a driver was when I was carrying my bike over a stretch of road that was totally covered in glass and a guy, not seeing the glass and thinking something was wrong with the bike, pulled over and asked if I needed help.
The weird thing is that the roads here are way narrower and often more crowded than anything in the US, it’s just that there’s a culture of cooperation. Hopefully that kind of culture will grow in the US as more and more people start riding bikes, but for now, I’m not holding my breath.
My friend and occasional hiking buddy when I lived in New Hampshire, known to many as the Dining Philosopher, took a trip down to DC last weekend and came back with one photo that really caught my attention.
That would be an original Wright Bicycle — apparently one of five known remaining in the world. That’s Wright as in Wright Brothers — Orville and Wilbur — the fellows who made that first ever flight. If you were paying attention in your elementary school history class, maybe you’ll remember that before they got famous for for building airplanes, they ran a bike shop and, later, the Wright Cycle Company, producing their own line.
By all accounts they made fine bikes, apparently in a couple of styles. One, the Van Cleve is an around-town cruiser bike with an upright position and low gearing. The other, the St. Clair, had a much more aggressive handlebar position and big gear ratio for generating higher speeds. (The one in TDP’s photo is a St. Clair and, aside from a saddle that has seen better days, looks quite nice and very rideable.) You can read more about them here or even
visit their shop.
Everybody knows that the Wrights built the first successful airplane, but what most people don’t know is that they’re also responsible for a major cycling innovation: the reverse threaded left-side pedal. Most early bikes had right hand threads on both pedals where they screwed into the crank, meaning that the action of pedaling would unscrew the pedal on the left side. This was, at best, annoying and, at worst, dangerous. The Wrights’ innovation, which is now on pretty much every bike that gets built today, fixed that — both pedals are self-tightening.
So next time you throw your leg over a bike and your pedal doesn’t randomly fall off, you can thank none other than the Wright Brothers for that. I’m not so sure you can credit them for that titanium bike you have, though — they built their plane mostly from spruce and cloth.
I'm Dan Seaton. This is my life as a solar physics postdoc, expat in Belgium, cyclocross racer, occasional mountaineer, musician, amateur cook, and observer of the world.
