"A Brilliant Idea" - Bicycle Comedy of 1896

I found a script deposited for Copyright in 1896 for a "comedy sketch" about bicycling in American Memory - a married couple's adventures in owning bicycles.


Page 4 of the 10 pages of script

Jack and Fan (short for Fannie) attempt amusing dialog - Jack dirties up the living room pillows while working on his bike while Fan is out learning to "mount" (get on) a bicycle. And while she was out, Jack bought her a new "wheel" for her birthday! Eventually it segues to a discussion of her desire to modify her cycling attire - "not too short," says Jack (not surprisingly).

One could easily read too much into this, but overall this short vignette suggests how bicycling introduced new aspects to social life.

Riding in the Cool Rain ~

I have been commuted 10 miles each way to and from work by bike year round for quite a while but only recently put fenders a bike to ride in the rain - boy, does that help a lot! A great improvement.


Presented like this, it seems a bit much

Here is what I wear when the weather is done around 40 and rainy, which it was one day recently.

* Helmet - my everyday helmet. I only have one helmet and it has my required parking sticker on it (rather than put it on a bike, which would be a problem since I have several bikes I ride to/from work).

* Baseball cap - keeps rain from running down my face, which can be very unpleasant in a heavy rain.

* Waterproof rain jacket - I have used something called an "O2 Rainwear Cycling Rain Jacket" from Nashbar for what seems like ten years. This is an extremely lightweight jacket made of some 3M fabric that is good at the waterproof part although it doesn't breathe as well as some more expensive material (I assume). At $30 it comes with a stuff bag and is easy to have along "just in case." The main drawback is that it is fairly fragile material, easy to tear. I have not purchased a more expensive GoreTex sort of jacket because this can be used in layers or by itself and it has worked pretty well so far (and doesn't cost a lot).

* Long sleeve cycling jersey with hood - cheap lycra jersey from PerformanceBike. I like to have a long sleeve jersey like this with a hood since I can take the hood off easily if it is more than needed (or put it on) and the hood keeps wind from going down my neck.

* Short sleeve jersey - Another cheap jersey from Performance, to add a layer if it is 40 or below.

* Long sleeve base layer shirt - For me, a fairly pricey long sleeve thin (not heavy) Merino wool shirt from Ibex. I got this last year - it replaces a layer of polypropylene. Works well.

* Performance bike shorts - The more expensive "Ultra" Performance brand bike shorts last longer and compare with name brand bike shorts. The less expensive Performance brand bike shorts seem shoddy.

* Bicycle tights - I have had these so long I don't remember where they came from. They are just lycra or some lycra cotton mix and aren't waterproof or windproof. When it gets down to freezing I have some more substantial (and expensive) windproof/waterproof tights, but at 40 degrees they are too warm.

* Lightweight wool socks + pair of cotton socks - the shoes I wear in cooler weather are a size large so I can wear more than one pair of socks.

* Shimano RW80 Winter Road Boots - these are something I bought several winters ago in order to stop using summer shoes with various over-shoes and trying to cram extra socks into the shoes. They work quite well, although they are only moderately waterproof. And once they get damp inside, they are very slow to dry out.

* Addidas rubber shoe "booties" - If it is raining more than a drizzle, I usually pull these on.

* Performance Nanuk Waterproof Thermal Gloves - Silly name, but whatever (as they say). Somewhere around 45 I want to have full finger gloves and these are what I wear down to around freezing; cooler than that I want something more serious than these gloves. They aren't really waterproof although it does take a long time for them to get damp all the way through. Unfortunately they take a good long time to dry out.

So there you have it!


Newly installed fenders on 30 year old bike for rainy weather

The fenders mean that rain doesn't soak my backside; in fact, after ten miles in moderate rain the other day I could sit on a chair and not get the chair damp - pretty good! And the fenders make it a lot easier for the waterproof aspects of my footwear to work successfully - again, the other day when I got to work my socks were dry inside my shoes.

Racing Through the Dark by David Millar (Book Review)

Racing Through the Dark by David Millar

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Because of all the Lance Armstrong related hubbub I have not reviewed this because I thought I should do something more than just review this one book, but better to do something than nothing.

Many people who are not cycling enthusiasts will not know who David Millar is - there is a Wikipedia article that provides a lengthy overview. (Arguably it is a wiser time investment to read what is in Wikipedia than the book.)

Millar rode for several teams and was someone from whom success was expected not long after turning professional, then in 2004 he was caught doping and sat out two years. In 2006 he returned to riding as a vocal advocate for riding clean.

This memoir that clocks in at close to 350 pages has four parts: childhood through youth and early riding career, then his progressive conversion to doping followed by his being caught and banned for two years, and finally his reborn career and stance as anti-doping advocate.

The first section is too long - there is no compelling reason to have included most of what is here since little of it provides any background or explanation for what follows. Simply starting to read at page 58 or skimming up to this point would be a way of avoiding most of the pointless reading.

The second section - his professional career from 1997 through 2004 - is the most interesting part of the book. I have not read Tyler Hamilton's new book but I would guess it is similar. Millar avoids taking direct responsibility for his actions explicitly and offers a variety of excuses, including "it was expected," "the other guys were depending on me," "what I did at first wasn't doping, it is easy to slide over the line into doping" and more.

The description of his life as a cyclist and his fellow riders during this period reveals that things were quite bad - one wonders that something didn't set off a reaction then, long before Lance was busted. Riders didn't just take things to perform better during the race, they took various things to recover faster and took sleep aids as well. At one point Millar took a sleep aid while drinking (despite knowing this was unwise) and jumped from a window injuring an ankle and then not being able to ride for months.

The drinking aspect was not something I expected as apart of the story - for a professional athlete, Millar drank quite a lot. In only one photograph in the book where he was not on a bike is he not holding a drink. I suppose one can give him credit for being open about this.

The third section of the book is about being busted and serving a two year ban from riding. Millar is suitably grateful to folks who saw him through this period but in places he is whiny - given that he is a professional athlete who would drink, take pills, then injure himself it's kind of hard to feel sorry for him. He also moans and groans about his personal financial difficulties, the details of which I forgot about the instant I finished reading about them - given how much this subject may have occupied his attention during this period he likely thinks he kept description of this short, but it seemed labored to me.

The last section is the redemption section - as with many memoirs written by athletes who are still active, he doesn't want to annoy his new teammates so this is not terribly revealing (or interesting).

He makes an exception for his former teammate Bradley Wiggins who left Garmin-Slipstream for Team Sky. Millar describes his unhappiness at this (in large part, he says, because he took a pay cut so that Wiggins could earn more) and shares that he and his teammates regarded Wiggins' chances to win the Tour de France, his goal, as slim. "We looked forward to watching him fail" and "we were certain that he'd never be on the podium at the Tour." (Work on this book was completed long before the 2012 Tour de France that Wiggins won.)

Lance Armstrong comes up twice - early in his career he and Lance were both riders for Cofidis, although they didn't have that much contact since Armstrong was just coming back after cancer treatment. Much later, after the doping suspension, Millar lectured Lance at a cocktail party and Millar describes that incident in some detail. Otherwise what one gets relative to Armstrong's situation is confirmation that the culture of doping was widespread, pervasive.

The issue of doping overshadows the subject of bicycle road racing in this memoir, which is unfortunate. From time to time Millar does provide descriptions and analysis of some of his races and racing accomplishments but this comes across as a secondary topic. Millar had a number of big races where he just failed to win and much like his excuse-making with doping, he usually offers excuses for those failures. (As a memoir written with a co-author it seems remarkable that in numerous places a reader forms a less than good impression of Millar - not that he was doping, that he makes excuses and doesn't take responsibility for it more directly, and like that.)

In the 338 pages here there is around 120 pages of interesting stuff. There are some photos, both color and black and white. There is an index that can help you what what he may have said about particular people or events without plowing through all if it but no timeline for Millar's career, which would have been helpful. (You can look up his professional career accomplishments.)




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The Masked Rider by Neil Peart (Book Review)

The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa by Neil Peart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Neil Peart is the drummer for the band Rush - as an author he is mostly known for writing a book about a 55,000 mile trip by motorcycle after his daughter and wife died in less than a year. This book was written and published years before that and is much lighter.

Peart had participated in cycle tours in Europe but decided to try something more challenging that would be combined with an interest in Africa, so he went on an organized bike tour of Cameroon in 1988. The operator only had Peart and three other clients on the trip. The book is a description of his trip and what it was like.

Generally "adventure" travel books don't describe organized tours but in this case the tour was probably more arduous than many independent cycle tours. The tour lasted for a month, for one thing. In the per-Internet world, they were quite isolated almost the entire time, relying on the relatively modest belongings the carried on their bikes.

There is plenty of description of how physically difficult this was over the month, with the heat and generally primitive conditions. (They generally used lower cost accommodations even when western style ones were available, mostly to keep costs down.). He does a good job of describing what he saw and experienced. Much of the focus, as with most travel books, is on his interactions with people, both the people of Cameroon and his fellow travelers and the tour leader. (I wonder what his fellow travelers thought of this - it is somewhat critical of each of them.)

From time to time Peart engages in introspective reflections that I gather are more the point of his motorcycle book - I found these passages did not interrupt the narrative. I enjoyed reading this and will likely read it again.

You were always aware this was a book about travel by bicycle but there was not much description of anything particularly technical about that aspect. As a cyclist I felt like I had a good sense of the difficulties for cycling in this part of the world as a tourist from reading this (although things have likely changed since this was almost 25 years ago). The tour operator is still in business at http://www.ibike.org/bikeafrica/.



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Bicycle Polo in 1896

As usual, I have noticed a drop-off in the number of bicycle commuters and other riders as the weather gets cooler (and wetter).

In the 1890s, there were various attempts to encourage cycling during cooler months - in 1896, one strategy was to encourage new indoor cycling activities, including an article in the October 17 1896 Washington Evening Times about "Bicycle Polo".

The most exciting novelty of the wheeling season has been bicycle polo, which was practically unheard of until about a month ago. It is a rather dangerous game, but not more so than polo as played with ponies at an East Indian gymkhana or a Meadowbrook Hunt meet. A low-geared bicycle has decided advantages in playing it, because it is so much easier suddenly to check or start it. Precisely so, a low-geared pony-that is to say, one that can start or stop promptly and is quick in turning is preferable to one that is merely fast. Of course, the rider in bicycle polo must have a quick eye for distance, be able to ride "hands off" at any angle, and to turn in the shortest compass. In spite of Its difficulties. the game will be the principal attraction at most of the big exhibition meetings in the riding academies this winter.

Bicycle polo is still around . . . photo from Del~Uks Flickr offerings

"Cycling a Benefit to Women" (1897)

From the Summer Washington DC Evening Times cycling page

Cycling a Benefit to Women.

Women, perhaps more than men, are benefited by wheeling. Before the bicycle was perfected, horseback riding was the only outdoor exercise of the kind suited to feminine needs, and good, gentle, sound riding horses were hard to find, expensive to buy, and still more expensive to take care of, so that few women kept one. Good bicycles, although costly, seem to be within the means of almost every person; at all events hundreds and thousands of women and girls who never could have owned a horse go gaily over our streets and roads on bicycles that are quite equal in price to any but the finest Kentucky steeds. The good effect of this change from sedentary indoor life to free and exhilarating exercise in the open air is already quite noticeable even to the casual observer. Prejudice has rapidly given way before the fascinating progress of what at first seemed but the fad of an hour. and we have already become accustomed to seeing sunbrowned faces, once sallow and languid, whisk past us at every turn of the street. The magnetism of vivid health has overcome conservative barriers that were impregnable to every other force. And this is, let us hope, but the beginning of a revolution, humane and soundly rational, which will bring an era of vigorous physical life to women.

From the Washington Evening Times.
chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1897-07-31/ed-...
July 31 1897

Adding Fenders (for Winter ?)

No, I haven't been making many blog entries. Not sure how to explain that. Will see if I become more inspired . . .

I bought these fenders as a "daily special" probably two years ago from Bike Tires Direct - then let them sit in the box ever since after I realized (duh) how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to get them onto my (other) bike that has disk brakes that is nominally the "bad/rainy/wet weather bike." They were about 12 dollars so it didn't bother me that much to have bought them and not to use them . . . saving them for a rainy day. Ha ha.

Well actually not that funny since there were lots of rainy days but the fenders just stayed in the box, contributing nothing.


Cheap black fenders don't look that bad - from a distance

I decided I would see how they work in practice on this bike - it certainly was easy enough to install them. When it rains, these should keep the water from coming off the front tire in particular and bouncing off the downtube onto my shoes - also just keep the bicycle cleaner (hopefully - have to see).

Of course this means I'll ride this bike in some rain rather than the "dedicated" bad weather bike, but I am having various problems with the drive train and brakes on that bike so it can sit until (or if) I figure them out.

These are very lightweight, "polycarbonate" - that is plastic. They are adjustable in ways that mean you have to make sure the adjustment bolts are tight on a regular basis. Perhaps if I decide that I don't think fenders slow me down (which the randonneuring types would assure me they don't) I will buy some proper custom fit Velo Orange hammered fenders.

Although not prominent in this photo, another retrograde aspect of my winter rig that is shown here is my headlight - now I could buy a 200 lumen light with the battery built into the light unit for less than I paid for a 100 lumen unit with a rather large-ish battery that is separate and connects to the light with a cable. I think this unit is now three years old. Still, the battery holds a charge well, why should I replace it? Hmm.


We see from this 1892 book illustration that fenders are not an innovation