Bikes Outside: All The Single Speedies

This morning brings the bike-spotting lense back to La Paloma Sabanera for another Bikes Outside two-fer-one special.

Standing proud at the corner of Capitol and Babcock, this shiny Mercier looked brand-spanking new and was drawing a fair amount of attention. A neighborhood kid walking by as I snapped a picture said, "That's a sexy bike!" Elementary school-aged kids rating the sex appeal of anything is either mildly unsettling or a somewhat obscure Jhumpa Lahiri reference. Come to think of it, he might have actually called it a "sexy-ass bike." I dunno what constitutes an "ass bike", but I'm still fairly certain his statement was quite complimentary.

This fresh powder blue single speed was rockin' a flip-flop rear wheel that was flipped (or is it flopped-- I always forget which is which) to the freewheelin' side, so the bike features a brake, unlike last week's brakeless freewheeling urban attack Mongoose.

At the next signpost (can we get a bike rack here already?), I saw another blue single speed, this time a fixed-gear Schwinn Madison. I know of at least two blue Madisons in Hartford, but this is the only one with facial hair. This mustachioed brakeless fixie has more of a rough-and ready look about it. This bike has definitely accumulated some miles, and I mean that in a good way. Perhaps the third graders in my neighborhood would call this a "Ridden-ass bike" though that phrase lacks the smooth phonetic flow of the other compliment. The cow horn handlebars look like a home-brewed drop bar chop & flop, based on the inverted Bontrager logo. DIY FTW!

I briefly met and chatted with the bikes' owners inside the coffee shop and was having a good conversation when I was recruited by La Paloma's owner to help unload a new refrigerator. As I showed my commitment to supporting my favorite local haunt and eating unspoiled food, the young pair left to continue riding and enjoying the beautiful weather, and really, who could blame them? It has been awfully nice outside these past few days.
Have a great week and enjoy this lovely-ass weather.


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Bikes Outside: Non-friction at the Library

This Monday's Bike Outside was in good company among a handful of rides locked up at the Hartford Public Library on Friday afternoon. While all bikes in attendance were of the fat 26" tire variety, this particular Mongoose had some key features to set it apart from the rest. You see, this bike is all about taking it up a notch. While some mountain bikes have front suspension, this one has dual suspension. While some bikes are a little beat-up, this one is really beat-up. While many Hartford bikes have one missing brake, this one is missing brakes front AND rear. There's something to be said for that kind of thoroughness, and that something is "Aaaaiiigh!!!! No Brakes!!!!"

I had to dodge a guy barreling down the sidewalk on a brakeless mountain bike as I was walking down Capitol Avenue a few weeks back. I'm pretty sure this is the one, as I recall a flash of white and a remnant of V-brake jutting out. The rest of the moment was obscured by my life flashing before my eyes and fighting an overwhelming urge to give chase and administer a vigorous dope slap. While fisticuffs might have satisfied a certain knee-jerk instinct of anger/self-preservation, It likely would have ultimately made things worse. Not being threatened with immediate bodily harm on Friday afforded me a clearer head with which to seek out a more positive solution.

While I was at the library, I procured a piece of scrap paper and some adhesive tape. I wrote a short note that I intended to tape to the bike, directing the bike's owner to a couple of inexpensive sources for some brakes. Alas, the Mongoose was gone when I returned to the bike rack. I tucked the note into my tool bag on the off-chance that I see the bike again soon.

If the owner of this bike happens to be reading this, I encourage, nay, urge you to go to the Urban League's bike shop at the corner of Woodland and Sargent. They are open from 4-7 PM Tuesday-Thursday. They have a box full of old brakes, some of which will fit your bike. I'll even pay for them if you don't have spare cash on hand (provided you come on a Tuesday). Also, get off the sidewalk. Thanks. Read more!

Bikes Outside: Schweet Home Chicago

This week's Bike Outside is no less than an American icon. The "Electro-forged" Chicago Schwinn is the bicycle equivalent of a slant six Dodge: Ubiquitous in its day, by no means the fastest or the lightest of its kind out there, but sturdy as hell. It's overbuilt and under-appreciated. When a post-apocalyptic mutant runs out of gasoline to power its 1970 Dart, it can pull an intact 1970 Schwinn from the nearest bomb crater and pedal onward.


I found this bike chained to a railing on Farmington Ave in Asylum Hill. Judging from the extended paintless area on the frame of this bike, it has been chained thusly thousands of times. This and the rest of the paint layer surface strata make this beater a patina powerhouse. It wears the scars of a lifetime of hard usage without fanfare or apology. If terms like unassuming and badass can coexist in a single place, they can do so on this bike. It's also old-school all the way. I like the cloverleaf chainwheel, the alloy quill stem and the stem shifter. The upright handlebars and skinny chain guard make it look more like an old 3-Speed at a distance until you spot the derailleur out back. The "mattress" style saddle has seen better days, making this a short-trip bike for all but those with the hardiest posteriors. A front caliper has gone AWOL, leaving a lonely left brake lever behind and continuing the widespread Hartford tradition of one missing/malfunctioning brake.

This was another instance where a bike's owner came out as I was photographing it. The fender-equipped Schwinn has served as his foul-weather beater for the past few decades while his nicer Fuji comes out when the weather is nice. We had a good time talking bikes and such until I remembered that I had already been running late before I stopped to bike bond. I've forgotten his name (I'm terrible at remembering names) but I'll probably catch up with him at his store one of these days when I have more time. Nice guy.

The basic idea of this bike has been recreated in Schwinn's current retro lineup as the "Willy" with some welcome updates to the gearing (twist-grip 7-speed vs. stem shifted 5-speed) and brakes (which now stop the bike when applied). Schleppi's Jenny is its femme counterpart.

These Chicago-made bikes rode the final wave of the American bicycle industry before it crashed on the shores of the Malaise Era and retreated overseas. An affordable, decent domestic bike for everyday people became the stuff of tag sales and flea markets after that. Luckily, bikes like this will be around for decades to come. They will outlast us all. This Schwinn is just plain solid.

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Bikes Outside: 400 Club

This Monday's Bike Outside features an old school Trek that was found locked to one of the several improvisational bike racks surrounding La Paloma Sabanera on Capitol Ave. The corner of Capitol and Babcock has long been a cool bike-spotting place. I routinely see bikes dating from the 1960's to today locked up outside while their owners nosh and caffeinate.

The lugged frame of this Trek 400 has an early 80's look and feel to me. A very quick glance at the Vintage Trek website seemed to point to 1984. The Sugino crankset and quill stem could certainly pass for that era, but the remainder of the components have been modernized. That said, the modern 9-speed cassette and derailleur, v-rims and such don't look particularly out of place on this bike. The 400 was by no means Trek's flagship model, so people can feel free to modify them without fear of compromising a potential museum piece. They have great potential for the building of solid daily riders with bonus vintage flair.

I'm partial to Treks. One of my cousins in Brooklyn was an early adopter, riding a Trek in the late 70's and early 80's before replacing it with a gorgeous red Eddy Merckx. A far more prosaic Trek was my Father's last bike, so the marque has sentimental value for me. This bike sports a similar early logo and head badge style to my cousin's long-ago mount, so the nostalgia is strong with this one. The paint and graphics are in nice, original shape. It really is a good looking bike.


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Bikes Outside: Snow Goose

This morning's Bikes Outside features a Mongoose MGX locked up in front of an apartment building across the street from the Broad Street Community Garden. It was just accumulating snow last Tuesday, but the owner could have been having all sorts of fun riding around a snowy park instead. I have a hardtail Mongoose mountain bike frame that I started making into a ghetto 96er snow bike for that very purpose, but it has been a low priority. That has already been named Snowgoose, but mine is an open nomenclature and I'm willing to share.

Mongoose is a brand that lost their way the past decade or two. There was something solid and straightforward about them back in the day, but more recent models seem to be all about flash and hype. There seems to be a lot of stuff written on this bounce bike's frame--perhaps a bit more than the world needs to know. It's like the bike equivalent of tuner-style cars with Eibach, Toyo,"powered by Honda," et cetera plastered all over. Part of me wants to replace the "Powered by SRAM" decal with "Powered by legs" or some other admittedly prosaic but more accurate slogan. With tubing this large, I suppose designers felt compelled to fill up some of the space, but they could have gone in more interesting directions. How about a series of photos? Perhaps Haiku...

I spent the first half of yesterday at the Dudley bike swap meet sharing a table with Erik. The booth next to us specialized in vintage BMX bikes, so in among the Hutches, GTs and Thrusters were a few of the looptail Mongoose frames I would have liked to own as a kid (not as much as I wanted a "Tri-Power" Thruster, mind you, but neat bikes just the same)

Here's my brilliant marketing idea for the day: I think that if Mongoose, or any of the 1980's BMX superpowers started selling reasonably well-made 26" bikes that were essentially scaled-up vintage 20" BMX bikes, they would sell like hotcakes. The nostalgic force is strong with the thirtysomething demographic, and people have done far more ridiculous things to harken to their youth. A 130% sized BMX bike sounds ridiculous, because, well, it is, but I still kind of want one now.


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Bikes Outside: Going for Gold

I was hoping to find something that could tie in to the winter Olympics, Presidents Day or Valentines Day for this Monday's Bikes Outside, but the best I could find this past week was a bike that didn't cost a lot of dead presidents locked up outside the Gold Building downtown.

Huffys don't tend to get a lot of love. Few will do anything but scoff at how awful and cheap they are, yet they have been best-selling bike brand in the US for decades. They are kind of ubiquitous. A friend of mine who recycles dumpster and curbside bikes has found more Huffys than any other brand. It's America's most popular disposable bike.

George P. Huffman was a comparative latecomer to the 19th century bike boom when he is said to have overseen his first bikes being made in 1892, but the Huffy lineage (Davis, Dayton, Huffman-Dayton, and finally Huffy) has some parallels to Hartford's own Columbia brand. Both were originally made in sewing machine factories; Columbias at the Weed Sewing Machine Company on Capitol Ave (Weed is still quite popular in the area) and Huffman's bikes and parts at the Davis Sewing Machine Company bicycle in Dayton, Ohio. Both brands were churning out cheap high-volume bikes by the 1960's, with heavy tubing, ugly welds and clunky components. They were still kind of charming in their own way (my mid-60's Columbia has lousy build quality, but I'm still fond of it) but things got aggressively tacky from the 1970's onward.

My web searches for Huffy history turned up a wide variety of non-matching timelines that all seem to agree on only one thing: Huffman is credited with inventing and introducing removable training wheels on the 1949 Huffy Convertible children's bike, also the beginning of the "Huffy" nameplate. If you learned to ride with training wheels, you owe the man a little credit.

I've seen some very cool older balloon-tire era Huffys, my favorite being the Radio Bike, but like many US manufacturers, they were phasing out awesome for cheap in the twilight of the 1950's. There were some latter-day exceptions, like the Nottingham-sourced "Huffiegh" Sportsman 3-speeds and some recent higher-end BMX frames, but their bread-and-butter these days is cheap Chinese-made bikes that are spec'd to a very low price point.

Anyway, back to Pearl Street for a parting glance at this week's street-parked workhorse. Ashtabula cranks, hi-ten steel tubing, and everything else that makes a bike heavy and slow are in effect here, but this mountain-style bike is obviously getting the job done for somebody. I'm pretty sure I have seen this bike in this spot before, so it seems to be on commuter duty. I didn't see any Rivendells downtown on this February afternoon, so Team Huffy gets the win. It takes more patience, physical effort and heart to daily ride a heavy bike so they get this week's nod for keepin' it real.

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Bikes Outside: Barrio Style

Today 's Bikes Outside feature is my favorite thus far. Somebody obviously put a lot of time and care into decorating this cruiser-style bike and I really like that. It gets bonus points for D.I.Y. resourcefulness, as the multicolor striping you see there is all neatly-applied strips of colored duct tape. I spotted this one on Park Street in Frog Hollow. The Spanish-speaking owner came out as I was photographing it and was good-natured, if somewhat mystified at my interest in it. Our verbal exchange was brief, as my own particular brand of French-inflected Spanglish serves as little more than an efficient way to confuse and alienate speakers of all three contributing languages. It's kind of sad, really. I need to work on that.


In this bike's owner, we have personified the nullification of every excuse anyone has ever given for not riding. You think you're too old? Unless you are well into your 70's or older, this man has you beat. Too cold? Temps were in the low 20's this particular afternoon. Are you too tired, too sore, too out of shape? I invite you to check out the custom cane mount. This man walks with a cane, hooks it on to the rack and frame of his heavy single-speed bike and rides on. The majority of Hartford's cycling public (myself included) look a bit more wussy all of a sudden. You sir, are awesome. That's très imponente!

Now stop reading this, bundle up and go for a ride. No excuses! Read more!

Bikes Outside: Bikes on Ice

This Monday we have a couple of the bikes that stopped off at Jo Jo's for this past Friday morning's Ice Bike to Work breakfast. A total of six people showed up according to the sign-in sheet. Friday morning was bitter and windy, well below the day's predicted high of 22 degrees Fahrenheit, which probably affected turnout. I arrived on the late side, so there were only two other bikes present.


Dave's nice Rockhopper is very well equipped for just about anything. I'm pretty sure most of the cars I have owned have had fewer electronics on board. Legend has it that Specialized switched to oversized tubing in recent years just so they could write their name larger.


I remember digging that left hand bar-end mirror tree on Kevin's Trek at another CCBA event and wondering how far I could go with that concept, clamping more and more bar ends and mirrors to one another until my bike either had aluminum antlers or became the human-powered version of a 60's Mod scooter. It may be for the best that I not admit how much thought I've devoted to the idea of building such a bicycle. Of course the mod bicycle would need a Rocker-style counterpart, which I also may or may not have thought about between one and fifty times.

A minute into my Friday morning ride, I discovered that some water from last Mondays rain-soaked ride had apparently found its way into my cable housings and frozen there. My rear derailleur (interesting note: spell-check only accepts the French spelling) failed to shift at all and my rear brake would stay clamped against the rim after releasing the lever (arguably a safer failure than not working at all). Luckily, the front brake was 100% functional and the sluggish front derailleur could be coaxed into position with a quick toe-tap. I decided to experimentally spray some lock de-icer in the cable housings as a dessicant/cable lube to free things up. I've been riding my internally-geared Robin Hood since then, so I have to take another sub-freezing ride on the cargo bike to see if this actually worked (it functions perfectly well in the heated indoors, of course).

My late morning and afternoon left me feeling thoroughly spent, so I skipped Critical Mass this month. Did anybody go?


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Bikes Outside: North by North Wet

This morning had me riding to an appointment in Windsor center. There was a negligible drizzle when I left home at 8 AM and it was warm enough to ride comfortably in a T-shirt. The rain increased to something just shy of biblical for the return trip a couple of hours later. My aging Gore Tex jacket was completely soaked through within ten minutes, but my garish "Safety orange" CL&P-issued rain bibs held up nicely. A few of the flooded areas were deep enough that my pedals were dunking into the murky, oil-slicked drink on the downstrokes. Despite my rainy glasses-induced blindness and possible violations of maritime no-wake rules, I was happy to see a few other bikes out and about.

Today, Bikes Outside spotlights a pair of mountain bikes chained up across from the Keney Memorial Clock Tower on Main Street late this morning. This extra small Specialized and its anonymous beater mountain bike companion were chained to a tree awaiting their owners' damp slog homeward. They look to be in pretty good repair and my guess is that this was a short-term parking spot. Big ups to my foul-weather friends, wherever you are. Here's wishing you a nice cup of hot chocolate when you get home.



Speaking of wet-weather riding, today was the first time I used my new Kool Stop brake pads in the rain. With a light-to moderate load on board, the cargo bike stopped very well and only squealed a bit during hard braking when the rims were submerged. I am pleased.
I also pinstriped my fenders with reflective vinyl to look like roads to increase night visibility and because I am a dork. If you are one of the three BBB readers who remember my old art car, this will make somewhat more sense.
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Bikes Outside: Mixte Up (against a fence)

I often stop to gawk at bikes locked to the bike racks and fences of Hartford and beyond. When talking bikes with friends, it's common for one of us to say, "I saw a cool old blahdiddyblah road bike outside of the library the other day, I've always liked those..." so I thought I would make a series out of documenting some of the street seen velocipedes in Hartford. Barring my coming up with a more clever name, I'm calling the series "Bikes Outside."

I'm shamelessly borrowing this concept from Jalopnik's Down on the Street series, where street-parked classic cars are documented. The rules will be similar. The bikes have to be seen out and about. This is all about bicycles being used for their more utilitarian intended purposes. Bikes on display for sale in front of a shop or at a flea market don't count (I can still post them if they are awesome, they just won't be eligible for this series). Maybe your own bike will be spotted sometime.

Our first entry was spotted in the Northeast neighborhood near the Windsor line. It has two features from the list of things that make me like a bike, in that it has a lugged frame and it is a mixte. I'm not familiar with the Cambridge brand (my search engine attempts all led to a [presumably unrelated] bike shop in Cambridge, MA), but it has an entry level bike boom-era look to it. The center-pull brakes are Cambridge-branded, but look identical to some late 70's Dia Compe's I have. The fancy head tube badge and proper-sounding name show its upscale aspirations. Someday I want to join two steel mixte frames of this caliber and make a Sheldon Brown-style D.I.Y. tandem. I would avoid using Peugeots or Motobecanes (as much as I do like them) because modifying frames and piecing together a tandem drivetrain would be difficult enough without having to find French-threaded parts. A couple of beaters like this Cambridge or some neglected Panasonic or Univega mixte frames would be nice donors for such a project. I acquired an old Bridgestone mixte a while back, but the frame isn't steel and it's far too nice to part out or modify. I kind of want to hang it over the mantel and just look at it for a while.

The limp brake lever and slack rear brake cable mean that this Cambridge has only one functioning brake, a disturbingly common affliction among street-parked (and ridden) bikes in Hartford. I have wondered about what to do about this. Maybe I could make some cards or tags to leave on brake-impaired bikes directing them somewhere for cheap or free repairs. Perhaps a pool of functional unwanted brake parts could be established. I'm guessing this brake-impairment is usually due to lack of money or repair know-how on the part of the bike owner, and I'd hate to see someone get in an accident for want of a few simple parts or adjustments.


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