Keri's Motobecane, Part 3

     It is funny how the world works sometimes.  One of the bigger projects looming in my mind for the past year has been outfitting my fiancee Keri's vintage Motobecane with shifters and derailleurs, as we bought it as an improvised single speed.  Actually installing the components wouldn't be that big of a deal, mostly because it involves pretty routine procedures; the real pain would come from tracking down somewhat appropriate components.  The bike is old but I'm not entirely sure what originally came on it.  Information on Motobecanes from the early seventies is difficult to find, and honestly the scans I have found are hard to read.  Accumulating all of the parts could take some time, some money, and it eventually got shifted onto our backburner.

Keri's bike prior to operation.
Taken on June 26, 2013

     Then, cosmic energies aligned and some good fortune came our way.  One of our managers at work was given an old Schwinn World bike.  Unfortunately, the bike was in really rough shape, needing at least new tubes and tires to be rideable.  In addition to that, the bike was too tall for her.  Deciding to donate it to a local non-profit bicycle program, she brought it into work thinking it needed to be in working order to donate.  After seeing it initially, I didn't think much of it.  The frame's paint job was a bit scuffed in parts, and most of the bike's componentry weren't anything to write home about.  But something did catch my eye:  the shifters.  They were exactly the kind I needed for Keri's bike, and they were actually in pretty good shape too!
     I mentioned to my manager that bikes actually don't need to be in working order to be donated, and that I was actually interested in the shifters.  We quickly worked out an agreement where the whole bike was mine, and I would donate what I didn't use.  Sweet!  After looking over the bike some more, I soon realized that not only were the shifters useful to me, but the rear and front derailleurs were actually perfect for Keri's bike!  In one fell swoop, I had acquired nearly everything I needed to turn Keri's bike back into a multiple speed vehicle.
     After stripping the necessary parts off of the Schwinn I hung the bike up for me to deal with later.  The components are all Suntour, and I can now guess the Schwinn is from some time between 1982 and 1984.  The online scans of the Schwinn catalogs did not make it extremely clear which year the bike was from, but I am confident it lies between those years.  All of the parts were destined for a bath in the parts cleaner we have at work, for although they were in good shape they still had some dirt and grime on them.
     First I disassembled the shifters.  They are simply called Suntour stem shifters, I could find no model name for them, neither on the actual shifters themselves nor online.  This style of shifter mounts, you guessed it, directly onto the quill stem of a bicycle.  They are usually not the highest quality parts out there, because the stem shifters were considered a more comfortable version of the downtube shifters typically found on more serious road bikes.  Despite this, the nicer ones are still of more-than-adequate quality, and I got lucky here:  these are of the all-metal variety.  A lot of the stem shifters that are still around have plastic levers, or at least partly plastic levers.  Besides looking nasty, they of course are not as sturdy as the ones made completely out of aluminum.

Top:  Shots of the shifters before disassembly and going into the parts cleaner.
Bottom:  After reassembly and a bath in the parts cleaner.  Not a ton
of difference, but quite a bit of shine in the mounting bracket is noticeable in person.
Taken on June 25, 2013

     I disassembled these shifters before putting them into the parts cleaner because they function entirely on friction.  The technology behind these levers is incredibly simple and in my opinion brilliant.  In essence you have four parts, in this order:  a bolt, a plate, the lever, and another plate.  When the bolt is tightened down adequately, these two plates sandwich the lever and physics keeps the lever where you put it.  The spring-tensioned derailleur can't overpower an adequately tightened friction shifter.  There's no ratcheting, no mechanisms, no springs and tiny parts.  They're incredibly low maintenance, and you really can't go wrong with them.  But because they rely on friction, I can't afford any sort of lubricant to get onto the lever and plate surfaces.  This would of course greatly reduce the friction and I'd have to carefully and thoroughly clean the surfaces before I could expect them to work again.  So only the mounting bracket, between the levers, would go into the parts cleaner.

Top:  A couple angles of the rear derailleur, prior to being cleaned.
Bottom:  Same angles, after the parts cleaner.  Besides really shining up,
a lot of the grime was removed.
Taken on June 25, 2013

     The rear derailleur is a Suntour Honor 1100, otherwise known as the fourth style of the Honor series which began in 1968.  According to the date code on the back of the parallelogram, this particular derailleur was made in June of 1981.  Aren't date codes neat?  According to the wealth of knowledge found on the Disraeli Gears website, the Honor series was renowned for not be extraordinarily beautiful or light, but for being a durable workhorse.  Sounds like my kind of part!  It has a lot in common with my Suntour Fuji Vx S rear derailleur on my Fuji S12-S, in particular the open cage--which I love--and the styling of the logo.  This really made me excited to clean it up!

Top:  Shots of the pre-cleaned front derailleur.  Note the grime around the clamp bracket.
Bottom:  Shots of the post-cleaned front derailleur.  What a shine!  But I did
have to put some elbow grease in to break up the grime.
Taken on June 25, 2013

     The front derailleur is a Suntour Spirit, and other than the fact that this particular derailleur was made in April of 1981, there isn't much else I could find out about it.  From a few catalog scans I've figured it was a rather low end component, not to mention front derailleurs tend to be a step or two below the rear derailleur on a bike.  Regardless it feels sturdy and actually has pretty good action.  It is neat, however, in that its default position is actually opposite that of most front derailleurs.  Typically, the spring in a front derailleur causes the cage to return to a default position close to the frame, over the inner, smaller chainrings.  As you pull cable, the derailleur moves out away from the frame, towards the higher gears.  For this derailleur, however, the default position is away from the frame, over the high gears, and moves towards the inner low gears as you pull cable.  This has no substantial value to me other than being an oddity:  it simply means it will be easier on the shifter staying in the high gear.

     The front derailleur was not absolutely necessary on Keri's bike, however, because somewhere along the line someone removed the inner chain ring, leaving only the larger "main" chain ring.  I'm not entirely sure what would have prompted this, but it is definitely something I find more than a little irritating.  Tracking down an age-appropriate and correctly sized chain ring could truly be difficult.  But in the meantime, I decided to install the front derailleur so that it can act as a chain guide.  With the chain moving between the gears on the freewheel in the rear, the chain can sometimes want to jump off of the front chain ring.  This is somewhat common, although it doesn't always happen.  It does tend to happen more with reckless shifting, such as "dumping" the chain from the lowest gear to the highest in one motion.  The chains spends more time "in the air" in a shift like this and so is more likely to come off.  Part of what a front derailleur does anyways is keep the chain on the chain rings, so I figured this would be a good idea for Keri's bike.

     Finally, with all of the parts clean, I drove Keri's bike into work on one of my day's off to install everything.  I could have probably done it at home, but it is always such a hassle to pull out my folding stand and do bike maintenance in my living room, between my computer desk and our chairs.  It's worth it to do it in a real shop.  The whole operation went without much of a hitch.  In addition to the obvious expense of cables and housing, I bought a new chain for the her bike.  Her old chain was, well, old, being what I'm pretty sure was the original chain.  But more importantly, it was shortened to work for a single speed drivetrain.  Deciding it was time for a new one, I threw on a SRAM PG-850 8-speed chain that we keep in bulk in the shop.

Various shots of the finished installation.  Everything looks great.
Taken on June 27, 2013

     When everything was said and done, the bike actually came out looking a heck of a lot sharper than it did originally.  I know we are in the middle of a single speed craze, but I will always drift toward a geared drivetrain, if not for practical reasons then for aesthetic reasons.  The much more important satisfaction, however, came from taking Keri out for a test ride shortly after I finished everything.  She was very excited to finally "getting gears," as it has been something she's wanted for well over a year now.  With a yelp of unexpected nimbleness, she took off and had a smile on her face the whole time.  I was a little worried.  She had never used a bike with friction shifting, and although fundamentally it is simple, it is something that can give people trouble at first.  But she caught on like a champ, and after her ten minute ride she exclaimed how much she loved it.  Nothing really beats that feeling of a job well done, especially when that confirmation comes from a loved one.  At the end of the day, this is the kind of mechanic I am.  I just want to make people happy about their bike.

The completed bike, with a 5-speed drivetrain.
Taken on June 27, 2013

     All that is left on Keri's bike is for me to rebuild her rear wheel, as I did with her front.  With the finish line so near I think I'll prioritize this last project for her bike, so that she is completely equipped to get out and have some fun.  I've been partly putting it off because her bike will be out of commission while I am building the wheel, so I want to have all of the funds ready right off the bat.

The bare frame of the Schwinn World that yielded the parts so that Keri's bike could live.
I have plans for it...
Taken on June 27, 2013

     But, more relevant to myself personally, is the now completely stripped Schwinn World frame sitting behind me.  At first I was resolved to quickly donate it, but I've had a change of heart, and I believe I can use it in a project I've been very anxious to make a reality.  There will be more on that to come.

Note:  As in a previous post, I'd like to recommend the website Disraeli Gears as an incredible wealth of knowledge on rear derailleurs.  In addition, I'd also like to recommend this site for providing information on dating bicycle components.  It can be neat to find out when parts of your bike were made.

Finally, this collection of Schwinn catalog scans between the years 1981 and 1990 were (somewhat) useful in dating the Schwinn World.  You may find it useful as well.

Duality

     At the moment I have a few posts brewing.  I'm not sure if I will continue on the same path that I started for each of them, or even finish and publish any of them.  Right now I am in the middle of a project that has grown quite a bit more intense than I originally speculated:  I'm overhauling my mom's old 1994 ParkPre Team 925R road bike.  That'll warrant a very full post when I'm finished.

A bad photograph of the bike before I started work.  I neglected to take a full side shot of the bike.  Oh well.
Taken on June 18, 2013.

     Instead I'll take this time to share a little half rant, half musing.  Recently I have been experiencing a bit of a minor, not-inherently-bad-for-me identity crisis.  In short, the duality of my interests, which normally coexist in a sort of tag-team tap-out fashion, are butting heads.
     In lamen's terms, my digital, indoor video game side is at odds with my mechanically curious and productive side.  I waste time sitting on my computer, blinking away seconds, minutes, hours and days of video games and mindless web browsing while deep inside of me a greasy fire lusts for actually doing something.  In ideal circumstances, I would just roll my chair from my sweet computer rig over to my fully equipped and expansive work area to start building a bike from nothing, and when I tired of that, I would roll back to my computer to play video games for hours on end.
     Unfortunately, the reality favors one side of that much more than the other.  I have no work area.  Beside my computer I've crammed my tool chest, which is itself crammed with most of my tools.  Beside that is a large tote box filled with my bike part collection.  That's it.  When I rarely do bike work at home, it is usually while sitting in my computer chair, with parts lying on my computer desk--my computer desk with a glass surface!  Boy, it looked cool at Wal-mart but now I am slightly regretting it.  When I need something resembling a work bench I use the linoleum floor of our kitchen.  It gets some of what I need done but it is more than anything frustrating.
     I need a shop.  I need a space, even a somewhat small space, to call my own and to fill with whatever I desire.  Tools, parts, benches, chairs, lighting and of course a decent speaker system.  I need this so bad it drives me insane sometimes.  I would be a much happier and more content person if I had access to this.  But for now, I must endure.

     And so the side of me that needs to work my hands, solve problems and build to create is stifled.  While this never makes me happy, lately it has reached a new level.  It's bothering me.  But it also has me thinking:  "What am I going to do when I do have my dream shop?"
     I definitely want to still try my hand at frame building.  Regardless of how that works out, more than anything I want to tinker.  I want to take apart and rebuild things I normally wouldn't take apart, like shifters.  I want to put parts together to create interesting or useful bikes.  Possibly I could sell these, or I could just do it for the fun and educational value of it.
     One of the big things I have learned from working as a mechanic at a "new" place (that is, a place different from where I learned most of my trade) is that there is more than one way to do something.  There are "proper" ways, "dirty" ways, shortcuts and dumb ways.  I've also begun seeing that there is more than one type of mechanic.  Some people are all about being by the book, following the rules and instructions and seeing the process through in a methodical manner.  Other people are more loose and follow the ebb and flow of the process.  Some people are all about the componentry, how top-of-the-line or new the part is, or how allegedly innovative the company claims the part to be.  Others don't really care, as long as it is functional and gets the job done.  Some people work on bikes because they are serious riders and want every last drop of performance that they can wring out of their machine.  Others, such as myself, find their interest in bicycles in the very nature of it's ingenuity.  It's a machine, that must be manufactured, cared for, and ultimately put to rest.  There is satisfaction in that, otherwise humanity wouldn't be where it is today, regardless of how awesome you may think you are with your iPhone.
     I think I know what kind of mechanic I am.  The trick is staying true to that.  The harder trick still is staying true to that and upholding the tenets of my job.  It's not so difficult that I am strained, just difficult enough to keep me on my toes.
     I just have to keep on trying to grow as a mechanic, to take on new challenges head on, so that I can add "I can't"s to the pile of "I can"s.  It is difficult for me.  I have some serious confidence problems.  My dad always made it look so easy:  nothing ever seemed to make him step away.  He built a whole house seemingly by himself for god's sake!  Sometimes I know I can do it, sometimes I feel I can't.  Duality seems to run deeply in my life.  Prior to very recently I could handle it, if not ignore it.  Nowadays it has been more than I can handle.
     Just got to keep on keeping on.

A Bike For Mom

     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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

Hello!  You can't hate the Mirrycle.  Taken on May 7, 2013

Happy Birthday, Dad

   Today, being April 3, 2013, is my dad's 49th birthday.  I felt it only appropriate to make a post celebrating the day, and I felt a good tribute would be talking about what was his (and my mom's) most successful business venture:  Pisgah Bike Center.

Pisgah Bike Center in its original location, during the winter.
Date unknown, probably 1995 or 1996

     On May 2, 1992, Pisgah Bike Center was opened for business on 210 East Main Street in Brevard, North Carolina.  Before my parents acquired the lease to the building, it had been a bakery.  I remember scraping off cartoon bats which had been window painted onto the large front windows.  My guess is that it went out of business around Halloween.  I'm not sure what business occupied the building before the bakery, but it was originally an auto shop.  As you can see in the picture above, there were two large garage sections.  The left garage housed my dad's work area, and the garage to the right was storage for bicycles.  The storage garage even had a pit for changing the oil of a car.  A heavy steel grate had been placed over it, and my brother and I would often fish for quarters and other loose change in the bottom of the pit with a long, flexible grabbing tool we borrowed from my dad's toolbox.

My dad at the register of Pisgah Bike Center, before we officially opened.
Date unknown, probably April, 1992

     In the beginning my parents sold Mount Shasta mountain bikes, which were a cheaper, lower quality subset of bikes made by GT Bicycles.  Eventually my parents were able to secure the rights to sell bikes made by GT themselves, along with Balance and ParkPre, and eventually made it into the "big leagues" via Specialized.  They don't make Mount Shasta, Balance, or ParkPre anymore, if that is any indication of how different it was back then.  Our family bike shop was very successful for a lot of reasons.  The most powerful factors were simply that we were in the right place at the right time.  The mountain bike boom of the late 1980's and 1990's was still going strong, and we had moved to the front-line of one of the best mountain biking regions of the eastern United States:  western North Carolina.  Pisgah National Forest in particular is well known as a mountain biking mecca of the East, and Brevard is right on the southeastern edge of the Forest.  When my parents opened Pisgah Bike Center, we were the only bicycle shop in Brevard.  The closest shop was in Asheville, the cultural center of the Blue Ridge Mountains, about thirty miles away.  Add to that mix my parents strong work ethic and enthusiasm for mountain biking, and you have a winner.

Before we officially opened, waiting on bicycles to arrive.  This wall would eventually contain our lineup of bikes to sell.
Date unknown, probably April, 1992

     I have some memories of this time, but they are not especially concrete or clear.  I was, unsurprisingly, not paying that much attention to the bikes or what my parents were doing.  Most of my time was spent playing in a back room where my parents set up a very tiny TV for my brother and I to watch cartoons.  We would venture out to cause a ruckus in the rest of the store from time to time but when things were busy we were usually scooted to the back.

     I only recall my dad trying to show me how to do some work on a bicycle once.  Being seven or eight at the time I guess I was too hyper to sit and learn something, because all I remember is my dad showing me a set of brakes and explaining how you adjust them.  I didn't understand it but I didn't really pay attention either.  I don't know if I was too young or too preoccupied with trivial, boyhood things like video games or the Power Rangers, but I had no interest in learning what my dad did.  That has always been a tremendous fault of mine:  I've always had my head somewhere else, never in the present and never in what I was doing at the time.

     We had the shop at that location for about four years before tragedy struck.  We were leasing the building from an eccentric elderly lady, whose son managed her various properties.  According to my mom, he was very friendly and easy to deal with.  The elderly lady eventually passed away, so the property was passed to the son who was managing it for her anyways.  Then, he unexpectedly passed from a massive heart attack.  At this point, another son of the elderly lady we hadn't known about comes into town from Virginia and claims his inheritance.  Without us knowing, he sold our property to another local business owner who owned a knickknack shop nearby.  They sold things like porcelain unicorns and glass dolphins.  These new owners appeared on our doorstep on my little brother's birthday in 1996.  They were doubling our rent and forcing us to relocating to a temporary trailer so they could demolish our shop to build a strip mall, from which we could then rent space.  My parents rejected this offer and immediately started looking for a new location.  We only had about a month before the new doubled rent would go into effect.

     Unfortunately, the best location my parents could find in time would end up being the first nail in our coffin.  Whereas before we were located downtown in an easy to find building, we were forced to move to a extremely out of the way residential house on one of the state roads going into town.  We were about two miles from the entrance to Pisgah National Forest, but we were also in the middle of the rural countryside.  No one would think to find a bike shop there.

The second location, before my dad turned it into a store.
Left:  Almost every wall you see here was eventually knocked out.  We also pulled up the carpet.
Right:  Taken from the kitchen, which would be my dad's work area.  The dining room type area would become the office.
Date unknown, sometime in 1996

     My dad knocked down a lot of walls and converted the house into the best store that he could.  His work area got much, much smaller, going into what was once the kitchen.  Thinking back, I don't know how he worked in such a small space.  The basement provided a lot of storage, but it was really too much for what we needed.  We were only at this location for about a year before we were forced to close shop for good.  We were losing money quickly and only our most loyal customers would come to our new location.  After a while, even they stopped showing up.  It was a bad time for our family, laced with uncertainty and doubt after a handful of years of uplifting success.  Other bike shops, some in unbeatable locations, started to pop up in Brevard around this time and we could not compete.

     Even today, my mom still harbors resentment towards the people who had malicious parts to play in those events.  She found out later that the plan to push us out of business had been a calculated move, strung up from one black-hearted person to the next in a web of foul play.  A local outfitters store which also dealt in bicycles wanted us out of business, so they used their friendship with the people who underhandedly bought the property we were leasing to drive us out.  According to my mom, a lot of bad things happened to the people involved in that.  Infidelity legal issues, illegal substance abuse and ill-fated business moves came to those people.  I guess the world has a funny way of working itself out sometimes.

My dad's truck, painted up as an advertisement for our store.  Parked in front of the
small duplex we lived in when we first moved to North Carolina.
Date unknown.

     My mom started to work part time for UPS to help the family, eventually venturing into real estate, and after we closed the shop my dad went to work for a former customer who owned a machine shop.  He quickly distinguished himself as one of the best manual machinists there and made quick friends with just about everyone he worked with.  He worked there until we moved to upstate New York in late 1999, and again in 2000 after we moved back to Brevard.  I think of all the "real" jobs my dad had, where he clocked in and was payed by someone else, the job at that machine shop was probably his favorite.

     My dad held onto a few relics from our time as bike shop owners:  small parts and oddities, things that we hauled to New York, and then to North Carolina again, and finally to Indiana when we "returned home". When I embarked on my first backpacking adventure in 2007, my dad fished out what he said was the last ticketed item from Pisgah Bike Center:  a set of sunglass straps, made of blue cord to look like climbing rope, still in its package with one of our price tickets on it.  I took that to the Uintas of northeastern Utah with me, but I didn't end up wearing my sunglasses for more than a few days so I got little use out of the straps.  They actually broke on me near the end of the trip, no doubt because they were over ten years old at that point, but I was fool enough to throw them away when we got home.  A small mistake, I guess.

     My father of course held onto nearly all of his bike tools.  After I started to become a mechanic, I asked if I could have them for my own use and he gave me nearly all of them.  They are now lying in my wooden tool chest, only a few feet from me now.  They are old and most of them worn; some are so depreciated that they don't even make tools in that style anymore.  Not that they are ancient, they are just relics from a time not too long ago.  I will definitely hold onto them for the rest of my life.  Maybe someday I can pass them on, as they were passed to me.  Hopefully at that time, cone wrenches and lock-ring bottom bracket spanners are still relevant.

Giant Flying Bicycles

     When I was a kid, between the ages of maybe eight and ten, I was really interested in airplanes.  I often sketched doodles of them on the backs of my worksheets at school, I tried to always read about them in library books, and I was absolutely fascinated by just about anything that flew.  Specifically, World War 2 military aircraft have always been sort of special to me.  Even though I don't really pursue it anymore as an interest, my eyes always light up and my mind starts racing when those kinds of aircraft are brought up.
     Part of this interest was spawned from my dad, whose interest came from his dad.  My grandpa was in the United States Air Force during World War 2.  His enthusiasm for flying carried over into his post-military life, and he has had a lifelong love of aircraft.  My dad and uncles inherited and shared this fascination, which was passed onto me.  It runs in the family, I guess.

     My birthday is nearing, and my lovely fiancee Keri surprised me today with a visit to the Pima Air and Space Museum, a world-class aviation museum right here in Tucson, Arizona.  I was extremely excited, and we had a really fun time.  My boyhood enthusiasm came right out, as I ran from airplane to airplane, telling Keri what I remembered about each one.  When we first entered the museum, we were unsurprisingly greeted with a replica reproduction of the Wright Flyer, the first successful powered aircraft.  Growing up in North Carolina, known as the "First in Flight", I learned about the Wright brothers in elementary school.  They were  bicycle mechanics and frame builders during the great Bicycle Boom of the Victorian Era.  They held patents on some bicycle inventions, and are credited for starting the standard today of left-sided crank arms being reverse-threaded so the pedals do not loosen themselves while pedaling.  That is a very important innovation for the bicycle!
     Although the replica was hung from the ceiling and it was difficult to see the entire thing, I couldn't help but smile as I noticed the bicycle-inspired parts.  Thick sprockets attached to the propellers were driven by what looked like a giant, heavy duty bicycle chain.  On the motor itself, which was a custom-built machine, a more standard-sized chain helped drive the system.  For some reason, and I'm not sure why, I noticed a bare bicycle hub mounted to the front of the canard wings.  The only purpose I can give it is that it assisted in the aircraft taking off from its wooden railed sled.

Left:  A reproduction of the Wright Flyer at the Dayton International Airport.  Source
Right:  A close-up of the bicycle-inspired drivetrain that propelled mankind skyward.  Source

     They used the money they earned from their bicycle business to fund the research and experiments that eventually led to the forefather of all modern aircraft.  Essentially, the airplane was invented by some guys who built and worked on bicycles.  Bicycles and airplanes have always been at least somewhat connected in my mind.  Recently, it has become more concrete to me.  Both are vehicles which were considered radical at their time of conception, paving new roads and opportunities.  For the airplane, it's obvious: man was able to fly in the sky after hundreds of years of yearning to do so.  For the bicycle, perhaps not as obvious:  people were liberated to go greater distances at lesser costs, both financially and physically.
     Both machines are built to be light and efficient, relying on physics to maintain stability, unlike a four-wheeled automobile, which is stable for geometric reasons.  This may seem like the silliest reason, but I think it deserves notice:  aircraft were for the longest time controlled via cables, just likes bicycles.  This is actually still true for smaller aircraft, such as Cessna bush planes.  Strong steel cables run from the controls of the aircraft's cockpit to the various rudders and ailerons that control the aircraft in the sky.  Larger, more modern aircraft, such as jet-powered fighters and civilian airliners, have obviously upgraded to hydraulic systems, just like the bicycle when cable-actuated brakes weren't cutting it for hardcore mountain bikers.  About halfway through our visit, I couldn't help but think that airplanes were just giant flying bicycles.

What I can only guess to be control cables, running along the inside of a B-17 Flying Fortress.  Taken at the Pima Air & Space Museum, March 4, 2013

     We only had a few hours to see the whole museum, as they closed at five o'clock, and we unfortunately entered the one building I unknowingly would have wanted to visit the most dead last.  This hangar housed a B-17 Flying Fortress, this time a plane which is a family favorite, as it was the aircraft my grandpa flew in during World War 2.  But just as we stepped into the cool air, one of the elderly volunteers told us they were closing this building in five minutes, so we had better hurry.  So we rush into the exhibit era, and lo and behold, there is a restored B-17 in all of its glory.  But propped next to a wall exhibit is something that I must admit interested me much more:  an era-specific bicycle!  I had never seen a bike this old so up close before!  As I excitedly kneeled to take pictures, another elderly volunteer came up and told me they were closing in a few minutes, so I should take that time to take pictures of the plane.  I smiled and didn't feel like explaining that I was a bicycle mechanic.  I only had a minute or so to look at it, but it was really cool.

Left:  Front shot of the bike.  It was so interesting to see such an old bike!
Top-right:  Rod-actuated brakes, something that just does not exist anymore unless you're in a developing nation.
Middle-right:  The bottom bracket and crank arm, using the dreaded cotter-pin interface.
Bottom-right:  A Brooks saddle!  Now that assures me I have a quality product.
All taken at the Pima Air & Space Museum, on March 4, 2013

     I had never seen rod-actuated brakes before.  They are a very old precursor to the cable-actuated rim brakes we have today.  These used a solid rod that pulled up on a set of rubber pads, which actually gripped the underside of the bicycle rim instead of the sides like they do nowadays.  The bike was not in the best shape, but it was good enough for me to really enjoy.  Keri pointed out the saddle to me, which was none other than a Brooks leather saddle.  Quite worn and gnarled around the edges, but still very distinguishable, this makes me feel good about my purchase.  If a saddle from the 1940s can at least still bear its shape and resemblance then that is good enough for me.

     Seeing all of the airplanes sparked some strong memories for me too.  In every building, it seemed there was at least one plane that I learned about from my dad.  If it wasn't the SR-71 Blackbird, the current record holder for the fastest manned aircraft propelled by jet technology, it was the PT-19, an aircraft used to train new pilots on how to fly during World War 2, and a plane my dad always seemed to get excited about.  He loved it so much that we actually embarked on one of our first father-son projects, and built a wooden toy plane that we painted with the familiar blue-yellow color scheme.

Left:  The PT-19 on exhibit.  One of my dad's many favorite planes.  Taken at the Pima Air & Space Museum.
Top-right:  The wooden toy plane my dad and I built when I was a kid.
Bottom-right:  A close-up of the plane.  Note the (mostly) similar paint scheme.
All photos taken on March 4, 2013

     I was probably nine or ten years old, and he had just bought a scroll saw; for what exactly, I'm not sure.  But he wanted a project, so he decided he and I would build a little plane.  The fuselage was cut from a piece of pine, probably a two-by-four, and the wings, tail stabilizers and wheel struts were cut from hobby plywood.  I remember my job was to sand everything down to be really smooth, and that I hated doing it.  The propeller was from a model plane, one of those motorized hobby planes that run on a control line as you spin in a circle.  My dad liked playing with those, from time to time.  The most special piece though is the nose cone, a completely custom part that my dad made one night on his tiny lathe in the basement.  He was so proud of it, just a simple, polished piece of what I'm going to guess is steel due to its shine.  The vertical tail fin and the wheel struts were first attached to the fuselage with glued toothpicks, but when those broke he repaired it with cut bicycle spokes.  It seems bicycle spokes solved a lot of his problems.
     A love of airplanes will always be one of the bonds I have with my dad.  I think it transcended the need for any sort of discussion or validation.  It was simple:  we both were just naturally drawn to them.  The same could be said for bicycles, but I honestly think the sentiment runs deeper with airplanes.  Maybe it was because they are sort of mysterious and unattainable.
     I remember my dad briefly wanted to get his pilot's license, but he never got very far with it.  According to my mom, he started reading the books, and went up on an observation flight with a pilot to get a feeling of what he was in for.  After he got back down, I guess he decided he couldn't do it, because it required a lot of reading, written tests, and technical knowledge.  My dad felt his way through everything, just like me, and while you can fly with that sort of skill-set, I don't think it is really encouraged to let novices go up if they don't know exactly what they're doing beforehand.

My dad and his tandem jumper, right after they landed back on the Earth.  This picture
hung on a wall in his house ever since the day he leapt from the plane.
Date unknown, probably summer of 2002.

     Despite this, my dad maintained a lifelong desire to take to the skies.  After our family moved back to Indiana and my parents split up, my dad took to visiting the local airport and watching the skydivers.  He liked to go up into the jump plane and ride back down as the plane tried to beat the plummeting skydivers to the surface.  One day, my dad decided he wanted to join them, and he soon found himself leaping out of the door of an airplane, strapped to an experienced skydiver in a tandem jump.  It was one of my dad's proudest moments, something he had always wanted to do and something he would always be excited to talk about afterwards.  He really loved doing it, although he only did it once; it was a pricey endeavor.  He really wanted me to do it when I was old enough, but I refused.  I enjoy airplanes more as museum pieces, and at least, when safely buckled inside of one.  But maybe someday when I'm in my early forties, that will change.

My entire gallery of the trip to the Pima Air & Space Museum can be found here, on my Facebook profile.  If you ever find yourself in the Tucson era, and you're a fan of aviation, I highly recommend visiting the museum, although I do also recommend to come earlier in the day as our two hour visit was not long enough.

The Creed of our Forefathers

     An encounter with a customer today at REI where I work prompted me to ponder some things.  An older man came up and asked if I knew anything about bicycles, to which I replied that I knew some.  Heavyset and gruff, he was one of those very straightforward older white men who probably led a successful life by ordering people around.  He told me he had an older "race" bike, which was "very nice", but he was contemplating selling it so he could get a more comfortable bike.  After asking him some questions I figure out he isn't really wanting something built for maximum comfort and that a typical flat bar road bike or performance-oriented hybrid bicycle would do fine for him.
     At this point I ask what I always ask when in this situation:  "Do you like your bicycle?"  Usually I get an affirmative "Yes", to which I then start explaining that you can typically do a lot to a bicycle to help it fit your needs, and that even if a lot has to be done, it usually doesn't cost more than a brand new bicycle.  This approach of course doesn't always work; trying to turn a mountain bike into a road bike and vice versa simply won't yield results as good as starting from scratch.  But, if something like raising or swapping out handlebars, or getting different tires, can zero in on what someone wants out of their bike, I am always happy to open that option up to them.
     The older man didn't seem opposed to the idea, so I went into my usual spiel, in which a main part is me explaining that I love old bicycles and that I prefer to keep old bikes on the road rather than add new bikes to the pavement and trails.  There's a few reasons for this, and one I often list is that it conserves resources, as we aren't throwing away a potentially (or perfectly) functional bike for a brand new hunk of aluminum, steel and rubber, which is probably of lesser quality than what the person has already.  When I say this, a big smirk creeps across his face.  I notice a large, silver revolver stuck into a holster on the back of his belt.  His black ball cap has the word "VETERAN" stitched in gold thread across the front.
     "How veeeeery green of you!"
     I'm sort of shocked by both the comment and the amount of venom in his tone.  It insults me, which is odd as I agree with environmental issues, at least in philosophy.  Mentally quick on my feet, and angered at his statement, I explain that both of my grandpas grew up in the Great Depression and they both hold onto things.  They keep old things running and try to conserve what they use, because it is expensive to do otherwise and just unethical to waste.
     His tone softens and he agrees that he doesn't like to throw things away.  We ended up reaching a compromise, although I think he still thought of me as some kind of "environmental hippie."


     As the day wore on, this event bothered me.  It bothered me that the current mindset of a lot of people is to go out and buy buy buy.  Has the consumerism that has run rampant since the 1980's finally snuffed out older American values, such as conservation and making do with what is given to us?  Are these ideas now branded as controversial, left-wing and liberal by those who may have at one time embraced them?
     Although I am only twenty-three at this very moment, and not that old at all, I was brought up to not waste things.  My family didn't have a "clean your plate" rule at the dinner table, but I know from experience that what my mom made for dinner was what we ate, end of story.  My dad did almost everything that had to be fixed or built by himself, which saved the family a lot of money.  Even on TV shows which either praise or lampoon traditional American values, you get phrases like "We can't do that, it's wasteful".
     Now we have the Kardashians.  Now we are living in a time where America is more interested in celebrity drama than NASA.  Kids aspire to be professional athletes, and rockstars, but go to college to be lawyers and doctors.  The handy-man is seen as a lovable tramp, a low-life necessity in this world of things that move and go, and breakdown.  It is difficult to find something that is repairable in a store.  A broken lamp is sitting behind me right now because there is no way for me to open it up without damaging it, to try and figure out why it won't turn on.  It is destined for Goodwill.  When something breaks, buy a new one.  I'm guilty of it just as much as the next person.  But it feels wrong, and when I think about it, I don't agree with it.  I wasn't raised this way!  So why am I acting like this?
     I guess my point is that by branding the same idea as a core value carried by those who lived through the Great Depression, I was able to shatter the anti-environmental, anti-"green" connotation that immediately soured the gun-toting Texan.  Hemp-sandaled politics suddenly morphed into the creed of our fathers and grandfathers.  Why did we forget these values?  What happened?

Take a Moment

     The idea for this post started off being centered on bicycles, of course, but as the notion brewed in my mind it sort of grew to encompass, well, everything.

     Have you ever stopped to consider the technology around you?  No, I don't mean computers, cell phones and other high tech gizmos of the modern age.  Those don't count.  I mean the little things that make civilized life possible.  I'm talking about ballpoint pens.  Corrugated cardboard.  Pneumatic tires.  Have you ever wondered where these simple things that we take for granted come from?  Have you ever wondered who came up with them?  Because that is how they came to be:  they were someone's idea.  More than likely, it was a single person's idea.  At some point, someone realized there was a way to solve a problem or make something easier; there was a way to write with ink more easily, a way to make cardboard significantly stronger, a way to take the bump and jostle out of road.  That idea was realized, and granted it was improved and built upon for the decades to come, and likely will continue to be improved in the future, but ultimately that idea came out of seemingly nowhere.

     It's so easy to take these things for granted today.  It seems everything is comprised of hundreds if not thousands of tiny, specific parts, all different ideas that came at different times to ultimately come together into one item.  The bicycle is a great example of that.  Did you think that some day, some guy got a bright idea and hammered together a fully geared, chain driven bicycle with pneumatic rubber tires on laced wheels that stopped with caliper brakes, and that this idea came out of nowhere?  I'll give you a hint, it didn't.  Before pneumatic tires there were solid rubber tires, and before that there were simple wooden wheels, much like those found on a horse-drawn wagon.  Having multiple gears on a bike was an idea that came sometime in the early part of the 20th century, and it was a notion that was met with great resistance at first.  In fact, the very idea of a chain driven bicycle, something that might seem so simple and obvious to us today, was an idea that came about decades after the first velocipede was created.  Before chains, the crank was mounted directly to the front wheel.  The iconic "penny-farthing" was a great example of this, and you might be surprised to learn that it was very difficult to ride.

Left:  Example of a "penny-farthing".  Could you imagine trying to ride one?
Right:  Example of a safety bicycle.  It may seem like common sense,
but this was at one time a huge technological breakthrough.
Source

     Fed up with the difficulty associated with riding the beast, the safety bicycle, the forefather of the modern bicycle, was invented in 1876.  This significantly easier to ride vehicle led directly to the infamous "bicycle boom" of the 1890's, which would foster several technological achievements that we definitely take for granted today, pneumatic tires and road building standards being just a few.  A lot of the technology that helped make the automobile not only possible, but also practical, was already "discovered" thanks to the bicycle.

     In our superficial, consumerist society it's easy to get caught up with what things look like on the outside.  But every once in a while, take a moment to think about what's inside, and what it took to create whatever is powering your high tech cell phone, or low tech ballpoint pen.