Thinking of the Pacific NW

The well-known (let's say) tree-in-a-bicycle of Vashon Island, near Seattle - from Sea Turtle on Flickr

Apropos of nothing in particular other than a short trip planned for Seattle this summer.

Mile-a-MInute Murphy and the Need for Speed (1899)

New York journal and advertiser, June 22, 1899

This June 22 1899 issue of The New York Journal has a front page article about Charles Minthorn Murphy's attempt to cover a mile in a minute, drafting behind a train, including the "instantaneous photograph taken for The Journal" shown above. Riding on boards laid down over several miles of railroad ties between the tracks, this is one of the more extreme daredevil endeavors imaginable with a basic single-speed track bicycle. Whether Murphy was simply crazy or extremely brave or both is hard to say.

Wikipedia has a detailed description of his attempt to cover a mile in 60 seconds or less in this way. He didn't quite make it on June 21 1899 when he made the attempt documented in the above article and photograph. According to the article, he had plans to try again and expected to do a mile in 50 seconds, but there is no record that in fact he did try again - this one attempt was apparently close enough.


Murphy in later years a the first policeman to chase criminals in an airplane

According to Wikipedia, Murphy later was a motorcycle police officer; unfortunately he had several accidents and the last one led to his retirement. Nevertheless he lived 80 years despite his early propensity for rather risky activities.

Interestingly Wikipedia uses the public domain photo of Murphy in his police airplane shown above; apparently there is no good quality public domain version of a photograph of Murphy as shown in the newspaper available.

Powered Scooters Are Not a New Idea

Or for that matter, a good one. If it was good idea, it might have gone somewhere in the last hundred or so years.

Title-POST OFFICE. POSTMEN ON SCOOTERS
Contributor Names-Harris & Ewing, photographer
Created / Published-[between 1911 and 1917]
Format Headings-Glass negatives.
Repository-Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
www.loc.gov/item/2016853758/

It is unclear where there the above news photograph was taken, other than that it was in a city in the United States. It provides evidence that the idea of commercial uses for powered scooters (here, a small gasoline or perhaps electric motor) is not a new idea.

With LimeBike introducing eScooter dockless app-driven rentals, one wonders why powered scooters have not been commonly used before. As we now know, scooter-enabled postal delivery did not catch on.


The Segway experiment never went very far, but they are expensive and heavy (clunky) despite a cleverness in design

When Segways appeared more than fifteen years ago, I wondered if they were going to compete with bicycles for traffic space. Their cost and other factors seemed to prevent them from becoming popular with individuals - I see a few being used for city tours in Washington but that is about it. There was one (1!) fellow who I saw for a while using one to commute on the Mt Vernon trail but as an entirely motorized vehicle, it was not legal. The two wheels abreast profile was also not good on this trail that isn't that wide - Segways aren't that fast and getting around him was annoying, and probably stressful for the Segway operator since I don't think putting one wheel off the trail suddenly would be pleasant.

Now we have the LimeBike e-scooters that can be rented for riding around in Washington DC. The LimeBike e-scooters have a substantial 250 watt motor and claim a top steep of just under 15 miles per hour (with the motor alone) which is a pretty good clip for a vehicle that has your feet only five-six inches off the ground and wheels only eight inches in diameter. LimeBike's site refers to the wheels as "solid, stable 8" wheels" but a typical folding bike will have 16 inch wheels (that are real tires, too). The problem with an 8 inch wheel is that a significant pothole or a misjudged curb cut would result in a very sudden stop. While not necessarily a problem if being pushed along with foot power, the results could be a lot more interesting when riding a motorized version.

There is also legal ambiguity, at least for now, as to what rules (if any) a rider of an e-scooter is to follow. The sense one has from LimeBike is that their e-scooters are the same as a bike or e-bike, but isn't obvious why that would be true. Riding one of these on a city street in Washington seems almost crazy by definition, but I can't imagine they are good to have on sidewalks, either. Washington DC in particular has a "no bikes on sidewalks" law for its central business district - https://ddot.dc.gov/publication/dc-central-business-district-no-bike-riding-map-sidewalks-downtown.

If every tenth, or twentieth, person walking in downtown DC was to move to an e-scooter, how would that work?

A separate but related issue is that LimeBike displays a casual attitude towards their vehicles themselves, as things. I can't seem to find a creative commons licences photo of piles of bikeshare bikes in China, but LimeBike and the other dockless bikeshare operators all seem less than concerned about whether some of their bikes end up in effect as random trash (which works for them since they are very cheap bikes). Society, not the operator, will pay for the disposal of a stream of these "vehicles" that may have some convenience for their user-customers but not so much for the rest of us.

Perhaps I am a curmudgeon.

The First Tour de France (Book Review)

The First Tour de France: Sixty Cyclists and Nineteen Days of Daring on the Road to Paris by Peter Cossins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I found this on the new book shelf at the public library. To me, the dust cover design didn't much suggest a newly published book - and I have read enough books with a Tour de France theme that I took this home thinking I would give it 25 pages with the expectation that it wouldn't engage my attention.

But it did - this focused look at the first instance of the Tour de France and how it came to happen drew me in.

A good book about professional bicycle racing successfully combines description of the context of the race, enough (but not too much) about the significant riders, and a narrative description of the race itself - and that's what is I found here.

From reading this (and having read other books about the Tour), I came away with a better understanding of just how much the structure and rules of the Tour de France have changed over the years since the first iteration in 1903.

Two aspects of the 1903 Tour de France surprised me. One was that the new rule (at the time) for the race that forbid what was called "pacing" - that is, riders that were only part of the race to lead a designated team leader who would draft behind them. Of course riders did draft behind one another, but usually taking turns to help each other and not in support of one person. The "no pacing" rule was in fact more about leveling the field between teams with more money to have more riders and other smaller efforts.

Another was the structure of the race overall, which was quite different than recent years - although it ran over 19 days as a multi-stage race, there were only six stages with longer periods for rest between stages that were on average far longer than what is done today. Some amazingly given the lack of lighting on the route or available to cyclists in the form of headlights, the stages would usually start in the middle of the night and run through the day with some riders continuing on into the next night. Given the road conditions and the length of the stages, the physical demands of simply completing a stage must have been incredible.

An enjoyable and entertaining read.

View my other cycling book reviews.

Hertz "Rent-a-Bike" in Washington DC (1971)

Photograph title: Bike story [Bicycle rental store, District Hardware]
Creator(s): Leffler, Warren K., photographer
Date Created/Published: 1971.
Medium: 1 photograph : negative; film width 35mm (roll format)
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Forms part of: U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection.
www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017646391/

The Library of Congress has a collection of older photographs from the US News & World Report, including many that never appeared in the magazine. These are occasionally being digitized and put online, which is nice since they are in the public domain.

The photographs sometimes have discernible context but often not - here, it isn't clear why this photograph was taken - what news story would have been supported by such a photograph.

A store called "District Hardware" still exists in Washington DC. I confirmed by email with the grandson of the man pushing the bike out the door that this was an earlier location for the same store in Washington. And that Hertz really was in the rent-a-bike business in the 1960s-70s. Crazy.

The Celebrity at Home - Photographs with Bike

Occasionally one finds old news photographs featuring well-known persons of the time with a bike, apparently to show they are regular sorts of people.



In these two examples from some time between 1915 and 1920, a then-successful country singer is shown (among other things) with a bicycle. A regular guy!



Dalhart seemed to like hats - the one he is wearing while riding a bike is somewhat amazing for its size.

"Speed Kills" - According to the Seattle Dept of Transportation

The Seattle Bike Blog has a recent post about e-bike versions of LimeBikes that is interesting to read. The description of the apparent success of dockless bikeshare in Seattle is intriguing since their attempt at "traditional" docked bikeshare was a failure, only getting to 500 bikes available before being shut down. And now they have dockless e-bikes too.


LimeBike e-bikes in Seattle from SounderBruce on Flickr

The blog post talks about how the LimeBike e-bikes only provide powered assist up to about 15 miles per hour. This is explained as follows: In part, this is for safety and liability concerns. As the Seattle Department of Transportation regularly reminds us, pedestrians have a one-in-ten chance of death when a driver collides with them at 20 mph. For LimeBike, any crash or collision at that speed is a serious liability.

I first read that (too quickly) as having to do with the speed of cyclists, not cars, and involving cyclist crashes - thus getting two aspects wrong. Oh well. There probably aren't good numbers about how the speed of a cyclist relates to crash outcomes, but it likely that the faster one is going, particularly beyond 20 mph area, the more likely the outcome will be more unpleasant (for the cyclist - and also for whoever he may run into who isn't in a metal box).

This is why I am often unhappy with the so-far relatively few e-bike equipped bicycle commuters I see whose main goal seems to be to emulate car-like average transportation speeds on their overall commute, chugging along the Mt Vernon trail along the Potomac at between 20 and 25 miles an hour (and beyond). Counter-intuitively many such riders are highly disinclined to slow down when presented with traffic or to exercise what would seem like common sense, instead passing at the highest speed manageable with little apparent interest in anyone's safety. (Of course, this is not true of all e-bike commuters, some are a little more safety minded, thankfully.)

The speed limit for cyclists on the Mt Vernon trail (as one example) whether riding an e-bike or a regular one is 15 mph, so someone traveling at 22-24+ mph is traveling well in excess of the speed limit. Now if there is a fantastic tailwind (which is very rare with the direction of my commute) I may average 20 mph for a while but 16-18 is more typical as my high speed - also exceeding the speed limit, but only by ten percent or so, and not exceeding the 20 mph "death zone" speed.

It is also relevant that the trails are used by persons on foot, running or walking, and that the trails around here are typically not very wide or all that well maintained. The mix of 3 mph walkers and 23 mph e-bikers on these trails is not good for anyone.

The Invisible Mile by David Conventry (Book Review)

The Invisible Mile: A Novel by David Coventry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I am something of a cycling enthusiast, although my interest in modern professional road racing has mostly collapsed, I guess from fatigue with doping scandals.

There are some topics that are, let's say, overworked. For U.S. history, topics such as the Civil War, for example, or something about Abraham Lincoln. For books about cycling, the Tour de France has somewhat the same place - it feels like every third or fourth book involves the Tour somehow. This is a work of fiction drawing on actual events at a particular Tour, the 1928 version. At that Tour there was a mostly Australian team; the main character of the book is a fictional participant from New Zealand. The rest of his team are historical figures from that race, as well as other named riders and a few race officials and others.

The structure of the Tour de France has evolved (and perhaps also devolved) over the years - I should have read the Wikpedia entry on the Tour de France for this period before reading the book for some basic context.

The book has several plot lines - one is certainly the main character's participation in the race, and much about the race itself with particular focus on its many grueling aspects. There is at least one other plot line, although perhaps it's more like several others, and I somehow never engaged will with any of that.

I didn't read the book properly, I guess. Oh well. I enjoyed the cycling parts.

View my other cycling book reviews.

Bicycles on DC Streets 1907 (Compared to 1903)

Washington, D.C. clip of Pennsylvania Avenue in 1907 from GhostOfDC

In two different earlier blog posts, first this one and then this one I looked at bicycles that appeared in two short videos of DC streets in the summer of 1903. I have now found the above video of Pennsylvania Avenue in DC, with the U.S. Capitol in the background, from 1907. One can see a lot of change in the four years!!


At about 25 seconds in, a cyclist first appears riding from right to left

The main impression of change is WOW there are a lot more cars carrying passengers on a main thoroughfare in Washington DC in 1907 than there were in 1903, and far fewer horse-drawn carriages. The fellow with a hat facing the Capitol is apparently a traffic policeman who casually directs traffic and to some limited extent, pedestrians.


This is the same cyclists as above, having made a left turn in the intersection and now proceeding away from the Capitol

The cyclist proceeds as any other vehicle, motorized or horse-drawn, riding in the main part of the street.


Another cyclist appears

There are some small breaks in the film - it isn't clear how this cyclist got to the middle of this intersection, but probably he was riding away from the camera and towards the Capitol, then stops or slows to turn to the left.


Because of heavy traffic, the cyclist starts to ride away from the Capitol but then turns to his right

The cyclist makes his left turn in two stages - first, he makes a U-turn, then once he is established heading in the reverse direction and traffic clears to his right, he makes a right turn to complete his original left turn. The traffic policeman plays no role in this maneuver. Note that cyclists in this intersection would have had to navigate safely tram rail tracks in two directions, crossing those at as close to a 90 degree angle as possible.


One of several vehicles spewing vast amounts of exhaust, which can't have been too pleasant


One of only five horse-drawn carriages in the short video

Cars carrying passengers have skyrocketed and horse-drawn carriages, all appearing commercial in nature, have dropped off in number from 1903 to 1907. There are still many streetcars in this urban setting. And there are still bicycles, but the ease with which they can be navigated is much changed for the worse, which probably meant fewer were riding as shown here (although these short videos are of course a very small sample).

More Bicycles on DC Streets 1903

In an earlier blog post I looked at a short film available as a video via the Internet meant to show US Post Office operations from 1903 in Washington, DC. I found another.


The version on YouTube is so poorly rendered as to be almost useless

The default viewing version is poorly rendered here but the downloadable mp4 file is acceptable.

In this film, meant to show Post Office operations, you can see a certain amount street traffic as well. (The video is apparently meant to show how bags of mail are transferred between a street car and a Post Office horse-drawn wagon.) There is less than a minute and half shown of a major street in Washington DC. Whatever time of day this was, filmed in July 30 1903 (a Thursday), there wasn't much traffic generally, however I am struck by the number of bicycles. It isn't a vast number, but they are clearly being used for transportation by adults.


Cyclist appears suddenly at left, proceeds at measured pace out of view


Next cyclist appears at right, again riding at a measured pace


Due to low resolution, it isn't obvious but a cyclist is proceeding right to left on the next cross street in the distance and is just visible in the space been the streetcar and the Post Office wagon.


Cyclist rides into view, apparently against the flow of traffic on this side of the street

Street mail car, U.S.P.O.
Summary-The first scene appears to have been taken on a main thoroughfare of large city. In the immediate foreground is a horse-drawn U.S. mail vehicle waiting at the side of a streetcar track. Soon a streetcar approaches the camera position. It stops beside the mail vehicle and the driver unloads mail sacks from the streetcar. He then puts some sacks from his wagon onto the streetcar. As the film ends, both the streetcar and the horse-drawn mail delivery wagon leave the scene.
Contributor Names-Weed, A. E., camera.; American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
Paper Print Collection (Library of Congress)
Created / Published-United States : American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, 1903.
Notes
- H34992 U.S Copyright Office
- Copyright: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company; 22Aug03; H34992.
- Cameraman, A. E. Weed.
- Cameraman credit from Niver's, Early motion pictures, p. 314.
- Filmed July 30, 1903 in Washington, D.C.
- Source used: Niver, Kemp R., Early motion pictures, 1985.
- Available also through the Library of Congress Web site as digital files.
- Received: 2/2000 from LC lab; ref print and dupe neg; preservation; Paper Print Collection.
Repository-Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA dcu
Digital Id-http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mbrsmi/awal.1878
LCCN Permalink-https://lccn.loc.gov/00564571

The Cost of Cycling for the "Modern Athletic Girl" of 1896

WHAT THE "MODERN ATHLETIC GIRL COSTS. The Various Items of the Necessary Summer Sporting Outfit. From The Journal newspaper (New York), Sunday June 26, 1896 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84031792/1896-06-28/ed-1/.

The Journal newspaper of 1896 in New York carried far more pages than other urban newspapers in the U.S. at the time and worked hard to fill the pages up with various kinds of human interest material. 1896 was the height of the so-called "bicycle craze" in the U.S. so here we have an article that combines that topic with women and sports. Probably because of the exceptional popularity of bicycling at the time, it is discussed first, then golf, hunting, and other sporting endeavors. Cycling is also given here as the most expensive at almost $200.

The father of an up-to-date society girl who decided to take up athletics this Summer consented with pleasure to buy his daughter a $100 wheel, thinking that $125 at the highest would be all the money necessary for him to spend on her bicycle outfit. The following Is an' Itemized account of the bills which were sent him for everything pertaining to her bicycle outfit: Bicycle, $100; lamp, $5; cyclometer, $1.25; bell, 50 cents; foot pump, $1.50; bicycle stand, $2.50; lock, 50 cents; silver name plate, $2; knee protector, $3.50; Summer bicycle costume, made to order of linen homespun, $25; linen knickerbockers, $5; one pair low bicycle shoes, $4; one pair boots, $6; three pairs of silk stockings, $G; three pairs golf stockings, $6; linen hat to match suit, $3; six shirt waists, $18; pair of gloves, $1.35, making a total of $191.10.

Arguably the amount and cost of the "required" clothing is intentionally varied and high in order to support the article's point that such activities are expensive; it is more interesting to see what are given as typical accessories, including lamp, cyclometer (measuring distance covered), bell, footpump, stand, and lock. (I wonder how the lock would have worked - in looking at ads and articles about cycling at the time, I have not commonly observed a lock set-up for bicycles.)


Detail of above illustration with woman on bicycle

Descent: My Epic Fall from Cycling Superstardom to Doping Dead End (Book Review)

From Flickr, user Vanil-Noir

Apparently there is a sub-category now of cycling literature, the "I was a great bicycle racer, but then somehow I became a doper and it all went to hell" tell-all, as-told-to-someone-who-can-write memoir. We have Tyler Hamilton's "The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs" (2012) and then there is David Millar's "Racing Through the Dark" (2011). Mr. Dekker is a little late to this activity, since all three are reporting on much the same period of doping, but Dekker attempted to continue his career later than the other two so only got around to publishing this late in 2016 (in Dutch; the English version was published in the US about a year later).

As a highly successful Dutch bike racer in a land of cyclists, Dekker was presumably as much of a name there as Lance Armstrong had become here. In Dutch, the title of his book was "mijn gevecht" which apparently translates to "My Fight" (or maybe "My Struggle"?). With himself, I guess.

I thought that to be clever they used "descent" as the title in the English version since cyclists who win typically have to be good at descending mountains as well as racing up them, to give the title kind of a double meaning, but in reading it I eventually decided that was just coincidence. The cover of the Dutch version has Dekker in 3/4 profile, looking as come-hither as a sanctioned cyclist-doper can for his Dutch admirers. It's a little . . . odd.

I gave this two stars because . . . well, I didn't really like this book. It was pretty depressing, in fact. The main plus is that it is just over 200 pages with fairly large print - it is a fast read.

Tyler Hamilton's book was not so heavily focused on doping, he talked a lot about racing. The discussion of doping was mostly amusing since it became clear that he ran into problems largely because the team he was on after being with Lance Armstrong didn't spend the kind of resources organizing doping and that Hamilton realized eventually that poorly organized doping is not a good idea once he accidentally ends up with someone else's blood transfused into his system instead of his own. Oops! David Millar's book is hideous because it talks way too much about David Millar - but even he has more blow-by-blow description of races he was in than this book. "My epic fall from cycling superstardom to doping dead end" means you read far more about doping as well as drugging and drinking and sleeping with hundreds (his word) of women than about any races he was in. One wonders why VeloPress thought it was publishing a book about cycling. There are endless examples of how he wasted money, giving Euro values in most cases - 25,000 Euro for this evening, etc. Ugh. Simply ugh. (The apparent need to list his Euro salaries for all the different years he worked is just plain weird. I half expected him to say how much he got for writing this book.) And there is certainly far more detail about the mechanics of doping as he practiced it, and a fair amount of description of how members, managers, and others of his now defunct Rabobank cycling team supported his and others' doping.

I read to the end - now not sure why. Does he make some statement or apology at the end that redeems himself at the end? Spoiler alert that probably isn't a surprise - no, he doesn't.

I might have felt better about investing the time to read this if I had come away with some understanding (or feeling of understanding) of why someone would do this, why he did this. This is almost entirely missing, other than that it was the culture of the team and (in effect) "everyone did it" (although he does mention at least one other rider who didn't, but who only had moderate results). He describes the trip down but makes no attempt to explain what we might be able to learn from this from his perspective.

Bicycles on DC Streets 1903

"Collecting mail, U.S. Post Office"-digitized short film shows a few bikes in street traffic

This short movie from the collections of the Library of Congress shows two post office boxes on a street corner and was apparently intended to show how the Post Office employees serviced them. Separately the video shows something of what street traffic was like, including persons on bicycles, which from my perspective is far more interesting. (The video is not identified with any tags or other access points suggesting cyclists are part of this. Typical.)


First cyclist enters screen from left at around 15 seconds, riding parallel to a streetcar

The first bicycle rider shown looks to be an adult man riding at a moderate pace, likely to get from one place to another - bicycle as transportation that is faster than walking and less elaborate than using a horse-drawn carriage.


At about 20 seconds, second cyclist appears in upper middle of screen as traffic clears, riding across intersection from cross street

Much like the first bicycle rider, bicycle as transportation. I was amused by the man walking across the street in another direction, who ambles rather casually.


At 28 seconds, third cyclist appears from left, who has a boy sitting on the handlebars as a passenger

All the cyclists shown are traveling at a moderate pace. If you look closely, you can see the rider here pedaling steadily. It is almost certainly a single-speed bike.


At 32 seconds, fourth and last cyclist appears from right, cutting through the intersection

A little hard to tell, but this appears to be a younger rider, moving at a faster (but not that much) pace. He seems to ride in front of two women who are going to cross the street. He has a bag of some kind in his hand held to the handlebars.


No bicycle shown here, but you can see four different horse-drawn carriages at once near this Washington DC intersection in 1903

Most of the "traffic" shown during the video consists of horse-drawn carriages. Two different streetcars pass, one in either direction. There are a moderate number of pedestrians, and then the four cyclists, one with passenger. All the traffic is moving at a moderate pace - the horse-drawn carriages in particular. Most of the pedestrians are shown walking briskly and enter the intersection without pause - one suspects that absent many cars, concern about entering intersections was much more casual.

One assumes that this was shot during the middle of the day and that the various traffic elements are representative. The use of bicycles looks pretty high. Interesting.

LimeBike Parking is Difficult in DC

LimeBike dockless bikeshare bikes "parked" on National Park Service land near the Jefferson Memorial

In yesterday's blog post I had a video about how to park a dockless bikeshare bike produced by LimeBike for its users.

Over the last three days, during which there was some snowfall, I have seen these same three LimeBikes parked in a row near the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. First they were parked on the sidewalk, all standing up. Then after the snowfall they were all laying on the sidewalk where they had previously been standing. This morning someone had stood them back up but then on the way home someone else (one assumes) had tossed them over the chain-fence so that they were lined up as shown on the grass, laying there in a row. I suspect the National Park Service would not approve.



This parking arrangement of course does't follow the advice in the video, where they are particularly critical of laying bicycles on the ground. Because so far there are far more of these bikes than available bike rack slots at the locations where people seem to want to take them, I would say I have never seen so many bikes laying on the ground before the introduction of dockless bikeshare bikes.

Absurd Instructional Video on How/Where to Park a Dockless Bikeshare Bike

Let's just make a joke out of it then it will be ok

The LimeBike people seem to think this is a helpful gesture towards getting their users to park their bikes appropriately. It includes several "do this" and "don't do that" points.

It is worth noting that the LimeBike User Agreement has this minimalist statement: Upon conclusion of your ride, the Bike must be parked at a lawful parking spot, i.e. the Bike cannot be parked on private property or in a locked area or in any other non-public space.

The video suggests that what is needed beyond "lawful" parking is to show good "parking etiquette." For example, do not lay the bike on the ground, but do park at a bike rack. Do not block driveways or pedestrian paths, do park "in this zone" - which is shown as the parking strip next to the roadway that in residential areas in particular is often grass or dirt. Do not park at bus stops or street corners, but do park next to a bus stop.

After listening to this the two main characters launch themselves into the sky leaving their bike on the path - whether this falls under "blocking a pedestrian path" or not is unclear. The don't stay to clarify.

In Washington DC at least, some of this gets a little ... complicated. What is a lawful place to park? Since I have observed the U.S. Park Police carrying away dockless bikes parked up near the Washington Monument (before it was recently closed off to everyone) apparently they aren't too thrilled with them on NPS territory, period.

The kind of "zone" that is shown as ideal isn't necessarily all that common around here. What is best is to park them at bike racks, but there simply aren't enough of them.

Hmm.

A Great Cycling Comedy? Jour de Fête

Trailer-like video for the re-release of a restored version of this 1948 movie in 2014 - embedded video starts where cycling is featured

Jacques Tati was a film director and actor in France after World War II up through the early 1960s. His films are quite remarkable, making certain social commentary in films that were mostly physical and visual humor (although it is more complex than that).

His first 1949 full length film, Jour de fête (or The Big Day), centers on a postman in a French village who spends much of the film making deliveries (although I have only seen snippets, not the entire thing). Wikipedia has a short summary of the plot. Apparently the thought was he should perform more like the (then) super-efficient United States Post Office.


Two minute clip where the postman joins French racing cyclists on the road

It is not clear to me in the above scenes how he manages to appear to maintain such a high rate of speed; perhaps the playback is sped up somehow, although it doesn't look that way when he is with the other riders. Sitting bolt upright as he is, it would be hard to maintain such speed, particularly given what seems to be a single-speed bike and how it appears to be geared.


The postman chases his bicycle that travels a considerable distance without a rider

Again, I don't know how they did this - keeping the bike rolling for these distances without falling over. I like that the pedals keeping going around, as they would on a fixed gear bike.

The Evolution of the Bicycle as a Tool-for-Living

A point of comparison - 15 years (or so) of mobile computing devices

One reason I appreciate bicycles is that a good basic bicycle can be highly useful even if only slightly evolved from what was in use over 100 years ago.

By comparison, we have mobile computing devices, which are disposable units (although we see uhm I forgot to dispose of several) that provide useful service for at best four or five years. Further, while mobile commuting are evolving, not all the evolution is in a positive direction for many users. The 2001 (or so) Palm Pilot M105 was a cheap plastic device that required docking with a PC in order to upload/download messages but it weighed almost nothing and having no glass, was difficult to break (and if you did, it was so cheap, it didn't matter that much). I was actually fairly good with the "shorthand" to enter text with a stylus. The next step, a "traditional" 2005 or 2006 BlackBerry, was much more truly a mobile computing device but best for doing email with its "real" (tiny) keyboard - the size of the screen made Internet browsing painful - but then, that wasn't the point. Then we have a now-old(ish) iPhone 6 - the main thing I use it for is email, for which the keyboard is not great (for me; I realize some are good at it). The browser is good but not the main reason I have this device. And compared to the Palm Pilot or the BlackBerry, it is heavier as well as fragile with its sheet of glass. (Alas now I find it necessary some of the time to have both a work phone and a personal phone and the two of them together weigh 5/6 of a pound, which is annoying.)

Most importantly the two older mobile devices are simply unusable due to obsolescence. There is no comparison with a good bicycle!


A 1982 Bridgestone bicycle that I ride thousands of miles a year to and from work

About six years ago I bought the frame and fork for this Bridgestone on eBay for a little over $100 including the shipping. I then spent another ~$400 on a combination of used and new components to make it into an outstanding commuter bike. Other than the brakes I chose, which are a design introduced in the 1990s, nothing about the bike now represents a technological improvement over the bike as originally sold in 1982. I would be fine with riding the bike to and from work with the components that it had originally - that is, there is no way to regard any aspect of this bike as sold 35 years ago as obsolete. No one gives a second glance to this bicycle as they would if I tried to use my plastic Palm Pilot at a meeting at work, for example, or to use a different example, if I drove around in a 35 year old car.


Another ageless bicycle, a 1995 Trek SingleTrack

I purchased this bike two years ago from a bike repair "collective" (http://velocitycoop.org/ that had too many bikes and was selling excess - it cost $60 more or less as shown, except it was missing a saddle (seat) and only had one pedal. Well and it was incredibly filthy. I added a pedal and saddle and cleaned it and it was immediately ridable. While at the time this was a "low end" Trek bike, it was still significantly more expensive than many similar looking bikes one sees for sale today - the difference was that this bike was made with well thought out double butted chromoly tubing for the frame that means it only weighs 27 pounds (which is good). I have put studded tires on this for winter and it is a great bike for icy conditions!


My one perhaps mistaken concession to modern bicycle technology - sort of

I did buy this bike new in 2007 - it is a carbon fiber road bike and I ride it in good weather. Avoiding rain reduces maintenance and the bike doesn't have fenders anyway. It is nice, weighs just under 20 pounds, or about five pounds less than the Bridgestone above. The "technology" that is advanced for this bike is the use of carbon fiber for the frame, which at the time had a certain appeal to me that I still understand, but I wouldn't do it again. Carbon fiber is simply nasty to dispose of, although apparently the bike frame is unlikely to wear out - but eventually someone will dispose of it. And creating it in the first place was not a green process, either. Carbon fiber bike frames didn't render my steel bikes obsolete for commuting!

I doubt I will ever buy another new bicycle. New to me, perhaps, but not new-new. New technologies for bicycles are largely optional (if not also perhaps highly attractive/sexy to some people) such as hydraulic brakes or electronic shifting. No thanks.

Unusual Bicycle Messenger Photograph

Telegraph messenger, Berlin - during WWI

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.19641 persistent link to this Library of Congress collection item, a digitized Bain News Service photograph.

Bicycle messengers in the US 100 years ago or so were usually teenage boys, hardly old enough to serve in the army, but apparently in Berlin this was not the case since with the men off serving, this woman was a bicycle messenger. Her attire, with long skirt, is not particularly practical for this activity (but it could have been worse). Her single-speed bicycle with a simple spoon brake with a step-through frame is probably not inferior to a mens that would have been used for this purpose at the time.

Presumably this photograph was taken before the United States joined the war against Germany.