The Non-Politics of Riding a Bike

On Monday I posted a photo of MLK Jr. on a bicycle. Wednesday I had some photos of presidents and world leaders on bicycles - along with some commentary on how partisan political pundits try to bring the bicycle, or the act of riding one, into their political attacks. Today, I thought it might be nice to just share some pictures of other famous people enjoying their bicycles.

Pop almost any name into the Google search box and add something like "on a bicycle" and see what comes up.

I'm sure everyone has seen this very famous photo of Albert Einstein taking a spin. It's often accompanied by the quote "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."

Ernest Hemingway in WWI (notice the rifle hanging from the top tube). He famously wrote, "It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle." Nevertheless, it's hard to find many photos of Hemingway with a bike.

Reader "Unclemiltie" reminded me that America's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, loved to ride his bike, and was still riding in his 80s. It's a little bit ironic that he made his fortune at the helm of what was then the world's biggest oil company, which greatly enabled America's love affair with the automobile. This Library of Congress photo shows him posing with his shaft-drive Columbia bicycle.

I managed to find a bunch of photos from the world of pop and rock music.

The Beatles in the Bahamas from the filming of their movie Help. 

"As a kid I had a dream. I wanted to own my own bicycle. When I got the bike, I must have been the happiest boy in Liverpool -- maybe the world. I lived for that bike. Most kids left their bike in the backyard at night. Not me. I insisted on taking mine indoors, and the first night I even kept it in my bed." -- John Lennon

Some kids never grow up. Lennon and Yoko Ono in Amsterdam, just tryin' to get some peace.

Mick Jagger on what looks to be a pretty nice Condor.

As long as we're on a roll with British rockers, here's one of Eric Clapton with one of his many Cinellis. I had a whole article about Clapton and bandmate Ginger Baker almost a year ago.

Can't leave out the King. Paramount studios gave Elvis this personalized Schwinn Racer, "Hound Dog," when he was filming one of his movies, Loving You. 

Many movie stars used bikes as an easy way to get around the expansive studio lots, so it isn't hard to find publicity shots of them on their bicycles.

Humphrey Bogart, making it look good.

Glen Ford and Rita Hayworth on a tandem - probably about the time they were filming the classic movie Gilda. Ever seen it? If you've seen the film Shawshank Redemption, there's a scene where the inmates are all watching a movie, and up on the screen we see Rita Hayworth do this amazing flip with her hair and the whole crowd explodes into whistles and catcalls. Morgan Freeman's character, Red, says "This is what I really like - when she does that shit with her hair." That's Gilda.

There's another one of Rita.

Marilyn Monroe, out for what looks like a pleasant ride with playwright and then-husband Arthur Miller.

Audrey Hepburn was well-acquainted with bicycles. Born in Belgium, she also spent much of her youth in the Netherlands. Many claim she spent the German occupation as a courier for the Dutch resistance, though that could be disputed -- after all, she was only 11 when the occupation began. True or not, she was a natural on a bike.

Great shot from a great movie. Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy. "Rain drops keep fallin' on my head. . ."

And there's the Sundance Kid himself, Robert Redford, out-of-the-saddle on a Schwinn (can't tell for sure, but it looks to be a Paramount).

Sidney Poitier, and director Sydney Pollack. Poitier is the definition of smooth.

Speaking of smooth: Sean Connery, probably on the set of one of the Bond films.

. . . Still looking good decades later.

Ewan McGregor at speed on a fixed-gear. McGregor has a number of bikes, including some pretty sweet custom rides from British builders Mercian and Bob Jackson. That fixed-gear machine in the photo is from the company GOrilla.

If I'm including "Obi Wan Kenobi" Ewan McGregor, I should maybe end with "Queen Amidala" Natalie Portman. Somewhere else on the net I spotted this photo misidentified as Audrey Hepburn. I suppose there is a certain resemblance. A younger generation may well remember her the way previous generations remember Hepburn.

Yes, the pictures could go on and on, but that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed it.

The Politics of Riding a Bike

On Monday, I had featured a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. on a bicycle. Until I got it in my head to search for a photo of MLK on a bike (basic Google image search, by the way), I had no idea such a photo even existed. I'd never seen one before, but it turned out to be a good hunch -- there were multiple copies/examples to be had.

Since then, I got to thinking about other important people, world leaders, etc., and bicycling. And in searching for pictures, I was surprised - yet not so surprised - at the interjection of politics into the discussions that accompanied them.

Take this photo of President Obama on his bike:

I saw this picture, along with several others like it, showing Obama out for a ride with his wife and kids. I was immediately struck with thoughts of how much I love my rides with my own daughters. What could possibly be a better depiction of the notion of "family values" than a family riding together?

So how did the President's vocal opponents portray the images?

"Many Americans, including myself, are humiliated today," said T.V. and talk radio host Sean Hannity back in 2014. "Take a look at the photo comparison of our commander-in-chief. There he is juxtaposed with Vladimir Putin [describes a photo of Putin swimming in frigid waters] . . . so you got a picture of that juxtaposed next to Obama on a bicycle in Martha's Vineyard with a goofy helmet riding his bike."

Hannity added, "For the first time in my adult life, I am humiliated for my country."

I guess Hannity never saw this photo, or the dozens more just like it:

G.W. Bush loved to ride his mountain bike, and almost always wore a helmet. And can you imagine the outcry from the all the pro-helmet evangelists (especially those who don't even ride bikes!) if a sitting American president were shown riding a bike without one? Actually, I have a hunch that if Obama were shown riding without a helmet, Hannity and his ilk would have pounced on that very issue. "What kind of example is he setting for American kids?" they'd cry.

Then again, Hannity may have unwittingly given us all an air-tight excuse for his asinine criticism as he continued in his rant.

"Look, I'm going to be honest. As a parent, did I make my kids wear that goofy helmet while they were learning to ride a bike and wear that goofy helmet? Yeah. But when I grew up all I did was ride my bike. I never wore a helmet. Not once, not one time. And guess what? I had newspapers and guess what? I went over the handlebars, and my friends pushed me into cars. We pushed each other into cars. We survived. I mean, it's embarrassing."

So if I interpret that correctly, Hannity is admitting to brain damage from crashing a lot without a helmet. It explains a lot.

Speaking of Putin, the Russian president doesn't just swim in frigid waters and pose for staged shirtless horseback rides (or photo-ops, if you prefer):

According to Sean Hannity (who I swear has a serious man-crush on Putin) real men don't wear helmets. They also ride with their saddles too low, apparently.

I wonder what Hannity thought about former French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- who also rides without a helmet, but then again, few Europeans wear helmets unless it's required of them.

Then there's this guy, Secretary of State John Kerry:

Kerry is a long-time cyclist who, from all reports, can really hammer on a bike, despite his septuagenarian status. In a Wall Street Journal article last May, Jonathan Vaughters said of the Secretary of State, "Kerry is the real deal--fit, fast, confident. If he raced in his age category, he'd be one of the top riders in the U.S."

Anyhow, after crashing on his bike and breaking his leg last year, there was this response from presidential candidate Donald Trump:

"I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And we won't be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who's making a horrible and laughable deal, who's just being tapped along as they make weapons right now, and then goes into a bicycle race at 72 years old, and falls and breaks his leg. I won't be doing that. And I promise I will never be in a bicycle race. That I can tell you."

OK - never mind that (not surprisingly) Trump was playing a bit loose with the facts. Kerry was just out for a ride, not racing. And President Bush notably suffered a couple of crashes while out on his bike rides (2004, crashed while riding around his ranch, and 2005, crashed into a British police officer during the G8 summit) but I don't recall anybody suggesting that his bike riding (and crashing) somehow made him unfit for international negotiations.

I'm really trying not to let a political bias dominate this piece. Yes, I'm definitely biased - but the only bias I want to show here is a Pro-Bike bias, not a political one. Obviously, people of any political stripe can enjoy a bike ride. It's true that as a Democrat, I was never a fan of President Bush, but I absolutely love the fact that he could often be seen enjoying a bike ride. But for some reason, when politics enters into a discussion on bikes and bicycling, it seems that the anti-bike bashing overwhelmingly gets directed from the right to the left.

One can find lots of pictures of Reagan on a bike.
Most of them were probably taken back when
he was still a Democrat, though.

I mentioned in a post a couple years ago (Bicycles: Public Enemy?) that we have somehow become a target in a Red-State/Blue-State culture war. Bicyclists get portrayed by some (very vocal) opponents as "elitist." People who advocate for bicycle infrastructure get dismissed as starry-eyed, immature hippies. Arguing for more bicycle commuting accommodations will quickly get a person labeled as some kind of Socialist. Meanwhile, flag-waving American "patriots" can profess their love for a scary totalitarian Russian president who poses shirtless on horseback, while they ridicule a bicycle-riding (and helmet-wearing) moderate Democrat president and his secretary of state. And when you can demonstrate that a conservative president also enjoyed his bike and always wore a helmet, the point would almost certainly be met with dumbfounded silence. "What's your point," would likely be the response.

Then there are those who almost seem to transcend the political quagmire. Consider somebody like Jimmy Carter, who as president was ridiculed by conservatives for actually suggesting that Americans practice conservation. But in the years since leaving the White House, the man has taken on a much greater status in people's eyes regardless of political affiliations. Building houses for the poor. Negotiating peace between historic enemies. Working hard to eradicate diseases in Africa. Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, and when he's gone, his legacy will almost ignore the fact that he was once an American President, focusing mainly on everything he did afterwards. Seriously -- I can imagine eulogies for Carter someday that leave people with the impression that he went directly from farming peanuts in Georgia to eradicating guinea worm in Africa, without mentioning the White House once.

And how cool is it that he rides a Rivendell? Fantastic!

By the way -- Carter, Obama, and Martin Luther King have something else in common, besides appearing in this blog on bicycles. All three have Nobel Peace Prizes. How many of the critics can make that claim?

MLK: Need I Say More?

Sometimes a picture just says it all:

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

Here We Go Again: Freewheeling Cranks

Does anybody out there remember freewheeling cranks? Shimano introduced such a system in the late 1970s that they called Shimano FFS - for "Front Freewheel System." It had a freewheeling device built into the crank-bottom bracket interface. Combined with an extra stiff rear freewheel (Shimano called it a "friction freewheel") the system was designed so that the chainrings and chain would continue to move when coasting, thereby allowing the user to shift gears while coasting. The late great Sheldon Brown referred to it as "a solution in search of a problem."

Show of hands. Who's too dense to figure out shifting? WE ARE!

Apparently some beginning cyclists couldn't get the concept of shifting their new 10-speed derailleur bikes only while pedaling.

I can just picture them bringing their "defective" bikes back to the shop.

Customer: "There's something wrong with my new bike."
Bike Shop Manager: "Tell me about the problem."
Customer: "This thing won't shift when I'm coasting."
BSM: "That's not how it's supposed to work. You have to be pedaling when shifting."
Customer: "But why doesn't it work when I'm coasting?"
BSM: "That's not how it's designed. The chain has to be moving to get from one cog to the other. The chain doesn't move when you're coasting"
Customer: "So what are you saying? You can't fix it? I want a refund!"
BSM: . . . . (grrrrrrrrrr) . . .

Marketed along with Positron, Shimano's early attempt at indexed shifting, it seemed that the company was convinced that beginning cyclists were incapable of learning new skills - and the thing that kept so many American adults from riding bikes was basic incompetance.

By the way, the FF System utilized the "friction freewheel" on the rear hub as a safety measure. The rear freewheel was much stiffer than the front one, so the chain would continue to move when coasting - but the chain could still be stopped if something got caught in it, such as clothing, or a shoe, or someone's hand, etc.

FFS was made available on some models by Schwinn (the Suburban comes to mind, but there were others), and some department-store bicycles. The system was dropped in the early '80s because it was a bust - heavy, complicated, and ultimately unnecessary. And of course, repair/replacement parts were only available for a couple of years afterwards. I knew a guy who had a FFS-equipped Schwinn that totally seized up and I remember how dismayed he was when he was told it couldn't be fixed -- the only repair was to replace the entire crank, bottom bracket, and rear freewheel with "normal" parts.

Big surprise - but freewheeling cranks are BACK!

The French company HxR has just introduced a new product they call Easy Shift.

The Easy Shift crank is made for the latest 1x11 "Enduro" MTB drivetrains. Like the old Shimano FFS, it has a freewheeling mechanism built into the crank, but it is paired up with a true fixed-gear 11-speed rear hub. No "friction freewheel" here - so don't get anything caught in the chain, 'cause you'll lose it. Granted, that's the case with any fixed-gear drivetrain, but just sayin'.

Instead of being marketed for incompetent neophytes, the Easy Shift is claimed to be great for "technical" MTB conditions. But it's unclear just how much abuse the system can take. It's apparently necessary to pair the Easy Shift crank with a combination "bash guard" and "chain guide" -- to protect it from impacts below, and to keep the always-moving chain from derailing off the chainring.

I still question whether such a thing is necessary, but if anyone out there decides they can't live without it, being able to shift when coasting doesn't come cheap. The Easy Shift crank and bottom bracket alone are listed at about €450. Adding a chainring, the fixed-gear 11-speed hub, and the bash-guard/chain-guide takes the price up to €995. Based on current exchange rates, that's probably about $490 - $1090. Phew!

Don't be surprised if Shimano gets the last laugh by re-introducing their own FFS. I can see the ad tagline now:

See? We Told You So!

Data Glasses Again - A New Player In Town

Remember those Recon Jet goggles that are essentially a computer you wear on your face? The ones with microprocessor and sensor-loaded pods and battery packs that block peripheral vision, and a miniature monitor to take up about 1/3 of your forward vision?

Who needs to see where they're going when there's so much data to digest?  (Recon Jet)

Well, they're not the only game in town anymore. Lots of tech and performance junkies are now declaring the new Garmin Varia Vision as the "heads up display cyclists have been waiting for." By leaving out some of the microprocessing power and built-in sensors, Varia Vision instead syncs with a rider's other devices, such as their smartphone, their Garmin GPS-enabled ride computer and the new Garmin Varia rear-view radar system.

The Garmin Varia Vision is designed to attach to the user's own choice of riding glasses.

By "outsourcing" a lot of the sensors and power to the rider's other devices, Garmin's heads-up display is a bit more compact, uses smaller batteries, and offers longer run-time than the more self-contained Recon Jet glasses. The Garmin unit is also designed to be attached to the user's own choice of eyewear. All of these differences mean that the Garmin costs "only" $400 -- at least $100 less than the Recon wearable computer.

Garmin has a video to extol the virtues of Varia Vision display. In it, there are images that are supposed to give us an idea of what the rider would see with the device:

Dear God! I hope it doesn't actually look like this! Did we just get sucked into a video game? 

Are these Tron-like images supposed to make people want Varia Vision? Sorry, but it has the opposite effect on me.

Look familiar?

Check out the video here:

And it's not just for performance junkies, but Garmin also makes the claim that their "In-sight Display" is a great tool for commuters:

"I have this vision of keeping my focus forward," reads one quote from the video. "I have this vision of fewer close calls on my commute," reads another.

Want to keep your focus forward? Want fewer "close calls" on your commute? Then keep your focus on the road and your surroundings -- not on a computer display, whether mounted to your handlebars or right in front of your eyes. How important is it to get performance data on commute to work when you're sharing the road with over-caffeinated cell-phone-addled drivers? Do you need the In-sight display to tell you when you have an incoming call? Do you really need GPS directions to tell you how to get to work?

Even when all this info is being projected onto a tiny "heads-up" display on your glasses, just trying to process it mentally takes your focus off the road, and the possible dangers that can crop up in a split second. As far as I'm concerned, that's what leads to more close calls.

There is such a thing as data overload. When I'm riding -- especially in traffic -- the best computer I have available to me takes no batteries:

The rest is just a distraction.

New is Old Again: Expanding Chainring Cranks

You know what's wrong with front derailleurs? They're light, simple, and they work. Yes, it's true that if they're badly out of adjustment, you can drop the chain when shifting. But on the whole, they haven't changed much since the 1960s because they haven't really needed to.

People are always trying to find a better way, though, aren't they?

I saw a video for a new gear-changing innovation called Wavetrans Bicycle Transmission. "A new kind of bicycle transmission which uses a revolutionary logic," the website claims.

What is it, exactly? Wavetrans is essentially a crank with an expanding chainwheel. It has about 6 chainring "segments" which can expand or contract at the push of a button. Its inventor is trying to get backers for their concept, but you can see a working prototype on their website:

The company claims many "advatages" (sic) "compared to old gear shifter systems (Derailleur for example)." It can be shifted uphill, under load, the chain never comes off, and (my favorite) "no crunchy noises." Unless you're a dedicated granola-muncher. Then there's still lots of crunching.

Here you see the crank in its lowest gear. The prototype uses a pretty huge '80s-looking computer to control the unit and to shift gears. The FAQ page asks if users would be able to shift gears using their smartphone. "Yes, I'm sure there will be an option for that." Yes, I'm sure too.

Here, the chainring segments are expanded to the highest gear. 

You know what else is cool about Wavetrans? It's "something . . . that you have never seen before."

. . . Unless you actually know something about bicycle history, that is. In which case you know that these things go back almost to the beginning of the safety bicycle.

According to several sources, including Frank Berto's history The Dancing Chain, and Tony Hadland's Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History, there have been a number of expanding chain wheel systems, some dating back to the Victorian age -- most of them just variations on the same idea.

Here are a few:

1896 - Linley & Biggs Protean Gear. It used two half-chainwheels that could then be expanded by up to 4 teeth, though it took on an oval shape as it expanded.

1903 - Paradox expanding chainwheel. "Incorporated a complex mechanism to achieve a circular expandable chainwheel." (Hadland) It expanded in one-tooth increments up through 7 teeth.

1903 - Mitchell Any-Speed. "Rotated the chainwheel off-center. The eccentricity changed the effective diameter, giving infinitely variable gears." (Berto)

Searching on my own through some "expandable chainwheel" patents, I also found some of these diagrams:

One patent is for W.A. Leggo Jr. in 1894, and the other is for J.M. Cleland in 1898. I don't know if these ever made it onto the market.

None of the systems listed above lasted for more than a year or two. Development of such systems on the whole disappeared for a few decades as derailleurs and even internal hub gear systems proved to be simpler and reliable. But then, in the 1970s for some reason, they came back as more inventors once again looked to expanding chainwheels as the answer to a question nobody was asking.

Here are some of the more modern systems:

1974 - Hagen All-Speed Expanding Chainwheel. This had 6 smaller sprockets that moved outward as an inner spiral-plate turned. The gear range was 2.85 to 1, or 285%.

This Hagen All-Speed crank was up for sale on eBay last year. Top photo shows it in "low gear" position, and the bottom photo is "high gear." And it was infinitely variable in-between. At least one of the ads described it as having "a jillion speeds."

1983 - The Deal Drive had 16 speeds and a 2-to-1 range. It used 6 spring-loaded expanding segments. Pedal forces compressed the springs, retracting the chainwheel segments, thereby lowering the gear. An adjustment lever on the crank arm let users adjust the spring loading tension. Frank Berto described it as "well built and reliable. However it was heavy, expensive, and it had a limited gear range." Expired after 2 years.

A prototype of the Deal Drive. What must this thing have weighed? And how could anybody think that this was somehow preferable to a derailleur? (photo from Commutercycling)

1983 - Excel Cambiogear. Oddly enough, Excel was a division of Beatrice Foods, which tried to break into the bicycle business in the early 80s. The Cambiogear had 16 speeds, and a 3-to-1 range. Made of graphite-reinforced-plastic. It lasted 1 year.

The Excel Cambiogear, front, and backside. Made of graphite-reinforced plastic, it had small chainring "segments" that expanded or contracted on these spiral-like grooves, not terribly different from the Hagen All-Speed.

Here you can see one of the chainring segments.

The photos above are screenshots from an explanatory video of the Excel Cambiogear I found on YouTube. You can watch it here:

Clearly, this idea has been tried (and abandoned) numerous times in over a century. And the Wavetrans isn't even the only expanding chainwheel crank startup today. Another startup - the VECTr Variably Expanding Chain Tranmission - apparently applied for a patent last fall on their own version of this old idea.

Here's a prototype of the VECTr, which uses a heavily modified Deore crank. It looks like the little toothed chainring segments have 5 distinct positions, giving the user 5 gear selections ranging from 24 to 44 tooth equivalent.

So, about the only thing I can see that sets the Wavetrans apart from all these other systems is that it's electronically operated. Push-button electronic shifting chainrings, without a derailleur. Well, that's something we've never seen before.

Oh, wait. . .

Scan from a 1987 issue of Cyclist. The Browning Automatic Transmission used hinged (not expanding) chainrings, and an electronic control box to change gears. Early tests by a lot of the bike magazines of the time declared it an unqualified success. It was later put into full mass production by SunTour (called "The Beast") and suffered from reliability problems. Many were recalled. Then SunTour went out of business. Browning tried to keep the design going for a few years on their own, but never found a market for a shifting system that cost about twice as much as a Shimano derailleur-based drivetrain.

Something tells me that people today are no more likely to adopt a transmission that's heavier, more expensive, and more complicated than a derailleur system than they were 20, 30 or even 100 years ago. I just don't see the Wavetrans (or the VECTr, or any other similar ideas that might be brewing out there today) having any more success than their Victorian-era counterparts, or any of the revivals from the '70s and '80s.