1897 Photos Tell a Story

Something about these photos looks staged to me. Pretty surprising to have a fork stem break. Anyway, although probably posed, there he is with his broken bike.


From the Library of Congress

Now comes along this other fellow, but how he is supposed to help repair a problem like this is difficult to say.


From the Library of Congress

Taken by one F.T. Harmon in 1897.

Good Looking Classic

PerformanceBike has a nice looking all-weather traditional looking sort of steel frame road bike for only $999. The CroMo Tange steel frame is made in Taiwan and sold by the British company Charge Bikes. For $1,000 the component selection is excellent and it supposedly weights less (just) than 22 pounds with fenders. That's excellent.



A 2010 version of the same bike (with fenders removed)

Here's a typically laudatory review from the British cycling press.


Features good Shimano 105 and other components

About the only thing I don't find so attractive is that it isn't a lugged frame but that probably reduces the weight over my Bridgestone which in many respects is quite similar.

This is a more interesting bike than a lot of the stuff PerformanceBike carries.

Bicycle Parts Named, 1898 Version

Taken from The Modern Bicycle and its Accessories: A Complete Reference Book for Rider, Dealer and Maker. New York: Commercial Advertiser Association, 1898. Digitized version from Google, a rare example of a book digitized by Google from the Library of Congress General Collections.


Above, the title page

Note that Google only got the first part of the title correct ("The Modern Bicycle") and made part of the title into the author - "By Rider Dealer and Makerr". Oops.




A detailed listing of all the parts of the bike

If you click on the image you can get to a better version on Flickr. It is probably an artifact of Google's efforts that the text is straight but the image of the bicycle is not. Also, the poor image quality is another sign of Google digitization. I think this would have been done very early in their digitization efforts.



An amusing example of the most "up to date" model - a racing bike, presumably

Note the rather large front ring. This almost looks like a bike used with a lead bicycle (with three or four riders) that the rider of this bike would draft behind.

Arlington (VA) Survey of Area Cyclists

This short article summarizes a study of Arlington cyclists.

Here are the survey results. The survey results include information gathered in 2009 and 2011. Apparently they stopped riders on the trail to administer the survey.

The point of the survey, besides understanding who bikes in Arlington and why, was to assess the BikeArlington program.

BikeArlington scored high satisfaction ratings in the survey. 79% of respondents reporting they were satisfied with the service, and more than half (54%) of BikeArlington users have already recommended the program to someone else. Most importantly, almost half of those who used BikeArlington services reported making a change in their biking behavior!!

I confess I don't think of BikeArlington as a service and other than providing rider instruction and managing the bike trail system and bike lanes, I don't know what they do, in the sense of being able to "recommend the program to someone else." And making a "change in their biking behavior. . . ?" Hm.

Good List of New Cycling Books ~

Podium Cafe has a nice list of new books about different aspects of cycling. Something fun to peruse!

It mentions that there will be a fourth edition of The Dancing Chain! Who would have guessed there was so much about bicycle chains (well, and the rest of the drive train too) to update!

Contrasts in Rider Attire - Women Century Riders 1897

The photos below are taken from the C.R.C. Manual compiled by Will L. Krietenstein for the Century Road Club of America in 1898. In the middle are a number of posed photos of century ride champions, including two women.


More manly attire, as shown on this page


More traditional attire, as shown on this page

Since the photos were posed in two different photographers' studios, one wonders if the second rider actually rode with such a long coat and that particular sort of wind-catching hat; still, one sees other photos of women on bikes in similar attire at that time (but not, presumably, riding 100 mile intervals). The first rider's attire is noteworthy for its practicality. One senses that this may even be her own bike that she has brought to the photography session, with its tool bag attached under the top tube. (I assume that in the first one the bike is a photographer's prop and not her own since it was taken in St. Louis and she was the champion of Minnesota.)

Given that these images are captured from Google book scans rendered in poor grayscale, they are not too bad, I think.

New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest with Bikes

The New Yorker has a cartoon each week that users can captions for - this week's shows two angels (with haloes), both holding bikes at their sides. One is talking to the other. They are standing in the clouds and in the background another angel can be seen riding on a cloud on his bicycle. These three angels are the only ones visible, so apparently in this heaven one has a bike.

Here's the link although next week it will change.

One has to suggest a caption by January 1 to compete. It seems like I should have some sort of idea, but nothing is coming to me.

Cartoon brawing by Mick Stevens - Contest #316, January 2, 2012.