Yes Indeedy, Let's All Go Tweedy

Washington, DC gets its first Tweed Ride on November 15th. That's only 9 days from now. No time to waste to get the roadster ready and find which of my tweedy clothes still fit me. What's a Tweed Ride? It's a deliberately old-fashioned event in which the participants, dressed in tweeds and other non-lycra, pre-modern cycling attire, ride old bikes, preferably of the English roadster or sports 3-speed persuasion. Tweed rides are intended to be fun, relaxed, and recreate the spirit of cycling of an earlier generation.

Over the past year or two I have noticed a number of activities based on the English upright bicycle and its relatives and descendants. Notable among these are the Lake Pepin Three-Speed Tour in Minnesota, and various tweed rides in Boston, New York and elsewhere. Many are included in the links in the right-hand column of this blog. One thing all of them had in common is that they were happening somewhere other than where I was. At last, we have one here in our nation's capital. Let's get a lot of riders out for this.

I've put it on my calendar and I plan to be there, suitably attired and riding my Raleigh Roadster. I have not ridden an upright bike since my accident in June, other than to stand over one and confirm that my arm still wasn't up to it. However, my arm is improving rapidly. The recumbent trike seems to provide a very good therapy for my arm without overstraining it. Accurate steering requires some muscle (trikes tend to wander side to side), but I don't have to support any weight on my arms. I've been anticipating when I might try riding a bike again. The Roadster is probably the easiest one to start with; with its great stability and very low balance speed, it's probably the safest thing on two wheels. If my test ride shows I can do it, I'll bring it along. If not, at least my trike is from Britain, (Cornwall, to be exact). So far as I can tell, the tadpole trike was a British invention. Plus, it's easy to ride in whatever clothes you like.

Trike Out, Trike In

Bicycle fanatics will have to excuse my writing about a motor vehicle today. However, if you stick with me, I think you’ll find it has some relevance.

I’ve often commented on the resemblance between a recumbent tadpole tricycle and a Morgan Three Wheeler. What I’ve not mentioned here—indeed many of my friends had never heard it—is that I had owned a Morgan Three Wheeler, an example of the famous Aero model, since 1982. I sold my third (and last) Model A Ford to pay for it. The Morgan was a project car, a basket case (haul it away in baskets) that had been passed from owner to owner without ever being restored. So far as could be determined, it was built between October 1926 and March 1927, and thus it was a 1927 model, Morgan beginning their model years in October at that time. Morgan’s highest-production year was 1927—they built 1700 cars. Very few of that vintage survive. Three-wheeled Morgans were made from 1909 to 1952. Perhaps 1200 exist today, but only about 200 of the survivors are earlier than 1933. There are perhaps 50 to 100 of the Aero model in all the world, and I was very excited to own one of them. It was the only true vintage (meaning 1919-29) sports car I could afford, the price of 1920s Bentleys and the like having long been in a bracket with real estate.

Morgan celebrated their 100th anniversary this year in England. Today they are the world’s one remaining traditional British sports car, the world’s only privately-owned car company, only family-owned car company, and perhaps the largest British-owned car company—on an average production of perhaps 500 cars a year. Everything bigger in the British motoring industry has been bought up by foreigners.

The Aero fascinated me. It appealed to my fondness for light, simple, efficient machinery, which is also a part of my love of cycling. In the first few years that I owned it, I did a lot of work to restore it. I found all the rare parts and had them refurbished. But it stalled out, as many restorations do, at the low point when everything is apart and it seems a long way uphill to get it all back together again. There are perhaps more antique cars in that condition than there are in running order. Then my priorities, career, interests, financial situation, residence and other vehicles had all changed. Occasionally I got interested in doing something about the Aero, but generally it just sat in storage and nothing happened. Periodically someone would inquire about buying it, but never, it seemed, at a price I wanted to accept. But finally, this year, one of my friends in the Morgan club was willing to give me what I estimated I had spent on it. By now, with other life plans in mind, I was ready to part with it. And so on August 22nd the deal was done.

It felt strange to have it go. Eager as I was to make the sale, I had moments of wanting to call it all off. But I knew better than to do that. I needed to get it out of my life, to lighten the load so I could proceed with my plans to move and enter new phases of life in new places.

And I had a use for the money too, most of which was used to pay off debts. On August 24th, I took delivery of my Trice QNT recumbent trike. Trike out, trike in.

Cleared for Takeoff

On Wednesday, August 5th, I had my one-month-after-surgery appointment with my orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Gordon Avery. He set my "bionic" elbow brace to allow more degrees of movement, said I don't have to wear the brace when I'm at home, and told me to start physical therapy next week. I asked him whether I was recovered enough to ride a recumbent tadpole trike, showed him a picture of one and demonstrated how the arms are used for steering. He said, "that looks like therapy!" So I plan to order a Trice QNT this week--delivery time is about a week and a half. This is an act of faith that the money I have scheduled to come in around the end of August does indeed come in on schedule.

An accountant friend had said a few weeks ago that the trike might even be deductible. That would be gravy. Now, having put off ordering it for months, I am impatient for it to arrive. I had planned to order it so as to have it by today (this being the soonest I might have been recovered enough to ride it) but I waited as I wanted to delay the expense and there was no need to have it sooner than I could use it. I was also finalizing my list of options on it. I missed my deadline to order it in a custom color (this adds three weeks to delivery time and I want to have it before the end of August) but the standard colors will do. Even though it will look like many others of the same kind, there aren't all that many of them around for it to look like.

Sometimes I wonder if I will really use it enough to make the investment worthwhile, or if it is just too geezerly to ride it instead of a bicycle--which I can't do for another few months anyway. On Monday I saw a Trice being ridden in Alexandria, and I have heard from an owner in Falls Church through the Triceriders Yahoo Group (which seems to be mainly UK-based, as is Trice itself). The local dealer tells me they've sold a lot of them this summer. Friends report trike spottings. I am not alone.

The Bionic Bicyclist

"It's the Bionic Man!" seems to be the universal response to anyone's first sight of my new elbow brace.

It's been decades since Steve Austin and the first use of slow motion to indicate movement faster than the eye can see, and people still remember. Presumably Steve still runs somewhere in the recycled wasteland of cable TV. On the few occasions when I watch TV, I simply get clear why I don't watch it.

The elbow brace protects the repaired area and keeps my arm movement within safe limits--currently 20 to 75 degrees--while it heals. It is a lot better than the cast that I was told I might need. I have more use of my arm and I can remove the brace for showering. The worst part is putting it on myself one-handed, though this is improving with practice.

My doctor has a great technique for preparing me for what may happen. He tells me the worst and lets me get used to it. What's actually happened has usually been better than what he prepared me for.

I asked him what arm movements to avoid (other than what the brace won't let me do) and he said, "don't push." Sometimes I forget. The other day I tripped on something in my living room and put my right arm out to grab the couch and stop falling. That gave me some scary moments worrying I might have damaged the repair. My arm has been painful off and on. I am dealing with it with acetaminophen and grit. I'm back to work. My left arm has become strong and skillful.

Cycling content (this is a cycling blog after all): I went to the trike dealer after I got the elbow brace. They can get a Trice trike for me in a week and a half, add three weeks for a custom color (I have been considering orange to match the Great Pumpkin). I'm thinking to time my order to take delivery at the time I could start riding it. I still have concerns about the cost. I'd like another home sale in the pipeline or to have sold off some surplus bikes before I commit the money to a trike. And I need to reconfirm that I'd be able to ride one sooner than I could ride a bike. While riding an upright bike requires more arm strength than a recumbent, because the arms are used to brace the rider on an upright, the underseat steering of a trike is still done with a push-pull arm motion. It's possible to push only with the left arm, but I'd have to remember never to push with the right until it is healed enough to use. Well, it's early yet. I've only had the brace for 6 days. It's another 17 to my next appointment. Time and patience are required to recover from this. Long-term recovery is the objective, more important than a few missed months of riding. That's what I tell myself every time a bike goes by.

Splat Update

Thanks to everyone who has sent me expressions of concern about my June 14th bicycling accident and good wishes for my recovery from surgery to repair the ruptured triceps tendon on my right elbow. Here is an update to my earlier article “Life Goes Splat” posted on June 26.

The surgery was performed on Monday, July 6th and went well. My arm is in a splint for the first week. Next Monday I will have the stitches out and determine whether it needs to be in a cast. It will be immobilized in some manner for a further three weeks. Then I will have to limit use of it while it finishes healing.

I will not be able to ride an upright bicycle for three to four months. However, my orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Gordon Avery, said I could ride an underseat-steering recumbent in a month, because it is easier on my arms—they do not have to brace me in position or support any weight. I’m committed to my fitness and will continue exercising in whatever ways I can while recovering.

This week I am resting at home, taking the prescribed medications, and doing such work as I can by phone and online, between naps. Once the post-surgical pain has reduced to a level that I can manage without strong drugs, I will be back to work and the normal activities I can do with an arm in a sling.

One thing I am also committed to is having positive outcomes from this experience that would not have occurred without it. One that has already shown up is that I had no idea how many people cared about me. I’ve always had it that I could disappear and no one would notice—that I’d be immediately forgotten. Indeed, I’ve had it that no one even thinks of me when I am not there, and that I have no influence on anyone. I’ve been proven wrong, and I’m glad of it. Thank you all.

Who Inspires You?

Take a look in your local bookstore and you might get the impression that Lance Armstrong is the only guy who ever rode a bicycle. In our spectator society, there are the few that do and the many that watch. The watchers think, "I could never do that," and maybe there are some who think, "I could do that," and even one or two who actually get inspired to get off the couch and do it.

I'm not particularly inspired or daunted by Lance. Not to take away from his remarkable achievements as a cyclist, combined with his remarkable achievements as a cancer survivor. It's just that I have no particular urge to race bicycles; my interests are in other kinds of cycling. I do like to go fast, and I like to match the pace of fast riders when I encounter them--especially when they pass me in all their lycra-clad gaudiness. It's just that I am more interested in being able to ride long distances, going somewhere interesting, or in using my bike to go where I am already going, than in competition. I am certainly aware that others feel differently about it. A lady I know who has won a number of mountain bike races told me she had hardly ever ridden once she stopped competing. And for her, a racer like Lance is an inspiration. But today I want to tell you about some people whom I find inspiring.

In today's Washington Post there was an article about an elderly gentleman, Larry "Curly" Haubner, celebrating his birthday in the assisted living facility where he now resides. The incident that resulted in his moving into said facility was a bicycling accident, in which he broke his hip. He was 102 at the time. The birthday he celebrated yesterday was his 107th. He is fit, healthy, mentally alert and highly articulate. He attributes his long life to good diet and exercise. His biggest problem seems to be that he has outlived his money, and lives in Virginia, one of eight states that do not allow Medicare to pay for assisted living. The article did not say whether he still rides his bicycle. I hope he does.

Then there's my friend Zoe. She is, to put it politely, a big girl--a very big girl. Not long ago she mentioned she had bought herself a bicycle and was riding it. Last night as I was leaving the seminar in which we are both participants, I saw Zoe and another equally large lady preparing to ride their bicycles home. They were wearing helmets, the bikes were properly set up (and in an appropriate gear) and had lights on them. Zoe told me she had already lost 20 pounds so far. She wants to add fenders, a rack and better lights to her bike. It's an honor to assist someone like Zoe to find them.

One of the great things about bicycling--one which made it suspect when it was invented in the class-conscious 19th century--is its egalitarianism. Bikes are relatively inexpensive, easy to care for and store, and rideable by just about anyone. They were the first experience of personal mobility--going somewhere other than on foot or by paying to ride in someone else's conveyance--that most people in that time had ever had. And I will never forget the feeling of freedom that my first bicycle gave me--a feeling I have never entirely lost.

Just about anyone, you ask? What about those whose physical abilities are, we might say, limited compared to the rest of us?

One afternoon on the bike trail, I was, with considerable effort, making my way up a long hill. In front of me was a man on a recumbent three-wheeler, who seemed to make light work of it. I could scarcely keep up with him. Not only did he appear to be quite a bit older than I was, but he was propelling himself with his hands operating grips in place of pedals on the cranks, which were positioned in front of his chest. He had no legs. He was outpacing me, up a hill, on a handcycle. Such a sight is both humbling and inspiring. I don't know who he was and I haven't seen him in a while. I hope he's still riding.

So what's stopping you? You got a better excuse than they do? I don't really want to hear it. It's just a story anyway. Get out and ride.

Life Goes Splat

Sunday, June 14, 2009 was a beautiful day. I held an open house that afternoon, one that was successful enough to justify staying there on a day when I would otherwise have been outdoors. People kept arriving and I stayed open an hour and a half past the scheduled closing time. Then I had papers to deliver to my office. I decided that with three hours to go until sunset and nothing else I had to do there, I would bicycle to my office, thus getting in a ride on this pretty evening. I set off on the Schwinn Sierra commuter. I made the left turn onto Lee Highway from Quincy Street (which avoided a hill), and immediately a car with a loud exhaust passed me a bit too close for comfort. I decided to get off the street onto the sidewalk, much as I dislike riding on sidewalks—it enhances the motorists’ opinion that bicycles do not belong on streets. On this stretch of Lee Highway, the speed limit is 35 but the traffic speed is more like 50. I headed into a gas station (the nearest access to the sidewalk), and caught the lip of the driveway, perhaps an inch high, at too low an angle and speed to go up it. The bike tripped and went down on its right side. I landed on the point of my right elbow and the heel of my right hand. I felt something go in my elbow as I hit. Immediately two guys in the gas station ran to me and offered assistance. I refused their offers to help me up, lay as I had fallen and took inventory. I saw no open wounds, only a mild road rash on my arm from landing. No visibly broken bones. My arm bones seemed intact. My hand, protected by my cycling gloves, was a little sore but not really hurt. My head, in its helmet, never got near the ground. But the tip of my elbow moved around like a kneecap. I tried my arm and I could move it. I was going to hurt later, but I didn’t yet. Meanwhile my would-be helpers were shouting offers of assistance at me. Did I need to call an ambulance (no, it’s not that serious—besides, I thought, I don’t need to lose the bike on top of this, by leaving it while I go off in an ambulance). Could they call someone I knew for help (there’s no one to call). Finally I was ready to stand up. The bike was undamaged except for a scrape on the right brake lever. I evaluated my situation. Although I was more than halfway to my destination, it seemed foolhardy to continue there. I needed to get the bike back home and evaluate my options. I managed to ride home, carefully and using the left hand to brake. I’ve been in the process of changing my brakes around on all my bikes to use the right lever for the front, European style, but hadn’t yet on this one, so I had the use of the better brake.

I arrived back home and put the bike in the garage. I still had work to do. I was likely to be in more pain the next day. The work needed to be done. I got in my car, drove to the office, and did the work. By the time I was done, my elbow was swollen up and I was starting to hurt enough to distract me. I drove back home and began looking up places to get treated. In my mind this was still not an emergency—that would have been a compound fracture or bleeding wounds or inability to use my arm. I thought it was not severe enough for the emergency room, that they would think I should not have come there with it, and I had no taste for sitting around in an emergency room waiting area all night anyway. Plus I was worried about the cost. One of the casualties of my reduced income had been my health insurance, that I had worked so hard to get in 2005 (during another health scare). Now that I was making money again, it had, ironically, already been on my to-do list for Monday to call up and get reinstated. This did me no good now. So I looked up the hospital urgent care facility, saw that they did not even do x-rays at night, and went to bed planning to go there in the morning.

Next day (Monday the 15th) I went to the Arlington Hospital urgent care facility. They X-rayed my arm and confirmed there was a bone chip, looking like an island off the coast of my elbow. They splinted my arm and gave me a referral to Commonwealth Orthopaedics. Soonest appointment I could get with them was Wednesday afternoon. I continued to work on Tuesday and Wednesday until my appointment.

I had taken pot luck on which doctor was available—knowing nothing about any of them—and ended up with one of the best in the business, Dr. Gordon Avery. He said he was not concerned about a bit of calcium loose in my arm, but after he had me try moving my arm in various ways, he said he thought I had detached the triceps muscle. That requires surgery and further treatment that he estimated would cost $10,000. He prescribed an MRI to make sure. I left to digest this news and get the MRI.

I had told Dr. Avery that I was not in much pain, except when I moved my arm the wrong way. The rest of the week I was in a lot more pain, which I took care of with ibuprofen and fortitude. I continued working. I had to sell my way out of this. Fortunately $10,000 is an amount I can at least see how to earn, although I would have had other uses for it. And I did reapply for health insurance. I considered myself lucky. This was my wake-up call from the universe, telling me to get this handled before something really serious happened. Two of my friends, last winter, slipped and fell and had compound leg fractures that were costly to repair and rendered them unable to work for several months. I could still work and take care of myself. I am largely ambidextrous, although this tested it to the limit.

It was Monday evening, the 22nd, before I got the MRI, a new experience for me and one I hope never to have again. It was like spending a relaxing evening inside a torpedo tube, accompanied by loud electronic music. I did not consider myself particularly claustrophobic, but it was all I could do to stay in there and go through with it. I told myself that I needed to do it, closed my eyes and listened for patterns in the noises the machine made. Finally it was over. Afterwards my arm felt so much better that I thought perhaps I had escaped with only the chipped bone.

I was not so lucky. Next day I talked with Dr. Avery about the results. I had indeed torn off one of the three attachments of the triceps to my elbow. Surgery is needed within the next two weeks. I am awaiting a call from their scheduler. It’s outpatient surgery, a day trip to the hospital. Then I’ll be in a cast for a month, then have to limit use of my right arm for another six to eight weeks. So I won’t be riding a bicycle the rest of the summer.

I’ve delayed posting this, as people close to me read my blog and I did not want to alarm them unnecessarily about something they could do nothing about. It even occurred to me that by the next scheduled family event at the end of August, I’d be out of a cast and they would never need to know. Eventually I saw that withholding this would not work—it would only get harder to hide. It was inconsistent, anyway—I wasn’t hiding it from everyone I know. Maybe I was simply not willing to admit to my family that I’d been stupid enough to be caught without health insurance.

Now I’m concentrating on selling an additional $500,000 to cover the cost. There’s another irony in this too. Since March, I’ve been interested in getting a recumbent tadpole trike, just because they are fun. I haven’t yet mainly due to the cost, as well as considering whether I would really get the use out of it. And lately I’d gotten fired up about bicycles again, building the new Surly and refurbishing the Grand Prix. Now I have a condition that will prevent me from riding a bicycle for three months. My immediate concern is to maintain and improve upon my physical conditioning and weight, so I will need to find alternative forms of exercise and go on an even stricter diet. However, I could ride a recumbent trike a lot sooner than I will be able to ride a bicycle, because of the way that the arms are used. So now I have a reason to get one. At the same time, I have to meet the medical costs—and I was concerned before about how to pay for a trike. However, after paying ten grand in medical bills, the price of a Trice (about $3,600) will seem like dessert. I intend to be riding one as soon as possible.

Make Mine a Triple

At Le Cirque du Cyclisme, I was inspired by the beautiful bikes. I've always been a sucker for good machinery. I remember my first sight decades ago of high quality bikes in a shop, where I had gone in search of a simple utilitarian transportation bike. Two weeks later I had my first drop bar lightweight. It happens that while I sometimes think the bike enthusiasts go too far in the direction of "jewelry with wheels on," I also succumb to the charms of a pretty bike that also does its job well. For me, that's always tempered with practicality and rideability.

Recently I've been interested in getting a recumbent tadpole trike. These are expensive--comparable to a better grade bicycle and indeed less than many of those, but still more than I have ever paid for a bike. I looked at my bike fleet and concluded that I could sell off some of those to help defray the cost. One of those I thought of selling was my 1986 Raleigh USA Grand Prix, which I would not need once my new Surly was complete. It seemed to me that I would only need one conventional bike and one trike. I was all set to sell off the Grand Prix until I made the mistake of riding it again. It's just too nice, with its lugged Reynolds 531 butted frame. In fact, my only complaint about it has been that it doesn't have the low gears I want for hill climbing. It has a perfectly good road crank typical of its vintage, with 130mm bolt spacing so little rings don't fit. In back, it has a six-speed freewheel in a range of 14-24. In what Brian Buffini calls "a blinding flash of the obvious," I thought that a triple crank, such as I used on the Surly, would be the answer. And I am reminded of why I used a triple crank on my tourer in 1974.

Back then we had 5 cogs in back--what is now called a road bike was known as a 10 speed. Most bikes came with a 40-52 chainring combination and a fairly wide range rear set--often 14-34 or so. This allowed the bikes to be ridden in any terrain, but the gears were often uncomfortably far apart, especially if you were riding in flat country. In South Florida, where I was then, discerning riders fitted close ratio freewheels, since hills were not an issue and that way we got lots of closely spaced gears suited to the local conditions. Racers tended to ride these kinds of gears anyway, even in hillier places, relying on their strength to climb hills or using different gearing--even different bikes--in steeper places. When I built my tourer, I wanted to be able to have close ratios and still be able to handle grades with a loaded bike. The only way to do this at the time was with a triple crankset, which was then rather uncommon. There were only two brands of crank at the time that would do this--TA and Stronglight--and my bike attracted a lot of comments.

Nowadays, we can put 10 cogs on the back wheel (although I limit mine to 8 for practical reasons) and triple cranks are everywhere. When I put a triple on my Surly plus an 8-speed Sheldon Brown touring cassette on the back, I ended up with gears lower than I am likely to need--I could have used a double crank and gotten the range I had with a triple in 1974. Well, the difference in price between a Sugino double and triple is only $10 and I don't have to use the small ring even if it is there. But on the 6-speed freewheel of the Grand Prix, it makes sense. With a triple crank and some fenders to go with the Nitto Noodle bars and Suntour Barcons it got last year, the Grand Prix can change from club racer to randonneur.