Cottonwood Art Festival, Richardson, Texas
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
—-William Blake
Tag Archives: postaday
Halloween is Gone
Garden District, New Orleans
More fundamentally, it is a dream that does not die with the onset of manhood: the dream is to play endlessly, past the time when you are called home for dinner, past the time of doing chores, past the time when your body betrays you past time itself.
—-John Thorn
Brakes
At a recent Vintage Bicycle Show I was fascinated by all the geriatric brake technology on display.
For example, I have been interested in the Flying Pigeon Bicycle from China, though I don’t know if I’d actually want to own one. They are, after all, the most popular single means of mechanical transport in history. When I read about them, I was especially interested in the rod brakes – very simple and reliable. They use a series of levers and rods to pull a pair of brake shoes into the inside of the rim. At the show, I saw a bike with rod brakes (not a Flying Pigeon).
Phillips Bicycle with rod brakes.
It’s a Phillips. I talked to the guy that had bought it and restored it about the brakes. Another guy said, “If you think about it, a rod brake isn’t that much different, you replace the wire with a rod.”
I don’t know about that. I asked the owner how well they stopped. His reply was a classic, “Well, they stop well enough… when you consider you can’t get going very fast on this thing anyway. You have to be careful… really careful, if you find yourself going downhill.
Across the aisle was an even older and cruder technology.
The rod brakes on this bike push a rubber block right down onto the tire. I certainly wouldn’t want to be caught going too fast on that bad boy. Cool bike, though. Love the generator.
Finally, there was a bike with a Campagnolo Delta Brakeset.
Campagnolo Delta Brake
I’ve always loved these. They are heavy, complicated, and don’t work very well… but what a work of art.
One fun story from the show. While I was standing around a guy came in with a vintage Raleigh – about the same age as my 1974 Super Course that I bought my freshman year in college. He was restoring the bike and was about half done – it was rideable, but still looked pretty ragged. I told him the story of how I lost that beloved bike.
“I lived in a third story apartment,” I told him. “I never thought about it, but I left it out on my balcony unlocked. Somebody stole it. It must have been a tree trimmer, working in the neighborhood with a ladder, and he yanked it off my balcony.”
“That’s how I got this bike,” he said to me.
“What, did you steal it off a balcony?”
“No, I saw this guy, he was a landscaping guy, riding this bike. It was in terrible shape, the bar tape was falling off, the paint peeling, but I recognized it as a vintage Raleigh. I asked him if he’d sell it to me. He said, ‘I can’t sell you my bike, it’s the only way I have to get to work.’ So I told him, ‘Tell you what, we’ll get in my car and I’ll drive you to Wal-Mart and you can pick out any bike you want. I take your beat up old bike and I’ll buy you a brand new Wal-Mart bike.’ He said it was a deal and that’s how I bought the Raleigh.”
I loved that story.
Now that I’ve decided I can’t afford a new bicycle I am concentrating on making do with what I’ve got.
I’m lucky in that my Raleigh Technium is old enough (1986 or so) to be vintage and therefore, semi-cool, it is not old enough that I need to keep it stock. So I took it apart and rebuilt it.
You would think that the parts that I would have to upgrade would be the drivetrain – new super gears and integrated shifters and whiz bang shit like that – but that’s not what I did. Old friction shifters and ancient freewheels still work pretty darn well. Dallas is flat, I don’t have to shift very often. What I did upgrade – the place where technology has improved – is brakes.
My Raleigh had old single pivot sidepulls (my even older Raleigh Supercourse from 1974 had center-pulls) and stopping was not a reliable thing. Riding in an urban area – you need to stop. Stop or die. Plus, the cables were rusting and I never liked the awkward cables looping up from the brake levers.
So I bought some new long-reach dual pivot sidepulls from Nashbar, some nice used aero levers from Ebay, and a set of high quality, high tech brake cables. I tore the bike apart, repacked everything that had grease in it, tightened everything down tight, and put the new brake system in. The Technium routes the rear brake cable inside the tubing, and that was a pain… a lot of fishing for cables, but I finished it up and now it rides like a dream. Well, except the engine, of course.
So, now I turn to rebuilding my commuter bike – the creaky old Yokota Mountain bike I bought used at a pawn shop around 1990. The rear shifter won’t shift down any more, so I needed new shift levers – so I bought new ones, and I bought new integrated brake levers too – so I bought new brakes. I’m replacing the old-school cantilever brakes with more modern V-brakes. All this I picked up from fire sales on various places, so I didn’t pay too much money for any of it.
Now, next, I’ll strip the bike down, then paint it (I’m thinking a dark English racing green) – and put all the new stuff on.
That’s the ticket.
Dog and Guitar
Change of Seasons
When I drove down to the Dallas Arboretum the day after Christmas for one last visit to the Chihuly Exhibit I took a series of photographs of The Dallas Star, the Crepe Myrtle Allee, and the Toad Corners Fountain beyond. They look much different, though still really attractive, in the leafless winter.
“When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can’t make up their minds. Perhaps it’s a way of admitting that things can’t ever bear the same certainty again.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
The Dallas Star
I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. I’m going to miss the Chihuly.
“We say that flowers return every spring, but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested.
The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid.
And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring
Crepe Myrtle Allee, Dallas Arboretum
(Click for a larger and more detailed version on Flickr)
I remember a long, long time ago, talking to a girl. I was talking about how much I liked the life-renewing rains of spring, she replied that she liked the storms of autumn. She liked the excitement, the change, the promise of hard times to come… but not quite here yet. It took me a couple of days of thinking about what she had said to understand that she was right and how unique and interesting her way of looking at things is.
It took me too long, she left me for somebody else. She may be long gone, but I still remember what she said. I will remember it on the day I die.
Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.
― Sarah Ban Breathnach
(Click for a larger and more detailed version on Flickr)
“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”― William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Beater Bike in the French Quarter
Nothing is old… it is vintage. And if it is vintage… it is cool. It’s not rust… it’s a patina.
All bicycles weigh fifty pounds. A thirty-pound bicycle needs a twenty-pound lock. A forty-pound bicycle needs a ten-pound lock. A fifty-pound bicycle doesn’t need a lock. ~Author Unknown
Bicycle, French Quarter, New Orleans
After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow.
—-H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance
Blue
I feel sad that the Chihuly Exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum is now over. They are carefully packing the glass up and loading it on to trucks – I suppose that it will eventually go to some other urban garden somewhere, but I don’t know where. It’s been in a few places over the years and see no reason to quit now. I’d love to visit it in a new home, see what the glass looks like in a different setting, in a different arrangement.
In the meantime, I still have a lot of photographs. I went down to the Arboretum with my camera at least three times (plus a few more with only my eyes). I can dredge through my archives… find some that I like and put them here.
Blue Reeds, Dale Chihuly, Dallas Arboretum
Big Fans
I have become a fan of attending small local (usually free) concerts around town. There is so much talent and passion out there – more than I can ever take in.
At the second Set List on the Green (a lot of fun, I can’t wait until spring and the re-start of the series) down at Klyde Warren Park these three women were sitting near me. They were big fans, but not big enough to stop looking at their phones all the time. That’s cool – as far as I’m concerned, they can do whatever they want.
.
A Thing of Beauty
I know I should not give things – physical objects – attributes beyond what they are – simply shapes of metal, rubber, and leather. Things are not as important as people.
Bicycles…. umm, that’s another matter.
At a vintage bicycle ride/show/swap meet I attended a while back there was a Hetchins bicycle that was of such sublime beauty that I can’t really think of it as a physical object only. The Hetchins bikes are known for intricate lugwork and for being, well, transcendent works of art.
This one was painted green with the lugs set off with gold paint – and a full complement of Brooks leather saddle, bar tape, and tool bag. Vintage Campagnolo… of course.
A simple bicycle, yet such a thing of beauty.
Mystery Sculpture
While I was riding my commuter bike around downtown Dallas, I stumbled across this piece of welded iron sculpture in back of the office building at 2001 Bryan Street.
I looked around and couldn’t find any type of plaque or label or anything. I have no idea what the sculpture is or who did it or who put it out there in back of that skyscraper.
Still, whatever, I like the thing and am glad I found it. It sort of feels like my own personal secret sculpture, in the middle of the big city.
The Mystery Sculpture, welded iron.
The sculpture, with the Eye of Sauron in the background.
My commuter bicycle, leaning up against the mystery sculpture.
Bill Chance 