Court Elaine

This Lady of Shallot should have married name rhymed Gawain. Instead she pined unto death for unrequited love of Lancelot. Brit mayhem never ends. Elaine dies again, this time on her first anniversary, mowed down with impunity by a nonagenarian driver. Labann mourns her loss with inconsolable sadness.

Over a century ago girls flocked to bikes as a means of emancipation; got them out of the house, let them meet more suitors than cousins and dull locals, and probably expanded inbred gene pool in a healthy way. Today they hide in or loiter for motor vehicles. As Labann often remarks in passing to anyone waiting for busses, “If you had a bike you’d be there already!” With additional risk of pregnancy and double standards that trap them in situations, women must endure more risks than men to get anywhere. Despite CitiBike and other cycling promotions bumps and scrapes result. But such issues tend to get reported, rather than informing public of the much worse hazards of motoring.

A gender gap has become obvious. Men hesitate to recommend this simpler alternative to ladies, but it's not up to them to court involvement or grant permission. A persistent lack of infrastructure remains a huge deterrent, especially in cities but also in suburbs. Even lightly travelled country roads present safety issues. You can't reassure your frightened daughter when dogs roam loose, medical examiners report bodies found are usually females, and most incidents described occur because society doesn’t seem to give a damn about cyclists and pedestrians regardless of gender. As in all human endeavors, some still find the necessary courage to aim high and compete effectively.

Salute newly established Women’s Cycling Association. Old boss from 1994 to 2004 sponsored an all-girl racing team, so never reckoned that women’s cycling lacked support. Now that it's mentioned, always imagined that misses might have a harder time braving wackos, weather, and worrisome details. With distaff Olympic gold, girl teams garnered sponsors, yet roles remain subservient in premier events. Labann arrowed, designed, instigated and sagged rides to raise awareness and funding for breast and other feminine cancers. But sister participants were typically few. Boys will ride for challenges alone, middle age men out of stubbornness, but damsels are mostly deterred by fear and vanity despite fact that they will never be more alluring while blushing from mild pedaling.

Biz Quatrain

For road riding cyclists, not just grates, manhole covers, and standpipes stuck in it, pavement itself might be a drag. Appian way pave, bumps, cracks, exposed substrate, hard pack, roughness, ruts, tar blotches and washboard woefully impede progress. Edges of patches can be pathetically unnerving, and expanse within wavy. Refilled with too little or much leave unintentional potholes and speed bumps. Why are there so many?

A street isn’t just its visible surface at ground level but a sandwich layer between crust and sky. Underneath, a whole network of sewer and water supply pipes run dangerously close and inaccessibly deep but not without frequent dug interventions. Manholes at least allow access to buried electrical and phone cables, which arise at intervals, cross above, and drape alongside in unsightly tangles. Streets are rights of way for all sorts of purposes, many of which you’d rather know nothing about.

Sticking to smooth isn’t always possible in marginalizing traffic. Cities stink with bone jarring lumps of distorted asphalt at truck pounded intersections. Sometimes it takes every bit of cycling skill just to survive. A steel bike is pliant and strong; its pneumatic tires and spokes absorb some of the many shocks. You’ll have to stand at such times if you can’t stomach a kick in your crotch. The rougher the ride, the slower. None of this has deterred London residents; lately 25% of commuters there are riding bikes. How fast do you want to go? A 32/16 crank/cassette combination at 80 rpm can propel you at 18 to 20 mph on flat. If you spin for cadence you seldom need to shift. It can relieve and rival creeping automotive gridlock that plagues most cities.

Drivers are driven berserk by roads that don’t do what they are supposed to. You can’t earn a living without them. In African nations with few resources, villagers get together and pack earth by hand for the sole purpose of connecting to outside cash flow. Roads used to mean rails, but even trains were too limiting and linear, since farmers and merchants still had to move wares to stations. Did discuss rail trails and train renaissance in Bike&Chain rather prophetically. In a recent tragic rail fail, 80 pilgrims are dead after crash in Northwest Spain. That line had a perfect track record, but anything can be made life threatening by pushing it to the limit. Any attempt to speed things along claims victims. But, with sad refrain and typical lack of concern for fellow man, business rules and shows must go on.

Burst Membrane

Every now and then present new bike stuff neither neatly contained nor overlooked but too insignificant to merit individual elaboration. Saw a handtowel with Babar the Elephant riding a bike, instances of bikes in commercial and films, landscape bikes planted with flowers and vines, some ghost bike memorials, and totes with images of bikes representing "green" of reusable versus disposable bags; am pretty fed up with ubiquitous plastic bag litter. References can be obliquely offhanded. Led Zeppelin's 1973 concert video "The Song Remains the Same" begins with a bike messenger riding a long country road to deliver a list of tour dates to a vacationing band member. PBS serial production of "Call The Midwife" set in 1950's England has title characters routinely delivering babies by utility bicycles replete with Brooks saddles and chain guards.

Bleeding hearts at Canadian Tire ran a wonderful ad in 1989 that defies you to suppress a tear and won several awards.
They followed up in 2013 with a clever suburban dream spot.

Two songs previously mentioned are repeated with links.
Ashley Theberge, "Bicycles", from Ba Doo Day.
Liane Smith, "Bicycle", from Two Sides of a River

Skylar Grey features famous rapper Eminem in newly released fun single "C'mon Let Me Ride".

In realm of incomprehensible, Ukrainian grandmothers sing "My Bicycle, a bicycle". Would beat riding a bus.

Recent concert by NYC band Vampire Weekend included "Obvious Bicycle" from their 3rd album Modern Vampires of the City.

Bring On Cheese

Wiebe E. Bijker (must be the name) provided an academic and constructivist thesis, Inside Technology: "Of Bicycle, Bakelites, and Bulbs, Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change" (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995), that delves into development of the safety bicycle and how it changed society by empowering females, as well as other sociological effects of bakelite plastic and florescent bulbs.

Way less convoluted and a few years later, Arnie Baker's The Essential Cyclist (Lyons Press, 1998, 148 pp) is a scant, tight compendium, nearly a glossary, of cycling facts and good advice by a board certified doctor and coach to the pelaton. Other titles by Baker include:
Bicycling Medicine (1998)
Psychling Psychology (2004)
Smart Cycling (1997)

Alon Raab takes you on a 20 minute tour of cycling related literature from blogs to classics. Labann thanks Raab for his shoutout in essay "Wheels of Fire: Writers on Bicycles".

Cycle Sport Online compiled their version of the Top 50 Cycling Books historically, but each one chases the pelaton or licks loser's wounds. Yet they ignored landmark works in the public domain. Sense beyond bicycling there's a hidden connotation in cycling, that is propelling self solo like a billion others versus racing obsessively in a miniscule subset who in every group spin instigates another hammerfest.

Goodreads Listopia outdid them with 88 for which they'll accept your votes. Neither mentions Bike&Chain, only books for sale, since almost all lists are motivated by cheesy advertising needs.

Alex Baca has begun collecting essays periodically in The Bicycle Reader (#1: Summer 2012). Any chapter of Bike&Chain would fit nicely and never repeat ground covered by majority.

If you're a Cheesy Bike Nerd, too bad you missed last month's annual Tour de Fromage of San Francisco's best spots for this stinky delicacy.

A Bloodstain

Memorial Day recalls those who sacrificed themselves. More than soldiers who've died mercifully young on front lines, those who deserve as much honor are those who give up their well being daily as domestic technicians or dungeon workers at companies that don't care whether they die or live. Caregivers and parents painfully and slowly lose their sanity and vitality so someone else can survive or thrive, someone who generally doesn't know how fortunate they are, particularly pampered artists and spoiled children. Someone nurses wounded soldiers, too. Warmongers profit from all equally, but revel over foolish cannon fodder upon which empires are founded, you'll forever find.

Funny how Memorial Day is bracketed by Father's and Mother's Days on calendar. Once organized blog entries around these holiday revelations. With a memetic buildup of buzz and commercials goading spending, one ought to organize some balance against agendas, but why bother when message is blurred by conformity and greed?

Viewed feature film, Le Gamin au Vélo (A Kid with a Bike) directed and written by Jean-Pierre Dardenne (2011, French with subtitles). Schoolboy Cyril gets abandoned by single parent father and suffers consequences of neglect. Driven to regain his missing bike and resume relationship with financially strapped dad, he runs from orphanage straight into trouble. Recovered bike enables his futile quest, gets stolen, and results in escalating confrontations. A hairdresser steps in to change his life despite his churlish behaviors. None of the above holidays hold much meaning in this bleak scenario. All credit goes to an unsung stranger who freely sacrifices and forgives unconditionally. The stain is in the name of his own blood. Social justice keeps families together and lets adults act responsibly. Society can never forget that unless unrelated individuals intervene soon enough, crime ensues.