Major Taylor 1878 - 1932

February being Black History Month, I wanted to remind everyone of this remarkable athlete.

Marshall Walter ("Major") Taylor born in Indianapolis, Indiana was an African American cyclist who won the World One-mile Track Cycling Championship in 1899, 1900, and 1901.

Major Taylor was the second black world champion in any sport, after Canadian boxer George Dixon. 

The Major Taylor Velodrome in Indianapolis, Indiana and a bicycle trail in Chicago are named in his honor.

On July 24, 2006 the city of Worcester, MA changed the name of part of Worcester Center Boulevard to Major Taylor Boulevard

Memorial outside the Worcester Public Library in his adopted hometown of Worcester, MassachusettsMajor Taylor suffered as a result of racial prejudice throughout his career, banned from racing by some promoters, or treated roughly or unfairly by other competitors. The League of American Wheelmen banned black cyclists form membership in 1894.

(Left.) A caricature published in the edition of February 23, 1894 of The Bearings cycling magazine, illustrating the ban from membership of the League of American Wheelmen

However, by competing in an integrated sport, and even being part of an integrated team, Major Taylor paved the way for other black athletes in other sports.

Taylor shakes the hand of competitor Edmond Jacquelin at Paris' Parc des Princes Velodrome in 1901Taylor and Léon Hourlier at a standstill during a race at Paris' Vélodrome Buffalo in 1909Taylor with the Boston pursuit team of 1897; one of the first known photographs of an integrated American professional sports team.

Here are some links to more on Major Taylor:

MajorTaylor.com

The Major Taylor Association

Wikipedia

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Ebay Prices and my Bike Registry

 

It has been over ten years since I opened my “Bike Registry” in August 2010. My blog had started five years earlier in 2005 and a result I was getting emails from owners of bikes I had built. I realized in order to preserve these bikes there needed to be information online, so someone finding one would realize the bike had value, and there were people interested in owning one.

The Registry has worked because there is hardly a week goes by, that I don’t get two or three emails from people who have inherited a Fuso, or another bike I built, or they found one in a yard-sale, and they want to know how much it is worth.

The value of a frame or bike that I built is the amount the owner is prepared to sell it for, and the price the buyer is prepared to pay. It is the same for all vintage bicycles, or for that matter any used item for sale.

I can tell you over the last ten years that my Registry has existed, the price has held steady, on average around $500 or $600. A really nice one in mint condition with top-of-the-line components will occasionally go for $1,000, or even more. But there has to be someone willing to pay that much for a bike that is the size that the buyer needs.

On eBay at the time I am writing this there are five bikes with frames I built, priced between $695 and $2,400, plus $100 to $150 for shipping. The bike that is priced at $2,400 (Pictured above.) has been on eBay for at least three years. It may be worth that much to someone, it is in mint condition, and anyone would be hard pressed to fine a nicer one. Obviously, the owner is holding out for the right buyer.

I always assume that when someone asks me for a value of a bike or frame, they expect to sell in in a reasonable amount of time. Let me tell you a true story.

About a year ago, someone emailed me to tell me they had bought a Fuso at a yard sale for $19 and asked me what it was worth. I told him $500, thinking that this was a nice little return on his investment. Within minutes of sending the email the bike appeared on eBay at a $1,000 “Buy it now” price.

I was a little annoyed, I thought, ‘Why waste my time asking for a valuation.’ Then just to rub it in, the bike sold for $1,000 by the end of that first day, and the seller emailed me to say I had given him bad information.

This is not the end of the story. A little over a week later the person who bought the bike emailed me, excited about his purchase, and wanted to add it to the registry. He sent pictures and asked me how to fix the rusted out top tube guides. Now I felt bad for him, I could not bring myself to tell he had paid way too much for the bike.

I hate to see people get screwed, whether they are buyers or sellers. Had this seller, sold the bike for $500, I would have been happy for his good fortune, and I would not have felt so bad that the buyer had paid $1,000 for what amounts to a piece of rusted out junk.

I do not influence or set prices, and neither does the presence of my Registry. Prices of vintage bikes went down in the crash of 2008, and have yet to go back to what they were prior to that. I remember a year or so before 2008 one of my custom ‘dave moulton’ bikes went for $3,000. I have not seen anything that high since.

Simple supply and demand create the prices. I have a Facebook Group page with about 1,300 members, that is probably the extent of my following. I built 2,400 Fuso frames plus the other brands. There is a good supply out there for anyone who cares to look for one.

If all you can find is a rough one in your size, you can at least ride it until a nicer one comes along, and if you did not overpay for your first bike or frame, you can sell it for what you paid for it. Do not buy vintage frames as an investment. Entered into wisely it can be a rewarding hobby that will bring hours of pleasure and healthy outdoor exercise.

Many bikes that come up for sale have been in storage for years in a garage or storage unit, the owner will ask top dollar for it, but the bike has twenty years of dirt and grime on it. Or they cannot even make an effort to drag the bike outside to take some decent pictures, they post photos of the bike still amongst the clutter it was discovered.

Wash the bike with soap and water as you would a car, do not wipe the dirt off with a dry rag or you will scratch the paint. Chances are if the bike has spent most of its life in storage it will clean up like new and will be worth more.

On the other hand, if the bike has been stored in a barn or shed without climate control, or worse still, outside under a tarpaulin, chances are the aluminum components will be badly corroded, and the frame rusted. The bike still has some value but far less than one in nice condition. However, you may get a hundred dollars or more for it, and someone may get pleasure in restoring it. Rather that than send it to the dump.

If you have one to sell it is your prerogative to ask as much as you feel you can get. You can always come down in price. One suggestion, you start the bidding at $500 or lower and place a reserve on it at $1,000 or whatever you think it is worth and see how high the bidding will go.

If you are a buyer, the prices you see on eBay are what the sellers are asking, not necessarily what the bike is worth, it is worth what you are willing to pay. Join the Dave Moulton Bikes Facebook group it is a good place to find bikes for sale by other DMB enthusiasts who know the true value of bikes I built is not in a dollar amount but the way it feels to ride one.

Here is another article with tips on buying a used bike, and a PDF file you can download and print, on “Packing a bike for shipping.”

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Groups and Friends

It seems to me that within the human psyche there is a need to believe in something.

Common beliefs bring people together as a group and gives the members some comfort in knowing that others agree with their beliefs.

Therefore there is safety within that group, they are among friends. It has always been that way.

For example, people in groups based on where they lived, or where they were from, race, appearance, and religious beliefs.

Today with the Internet and social media it has brought about a situation where people can easily form an infinite number of groups with a vast number of beliefs, not just locally but nationwide and even worldwide.

Conspiracy theories abound, and while some of them might sound ludicrous to an outsider, I ask myself are they any more illogical than some of the religious beliefs? It is just that the various religions have been around for thousands of years and so have gathered a larger following. Therefore they are established and generally accepted.

I have no problem with the principles of religion, in fact the world could use some right now. The problem is all the religions are so out of date. If you take the story of Adam and Eve as “Symbolic,” rather than historical fact. Eating the forbidden fruit from the “Tree of Knowledge,” is a prophecy that the miss-use of knowledge will eventually destroy this planet.

I think what gives me a different perspective is that I have lived half my life in England and half in the United States. My time in America has been split between living on the West Coast and now the South East. You could not find two more diverse cultures with differing political or religious beliefs, and yet I have managed to live harmoniously on both the Left and Right Coast.

I mostly keep my political viewpoints to myself; I do not ask others what their beliefs are. They may ask me my opinions, and I will answer honestly if pressed. Based on those answers people either accept me or not, I do not court or pressure others to accept my viewpoint. I distance myself from anyone who tries to convert me to their point of view.

Having one’s own line of thinking is true freedom, one cannot be totally free as an individual if one is being bought or sold on some market of this or that ideology. We are each and all Free Spirits, with the ability to think independently of others.

People talk a lot about “Individual Freedom,” but if they see an individual exercising their freedom, it makes them a little uncomfortable. Which is probably why many are drawn towards the various groups, to the detriment of society as a whole.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have “One Nation Under God” once more, simply made up of families and groups of friends?

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San Diego Bike Lanes

San Diego has to be the perfect place to ride a bike all the year ‘round, the weather is continually “Nice.” It is also nice to see that the City is making a real effort to make San Diego a “Cycling Friendly” place. Kudo’s to them, however, when a city embarks on an ambitious program like this, it becomes impossible to please everybody, least of all the motorist.

Bike lanes are being installed, some with raised concrete barriers, and plastic posts to separate the cars from the bike lane. The problem is when cars have to turn right across the bike lane, or for that matter a left turn from the opposite direction, to enter a business, or side street.

The cyclist is now in greater danger than if he was on the street without a bike lane. In some cases, there is a row of parked cars outside the concrete curb and plastic posts. Now the situation is even more dangerous as the turning motorist cannot see the cyclist, and the cyclist does not see the car until it is nosing its way across the bike lane.

In a recent article in the San Diego Union Tribune, a city traffic engineer said that the bike lanes were not designed for people who wanted to ride at 20 or 25 mph and made that clear in this statement.

“The design was not meant to make things more convenient for them,” said Abraham Bandegan, the Encinitas traffic engineer who oversaw the project along the coast. “The design was supposed to make life a little bit miserable for them, but now a 6-year-old kid can ride to the beach and feel totally protected.”

I cannot understand how someone without a basic understanding of what bike riding is about, can be placed in charge of designing a major city’s bike lane network? Has Mr. Bandegan never heard of momentum? One cannot ride any distance on a bike at any reasonable speed above a walking pace and keep stopping and starting. It is why there has always been controversy over cyclists rolling through stop signs.

So, the real bike enthusiast, the roadie or commuter riding to work each day is screwed from both sides. 20 or 25 mph is considered too slow the ride in motorized traffic but is too fast to ride in the bike lane. I am not sure if there is a local bylaw that prohibits the cyclist riding in traffic where there is a bike lane, but even if there is not, he will still suffer the wrath of every passing motorist who perceives he should be on the bike lane.

And don’t be so sure that a six-year-old will stop at every intersection, I have seen some that age on electric bikes that will do 15 mph or more. They scare the crap out of me, a child that age has no concept of danger. Don’t tell me that a child won’t get ahead of a parent and blow through an intersection just as a car is turning.  

Last November, a prominent local scientist and experienced cyclist was riding his bike along a protected lane on Leucadia Boulevard when he was fatally struck by a vehicle turning right onto a side street.

Please do not let anyone else die. Local cycling enthusiasts speaking out about the design flaws in these bike lanes are not all arrogant assholes, many are simply frustrated that they know how to fix the problem through everyday experiences, but getting the powers that be to listen, therein lies the problem.

My thanks to Steve Farner, friend, long-time reader and commenter on this blog, for sending the two articles that prompted this post, and are linked in the text. Well worth a read to further understand the issue.

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If Necessity is the Mother of Invention, who is the Father?

Have you noticed how simplest things in life have become high tech when they don’t really need to? For example, the paper towel dispenser.

What was wrong with just pulling on the paper, or operating a simple lever at the side?

Every one of these devices is different, so you stand there like an idiot with your hands dripping wet, trying to figure out where the “electronic eye” is.

Is it on the front, is it underneath? Shouldn’t there be a little red light somewhere? You wave your hands all around this abominable black plastic box. How about one that delivers paper towel when you punch it? Dry your hands and relieve your frustrations at the same time.

Invariably someone will come to your rescue and show you how it operates, making you feel like a total retard. (That used to be a politically incorrect term, but no one ever uses it to refer to a mentally challenged person anymore, it is only used when referring the type of person who can’t operate a stupid paper towel dispenser.)

Why make the simple things in life high tech, when there is no good reason other than we can? Or because we have the technology. The makers of these “Black Box” towel dispensers will argue that by eliminating the handle, they eliminate a source of germs that could re-contaminate our clean hands.

Now wait a minute, every person using the towel dispenser has clean hands. They have just washed them, that’s why they need a paper towel. And, anyway after sterilizing our hands thoroughly, we grab the filthy door handle as we leave. 

Why do we need electric can openers? One of the times we really need a can opener is during an emergency when the power is out. And the bicycle, one of the simplest and most efficient machines man has ever invented, is being made more and more complicated.

To be honest, it took me many years to get over index shifting in the late 1980s. At the time, I was in step with the European cycling community who scoffed at the idea, as did Campagnolo. This was tantamount to a violinist needing marks on the neck of the fiddle to show where to place your fingers.

Of course, the engineers at Shimano knew better. They knew that in America there were people who actually did not know how to operate a friction shift lever. Maybe they had great foresight and could see this same nation of people, who in the future, would not be able to operate a paper towel dispenser.

I always felt that index shifting was developed to cater to the “Instant Gratification” element. Nothing that requires a degree of skill, gives instant gratification. Muffing gear changes on a hill is no fun, but then neither is learning to play a musical instrument. However, the rewards are far greater once you master the skill. The satisfaction of doing something other people cannot, for a start. 

In the case of indexed shifting, Shimano was proved to be right, and Campagnolo spent years playing catch up. I will agree that indexed shifting has developed into something that is useful to all cyclists, including the pros. No one wants to go back to friction shifting, even old farts purists like me.

When I started cycling in the 1950s, racing bikes were the exact same machines as those ridden by the Pros in the Tour de France. It was like that up into the 1980s. What the professionals used, dictated what was sold on the open market. If you were a newbie and wanted to ride a racing bike, you had to deal with friction shifting. There was nothing else.

The mountain bike changed all that. Here was a whole new animal, and a whole new breed of cyclist. They were not trying to emulate the pros in the Tour de France, and they didn’t want to learn friction shifting. So indexed or click shifting came first to the mountain bike, then the road bike. This led to more and more gears. This was not necessarily a bad thing, although I think they should have stopped at 10 gears, no one really needed 11 or more.

Today, it is no longer what the pros ride and want, but rather what the corporations that sponsor the pros want them to ride. And that is, new stuff they can sell to the American leisure rider.

A prime example is Disc Brakes. The pros don’t really want them but they were forced on them. I have never used disc brakes, so I can’t speak from experience. I understand they work better than caliper rim brakes in wet conditions. But I do know enough about bikes, to know that the last thing I need in the wet is more stopping power when the real problem is the tires gripping the road.

If it is raining, I can lock my wheels up without even trying, with my old tech caliper brake. I do not need a brake that will lock my wheels up a split second faster.

There is an old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” I always wondered who the Father was. Today I know the father is the one who takes something simple that works, and fucks with it to make something that is more complicated, costs more, and does not necessarily work any better.

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