Best foot forward

Vibram - the first lugged rubber sole

I have spent large swaths of my life walking in the Shenandoah Mountains. I have done it in sneakers, in cheap work boots I bought at the hardware store and in hand-made Italian hiking boots. And to some degree or another, my feet have always suffered. But never have I known podiatrical misery like that I experienced last year when accompanying my brother on a hunting trip up Paddy Mountain in Shenandoah County, Va.

Walking on Paddy Mountain means either scrambling over rocky scree fields or bushwhacking through dense stands of knotty, iron wooded mountain laurel. Ascents are steep and descents are brutal on battered soles; bruised toes jammed into the fore ends of even your good old hiking boots and ankles mercilessly assaulted by the wobble of teetering stones. After a single day I realized that if I was going to spend more time traipsing around Paddy Mountain, especially in cold weather, which seems likely given a recently rekindled interest in spending time in the woods and having access to a cabin abutting one million acres of National Forest, I was going to need a new pair of boots.

The hunters down on Bonnet Hill Road all seem to wear similar 9" huntin' boots. Once you get 'em started on the topic, each will regale you with details of their preferred footwear. Mostly they seem settled on pretty standard boots by Irish Setter and Rocky. Of course what passes for standard these days is pretty high tech. All seem to have intricately interlocked panels, some mixing various fabrics with leather and other space age synthetic materials. The soles look like they could only have been designed by a computer, displaying swooping organic H. R. Giger patterns that wrap up and around the toes. Each man thinks he has the best pair of boots, but they all insist that the real trick is wearing extremely heavy socks in them.

My uncle, who has spent his life hunting in these mountains and who is partner in a hunting club at the base of Paddy Mountain, gave me a couple pair of thick wool socks he insists are the absolute standard of what hunters should wear. These things were huge! Not just that they were a larger shoe size than I wear, but huge in every respect: thick rag wool that came up nearly to my knee, a gigantic red elastic band at the top. They seemed more like some kind of leg warmer an Inuit ballerina might wear or something you might see a Japanese schoolgirl wearing. (Thought: Inuit Ballerina - great name for a band). It seems to me that if you have to wear a gigantic blanket inside your boots to keep your feet warm and pad them from the abuse of actually walking in them, maybe you have the wrong boots.

Chippewa Arctic 50 boots. The best. By far.

Now my brother, a Master Electrician and life-long outdoors-man swears by Chippewa boots, and in particular has been trying to persuade me that the only pair of boots worth wearing on the mountain are the Arctic 50's. They're lined with genuine lamb shearling, a 1/4 inch wool felt insole and a classic Norwegian welt Vibram sole. Old school. Classic. American made boots that have been made pretty much the same way forever. After my day out with him last November I came right home and placed my order on Amazon, but when they came in they were extremely narrow, a bit short and just as heavy and stiff as you could want them to be. I wanted to like them, but I could tell they were not a good fit, so back they went. I couldn't exchange them because at the time Amazon didn't have the next size up and I didn't want to play the back and forth game until I got the fit right. I really wanted to try on different sizes until I found one that fit right. But I couldn't find a retailer in the area that carried them, so I despaired.

Lamb shearling lining and wool felt insoles - what a lovely combination.
And yes, those are little American Flags on the laces. 

Then last month I got back to the mountain and spent some time exploring in my trusty old Timberland Euro Hikers. I love these boots and have had them since about 1995. But man, a couple of hours on Paddy Mountain once again reinforced my need to get a new pair of foot armor. Now as it happened I ran into my brother up around Chester Gap just a few days later and he mentioned that he had just bought himself a new pair of Arctic 50's down at Alvin Stokes General Store in Front Royal. The next thing I knew, I was down at the General Store trying on not my customary 9 1/2 D but a 10 1/2 E. Yes, the Arctic 50's seem to run a bit small. But once I got my feet in to the 10 1/2 I could tell they were going to work out. I was worried a bit by the boots' height, since I'm not used to walking with a collar that high up my shin, but the shearling lining and the thick felt foot bed provided instant assurance that these were boots I could walk and stand in all day, even in the sub-zero cold, even over the broken surface of Paddy Mountain. And I don't need unnaturally thick socks either to keep my feet warm or to provide cushioning.

I know better than to recommend a boot to somebody. Like a bicycle saddle or a toothbrush, some things are just too personal. But if you're in the market for a stout pair of hunting boots, and you're fond of traditional, high quality American craftsmanship, you might just want to stop down to the Stokes General Store and try on a pair of Chippewas. If you like 'em, you'll save money - Stokes undercuts the nearest competitors I can find by at least $25 - and if you don't, well they sell a lot of other brands you might just like. Plus you can pick up some ammo and some beef jerky while you're there.

I think that I shall never see...

With apologies to Mr. Kilmer

Autumn arrived this past weekend. With the exception of the Ginkgoes, most of the yellows have faded to gold. The reds are just passing from their lurid crimson fury to a deep dark magenta. Vibrancy is mellowing to calm loamy earth tones as the world trundles toward its winter dormancy.

Because, you know, red.

This is a time to pay attention. To really look closely. Nature uses this time to demonstrate the extraordinary loveliness of death, which is after all, the necessary precursor to rebirth. This is a time to settle into the warm embrace of sleep.

Form follows fashion

Over the years I have been expanding my notion of  the platonic form of "the good bike" has been evolving. In the 90's when I started riding, I thought the hybrid was the highest evolution of the bicycle, the fusion of all that had been learned to that time from all the different types of bikes ever designed. And to some extent, that was right.

My 1993 Specialized Crossroads Cruz has a TIG-welded chromoly frame, intuitive indexed thumb shifters powering the thoughtfully chosen 27 speed Shimano drivetrain (28/38/48, 14-28), solid cantilever brakes and 700 x 38 wheels. Nice upright position. Eyelets and clearance for fenders and racks. A very flexible platform for lots of practical types of riding. My wife still uses hers as a commuter, and despite being quite heavy, it's extremely serviceable. I even imagine it could serve as a loaded tourer in a pinch, though that weight problem would dissuade me from pointing it at Machu Picchu.

So I rode the Crossroads for about a decade. Then Lance happened so I had to have a racing bike. Then I had to have a fast racing bike. By then I almost knew better, but it was too late. So there I am, an overweight middle manager riding around Rock Creek Park on an overpriced carbon fiber superbike. I slavishly follow all these rules about what to wear and how to outfit my bike and how high my stem can be based on what the idiots on the Goon Ride think despite the fact that I couldn't hang onto those guys on my best day. Or the fact that even Eddy Merckx, the Cannibal himself doesn't follow them. What a sucker.

The reason I mention this whole evolution is because it occurs to me that what I've really been doing all along is merely following fashion. Hybrid > Road Race > Superbike > Rando... OK, I skipped single speed/fixies, mountain and 'cross bikes. I'm intentionally planning to skip fat bikes and gravel bikes, which are currently all the rage. So it is possible I've gotten off the fashion track and entered my retrogrouch years. Presumably I'll get through the lugged steel phase and find my way to recumbents.

I have seen the light

Curmudgeons beware. The future will be better than the present. Not in every respect, certainly. But in the way our present is demonstrably better than our past, our future is shaping up to be incrementally better than our present. You want evidence? Okay, there's a British company making glow-in-the-dark asphalt surface that promises to significantly reduce the need for electrical lighting on bike paths and streets. How cool is that? Imagine being able to clearly see where you're going as you navigate your bike through the woods. Imagine how much money is spent illuminating streetlights along such paths and roadways that could be saved if such a system proves practical (hint: it's millions and millions).

Imagine being able to ride your bike on a dark path without a light. Imagine being able to see the edge of a path with no painted lines - even after dark. Imagine reducing the amount of ambient light so you can see the stars again. That is actual progress. I doubt that this would be a replacement for street lights on busy roads, but anything that can reduce electrical costs for lighting, reduce light pollution and improve visibility in low light areas seems like a good idea to me. And from the sound of it, this could even save municipalities money on infrastructure costs.

So, still not convinced that the present is better than the past or that the future will be better than the present? Well, perhaps you should read the exhaustively researched The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, currently on Bartlebones' nightstand. The general premise is that it is now statistically the safest time to be alive in all of human history. So turn off the 24-hour [bad] news channel, tell your nutjob Tea Party friend he's wrong, and enjoy your life. Soon you'll be able to ride your bike in the dark and never slip off the pavement.

Hope springs infernal

Paul Rosenfeld has an interview in The Atlantic with Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten entitled The Rise of the Bicycle in the Twenty First Century. It would be easy to write this off as just another example of yet another Northern European attacking America's love of cars and their associated dependence on petroleum. Just another viking preaching about a transportation model and an attendant quality of life that cannot and never will be implemented in the United States. That is it would be easy if the model had not already started to gain traction in communities across the US, including right across the river in good ol' Arlington, Va. And increasingly in DC, and even right here in Bethesda, MoCo, MD, USA.

If I didn't know better, I might just start to feel a twinge of hope that at least some Americans are beginning to recognize that suburban, car-dependent communities suck and that human-scaled environments with pedestrian friendly infrastructure and public transportation (formerly known as "cities") potentially offer a higher quality of life, reduced environmental impact and a general improvement in the well-being of our citizens. Yeah, right...

In defense of idleness

The Atlantic has an extremely important article in the current issue entitled, Teach Kids to Daydream by Jessica Lahey. The topic is a particular bugaboo with me; a subject I return to time and again, about which I have even found myself in arguments with parents. I am a firm believer in the notion that children need unstructured time. I think many modern children live time-boxed over-scheduled lives that, combined with the saturation of electronic media have a devastating impact on their natural impulse to dream and imagine.

I've long maintained that boredom and idleness are the catalysts for imagination and creativity. In my own childhood I recall many a long, summer day filled with invention and discovery, as my brother and I roamed the woods, "explored" the local creek or built a tree house. Do today's kids even build tree houses? I'm sure some do, but I suspect they spend as much time figuring out how to get electricity and broadband access to it as they do actually building it. Then, instead of pretending it's a pirate ship sailing on a sea of acid, or writing a journal with entries that begin, "Day 39: I have secured shelter," they just sit inside it texting their friends about how great it is to be texting them from a tree fort. I dread the thought of having to read the books written by this generation, if such things still exist. So do me a favor and take Lahey's advice:

Teach your kids how to just be. How to value silence and be at peace with nothing but their thoughts to occupy them. Make the romantic notion of laying back on the soft grass with nothing to do other than to watch the clouds pass overhead a reality.

4 eyes

Looking back now I marvel at all the years I chose to see the world through disks of glass, peering through prismatic lenses so finely ground and polished. Those glossy optics inter-mediated my experience, framed my perception, protected me, an artificial eye between me and actual experience. As a photographer, the camera always dangling from a sling over my shoulder actually affected my posture with its ubiquitous, weighty presence, causing a slight slouch, a stoop, a very subtle listing to starboard. For many years that camera shaped my world and gave me focus. And quite literally reshaped me in the process.

Then of course I moved on to a different type of lens, a screen, whose cathode rays have now bombarded me for decades, whose plastic frame has provided a window through which I can interact with the world, can take it in, can stand witness, behind which I can hide. The voyeur needs the glass, the safety of the separation from the subject. But it's often hard to see how such things affect us, how they change us, how their very presence makes us something other than what we are without them. The glass is transparent, but not invisible.

Rudy Project Rydon

Now here I am, struggling to adjust to a new set of glass partitions whose strange disorienting parallax I must somehow come to integrate into myself; a prosthetic augmentation of my decaying senses that promises to restore what has through the years been lost, but which will in so doing fundamentally alter me. This new part of myself, this new way of seeing, of acting and being will take some adaptation. Even now, on this first night, I can sense the neurons rearranging themselves to accommodate the odd liquid pane through which I will ever after view the world. From this point forward I will be irrevocably changed. From now until the end of my life I will be a man who wears spectacles.

So if you see me staring vacantly off into space, idly staring out a window like a child in the back seat on a cross country road trip, don't just assume I am lost in my customary stupor. I may be engaged in re-configuring my brain to navigate a newly discovered world or merely marveling at the astonishing variety of textures in the road surface. 

Up, up and away

There comes a time in every man's life when he feels the need to do something incredibly stupid. Hopefully when that time comes it does not take the form of marriage or procreation, though sadly I have to report that it often does. Fortunately I have not been particularly stoopid in those areas. Nevertheless, I found myself gasping and wheezing my way up and down the lovely but viscous hills of Garrett County, Maryland a couple of weeks ago. And there's no way to describe the decision process that led me there as anything other than stupid*.

I survived it and even managed to enjoy the brief parts between long sessions of mind and body destroying effort. I won't bore you with the details of my deplorable climbing ability, but I just will apologize to the good people of far western Maryland for polluting their roads with my flaccid corpse for over seven gruelling hours. I hope I can still have babies.

Bartlebones drags his fat ass across the finish line of the Garrett County Gran Fondo Masochistic Metric

*Apologies for any offense taken by the American Association of Stupid People (AASP).

Nocino, Bambino!

Indigenous Eastern Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra)

A couple of days ago I reported on my experiment to make Nocino, an Italian digestivo. I noted that I was using California sourced English walnuts (Juglans regia) because they don't grow readily on the East Coast of the US, where your 'umble blogster resides. Now, I'm no locavore - I'd never be able to give up coffee or bananas - but when possible, I like to get as close to home grown as I can get. So having gotten my "imported" brew started, I began a quest to see if I could find a local variant. In my web wanderings I had run across one or two suggestions that it is possible to use the native Eastern Black walnuts (Juglans nigra), so off I went on a quest to find a nearby source. If I could find a tree nearby I would be able to provide myself and those around me with a plentiful supply of Nocino and save myself the forty plus bucks to buy the nuts from California. I figure the sunshine state gets enough of my money for their wine.

I scoured the area only to find that at the end of the street on which I live there is a thriving colony of mature, healthy Black Walnut trees. Under my nose the whole time, hiding in plain sight. The trees are technically on the property of a somewhat protective neighbor, but several branches extend beyond their fence, overhanging the quiet country lane, so I figured anything I could pluck from them to be a common resource. Regrettably, all but a few of the lovely nuts were well above the reach of my modest wingspan, so I was forced to employ a pole saw in order to retrieve a sufficient quantity with which to concoct my coveted elixir. So, brazenly I strode down the street to the very fence line, 9 foot pole in hand. I thought the neighbor might have bothered me, but within a few minutes I was all finished collecting my couple dozen nuts and was once again on my way with no interference.

The Black walnuts have rougher skin and a distinct piney (some say minty) scent. The insides looked pretty much the same as the English nuts, and they seemed to have more liquid in the core. Once cut and in the jar they behaved exactly the same, oozing their sweet black nectar overnight. So, the experiment will be much fuller than originally anticipated. I'll have a batch of Nocino Traditionale and a batch of New World Nocino. I can hardly wait!

See Part I
See Part III

Further Reading
http://graduallygreener.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/foraged-nocino-green-walnut-liqueur/
http://greengabbro.net/2011/07/18/this-years-nocino-recipe/

Plowshares reforged

Last week I was on an emotional roller coaster. I had just procured an absolutely delightful set of panniers made of re-purposed canvas Swiss ammunition cases when on their maiden voyage one of the retainer clips broke and the right pannier became unmoored. I became so depressed about the whole thing, I was driven to drink. Fortunately, it will be at least a year before I can have that drink, so while I waited I thought I might just as well repair the pannier; and that is what I did. I'm happy to report that all went well, and the result was even better than I could have imagined.

Copper tube rivet left; aluminum blind rivet with brass washer right

To modify the cases for use as panniers Out Your Backdoor (aka Jeff Potter) uses 3/16 inch copper tube rivets set with a splash anvil. Basically it's just a tube with a head on it that you mash into an anvil that spreads the open end of the tube into kind of a mushroom shape (the second type shown in this video). They work pretty well, and look really nice against the aged leather of the ammo cases. And while they're fine for riveting the leather logo and blinky light tabs to the bag, they're clearly not the best solution for bearing any appreciable amount of weight. No offense to Jeff - it's just the fact. He clearly puts a lot of thought into the placement of the rivets, carefully measuring and finishing them. But for the connections to the hooks that fit over the rack, I just think the copper rivets he uses are a bit too short and possibly a bit too soft. One of these rivets pulled through the leather within the first eight miles of riding with a relatively light load.  

Initially I thought I would just buy a 3/16 inch brass screw, nut and washers (I like brass for its relative corrosion resistance) just bolt the retainer back on and go about my business. But then it occurred to me that a few years ago I had purchased a rivet tool for a project I can't now recall. I had some 3/16 inch rivets but none long enough to add a washer to the inside of the rivet, which I wanted to assure it would be able to hold the weight, should I decide that I DO want to carry a few hundred rounds of 5.6mm ammo (the current standard for the Swiss military's standard issue SIG SG 550 rifle). So oft I went to my local hardware store where the nice man helped me find the Medium length "pop" rivets and suitable washers. Upon return to the Bartlecave, I had the whole thing complete in about five minutes. Voilà! The rivet's secondary head and washer stick out a bit more than the tubular rivet did, but I am convinced this will produce a much stronger attachment. 

The basic process is demonstrated by some guy with an English accent here:

Raise a glass to John the Babtist

Some time ago I wrote a post about a delightful homemade walnut digestivo given to me by a friend from Switzerland. He knew of my love for Nocino from my raving about an experience from a few years back in a small Italian village in Emilia-Romagna called Brisighella and the alluring concoction they make there. Ah, the romance of Italy! The gustatory loveliness of Emilia-Romagna! The mystique of ancient tradition! What exotic luxury. Well, as it turns out Nocino is not as complicated as a Swiss watch, and the interweb is loaded with recipes for the stuff, so I figured, what the hell, and give it a try.

Time to make some Nocino

But I don't live in Italy's breadbasket, so where on earth am I going to find green walnuts? It's nearly St. John the Babtist's day, the traditional day on which, with the dew still on them, you are to pick the unripe walnuts. Further complicating the matter is the fact that the recipe calls for the English walnut (Juglans regia) which doesn't commonly grow on the East Coast of the US. We have Eastern Black walnuts (Juglans nigra) but not English walnuts. So, time to turn to Syber Space.

I found a farm in California called Haag Walnut Farm that seems to specifically cater to the needs of Nocino makers among other walnut enthusiasts. Five pounds of green English walnuts for $42.25, shipped. I figure I'll get two batches of Nocino for that (25 walnuts apiece) so while it's certainly pricier than I might prefer, for the first batch I'm happy just to have found them. And the nuts themselves, which took about 5 days from the tree to my front door, are clean and largely free of blemishes. Given that Nocino della Cristina Napa Valley Walnut Liqueur is sold for about $30 for a 375 ml bottle, I am happy.

Pure spirits! Grain alcohol and Grappa. 

I found some 4.2 liter jars at the local Homegoods store that seem to be just about the right size. I then procured the appropriate quantities of Everclear which in an unexpected twist proved both challenging and enlightening. I found myself  in the state of Virginia last weekend and decided to pick up the booze there. It turns out though that in the Old Dominion, the state monopoly liquor stores refuse to sell neutral grain spirits, presumably on moral grounds. So, although I could have swung by the Chantilly Gun Show and picked up an assault rifle and 30 round clip with no background check, I could not buy pure grain alcohol there. To buy pure alcohol I'd have to go to either DC or Maryland. I guess there's a certain logic to states with strict gun control laws letting you buy strong alcohol and a state with virtually no gun control forbidding you to make "grain punch." I'm just confused about which one is the "nanny state." Anyway, upon returning to the People's Republic of Maryland I exercised my god given right to buy Everclear, and am now ready to make a delicate after dinner drink with it.

I have decided to start at the source and follow the "Nocino Recipe According to the Ancient Tradition of the Order of Nocino Modenese" (PDF). As this is my first attempt, I am opting to keep it simple, using no lemon zest or cloves, ingredients found in lots of recipes. I have opted to use raw sugar rather than refined white sugar, and may add a touch of Grappa to the mix in addition to the pure grain alcohol. I presume such choices will produce a distinct product I can call my own, and though I'm sure some Europeans I know will scoff at the raw sugar and the potential molasses flavor it may impart, I'm remaining stubborn on the issue.

Overnight the walnuts sweat their lovely nectar

Having assembled all the ingredients, I started by putting on some appropriate music to set the mood. I then proceeded to chop the nuts into quarters, 25 and 27 nuts to a batch, respectively. Like the admonition that you MUST pick the nuts while the morning dew of the dia de San Giovanni di Battista is still on them, apparently you MUST use an odd number of nuts. Why? Probably some old wives tale. There do seem to be a lot of old wives in Italy.

Well, obviously my walnuts were picked before June 24, but I did indeed make sure to use an odd number of walnuts for each batch, in the hope that the Jesus will smile down upon my little endeavor. I placed the walnuts in the jars with the sugar and set them where they would get some sun for a couple of days. By the time I looked at them first thing this morning, the jars had begun to fill with fluid. Ah, sweet sap of life! I will give them another day to ooze and then put the alcohol in. I'll post an additional update when there's something interesting to say.

See Part II
See Part III

Plowshares to stones

Broken rivet on the Swiss Ammo box pannier

In yesterday's post, I sang the praises of my new 1964 Swiss Ammunition Box Pannier by Out Your Backdoor. Regrettably, right after posting that post, I rode the bike home from work, encountered a speed bump, aka speed hump, speed jump, speed breaker, speed ramp, kipping cop or judder bar. 


Anyway, one of the rivets holding the rack mount popped out of the right pannier (see photo at right) which then failed catastrophically. OK, that might be a bit dramatic - it just flopped off the rack and hung limply from the bungee cord. No real damage was done other than the broken rivet. I was able to just disentangle my jury rigged retention system, secure the pannier on my Michelin Avenir Plescher style rack and go on my way.
OYB's website says there have never been any returns and that if I send it back they'll fix it and pay postage. I'm far too lazy (and cheap!) for that. I'll just go to the hardware store, buy a properly sized nut, bolt and a couple of washers and fix it myself. The repair will likely not cost more than a buck or two and will yield a better attachment than the elegant but obviously inadequate copper rivets Jeff uses. What is needed is a washer on the inside of the rivet. you can see from the photo that the inner face of the rivet is very small and the copper is very soft. A couple of good jolts on the weight bearing rivet was all it took to squeeze the rivet back through its hole. Lest you think I was carrying bricks, the pannier was not heavily laden at the time. I had an umbrella, a small digital camera and a seersucker shirt in it. Had I been portaging 5.6mm ammo (the current standard for the Swiss military's standard issue SIG SG 550 rifle) the rivets would no doubt have popped without the hitting the judder bar. 

See Part III

Swords to plowshares

1986 Fuji Allegro

I suppose I knew it at the time. I'm sure my wife saw it coming. When I bought the Craigslist bike, what I was really doing was buying the little black dress, the foundation upon which I would construct some sort of fantasy bike. It took almost no time for the accessories to cost more than the bike itself. The fenders, rack, new pedals and Zefal pump were again as much as the original sale price. And if that wasn't enough, the handlebar bag added another bike's worth of investment. Oy, it's always the accessories that kill you, isn't it?

The latest bangles to adorn the Allegro come in the form of a new set of panniers. Well, new isn't technically accurate, so let's say newly acquired. I've been using the bike both as a grocery store bike and more recently as a commuter. I have a couple of wire baskets for groceries, but wanted something a little more enclosed for the back-and-forth to work. I already have my beloved Acorn Rando Handlebar Bag mounted more or less permanently on the bike's front rack, so I wanted something that would at least complement it aesthetically.

I clicked around the usual sources, but didn't find much that hit my aesthetic/financial sweet spot. Oh sure, Rivendell's Sackville Toursacks are gorgeous, but they're so nice I don't think I'd want to put my dirty underwear in 'em. And they'd likely be too big for what I want anyway (not to mention they're a bit on the pricey side). VeloOrange sells what look like nice canvas panniers by Minnehaha, but the black doesn't appeal to me and I'm kind of a fan of boxier, more structured stuff. Then I ran across a review on Lovely Bicycle! of some unconventional panniers made from old canvas Swiss military ammunition boxes. Not the Victorinox/Wenger "Swiss Army" stuff you buy at the mall. Real Swiss military surplus from the 60's, buried for decades in some bunker just waiting for the next world war to break out. Eventually the military has to swap out the old materiel for more modern stuff, (spoiler alert!) if only to keep its contractors in business, and... And they're the ones I went with. They arrived yesterday.

OYB Retro Pannier -- Modified Vintage Swiss Army!

Form follows function in the 1964 Swiss Ammunition Box Pannier by Out Your Backdoor. Made from surplus ammunition/utility bags manufactured for the Swiss military, these panniers have clearly had a life before the bike. They have what Grant terms, beausage. The beauty that comes from use. They are definitely small bags - 8.5" tall, 4" deep, 11.25" wide. But I don't need much space - these are not for long distance touring - I just need to get my iPad, lunch and work clothes back and forth. So these should do just fine. And they look absolutely great.

Out Your Back Door buys these bags and rivets hooks to them so they'll hang from a rack along with one of their embossed leather logos. Of course you could do it all yourself (I did, in fact, drop by my local surplus store to see if I could find anything remotely like this, but they had nothing akin to these lovely Swiss things), but OYB really has the process down and for a price you'd be hard pressed to match, even if you did all the work yourself. Like many folks on the interweb who have commented on these, I'd prefer that OYB not add their branding to the bags, but it's tastefully done and I'm sure it'll blend in with the other leather after I apply a little oil.

Jury rigged pannier retention system

OYB offers a few additional enhancements such as shoulder straps and blinky light attackments and personalized embossing. I opted for the shoulder straps and blinky attachments. The blinky attachments are on only one side, which means that technically speaking, there is a correct left and right pannier. Both add-ons seem to be executed very professionally and will probably be around long after I have expired. The bungee cords in the retention system are too short to attache anywhere on my Avenir Pletscher style rack so I've had to jury rig it with a couple of supplemental bungee cords wrapping around my fender support. I'll have to experiment to see if I can find a more elegant solution, but for now it seems to provide enough downward force to keep the rather small clips from bouncing off the rack.  

One of the delightful things about this type of re-purposed item is the fact that there is history built right in. Not my history, but someone's history. Each leather buckle on my set has the following embossment:

H. REINECKE

BECKENRIED NW    

64

It's a kind of signature or craftman's mark. Too appropriate for such Schweizer heimatwerk. Beckenried is a tiny municipality in the Swiss canton of Nidwalden, on Lake Lucerne, presumably the location of the the company called Herbert Reinecke, Lederwarenfabrik which made the bags (based on a brief mention of the firm here which suggests that the firm made saddles for Die Militär-Radfahrer-Truppe, the Swiss bicycle corps). It's a small thing, but it's sort of nice that both bags seem to come from the same workshop in the same year. So thanks to the Swiss military for having such lovely bags made. Thanks to them for keeping them around and in such great condition for fifty years. And thanks to Jeff Potter from Out Your Backdoor for making it easy to put them on my bike.

See Part II

Nothing left to lose

Vroom Vroom

Wasn't the car was supposed to be the machine that represented freedom? The magic carpet that whisked us away to exotic destinations, that let us spread out and claim that little piece of the American dream? The essential expression of our personality, our very identity? Weren't we all supposed to get in the giant gas guzzler, put the top down, hit the road and discover America à la Kerouac? Was not the back seat the storied locus of our very conception? Where the hell did it all go so horribly wrong? How did the thing that was supposed to free us become our captor, our slaver; the shiny wings transformed into shackles?

As I've started to commute by bicycle regularly, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the role of cars in our community landscape. I have time for a lot of such idle thought as I'm gliding past car after car sitting stock still through light after light (note that we call them Stop lights, not Go lights), futilely attempting to get home, swimming upstream against the overburdened intersections, our mangled on-ramps, the press of our fellow humans all jammed into the constraints of our impossibly congested, detested, molested roads. If your body's arteries are anywhere near as clogged and sluggish as our poor, ailing road network is every evening at 5:30 PM, I seriously advise you to consult a physician immediately. You are on the verge of death.

I couldn't wait to get my first car. As soon as I was of legal age I got a drivers license and as soon as I could afford it, I bought a car. Then of course I had to have the money to pay for gas, insurance and maintenance, which meant I had to get a job, which frankly I only needed to keep the car running which I needed to get back and forth from work. By the time I was eighteen I had pretty much recognized the pattern of desire leading to enslavement. And I stayed voluntarily enslaved to the car for about the next thirty years. Good thing I wasn't allowed to get a learner's permit to use heroin.

SubDivision

The suburbs were the great promise of the American century. GI's coming back from the war could hope for a little place in a nice new development away from the troubles of the cities with their factories and immigrants and crime. The American dream included home ownership and mobility. Both literal and figurative mobility. We built the interstate highway system and drove our Conestoga Vista Cruisers out past the beltway to the promised land of the middle class. And the burbs had a pretty good run. We loved our little boxes and still do. But the suburbs have became so congested they're starting to look like cities. Cities with no cultural amenities (i.e., museums, theaters and public spaces where a diverse array of citizens mix), no public transportation, and no soul. The old shopping malls are dying or desperately trying to transform themselves into cutsie "town centers" where there is no town. Presumably the designers of such faux spaces think people will simply accept that our civil interaction is best played out at Old Navy or the 20 screen multiplex. No wonder the current generation of creative information workers are clamoring to get into cities.

Faced with the inexorable deterioration of our civic landscape, it is inevitable that some of us would seek alternatives. But what? A return to some non-existent pastoral utopia? Return to our Agrarian roots? Shall we hike up our breeches and go back into the fields? Not a very likely alternative for a nation of overweight consumers. But maybe by very small personal decisions, maybe through modest shifts in public opinion we can nudge our culture to first recognize the folly of dependence on automobiles for our every movement in life and find ways of building our communities and our lives around human beings instead of machines.

It's tough to imagine what such a future America might look like. And I'm certainly not an optimist that my countrypersons will suddenly come to their senses and recognize we have spent the last hundred years transforming our country into a spiritless hellscape and abandon the car over night. But there are already signs of transformation. In addition to the aforementioned migration of youth to formerly blighted cities (Cleveland and Detroit notwithstanding), the increase in bicycle commuting, increased investment in public transportation and even the aforementioned lame attempts at reconstructing our suburbs on the notion of Smart Growth / mixed use development are heartening signs of life after Exxon.

Thankfully, we can always trust in good old entropy to help us do the right thing. As we are confronted by the incredible societal cost of maintaining our crumbling roads and of securing fuel for the ever bigger Humscalades we need to isolate ourselves from the increasingly horrid road surfaces, and of the individual cost of owing and operating a personal internal combustion vehicle (auto loans, gas, maintenance and insurance), the sensible alternatives that have always existed (think bicycles, public transportation and more walkable communities) may just occur to more of us as obvious ways to improve our quality of life. But such transitions cannot be imposed on us.

We have to make choices based, hopefully, on enlightened self-interest. We will only choose to make our communities better places when we can no longer ignore the obvious; that the type of absolute reliance on cars that has characterized much of the past century makes our communities and our lives worse, economically, socially and and spiritually; and that walkable, bikeable, human-scaled towns and cities lead to happier, healthier lives for those living in them. It won't happen suddenly and the change won't come from above. It will come through the myriad personal choices made by people like me who seek out walkable communities in which to live and who limit their job searches to positions available within the range of biking, walking and/or public transportation. It seems a luxury to be able to do so, and for most people it is. But if you think about how much money you wouldn't be spending if you weren't dumping it into your car, you might find that you could afford a slightly more expensive house or apartment on the same salary. And if you add to that the fact that if you walked or biked to work each day, you might be able to stop spending money on a gym membership and a holistic life coach. You'd be healthier and happier because you're getting some freakin' exercise for a change.

One day the personal automobile may seem quaint vestiges of a bygone era, like the steamship or the land line telephone. But at this rate I probably won't be alive to see it. In the meantime I'll just keep the cranks rotating while I roll by the line of humanity in their little metal cages.

Revolution Schmevolution

In a previous post I cited a series of articles written by Jan Heine of Bicycle Quarterly (sheesh, why do I even subscribe to that magazine when Jan puts everything but the ads on his blog..?) about the relative merits of bicycle-specific infrastructure such as separated bike lanes, cycle tracks, etc. The gist was that there is a battle between those who advocate for bikes to have separate-but-equal facilities and those who want bicycles to be treated as vehicles - granted rights on the road equal to cars. I suggested, in my intuitive, non-scientific way, that there was likely some middle ground where bike lanes and cycle tracks would continue to proliferated in densely packed urban cores, bikes would continue to be treated like malformed stepchildren in the suburbs and in the country we would still have to clench our Lycra clad sphincters every time one of those gigantic pickup trucks blows by, but otherwise would still be happiest on such roads with their light traffic.

In his follow-up post on the topic, Jan has done what Jan usually does, which is analyze the options from a rational, statistical perspective aimed at maximizing the safety of cyclists and has recommended almost exactly the opposite of what we seem to actually be doing. He argues that on city streets where automobile traffic is moving slowly, riding in the street is the safest approach. Where the speed picks up a bit (up to 30 MPH), painted bike lanes allow sufficient separation to assure bikes and cars can coexist peaceably. And when cars are flying, he acknowledges that completely separate bike lanes are warranted. He cites the example of Munich, Germany which has engaged in a decade long effort to modernize its infrastructure and has apparently achieved a 70% increase in bicycle mode share in just nine years; 17.4% of all trips in Munich are now made by bicycle.

His key recommendation suggests the creation of Fahrradstraßen, bike boulevards where cyclists have the dominant right-of-way. Personally I have difficulty imagining many American cities will ever consider bicyclists worthy of the top spot on the totem pole. It just seems too European. But the concept is definitely intriguing. Just take a few strategically placed, lightly used side streets and designate them "bike boulevards". Cars can still use them, but bikes have the right-of-way. This would get a lot of bikes off the main arteries and make cyclists feel safer, which would get more people on bikes which would reduce traffic on the main arteries. I just have such a hard time seeing Americans giving priority to bikes over cars.

Maybe if we make it a nationalistic thing. Make it about beating the Germans. You know, Let's get those Krauts before they cover the world in Fahrradbahns! It might work. After all it worked once. I mean we entered WWII to save the English, who we don't much care for (and who, I might add we had to forcibly expel from these beloved shores a mere 158 years prior), and the Jews, who many Americans would probably have liked to exterminate themselves. We could get some awesome propaganda posters made and whip up the anti-Teutonic fervor that's always lurking just below the otherwise quiet exterior of the average American. Nah, it would never work. Or, I guess we'll just keep things just the way they are, which is what I suspect we'll do.

The problem is that the communities with the greatest desire for improved infrastructure, i.e., cities, don't really need much in the way of improvement. And those most in need of improvement, i.e., suburbs, don't want it (meaning don't want to spend money on it). So we'll end up with all kinds of separated lanes in the cities where we don't need it and the suburbs will continue to be soulless, car focused hellscapes populated by Humscalade driving distracto-moms shuttling their obese offspring from one diabetes clinic to the next while shouting at their cell phones over the television in the back seat playing a continuous loop of drool inducing mental pablum. Sorry Jan. We're not in the Old Country anymore...        

Pokey dokie

I'm not sure where you'd go to find a washboard these days, but I sure am glad Ryan Koenig, the percussionist for Pokey LaFarge found one. Dredged up from Mississippi bottom land of southern Illinois, the St. Louis band manages to transport listeners back through a Victrola horn to a warm crackling time when musicians actually had to know how to play their instruments. This is the flavor of American music revived by the Coen Brothers' Oh! Brother Where Art Thou. I don't know if it's the Great Depression-Great Recession connection or the plethora of Tweedy hipsters that have sprung up in our cities over the last few years that makes Pokey's tunes feel so relevant, but there is something about the that just seems appropriate. I'm just glad to have found them. I'm so happy, in fact, I'm singin' la la la.

Pokey and the boys swing the NPR offices

Devolution Revolution

One small step for man

This is the end

Neil Armstrong put the first human footprint on the surface of the moon in 1969, three days after my sixth birthday. The actual memory of seeing it on TV is now lost in the hundreds or thousands of reruns of the event, but I have a distinct recollection of having been told that this was the greatest achievement in all of history, the pinnacle of human ingenuity, and that it was performed by the greatest civilization planet Earth had ever had the good fortune to have hosted. Land of the free. Home of the brave. My country 'tis of thee (whatever that means). In those days America was number one with a bullet! And I believed it. I think most of us in my generation did.

We were born into a world in which even the sky was not the limit. Anything was possible and despite a few minor anomalies like the war in Vietnam, the odd political assassination or the race riots in cities all over the country, America was leading the world into the trans-planetary future of infinite possibility. It's been all downhill from that point on. Looking back from our current vantage point, I've come to see the moon landing as the high point of human evolution. It was the last time a pedestrian was celebrated and what seems like, at least from a transportation perspective, the beginning of the end of human powered locomotion.

Just as soon as NASA could figure out how to do it, they got a car up to the moon so the astronauts wouldn't have to trudge around the way Armstrong and Aldrin had had to do. That was it, Apollo 15 - the last time any American had to walk further than the car port. Should humans ever go back to the moon, my guess is that the first thing they'll do is construct an inter-crater connector (ICC). And that should kick off the next phase of human evolution: the symbiotic fusion of mammal and machine. Call it Homo Automobilis.

In the beginning

What we think of as the modern human more or less began when our primate ancestors came down from the trees and walked out onto the grasslands. To this day we maintain an irrational fondness for lawns. Just fly into any city in the southwest if you don't believe me. They're piping water hundreds of miles so they can grow grass in the desert! So, given how intrinsically defining bipedal-ism is to humans, it is amazing to see how foreign an activity walking has become to modern Americans. This fact was brought into focus for me when a couple of young nieces came to stay with my wife and me for a weekend recently. Without thinking much about it, my wife and I routinely walk to restaurants, theaters and shops in our neighborhood but when our young nieces, aged eight and eleven, were confronted by the prospect of a fifteen minute walk to get to a park, they acted as though they were being tortured.

I initially attributed their resistance to simple preadolescent slothfulness, but the more I thought about it, the more it kind of made sense. They live in one of those new McMansion subdivisions where the sidewalks just mysteriously end, they are driven to school each day and there is a TV set in the family minivan. Their entire lives basically seem to be spent on a virtual sofa. They have hand-held devices with them at all times - the first thing they did upon arrival at my home was demand free WiFi access - and there is video streaming in front of them more or less twenty four hours a day. Walking to the refrigerator is about the longest distance they have to traverse without being in a car. And it turns out that in this respect, they are really just typical Americans.

"...the idea that that we, this species that first hoisted itself into the world of bipedalism nearly 4 million years ago—for reasons that are still debated—should now need “walking tips,” have to make “walking plans” or use a “mobile app” to “discover” walking trails near us or build our “walking histories,” strikes me as a world-historical tragedy."     The Crisis in American Walking

We're Number One! We're Number One! We're Number One!

Only thirteen percent of American children walk or bike to school —  down from 50% in 1969. 23% of American children get zero exercise per day. Zero. You don't have to go farther than the nearest mall — to which, by the way I'll bet you have to drive — to see that Americans are becoming increasingly, astonishingly obese. In fact, obesity is one of the only remaining characteristics in which we can still claim to be a world leader!
    
And the funny thing about this is how resistant we are to do anything about it. Witness the recent uproar over the proposal to ban absurdly large sodas in New York. Or the kind of push back you get for insisting that our neighborhoods should be walkable. Now, I'm really happy to be an American and I'm glad we repelled the British occupiers, but equating NYC's prohibition on trans fat in restaurants and large sodas with tyranny just seems silly to me. And labeling people fascists just because they want to wean our citizens from the corporate gavage that is turning us into a nation of diabetics is just laughable. But then I guess our tricorn-hat-wearing forefathers started a revolution over a beverage, right? So maybe it's not so weird that greet limitations on our consumption of corn syrup as tantamount to the imposition of Stalinist totalitarianism.

I've consequently had no alternative but to recognize Armstrong's first step on the moon as the zenith of human evolution. After that point it's all devolution, as we walk less and sit more and slowly, inexorably become fatter and fatter, less able to even lift the weight of our ever growing bodies, transforming from Fat Bastard, past the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen phase, through the Jabba the Hutt metamorphosis and inevitably back into some kind of legless fish creatures. And we'll complain about the tyranny of anyone who tries to intervene between us and our Kröd-given right to pollute ourselves with fake food and wallow in the soothing glow of our Retina screens.

So off we go, forward into the past...

Integration Segregation

Jan Heine, editor of the much esteemed Bicycle Quarterly has recently engaged in one of his typically analytic discussions on the relative merits of the various types of bicycle-specific infrastructure popping up around US cities. In particular, he seems a bit incensed over a newly unveiled cycle path in his home city of Seattle. In the age old argument between those who advocate for equal rights of bicycles on the street (let's call them Vehicularists) and those who advocate for bicycles to be segregated from car traffic as much as possible (George Wallace took all the fun out of the term best used for these folks), Jan seems to be tending toward the vehicular side. But if you know how Jan's mind works (which you would if you read Bicycle Quarterly or his blog, Off the Beaten Path), you would know that he's really more of a data weenie than an ideological zealot. And more importantly, he is a lover of elegant design; and anyone who loves good, sensible, utilitarian design has got, inevitably, to hate most of what passes for bicycle-specific infrastructure.

My own city, that is the nearest big city, the one around whose edges I have spent the vast majority of my life, has been engaged in the rapid expansion of cycling infrastructure over the last decade or so, and is struggling as are many of our cities to figure out exactly how bicycles fit into the overall flow of traffic. We are in the early days of what sometimes seems like a genuine transformation of our city. And as is always the case with all of nature's transformations, we are experiencing growing pains. And it's not difficult to understand why.

"...evolving designs reflect a learning process, as bikes are squeezed back into a streetscape long dominated by cars."

The division between the two camps is completely understandable. White guys in Lycra want to be allowed treated like equal citizens, afforded the same rights as people in cars. They don't want to dodge baby strollers and speed walkers and all the other obstacles strewn about the average "mixed use" trail. And they want to make left turns without having to wait through two stop lights. The Dutch apparently don't mind waiting, but that's be presumably because they don't have real jobs to get to.

Pass the Dutchy on the left-hand side.

On the other hand, most people, thank Kröd, don't want to dress up in skin tight synthetic clothing, put a Styrofoam ice cooler on their heads and max out their lactic thresholds just to get to work or the store. It's the usual tribal warfare between caffeinated Baristas trying to get to work quickly and moms getting their kids safely to school; between racers and riders, carbon and steel, people who live in Copenhagen and people who live in an exurb with streets named after the features bulldozed to build the development.

I love this particular ideological war because it starts with the premise that it's good to have more people riding bikes. The argument is about how best to accomplish that goal. A worthy conversation. I am personally of the opinion that neither side is absolutely correct. We're not going to dig up all our cities and remake them around the bike. And the suburbs are not going to become friendly places for human powered vehicles until the gas runs out.

Ultimately we will find a range of options, more or less appropriate for each situation. I think cities will do a lot of retrofitting of their existing infrastructure, putting in bike lanes, bike shares and bike parking. Suburbs will continue to worship cars and parking lots but over the past decade more rail trails, sidewalks and mini-villages have popped up, so maybe there is hope yet. And country roads will still be lovely places for a delightful cyclo-tour despite the occasional yahoo in one of those silly big pick-em-up trucks hollering, "get off the road!"

A woman, a bike and a chicken, whole and roasted.

The Acorn Handlebar Bag

You know, if you have been following this blog, that I’m a big fan of the rack-mounted handlebar bag. But they won’t work with carbon frames (or really any bike with a “modern” racing front fork – no eyelet for the rack). As it happens, my stable contains a modern lightweight bike which I bought because I wanted a bike that would minimize the effort it takes to ride it so I could go farther, longer, more comfortably (okay, titanium or steel might be more comfortable, but the carbon certainly is better on my back than my old aluminum when it comes to the long rides).

Okay, you know it as well as I do. I bought a fashionable carbon fiber racing bike because I am a fan of competitive cycling and so in my perverse male ego I harbor delusions of riding like the professionals do. All I need is the exact same bike Sparticus rides and when some scout from an elite ProTeam gets a load of me ambling along Rock Creek Park on a Saturday morning, he will have no alternative but to recruit me on the spot into their senior division. Of course all having such a bike has accomplished is to drive a stake into the heart of any fantasy I ever had that I could be a racer. But still, I like the bike and I like to ride pretty long distances in places far from home.

And when I'm on such an "epic" ride, out in the glorious country, miles from the clutter and chaos of extraneous things like stores that are open on Sundays, I often find the need to eat and drink more than I can carry in my pockets. I occasionally want to swap out clothing as the day heats up, or to have warmer, drier clothes available when unexpected weather hits. When in unfamiliar locales I might even find it convenient to carry a map (I can see the Garmin owners' eyes rolling). So there you go - I like long rides, but I'm not exactly a touring rider. I like a light, racing style bike, because I've been brainwashed by the ads and reviews in cycling magazines to lust after the latest and greatest technology. But such bikes aren't conducive to portaging the several belongings I sometimes prefer to carry when venturing into the hinterland. Much as I look longingly over my shoulder, that damn team car just never seems to pull up alongside to take my unwanted rain jacket, to provide directions or to pass a prosciutto and Asiago panini out the window. Sowhattayagonnado?

Well, as of last week I am the proud owner of a new bar-mounted bag from the master craftspersons at Acorn Bags. This one is in black and was bought for the Madone, while the rack-mounted Rando in saddle tan has, since last autumn, perched on the front rack of my '86 Fuji Allegro. And I have to say that I love this thing. It's big enough to carry my phone, rain jacket, all the food I'm likely to need for a long day on the bike. And I can even remove a jersey or some tights when it warms up and don't have to cram my jersey pockets with all this stuff. And unlike the Rando, this one is rock solid. The wooden stabilizer bar keeps its shape and the stiffer-than-ripstop fabric keeps it from wobbling around. I just love the rider-facing rear pockets with their shiny turn-buckles, though the cables from my Ultegra make them less convenient than those on the Fuji with its center-pull brakes. I just can't say enough about how great these Acorn products are - and they're made in the United States. Bonus!

Of course this bag is an abomination to contemporary weight weenies, who spend fortunes to shave every gram from their UCI certified trophy bikes. But in my heart of hearts I know I’m an old fart who thinks cycling should be fun and practical, so screw ‘em. I have a big ol’ canvas bag with leather “appointments” on the front of my carbon fibré superbike. So what? Am I a walking talking (not to mention rolling!) ball of hypocritical contradiction? You bet. But I can carry a whole roasted chicken with me when I ride my bike. And chicken grease doesn’t drip down my butt while I ride. Can you say that? 

Related reading:

http://lovelybike.blogspot.com/2010/09/allure-of-handlebar-bag.html 

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/fell/PBP1975.html