A lot in this blog thus far has been about my dad, and my relationship and similarities with him. But, when talking about bicycles and my family, you shouldn't leave out my mom. She was right there running the
bike shop, undeniably fulfilling the more difficult tasks of finances, dealing with vendors and helping the public. My dad, as talented and skilled as he was, spent a lot of time between closed doors. Outside of the shop, my mom was a tenacious mountain biker, taking to the trails of Pisgah National Forest nearly every morning. She had several riding buddies who accompanied her on her rides, and even branched out from mountain biking (something my dad never did) and completed a century ride: the Hilly Hellacious in Asheville, North Carolina.
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| The patch my mom got for the Hilly Hellacious century ride in 1994. Taken on May 11, 2013 |
But by the late '90's my mom got away from cycling. The closing of our family bike shop forced her to seek full-time employment, and that strain in addition to raising my brother and I eventually took her away from the saddle for good.
For a few years now my mom has been wanting to get a new bike so that she can "get back into it". In the interest of her health she's already made some significant changes to her diet and the next step is exercise. Nothing felt more natural than getting a new bike. Having recently moved to the Playa Del Ray neighborhood in Los Angeles, she was wanting to get a beach cruiser to hit the nearby bike paths that line the world famous beaches of Los Angeles. We discussed the sort of bike that would be best for her and quickly settled on a bike which would be internally geared.
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Exploded view of a
Sturmey-Archer three
speed hub. Source |
When most people think of a bike with different gears, they are probably thinking of an externally derailed bike. This means that the chain is moved from one cog or sprocket to another via a derailleur, which is a mechanism that does exactly what it sounds like it does: it derails the chain to a new position. An internally geared hub, on the other hand, has all of the "shifting built into the hub", to use a phrase I often tell customers. A very watered down explanation of how it works is that a shifter-controlled "clutch" inside of the mechanism transfers the energy created by the pedaling cyclist between three different
planetary gearing configurations which changes the output ratio. For the common three speed internally geared hubs, there is usually an "underdrive" low gear, a "direct drive" middle gear, and an "overdrive" high gear.
Only within the past week have I seen the inside of an internally geared hub, and its complicated, clock-like inner workings greatly excite me. I want to get my hands on an old hub so that I can rebuild it and record the process here, eventually lacing it to a wheel and using it on a casual bike I am planning in my head. More on that will come, eventually.
Internally geared hubs are great for several reasons, and somewhat limiting for a few other reasons. All of the shifting, mechanical movement and delicate parts are completely sealed from the outside world and the elements. In general, they require very little maintenance, if any at all. They are also very easy to use, mostly because they can be shifted when the bike is not moving. This makes them better for stop-and-go urban riding.
Their drawbacks come from a lack of versatility and a high price. The most common internally geared hub throughout the ages has been the
Sturmey-Archer three speed hub, adorning bikes since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the past few decades, the three speed hub has budded into a five speed hub, grown to seven and eight, and lately blossomed into
Shimano's eleven speed Alfine hub and
Rohloff's monster fourteen speed hub. The prices range from the most simple three speed hub retailing between $150 and $200, up to about $1700 to $2000 for one of Rohloff's tricked out hubs. (These prices are rough estimations.)
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| Cut-away illustration of the inside of a Rohloff fourteen speed hub. Don't worry, I don't know how it works either. Source |
For my mom's potential bike, we talked about me building one up for her, but after more consideration decided to not go that route. To put it shortly, there would be little to no financial benefits of me building a bike up from scratch for her. The truth is that the sort of bike my mom was wanting wouldn't really warrant a custom build due to its simplicity. She was wanting, and needing, a very simple bike. This didn't require a special configuration, it required functionality. There's a lot of bikes out there that could fill this niche for her. A week before Mother's Day, my fiancee
Keri and I got time off of work to go visit my mom and brother in Los Angeles. Bike shopping was of course on the agenda.
The first few shops we visited were no good, ranging from helplessly useless to too elitist to talk to us. The next day, while waiting for my mom to pick us up, I got onto Los Angeles' Craigslist on a whim. After much scrolling, something caught my eye: a brand new bike, with a step-through frame, three speed internally geared, and at a killer price. A little more investigation revealed it was actually a small bike shop posting, coincidentally in a neighborhood very close to our destination that day, the Aquarium of the Pacific, in Long Beach. After our day of fun at the aquarium, we set out to find the bike shop.
We ended up in a business complex, curiously trying to spot anything that would look like a bike shop. Lo and behold, one of the storage unit-like store fronts was filled with bicycles. Inside we found an assortment of affordable bikes and a slew of used bikes. My mom immediately liked the bike I had picked out for her and after some test rides it was sold.
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| My mom's bike, setup in my brothers's apartment after my check-over. Taken on May 7, 2013 |
The bike is called the Micargi Kuba 3, and it is an inexpensive lady's city bike, outfitted with a Shimano Nexus three speed internally geared hub. Being what some people call a "city bike", it is a little more utilitarian and capable of urban riding than a cruiser. Cosmetically it emulates the old English three speed cruisers from the sixties and seventies, especially in the structure of the fork and fenders. Most of the bike has very inexpensive and low quality parts, but they are fairly functional and, more importantly, could be upgraded easily if the need ever arose. The wheels are the modern "road bike" size of 700c and the rims are double-walled, which as explained in my earlier
wheel-building post makes them substantially stronger than the cheapest rims out there. The saddle is some cheap knock-off of the older cruiser style, and will likely be replaced sometime soon when it wears out. The most valuable and important component on the bike is the rear hub. Everything else can change if necessary.
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Left: Rear of the bike. It came with a simple rack.
Right: Fork and fenders. Note the chromed dimple on the crown of the fork,
and the shape of the fender: directly imitating the old English three speeds.
Both taken on May 7, 2013 |
I've tried to do some research on Micargi but all I can find are outdated websites. It seems Micargi mostly produces department store quality bikes. While parts of my mom's bike hold up to this standard, I'm still surprised by the overall build of the bike. Maybe it's just the Shimano Nexus hub, but it feels like it is just a hair above the typical department store bike.
The important thing is that my mom likes her bike. She took it out for a ride a week after buying it and reported that she loved it. Hopefully with time she'll outgrow this bike and it can hang around as a good bike for casual rides and strolls through the park. For Mother's Day I got her the
Mirrycle Bicycle Mirror, which just so happens to be the best bicycle mirror ever. I bought it a few days before our trip, intending it to be a slight nudge to go ahead and get a bike. Seems it was all meant to work out.
My parent's divorce was, by most standards, not a bad one and they remained friends. Somewhere, wherever or whatever my dad is right now, I bet he's happy to see my mom on a bike again.
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| Hello! You can't hate the Mirrycle. Taken on May 7, 2013 |
