atlantalarry

Sheldon Brown 1944-2008

On February 3 one of the most prominent figures in the American cycling world passed away.  Sheldon Brown's knowledge of the technical aspects of the bicycle and cycling, and his willingness to give of that knowledge in both his extensive web site and on various forums on which he participated were legendary.

I'm not even going to attempt to add to the written summary of his life in cycling or his impact on the cycling community, but I will mention that the current interest in the fixed gear bike was greatly facilitated by his writings on the subject.  Of even more interest to me is his writing on the venerable Raleigh Twenty folding bike.  If not for Sheldon Brown I wouldn't even have known they existed, and now my 1969 Twenty is my favorite utility bike.

His most lasting legacy in the cycling world just might be the glossary of cycling terms on his website.  If I ever encounter a term with which I'm not familiar this glossary is the first place I visit.

Wikipedia has a brief biography of Sheldon Brown with links to other articles by and about him.

British Cycle Touring video from the 1950's

This video on youtube was posted on Bike Forums, and I thought it was absolutely awesome.  I'd toyed with the idea of cycling day tours jumping off various MARTA stops.  A recent century (100 mile bike ride) I rode, which went through wonderful rural areas of Coweta and Heard counties,  inspired me to begin thinking about devising tours starting from the MARTA stops.

This fantastic video reinforced my notion that MARTA could be a wonderful backbone for cycle touring.

Click here to watch this amazing clip.

Utility Cycling forum

An interesting new forum has been added to Bike Forums, a resource I mentioned in one of my previous posts.  It's the Utility Cycling forum, and covers an aspect of cycling which I think has been neglected in recent years, particularly in the U.S.  A lot of the focus on cycling has centered on commuting and recreational cycling.  The third major type of cycling, which in my opinion is a special category, is utility cycling.  Utility cycling consists of using the bicycle for the errands and utility trips most people in the U.S. perform in a car.  It covers a wide range of activities, equipment, and personal ingenuity.  The activities would include grocery shopping, visiting friends, or even using the bike for the purpose of moving.

There are many overlaps between commuting, recreational cycling, and utility cycling but on a worldwide basis utility cycling is the main use to which the bicycle is put, and I think this is going to be a very useful and lively forum.

Online Resources for cyclists Part I: Bike Forums

You may have noticed that lately the main focus of my blog has been cycling.  I came to the conclusion long ago that if I'm going to write consistently I have to write on topics on which I'm enthused, and lately I've been spending a great deal of my time cycling, tinkering with my bikes, and devising routes.  Probably within a few weeks I'll be moving on to some other topic which interests me, and cycling will once again become the subject of an occasional article.

One very good resource is the discussion site Bike Forums.  Like many internet discussion forums the noise-to-signal ratio can be high at times, with banter and repetitive argument out-weighing the useful discussions, but all-in-all on any given day there are practical discussions going on, and even the banter can be fun.

The forums I check in on regularly include Regional Discussions (Southeast) where there is an active Atlanta thread, Bicycle Mechanics, Commuting,  Classic and Vintage,  Fifty Plus, Folding Bikes, and Road Cycling.  There are quite a few other specialized topics.

All in all Bike Forums is a very good resource, and a place to browse for interesting information and also a place to ask questions on a number of cycling related issues.

Most direct route to Inman Park/Reynoldstown Station

Efficient Route to Inman Park Reynoldstown MARTA station from East Atlanta Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

I mentioned in the previous post that the route to the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station I outlined which crossed over I-20 at  Bill Kennedy drive was not the most efficient route.  In fact the route I usually take is the one seen above.  I turn right onto Moreland Avenue off McPherson and immediately start merging to the left.  I turn left on Memorial Drive and take an immediate right onto Flat Shoals. Walthall Street provides a straight shot into the MARTA station.

The route isn't very daunting if you are accustomed to changing lanes in traffic, but it does require familiarity and comfort with cycling in reasonably heavy traffic, at least until the turn onto Flat Shoals off Memorial.  From that point on the route is on residential streets with low traffic volumes.
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A route to the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station

East Atlanta to Inman Park Reynoldstown MARTA station Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Here's one more route I've devised, this time to the Inman Park/Reynoldstown Station from East Atlanta.  It isn't the most efficient route.  It's much faster to take Moreland across the I-20 bridge, left on Memorial Drive, and right on Flat Shoals.  But that entails a series of rapid lane changes on the bridge.  The crossing at Bill Kennedy Drive probably doesn't require any less interaction with motorists, but it's a more generally pleasant ride.

Remember that these maps are interactive, so you can drag the view around, zoom in and out with the plus and minus bar, and switch to a satellite or hybrid view to get more detailed information.  You can also go to bikely.com and search for these maps to get a larger view.  For instance searching on Inman Park Reynoldstown MARTA brings my map to the top, and you can then click on my name to get to other maps I've devised.

My Raleigh Twenty

I've been reading about the venerable Raleigh Twenty on the cycling websites  of Sheldon Brown and John Allen for the past several years.  The Raleigh Twenty was a folding bike manufactured in England from 1968 and through the 70s.

I'd been considering some form of small utility bike, so based on the evident love of Raleigh Twenty enthusiasts for their bikes, I started placing bids on eBay for any Raleigh Twenty which seemed to be in decent shape.  After being outbid on a number of Twenties in a row, I was finally successful, and the FedEx man delivered the package to my door last Thursday.

I immediately removed the pieces from the box, snapped a few photos, and using Raleigh's original assembly guide from John Allen's website for general guidance, assembled the bike.  The bike is in beautiful shape, as far as I can tell the parts are all original, and a set of small dents in the front fender and cracked grips are the only flaws I've found in the bike.  The original Sturmey Archer 3 speed internal hub gears shift smoothly.

The next morning I decided to use it for my commute.  Since I had limited faith in my rapid assembly and adjustments, and even less faith in my knowledge of its handling characteristics,  I decided to ride to the train station rather than my normal commute directly to downtown.  The train station isn't much closer but the route follows quieter residential streets.

The bike handled very nicely and was a lot of fun to ride.  It's heavy compared to my road bikes,   but it's also essentially a utility bike, so the trips I'll likely take with it will tend to be less than 10 miles round trip.  The one obvious downside of the bike on my first substantial ride was that the first gear was too high for the hills around here.  My first impulse was to rebuild the rear wheel with a newer 5, 7, or 8 speed hub, but someone on Bike Forums suggested that I might just want to replace the rear sprocket (making all three internal speeds resolve to lower gear), and see how that affects the suitability for the hills in Atlanta.

One ironic byproduct of my luck in finding a Raleigh Twenty in such pristine shape is that I'm reluctant to make modifications, at least without putting a lot of thought into it.  My approach to vintage bikes has been that I'm not a museum curator, and I purchase my bikes to ride, not to put on display.  But this particular bike has such character that I'm giving serious consideration to making it exclusively a short distance utility bike, and keeping the parts original.

Vehicular Cycling

One of my current projects is working up a set of routes for utility cycling in Atlanta.  I'm focusing on the eastside at first, since I live in the East Atlanta neighborhood, but I hope to include as much of the city as I can realistically explore.  Utility cycling basically means the trips to the store, the laundry, the bank, and any other of the little errand trips one usually makes with an automobile.

As part of this project I'm assembling links to websites I consider useful.  One website I stumbled upon recently is Bicycling Life (click here to enter that site).  The thing that interested me most about the site was that they had a good section on vehicular cycling, which is the principle that (to quote John Forester) "Cyclists Fare Best When They Act And Are Treated As Drivers Of Vehicles."

Bike Year -- Utility Cycling

A few days ago I stumbled onto the Bike Year: a Utility Cycling Experiment site (click here to visit).  Utility cycling is basically using a bicycle to do the sort of errands which most Americans do in a car, such as quick trips to the grocery store.

The blog includes a link to a Wikipedia article defining and describing utility cycling.  Utility cycling is an interesting subcategory of the cycling world, and has different requirements than recreational, exercise, or commuting cycling.  Utility trips are usually shorter, so the emphasis is on the ability to carry things rather efficiency and speed. 

The blogger on the site above made a committment to use a bicycle for utility trips for a year, and write about the experience.

John Finley Scott

I was saddened to learn that one of the pioneering modern American vehicular cyclists, and reportedly the developer of the first known mountain bike, John Finley Scott, has been missing.  Dr. Scott and I carried on banter on the transport-policy discussion list for quite a few years.  I'm an urbanist, and he was a cheerfully acerbic critic of urbanism.  But Dr. Scott was one of the handful of people who staved off the efforts to ban cyclists from the road during the 60's and 70's.  And he made me laugh, even when I was the butt of his humor.  I'll miss him greatly.  The site with the most info I've found about his disappearance is
this page at Bike Friday.