Why an "original" bicycle makes me sad

On the Classic Rendezvous list, where I have been a member for a decade or more, there has been much discussion of the Concours d’Elegance at the California L’Eroica and ride. I have been fascinated by the discussion, because I have been a rider of high-end bicycles and a bicycle business employee on and off since 1973.

“Originality” has become the holy grail of collectors. I will agree that it is very cool to find a forty-year-old bicycle in totally original condition. Cleaning it up and showing it would gather oohs and aahs from the most jaded of collectors. I will admit having mightily lusted after a 1971 Peugeot PX-10 that had been for sale at a very reasonable price a couple of years ago, right in my neighborhood.

But I have been thinking long and hard about “originality” and what it really means. Looking at the PX-10 in question, it seemed that the bike had been ridden a few times and then hung in the garage, gathering dust for a few decades, then getting donated to a charity bike shop. How sad. Bicycles are meant to be ridden.

A high-end bicycle bought in the 1940s or 1950s was not meant to be a static piece of art. The buyer clearly made some financial sacrifice to own a good tool. That tool was used. And as it was used, parts on it wore out. Riders would rarely replace the parts with the originals, especially in those years when everything bicycle-related was rapidly improving. Would you really replace a Cyclo-Benelux coil-spring derailleur if you could afford one of the newer Simplex or Campagnolo parallelogram units? Would you continue to ride with wimpy brakes as the technology improved? Of course not.

When I started working in bike shops, during the first 10-speed boom, “original equipment” often varied wildly as parts shortages were a regular occurrence.  And the economical race bikes of the day, the bikes that appeared alongside the more mundane entry-level 10-speeds of the day, seldom left the shop in “original” condition, and sometimes, were heavily modified even before they were ridden. One of my colleagues bought a PX-10 new, stripped off all of the parts, sent the frame out to be repainted with modern paint and clear-coat over the decals, then rebuilt it with a mix of top-of-the-line French and Italian parts. The only original equipment he kept was the Stronglight 93 crankset and V4 headset, which are already very nice components. Now fast forward to 2015, and here’s what the judges would say: Super LJ derailleurs with Retrofriction levers – not original, points off; Mafac Competition brakes with drilled levers and full gum hoods – not original, points off; Campagnolo Record hubs with Mavic Module E rims, shod with much later Continental Grand Prix 4000 tires – yep, you guessed it, not original, points off. So in the judges’ eyes, this bike that will keep its looks longer, with a modern two-part clearcoat over the decals and will work better because all of the parts were upgraded, is a less valuable bike than the original, with plastic Simplex derailleurs, Normandy Luxe Competition hubs, with their unique and unavailable bearing cones and integral dust covers that cannot be removed for easy cleaning, and Mafac Racers with the silly half hoods on the brake levers?

To my eyes, as a bicycle rider, not a bicycle collector, a 1940s top-end frame, with parts representing the best available from every decade since, repainted when needed, and still loved and ridden by the grandson of the original owner is far more interesting than the wall queen that was ridden 100 miles when it was new, discovered by a collector and then polished and hung on the wall as a sculpture.

And it makes me a little sad to think that the unridden bikes are the ones that people want to look at.

Tension can be a good thing

One of my friends swears that wheels I built for him roll faster than other wheels. He says he has even tested it with similar tires at the same pressure, trading wheels with another rider. He has said it enough times to enough people that I believe him. His tests are on long, steep hills with no pedaling but no brakes either, just coasting. And no matter whose bike has the Earle Wheel on the front, that’s the one that rolls away from the rest.

I build my wheels for maximum reliability and durability, but I had not really thought about making them roll faster. But as I mulled over the findings, I realized that the same things I do to make a strong, long-lasting wheel also make the wheel roll faster. Spoke tension. Specifically, very even spoke tension makes the wheel roll a little bit easier.

A trained engineer who studies wheels could certainly say it better than I can, and will have numbers to back up the words, but for the average rider, that would be overkill.

The thing to remember is that when it is rolling, a wheel is not really a static structure. As the wheel rolls, each spoke loses a little bit of its tension, then regains it. When a spoke that is significantly looser or tighter than its neighbors, the oscillation of tension is enough different that slows the bike down ever so slightly, the way a small bump in the road would.

We all know that smoother roads are faster. Well, my story (and I am sticking to it) is that wheels with very even tension will roll more smoothly and faster, the same way a bike goes faster on smooth road.

The continuing conversation with Maynard Hershon

Maynard: So many things you just said resonate with me. We never imagined that rides would start and end in parking lots. Why would we have wanted to arrive at the ride start in a car? What, so we could get home 10 minutes after the ride ended? 

Drive and leave immediately and never have a chance to hang out with your friends? I have to think that our friends were more important to us then. Our cycling friends were our best friends.

I worked for three bike shops on the sales floor and behind parts counters. I worked for my friend Tom Petrie, who represents several cool Euro parts suppliers, in his office in El Cerrito, California. 

I worked for Mavic, Shimano and SRAM at dozens of national and international level bike races. I wrote columns for Winning Magazine, VeloNews, the Bicycle Paper and the Rivendell Reader.

I wrote catalogs for Serotta Racing Cycles, Fuji Cycles, LeMond Racing Cycles and now Formigli USA.

I never HAD a resume. What we had were friends. You could say our circle of friends was almost like family. Someone you knew also knew someone in almost any cycling hotbed in the US. 

We didn't need no stinkin' resumes.

Earle: No stinkin' resumes? With first names as uncommon as Maynard and Earle, we seldom needed last names. Earle is a little more common than Maynard, so I sometimes would get, "Oh, you're THAT Earle." 

Maynard: It's funny when you say it that way, Oh! You're THAT Earle, but it's true! I wonder if we knew how perishable out little world was, Earle... Sigh....

Earle: In a way, that world still exists. That close circle of friends is still out there. It's just that for most of us, cycling is no longer the center of our lives. We get together just a few times a year. Or we keep in touch via the Internet. 

When I went to San Francisco State to finish my degree, I had to find work more lucrative than a bicycle shop job, at least for part-time hours. I also widened my circle to include a lot of people who had never been serious cyclists. 

In those days, at the dawn of the personal computer era, it was easy to lose track of people. I had to go out of my way to stay in touch with even a few people.

Meeting again was sometimes a happy accident. In Boise, Idaho, I'd been away from the bike business for most of a decade when I went to the start of the HP Women's Challenge. Wandering around as a fat man with no credentials, it still took me just a little time to connect with old friends. 

You were there doing motorcycle duty. Brian Greiger, now living just a few miles down the road from me, was a hired gun for a European team that could not afford to bring a mechanic. Mike Neel was managing the Saeco-Timex Women's team. Our conversations picked up right where they had left off years before.

The same thing happened last summer when I went to High Point, North Carolina, for the National Criterium Championship. I walked into a nearly empty hotel bar and started talking to one of the two other patrons. He was Bill Humphreys, who I had not spoken with in something like 35 years. Within minutes, we were laughing and exchanging John Allis stories.

The Internet has made it easier to maintain at least some contact. You and I have not been face to face in more than a decade, but here we are, talking as if we had a steady stream of beer pitchers and all the time in the world.

More conversation with Maynard

Maynard: I lived in Marin County from '75 until '84, so I watched the mountain bike revolution happen. And I sure knew Charlie Kelly, as did anyone who rode a bike in Marin in those days.

Thinking about Charlie makes me think about Phil Brown, another cyclist, rock 'n' roll roadie and later a sound engineer. He and Doug White, who makes some wonderful bike parts today, built road frames called Brown and White. 

Phil was just here in Denver with his old friend Paul Stubblebine, another cyclist and sound engineer. Paul and Phil tell great stories of working with music business folks back when. 

You ask, "Who was the smartest personal manager, Phil?" Or, "Paul, who was the greatest waste of talent?" The stories just roll out of those guys.

Guys like these, Charlie and Phil and Paul, would be great guys to know even if we hadn't met them through cycling. But cycling introduced us to SO many super people, men and women....

I'm afraid that the social aspects of cycling, the opportunities to get to know people, are not so frequent today. People drive to the rides and take their bikes out of their cars.

They look at their phones when the rides break. They're so connected that they have to get somewhere right after the ride ends. No hanging out for coffee. No getting to know their own Charlies, Phils and Pauls.

Earle: Especially in the early season, rides could be at a "conversational" pace, meaning nobody was working so hard you could not talk to the person next to you. 

Rides also ended at a destination, not a parking lot. In Berkeley, rides began or ended at Peet's Coffee, either the Northside location or Domingo Avenue, at the start of the Tunnel Road climb. The conversations continued there, sometimes for hours.

A day off work was a day to hang around with your bike friends. A ride might last a few hours, but nobody was in a hurry to part company.

Some of this can be attributed to the small world we lived in. Before Greg and Lance, before the Ironman, the world of high-end bikes was small. Small enough for no more than one or two degrees of separation from virtually everybody who mattered.

A personal example: When the economy dipped in 1981 and the Bicycle Exchange might have to lay somebody off, I was also ready to leave Cambridge. Rich Olken, the owner of the BiEx, and Mike Zane, one of the founders of Kryptonite Locks, each told me that I would probably get along with Peter Rich of Velo Sport in Berkeley. 

So I called the store, talked to the manager, who was from the planet known as Southern California, and he said, "Yeah, we need somebody, can you send a resume?"

I said I would, but also suggested that the manager check with other friends in the business. I got a call the next day. Somebody from Velo Sport had made a few calls and I had passed muster. More important than a resume was the recommendation of friends in the business.

The bike world is a lot bigger than that now. The small world we lived in hangs on in small pockets, but we get together for rides only a couple of times a year instead of a couple of times a week.