Goodbye IRO

My faithful everyday bike, which hasn't really seen a whole lot of use in the past year, is going to a new home.

I got this bike in 2005. Prior to that, I had a junky fixed gear conversion, and wanted something a bit more held-together. It was the first time I had bought myself something nice - other than my guitar amp. I used it to go on my first "long ride," from NYC's Chinatown to my parents' house in Bergen County, NJ. Almost twenty miles, stopping every now and then on the West Side Bike Path to tug the toestraps tighter. That ride made me decide that I wanted to be a little bit healthier, to get better at riding this bike.

Then I took it with me to live in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where it was a valuable companion in that lonely city. I used it to explore the seaside, the factories, the quiet and ramshackle neighborhoods. When my time there was up, I took it to the Bronx and discovered the fun and odd world of urban cycling. I got hit by a livery cab making a capricious u-turn underneath the elevated 2/5 on Westchester Avenue, which led me to get chewed out by a rookie cop posing tough for his partner, and hugged by the tearful, fearful, and carelss driver who was so relieved I was okay (and I was relieved that the bike was fine). I rode the Tour de Bronx and hoped that I'd be introduced to the person riding the yellow KHS. I rode Critical Mass and met the rider of the KHS. She doesn't have the KHS anymore, but a few other really nice bikes are filling up our bike room.

Soon I was swinging my leg over its handlebars for alleycat races. Some respectable finishes made me catch a racing bug that led me to get a track bike, a road bike, and a cyclocross bike - after racing the IRO on the Kissena Velodrome, taking it up and down 9W, and throwing some knobbies on it and racing it at StatenCX. Anywhere I went it took me there first.

It's gone through saddle swaps, a myriad handlebar configurations, and more wheel swaps than I can count. I think I even had matching wheels on it for a month or two. Once, in a pinch, I attached a threadless stem to its seatpost, put some bullhorns in it, and taped a bunch of cargo to this impromptu rack. I slowly and haphazardly added stickers. Spending two winters working food delivery shifts helped transform it from the pretty (if simple) thing I adored to a rugged tool that got thrown against poles, covered in snow, and rattled senseless over cobblestones. Other bikes got babied - the Pogliaghi, the Felt, the Co-Motion. And then, they too went through a similar transformation. At Fawn Grove I winced as gravel bounced all over the race course, flying off tires, not because they were slamming into my shins (though they were), but because they were slamming into my road bike's downtube. And halfway, as my body was well in the red, my head changed, and the bike had become what the IRO had become - a tool.

But with a new bike on the way, built for more specific uses, the IRO has got to go. A bike stable should keep sentimentality to a minimum, I think, and even when living space isn't at the same premium at which it used to be, the inclination toward maximum-bike ought to be curbed.

It's not the bike - it's the memories.

On Snow and Rollers

I was going to write a post about track bike orthodoxy and why it's silly, using my own bike as an example. This morning I put cyclocross tires on it. When I woke up around 6 AM it was snowing heavily and the street in front of my apartment barely had any tire tracks in it. Cyclocross tires, I thought, would be useful for a day of working in those conditions. At 10 AM, a few hours after mounting cyclocross tires on that trusty workhorse, I looked out the window again. Freezing rain. Slush as far as the eye could see, and not enough time to put slicks back on before I had to leave for work. Damn.

There is nothing worse than 33 degrees and raining, especially if it's combined with thick slush all over the roads. Plastic bags over my socks kept my soggy shoes from freezing my toes off - barely. A reminder from your friendly local bicycle delivery person: tipping 10% is a good start. Increase with generosity for longer distances, worse weather, walk-ups, and any additional hassles, complications, or waiting. Four or five additional bucks means more to the bike delivery person than it does the person warm in their apartment.

Anyway, since the weather was miserable, upon coming home from work I rode rollers for a little over an hour. Speaking of rollers: last night's roller races (a fundraiser for Recycle-A-Bicycle and featuring Bike Works' fabulous Competition Rollers) saw my buddy and teammate Al defeat this guy, who has a couple of noteworthy palmares. A velodrome rematch will have to wait until Al upgrades (a few times).

Good job, Al!

Hipster Trickster Idiocy

John Prolly wrote a pretty good piece for Urban Velo magazine about fixed gear freestyling, here. John is one of the more public figures in the FIX/MX (or 700CMX) trend - using full-sized fixed gear bikes for BMX-derived trick riding.

I've been impressed at how how skill throw-downs have evolved in the past few years. When I started racing alleycat races, side events featured track bike skid competitions. There was nothing cooler than a smoothly executed one-leg-over-the-handlebar, 360-degree skid, as a legion of sweaty bike kids clutching brown-bagged beers cheer on. But the a few people started to barspin and do wheelies, and all of a sudden there was another level of grace, coordination, and control on the bike.

And, in a just over two short years, it's booming. Companies are producing barspin-able bikes and beefy components made for slamming around. John himself is adamant that he doesn't ride a track bike - this is a different monster altogether. It's not a bike repossessed for a new purpose, like a track bike ridden on the street is. It's a fixed-gear trick bike - something tough, reliable, and, most importantly, ridable. It's a new kind of bike.

There's a lot of scorn for this field, as there always is for a developing niche. "Just get a BMX bike" kind of contrasts with the track-bike orthodoxy ("death before derailleurs!") that occasionally develops. But one of the things I admire about John is that he embraces the fact that it's not about track bikes. It's about riding and being able to ride to new places, and the fact that he's so willing to experiment with new pieces of gear - some of which are god-awfully ugly according to the conventional aesthetics - says that he's more interested in the function than the form. I mean, come on! Unicrown forks are hideous, 40 spoke wheels are ridiculous, 28mm wide tires are overkill for a 125-pound weakling like myself, who can't bunnyhop something higher than a curb. Riser bars... the list goes on. I hate all those bits and pieces. And yet they make perfect sense for these new bikes, and, well, that's okay. That's just fine. In fact, it's right-on. Exactly where it needs to be, with form following function.

Considering the way that cycling scenes tend to play out, abandoning form-first mentality means abandoning silly orthodoxies, more-authentic-than-thou idiocy, and general interdisciplinary trash-talking. John just likes to go ride his bike and do wacky shit on it. In collaboration with a couple companies and a bunch of other riders they've been identifying parts and designs that can survive this (ab)use. They're not perverting any old stock of riding history, they're creating a new one, and that's a lot of fun to watch. Not just because I've always been interested in the dynamics of temporal emergence (to borrow a term from my University days, but because some of the shit that they do on bikes is really cool.

BikesnobNYC can't stop giving John a hard time, but whatever. I like what John's doing, even if can't help but roll my eyes every time I see pictures posted on bikeforums featuring a super-short stem, riser bars reaching for the sky, and a 650 wheel in a fork meant for 700s... or, in other ways, just using the wrong tool for the job. Some of this stuff makes for nonsense bikes but it doesn't mean that the whole discipline is nonsense.

I mean hey, BMX was an Olympic sport in 2008. Things change.

That's the point.

I know I've got at least a couple readers who aren't quite so familiar with the city fixed gear scene, so, I welcome your reactions. Here is a little bit more data for your research (youtube).

The "If It Ain't Fixed It's Broken" Phase

Occasionally I hit upon some witticism that I just can't let go of. Two or three years ago, in conversations about my bike habits, it was correcting somebody: "Oh, I'm not a cyclist. I'm a biker." "What's the difference?" they'd ask, leading me perfectly. I'd pause. "I think it's spandex."

I was an avowed utilitarianist - my one bicycle was meant for all-purpose use, for getting me around, for going fast and being comfortable and wearing sneakers and not looking like a cyclist. Never mind that that one all-purpose bicycle was a fixed gear, frequently without a handbrake, with no accommodations for racks or fenders. And never mind that with rolled-up pants, a messenger-style shoulderbag, and lock wrapped around my waist, I did look like a cyclist. Just a certain sort of cyclist, and that was fine by me.

But, as I've found in a wide variety of ways, orthodoxy fades in favor of embracing complexity. I realized that clipless shoes are excellent innovations. I realized that I loved going fast, and that I could get even better at alleycat races - those messenger-inspired city races that take place between red lights and midtown taxicabs - if I embraced some more regular long rides. Which required a more suitable handlebar setup, and, eventually, gears. A regular browsing of craigslist and a trip to Westchester County with cash in hand brought home a used road bike. So much for the "if it ain't fixed it's broken" phase. And eyerolling about lycra-clad roadies struggling up the Central Park "hill" turned into, well, being one of them - sort of - on my way to work.

There are ways to stick to pride - riding a recreational-level steel racing bike with traditionally spoked wheels (but no downtube shifters - it came with Campy Veloce) and a midrange transmission. I was still wearing a mess bag, and, at first, riding mountain pedals (Time ATACS) on the road bike, on that lovely scrappy little Bianchi. I wasn't one of those ostentatious spenders in the park loop riding their Latest Bike Fad (how quickly Ti has dropped from favor, replaced by carbon fiber!). I was still a rough-and-tumble bike kid.

Thank goodness for - and be careful of - the changing of original intentions. I love my road bike and I am starting to love road racing. But I have to smack myself when I start wondering how I can cheaply acquire some deep-dish carbon aero wheels.