Pretty Green Saluki

This looks like a comfortable and classy commuter. Just the right sort of bike to really put the miles on. The color feels really fresh to me, now when the leaves are emerging and the grass is greening up. Bicycles are inherently green, and this one reminds us of that explicitly. I like it for that.

"Bicycling is human scale- a living, breathing alternative to the city's domination by motor vehicles. There is magic in blending with traffic, feeling the wind in one's face, the sheer fact of traversing the city under one's own power."
- Charles Komanoff, cycling advocate

Photo from Cyclofiend.

Ceremony to honor Major Taylor

On May 21st Worcester Public Library will unveil a statue installed in honor of the "Worcester Whirlwind", Major Taylor. Greg LeMond and Edwin Moses will be speaking.

Taylor is indisputably a cycling hero and his life story is all the more poignant because he had to overcome terrible racism to achieve his success.

Taylor had a number of endorsement deals at the height of his career and a particular form of trussed bicycle has become associated with his name. When you see a bicycle with an extra top tube, impress your friends when you tell them Major Taylor's story, and also how he was the first athlete with paid endorsements.

In addition to being the second African American ever to win a world championship in any sport, and a true hero, I think he was a smart man. I try very hard to live his wisdom:

"Life is too short for a man to hold bitterness in his heart."
Marshall W. 'Major' Taylor

Silver Motobecane hauling bike

More photos of this bike on Cyclo Fiend

Seeing this bike reminded me of this quotation:

"As a social revolutionizer, the bicycle has never had an equal. It has put the human race on wheels, and thus changed completely many of the most ordinary processes and methods of social life. It is the great leveler, for not till all Americans got on bicycles was the great American principle that every man is just as good as any other man fully realized. All are on equal terms, all are happier than ever before."

- New York Evening Post, June 2, 1896

Simple green Raleigh - efficient motion machine

More photos of this bike at Cyclo Fiend

"When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle."

- Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills

Discussion of "cycle chic"

There has been a lot of defining and discussion lately about what it means to be a chic cyclist. In reading what people have to say I have to affirm more and more that I am not a chic cyclist, by other's definitions.

I've decided to take a stab at defining what it means to me:

Chic cycling is a personal statement, an expression of self which extends to everyday transport choices.

Being a chic cyclist is a subversive statement, a refusal to conform for the sake of conformity.

However, rather than being reactionary, chic cycling is a rational, examined position integrating an aesthetic and a lifestyle which are based on substance rather than marketing.

Relatedly, I don't care what your bike cost, your clothes cost, or their relative value to each other. I do care that you've thought about both and chosen each deliberately, rather than merely purchasing the "REI cyclist 2008 package" (10% off, if you act fast!).

To me cycle chic touches on the French notion of épanouie - it implies a self actualized person living in harmony with herself and her community (local and global), integrating both.

I don't care if you ride a road bike, a mountain bike, a townie, or a unicycle. I just want you to have a reason to ride that bike, and for the bike to reflect who you are personally. I see nothing wrong with Tom Boonen in lycra (yum!), baggy shorts on a mountain bike in Boulder, and elegant city cyclists in Copenhagen.

There is a good reason for all of the choices above and those underlying reasons are what make each deliberate choice cycle chic. Form follows function and until recently the true function of utility cycling was not deeply examined in America. Hurray for progress!

My notion of cycle chic is consistent with a very Boston quotation, one that I've tried to take as my own over-arching manifesto. This was written by William Henry Channing around 1920:

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common
--this is my symphony.

Let me know what you think, and keep riding...

This says it all:

"I thought of that while riding my bicycle."

- Albert Einstein
(on the theory of relativity)

Another bicycle commute

"City riding is a continual lesson in feminine principles, in particular the art of being vulnerable. A confrontational, macho aesthetic spells calamity. You must learn to yield, to dodge, to seek harmony. You are obliged to mind the web of interrelations, that complicated mesh of interests, conflicts, and intentions."

- Chip Brown, essayist, and author of "A Bike and a Prayer"


Photo by Bicycles Only

Strong women ride bikes

"I'll tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bike. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood."

- Susan B. Anthony 1896

Photo by sr formica