Tiny Fix Moms, part 1
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!
Hercules Bicycles, 1949 catalog (from flickr)
My mom’s first bicycle was a 3-speed Hercules. It was blue, was a women’s style (suitable for wearing a skirt), with fenders and had a generator hub to power a headlight. They called these bikes “English Racers” because they had skinny tires and more than one gear. She rode it around her neighborhood in Washington DC, and up and down the rolling hills of Rock Creek Park with her brothers, when she was 11 or 12 years old. She didn’t ride much through high school or during college, but started riding again in the early 1970s when she was living in the Bronx, newly married to my dad. At that time she rode a Japanese road bike called a Velosolex. She would go out for exercise on the bike paths of the Bronx, to City Island and the bridges to Queens. Despite the reputation of the Bronx at that time, she felt safe enough on a bike; on the paths she was away from the cars, and never had much concern about a dangerous person lurking in the bushes somewhere.
Mom’s Bianchi
Once she moved to the suburb of Port Chester, NY, she upgraded to a Bianchi and began to ride longer distances. She rode mostly with a male friend who had taken up cycling after being laid off from his teaching job. He raced for the Toga Bikes team in NYC and would go north for hill training. They would ride 30-40 miles a few times a week. through the hills of Westchester County and Connecticut. When I was growing up, my mom was often out riding 30-50+ miles with her friend on the weekend. I never went with her, because I was both lazy and nowhere near fit enough to keep up.
The sport of cycling in the 80s was still primarily dominated by guys. She didn’t have any female friends who rode bikes and she didn’t feel compelled to join a club or start racing in order to find riding partners. The cycling clothing was for men. The shorts were considered “unisex” and she wore them, size small, with a T-shirt. Cycling shoes were like stiff narrow sneakers designed to fit into toe cages. Helmets weren’t widely used, or even available at that time. There weren’t very many cyclists on the road and people looked at them, dressed in their tight kits, like they were total weirdos.
She started wearing a helmet in the early 80s, switched from toe clips to the first Look clipless pedals in the mid 80s (as soon as they came out), invested in jerseys and bicycle specific clothing, but rode that same Bianchi, which had since been outfitted with a full set of Campagnolo components from a friend’s bike which was wrecked in a crash, until 2008. Speaking of crashes, in the late 80s, she was involved in her only serious crash. We had gone on a family vacation, and she was coming home from a long ride, when she had a catastrophic quick-release failure and went down rounding a corner. Thankfully she didn’t get hit, but did fracture her elbow and wreck her fork.
On a ride in Central Park, 2010
In 2008 I was getting into cycling and started shopping for my first road bike. She went on a few test rides and after realizing the differences between a modern, carbon fiber, women-specific bike with brake shifters and her trusty steel Bianchi, she immediately bought a new bike, a Specialized Ruby Comp Triple, which has perfect geometry and gearing for long hilly rides in NY. We rode together on the weekends through lower Westchester while I was in medical school. When I was an intern in Manhattan she would put her bike in the car and come downtown to join me on rides in Central Park. She continues to ride 100+ miles a week during the warm months. When she visited me in Chicago, she rode my (too big) road bike with my (too big) road bike shoes on the Lakefront Path. She rode my fixed gear on a family ride around the neighborhood (my dad rode my cross bike!). Perhaps her biggest recent achievement was getting her certification at Chicago Velo Campus, the south side velodrome known for its impressive (and frighteningly steep) 50-degree banking through the corners. She had no problem riding a brakeless track bike and maintaining speed around the track, even getting the hang of pacelining in the velodrome!
Mom riding the 50 degree bank at Chicago Velo Campus
So what’s next? Goals, aspirations?
“Not so much. Summer’s almost here. Just lots of riding.”
What do you think about on a ride?
“Pushing as hard as I can, trying to get my average speed up. I try not to let my mind wander, I’m very, very aware, like hyper-aware of what’s going on around me. You can’t think about anything other than cycling. And catching up with the cyclist in front of me. Constant pushing, good cadence, smart shifting, not too much coasting. Maybe a passing thought about what I’m going to eat when I get home.”
Your thoughts on riding fixed gear bikes in the city?
“It’s a preference. I have no attitudes as to whether it’s stupid or smart. It depends on people’s abilities. In a way, it’s a more pure form of cycling, but you have to know what you’re doing.”
How has cycling changed for women in the last 20-30 years?
“Obviously there are way more of them doing it. The sport of cycling has adapted to women, with women’s specific bikes and all the other gear for them. It’s a great sport for women because it’s so low impact. You don’t destroy your body, you make it better, you become more heart healthy, and it’s a great cross-training sport.”
Do you think cycling is a masculine sport or a boy’s club?
“No.”
Mountain biking in Colorado
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BlocBoi Fame – Disrespectful
BlocBoi Fame, who refers to himself as Fixie Montana on Twitter, stunts, swigs airplane bottles of liquor, and rides like he owns the street. This is possibly the best thing I have ever seen, and about a thousand times more interesting to me than Brooklynite conscious rappers trying desperately to try to rhyme “Cinelli.”
On the real tip, seeing stuff like this makes me happy in the same way that seeing Latino kids tear around Humboldt on Leaders with Deep-Vs, and, god forbid, one Aerospoke makes me happy. Listen, biking is not just for tastemakers and snobs with money. It’s not this secret thing hipsters own. There’s no Bike Kremlin who is going to swoop in if your shit ain’t zef enough and force you to take a CTA pass in exchange for your janky tarck bike, and if you love riding it, then I love that you’re riding it.
I believe in the spiritual beauty of diversity. It is my favorite part of humanity, the way we are made up of infinite experiences and backgrounds and places and cultures. I love that we eat everything from sea urchin to corn smut, fermented duck eggs and chocolate milk. I love that we all speak different languages and worship different gods and tell different stories. But some things are just universal. Everyone the world over is addicted to their fucking cell phones. Everybody loves to fuck. And everybody likes to bike.
Yeah, BlockBoi Fame is kinda stunting like a dummy with his disrespectful biking. As a secret mom, I would love to see him throw a brake on that jawn and stop at a red light once in a while. But this video is goofy as hell, and kind of hilarious, and I watched it twice.
Hat tip to Moneyworth for the link, go buy her rap cult religious supplies
Read Moretreats
Other than the usual stuff (getting there faster, it’s free, adrenaline is almost as good as morning coffee, the happy realization that sometimes bikes outnumber cars during the morning commute), my favorite bonus of biking to work via the bike lane on Milwaukee Avenue is this:
Coming from the northwest, I pass the Gonnella Baking Company and smell fresh bread, and then only a little bit later, I pass Blommer Chocolate and smell chocolate. It’s like getting a hug from a delicious chocolate croissant each morning.
Read MoreThey see me rollin’…
Let’s just cut to the punch line. She got it. Cupcake was riding the rollers like a pro on the first day she tried.
The evidence:
So, now you want to learn how to ride the rollers too, right?
Read MoreGoodbye #bikewinter, hello spring.
Since it appears that spring is almost here, forecast calls for warm(ish) weather this weekend, let’s reflect back on this past (bike)winter…
#bikewinter on Vimeo.
Film by Dana Kotler, featuring Joshua Grubman, Dana Horst, KC Winter, and the rest of the Tiny Fix Gang at our January Bar Night at Dorothy’s.
“Invisible Cities,” written by Benjamin Scheuer/Escapist Papers, from the album “The Bridge” by Escapist Papers.
Shown at Bike Winter Art Show, C-haus, 3/15.
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A Tiny Giant ventures into bike racing
I’ve wanted to race bikes for a while. I have done 3 triathlons, 2 centuries (1 of which was on a fixed gear), a 200K brevet, I’ve trained at a velodrome. I have gone to multiple meet-ups and happy hours for people interested in racing, but still, for a variety of reasons, hadn’t gotten around to signing up for a race. Some of the reasons were:
Somewhere along the LFP, south
- My back hurts.
- I am going to suck.
- I’m not strong enough.
- I don’t know what I’m doing.
- I’m going to crash.
- My back hurts.
- I’m going to suck.
What I didn’t realize, though, is that apparently EVERYBODY goes through this before their first race. From talking to racers, I’ve realized that everybody has been dropped and finished off the back of the pack. Everybody has been nervous and queasy at the beginning of a race. Once you get over that hump, bike racing is supposed to be pretty cool.
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