Words Re-written

What sets the human species apart from all other creatures? I believe it is not that we have a superior brain or opposing thumbs, it is language, our ability to communicate with words that can not only be spoken but written too.

I prefer the written word. It can be edited, whereas often the spoken word comes out and cannot be taken back. The old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is seldom true.

“Physical pain we tend to forget, but when someone says something nasty those words are locked away in our memory bank to be brought back along with the hurt, repeatedly. It takes a strong person to recognize that these are only words, and it is our choice to be hurt or offended by them.”

Fond memories can be re-told to others and relived in our own mind. Bad memories often get re-told and are exaggerated, made worse than they originally were. The smart lines and witty come-backs we recite in re-telling the story, are not the words we actually said, but rather what we wish we had said.

Told over and over the stories eventually become our reality. Others will steal our stories, make them their own and retell them until they become their reality. This is how urban myths are born.

“Talk is cheap,” is another common expression. Some can talk for hours and say nothing, certain politicians have honed this to an art form. Words may be cheap, but the cost may be enormous. Say the wrong thing and it can destroy the reputation of a politician or other public figure dearly.

People who talk incessantly miss out on a lot. For one thing by talking continuously they are not letting others express their views. Then when the other person speaks, they are not listening because they are thinking of what they will say next.  

It is only by listening to others that communication pays off. While I am talking, I am only repeating what I already know, whereas a thought from outside my own mind can spark an entirely new line of thinking. I other words, I learn something.

If talk is cheap, the Internet and social media often make words worthless. If someone makes a comment one strongly disagrees with, what is the point in firing off some knee-jerk opposing view? It divides people even more, and you are anonymous, why waste your time? I try to follow my mother’s advice, “If I can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.”

“Silence, it has been said, is golden and can sometimes speak louder than words. Words may say something, but silence can make a more powerful statement. I fail to see the logic in protesting hate speech with more hate speech. Protest in silence and let the other side spew the hated, thus proving your point.”

Or to an angry mob protesting any cause, ignore them in silence and walk on by, I guarantee that protest will fizzle and die in short order. Another wise response I remember from my mother when in my defense I would say, “Well he (or she.) started it.” My mother would always say, “It doesn’t matter who started it, it takes two to make an argument.”

Though talk is cheap, words should not be wasted. Words can heal a person or destroy them. Words can teach or miss-inform. Words can spread love, or they can spread anger and hatred. Words can be both a blessing and a curse, choose them with care.

This is just me trying to say something nice. Say something nice in return or please, say nothing.

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Phillips Cycles

I recently came across an old Bicycle Trade Magazine dated 1952 and read an article about Phillips cycles, a large British bicycle manufacturer back in the days when Britain ruled the world in the bicycle industry, with most of the bikes being made in Birmingham, England.

In 1892 two young men named  J. A. Phillips and E.W. Bohle traveled from Manchester to Birmingham, and went into business making bicycle pedals. Within a few weeks with 25 employees they had to move to a larger premises. Over the next 15 years a number of moves were made, always in order to gain more space. J. A. Phillips gave his name to the company, E.W. Bohle was managing director until the early 1920s.

By the turn of the century the company was making many different bicycle components, and in 1908 they moved to what would become their permanent location on Bridge Street, Smethwick, a district of Birmingham. Three years later they produced their first complete bicycle, and by 1913 where exporting bicycles all over the world at the rate of 1,200 per week.

One year later in 1914 a fire which started in the enameling shop, destroyed the whole factory. It took six years to rebuild and to get back into their former rate of production. The company prospered once more, and by the end of the 1920s the company could proudly say that they sold bicycles in every country of the world with the exception of Russia and Japan.

Ad from British Cycles and Motor Cycles Overseas. Aug-Sept 1952

By 1935 the company opened another factory a half a mile away in Downing Street, Handsworth. The Phillips Company continued to expand until the outbreak of WWII, when in common with the rest of British industry they switched from bicycles to manufacturing munitions and various gun parts.

They produced twenty-millimeter Oerlikon shells at the rate of 81,000 per week at one stage and throughout the war a staggering 89,000,000 shells were produced. They also made Sten gun barrels at the rate of 4,000 per day, and parts for anti-tank guns.

The factory was hit by German bombs at one time, and three acres of the factory roof was blown off, but in six weeks full production was restored. After the war in 1946, the Phillips Company bought another factory that had been a wartime munitions factory in Newtown, Montgomeryshire in Wales.

Phillips Cycles would have probably been at the peak of their success, as production would have been at its highest in 1952 when the magazine article that prompted this piece was published. The company had survived a fire, the Great Depression, and WWII to become the second largest bicycle manufacturer in the UK.

Today the name will be unknown to most but for a few collectors and as a distant memory in the minds of a few old-timers like myself. The bicycle industry World-wide saw a rapid decline though the 1960s and 1970s. As post war economies prospered and the production of automobiles increased, so too the demand for bicycles decreased.

Like many bicycle manufacturers, Phillips did venture briefly into moped production in 1960.

During this period, it was only in third world countries that the masses used bicycles as transport, and by then they were producing their own rather than importing them.

Like so many other UK bicycle brands they were eventually taken over by Raleigh Industries in the early 1980s, (The largest remaining bicycle company.) and soon after the Phillips name disappeared. Raleigh itself is a part of the Tube Investments Group.

A short Wikipedia entry does say that the Phillips name is licensed by Raleigh and the brand is still produced and is known in China, India, and other far eastern countries. So, in a small way the company slogan of, “Renowned the world over,” is still somewhat valid.

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The March of Progress

I first got into bike racing at the age of 16, in 1952. To the present day as I write, that is 69 years of racing bikes, studying and writing about bikes, and designing and building bikes. Looking back over this period, there were very few technological changes in the thirty years from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Frames were brass brazed, lugged steel, built by craftsmen. With standard size steel tubes as they had been for fifty years prior to that. All had level top tubes, it was the framebuilder’s point of reference. An individual could establish his frame size, and after that could buy any make of frame in that size, and it would fit.

There were subtle changes in racing frame geometry, but not so much that all but the most avid bike enthusiast would even know about, and apart from that we went from 5 speed to 6 speed and that was it.

However, in the next thirty or more years that followed, from the 1980s to the present day, the bicycle has changed at an alarming rate, as has technology in general. The mountain bike, indexed gear shifting, which lead to 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 speed, clipless pedals and Carbon fiber frames.

For more than thirty years all professional cyclists and almost all amateur cyclists used Christophe steel toe clips and Binda toe straps. It was a common standard of excellence. Then in the late 1980s clipless or clip in pedals appeared and in a few short years toe clips and straps were obsolete.

That is progress, and yes, I will agree it is an improvement, but imagine how the owners of Christophe and Binda must have felt seeing their lucrative business as the major suppliers of toe clips and straps for the entire world, disappear in a very short period of time.

What has changed is not only the bicycle itself, but the whole structure of the bicycle industry. Individual craftsmen are now obsolete. Racing bicycles are produced by a few large corporations worldwide. Individual craftsmen were content to make a good living wage, which probably accounts for the lack of progress in the first thirty years I speak of.

This can be viewed as a good or bad thing, but bicycle racing is a simple sport and requires a simple machine to participate. Individual builders like myself in the UK and the rest of Europe catered almost exclusively to amateur racing cyclists. Everyone wanted to emulate the professional cyclists and use whatever they were riding.

Everything changed in the 1970s with the “Bike Boom” in America. A few die hard enthusiasts wanted what the pros rode. But to the general American public, the race bike was over geared and very uncomfortable to ride. This is why the Mountain Bike became a huge hit in the 1990s, more comfortable, and easier to ride.

It used to be, “What the Pros rode” that drove the market. Today it is the American leisure market that drives the industry and the pros ride what the corporations who sponsor them, tell them to ride. A wider range of gears is probably the single most technological improvement that has benefited all aspects of cycling.

Now we have E-Bikes, electric assist that takes away the one thing that discourages many people from riding a bike, namely the effort required to do so. I cannot make up my mind whether this is a good or a bad thing.

On the one hand, more bikes on the road is a good thing, but more bikes going faster than they would solely under their own power, without the necessary skillset to safely do so, makes them a danger to themselves and all others on the road. Including people like me who believe the whole joy, and the point of cycling, is going somewhere under one's own effort.

What do you think?

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Rik Van Steenbergen: Road Sprinter Supreme

Rik Van Steenbergen wins the 1948 Paris-Roubaix.

Watching the Paris-Roubaix race this last weekend, I thought of Belgian rider Rik Van Steenbergen, who won the race in spectacular fashion in 1952, beating non other than Fausto Coppi (1952 was the year I started racing and Van Steenbergen was one of the heroes of my youth.) Van Steenbergen had previously won the Paris-Roubaix in 1948. (Picture  above.)

But it was his 1952 win on the same Roubaix track that was perhaps one of Rik Van Steenbergen’s greatest career victories. With 40 Km. to go the Belgian rider was in a group 50 seconds down on a three man break, consisting of Coppi, Kubler, and Jacques Dupont.

On a 5 Km cobble section of the course Van Steenbergen attacked solo out of the chasing group and miraculously bridged the gap.

Towards the finish, Coppi attacked again and again. Kubler was dropped, Dupont punctured, but Van Steenbergen managed to hang on and in the final sprint beat Coppi easily. 

When it comes to cycling champions, history tends to remember the great climbers like Fausto Coppi, Luison Bobet, and Ferdi Kubler, and others who won the Tour de France and other Grand Tours. But Rik Van Steenbergen was a sprinter who won many of the bunch sprints, in the Grand Tours and the Classics of that era.

A big man, 6’ 3” 183 lbs, (190.5 cm 83.18 Kgs.) he had a long professional career that began in war torn Belgium in 1943 and lasted until 1966, Van Steenbergen won 270 times on the road, including 3 World Road Championships, in 1949, 1956 and 1957, all taken in sprint finishes.

He won the Tour of Flanders in his first year as a professional at age 18. He won the same event in 1944 and 1946. The Paris-Roubaix in 1948 and 1952, the Flech-Wallone in 1949 and 1958, Paris-Brussels in 1950, and the Milan-San Remo in 1954.   

(Above.) Rik Van Steenbergen uses his explosive sprint to win the 1954 Milan-San Remo followed home by Anasti, Favero and Coppi.

Van Steenbergen like many great road sprinters was a prolific winner on the track, a total of 715 times including 40 six-day wins. He rode year round, road events spring and summer, and six-day events through the winter.

In spite of this non-specializing he took 15 stage wins in the Giro d’Italia in five appearances, and 4 TDF stage wins in three appearances.

His best Giro result was in 1951 when he finishes second overall behind Italy’s Fiorenzo Magni, beating no less than Ferdi Kubler and Fausto Coppi into 3rd and 4th places respectively. Pretty impressive for a sprinter who was not known for his climbing abilities. 

Rik Van Steenbergen in 1967

The world may never see such a versatile rider again. He was immensely popular. Born in 1924 he died in 2003 at age 78 after a long illness.

His funeral was attended by a veritable who’s who of cycling, including Eddy Merckx, Rik van Looy, Roger De Vlaeminck, Walter Godefroot, Johan De Muynck, Lucien van Impe, Freddy Maertens and Briek Schotte.

Also attending were the UCI president Hein Verbruggen and Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt

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Cycling clothes, 1950s style

The picture above is from 1952, the year I started racing and riding seriously. The photo taken at a British Hill Climb, typically an end of season event taking place around October when temperatures were falling slightly.

Notice what the spectators are wearing, regular everyday clothes. These cyclists probably rode a considerable distance to the event, the only special equipment is the cycling shoes. Corduroy or heavier tweeds were popular in the colder months, being warm, comfortable, and hard wearing.

The thing is these are regular pants or trousers, worn in conjunction with spring steel bicycle clips to keep the bottoms from being caught in the chain.

On the upper body you will notice a mixture of sweaters and light jackets.

In the winter I always wore a woolen undershirt next to my skin, wool stayed warm even when wet from sweat or outside elements. Often when setting out on a ride in the early morning hours, I would place a sheet of newspaper under my top sweater, to keep the cold wind off my chest. Later as the day warmed up, this was discarded.

In the summer cyclists wore regular shorts, and again these were often cut off from a regular pair of street trousers.

The very fact that a person was wearing shorts at all in public, was a sign that they were a serious cyclist. Or someone engaged in some other athletic activity.

Remember this was the 1950s and men usually wore suits and ties. Young boys wore short trousers up until age 13, then most often wore long trousers for the rest of their adult life.

Racing clothes were made out of wool, they were expensive, needed to be hand washed, and took forever to dry. Unlike today, you could not throw them in the drier, or they would become matted and shrink.

No one wore their racing clothes on a training ride. I do remember that when I did put these clothes on to race, they felt so comfortable and unrestrictive that I automatically rode faster.

Racing shorts had a real chamois leather insert inside, and I would smear a handful of Vaseline on it before a race. It felt extremely weird for about the first minute, but then kept me comfortable throughout the race, with zero chaffing.

Even the pros did not wear racing kit for training rides. The picture above is of Fausto Coppi (Left.) with his brother Serse. (Right.) and a few other riders about to set out on a training ride.

The trousers they are wearing would be specially made for cycling, but they are styled after regular street clothes with the exception that they fit just below the knee, and are worn in conjunction with knee length socks. On the top they are wearing a variety of woolen sweaters.

My mother was an expert at sewing, and I would take an old pair of trousers, and have her cut them off just below the knee. She would sew some wide elastic on the bottom to fit under my knee. The material cut from the bottom of the leg, she would make a double seat, which added comfort and made them wear longer.

By the 1970s, proper cycling clothes were available, but there were training clothes and racing clothes. Now it has become acceptable to train or simply ride for pleasure in racing gear. Modern matrials make cycling clothing so easy to wash and care for.

One also has to remember that general fashions change too. I remember some older cyclists would wear a dress shirt and tie to go on a club run. Clothing worn in public now, would have been considered against public decency back in the 1950s and before. Even if one was engaged in an activity like cycling.

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