Bicycle Diaries

Outa' the Loop with Bikes and Books

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:05:00 +0000

I like to bike and I like to read … a lot on both counts. I really like to read about bikers who travel way beyond the city limits or who, more importantly, reach beyond their intellectual horizons. As long as it’s on a bike, I'm in. I'll read it; but there are seven books I can read over and over and over again. There’s Le Surmâle by Alfred Jerry, the French proto-Surrealist. Written in 1902 about a six-man bicycle racing a train, it hugs together his three obsessions: sex, alcohol, and cycling (Midnight Marauders anyone?) Like Jerry, Dervla Murphy carries a revolver while biking. Unlike our Parisian, she leaves her native land far behind in 1962. In Full Tilt: Ireland to India on a Bicycle, she describes the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central Asia during these regions’ worst winter in two decades (now that’s Bike Winter).

At least Dervla returned (four years later she wrote In Ethiopia with a Mule). Frank Lenz never did. The American accountant turned long-distance cyclist disappeared in eastern Turkey in 1894. David Herlinhy’s The Lost Cyclist reminds us how the now forgotten Lenz not only inspired later cyclists and motorcyclists to circumnavigate the globe. He was also an early champion of the safety bicycle. Perhaps it takes a woman or a good Jewish mother from Boston. One year later Annie Londonderry negotiates a lucrative contract to promote bottled water (!) and circles the globe (!!), as told by Peter Zheutlin in Around The World On Two Wheels (BTW, her revolver had pearl grips).

A bit more Downton Abbey is Three Men on a Bummel, the "Mother of All Tweed Rides". Jerome K. Jerome follows up his enormously successful Three Men in a Boat (… no shit) with this Grand Bicycle Tour through Germany’s Black Forest in 1900. Imagine Wooster & Jeeves meets Colonel Klink & Sergeant Schultz (again … no shit). A bit more Monty Python is Flann O'Brien’s The Third Policeman. Whether it's a ‘60s thriller or a tradition vs. modernity polemic this has got to be the only of literary work where the romantic lead is played by a “bicycle of unusual perfection”. Other bike books come and go for me but, like I said, these I can read again and again at home … or in bars. One place I’d like to do that one-day is in Portland, way beyond my suburban limits. And when I do, I can Hop in the Saddle with Lucy Burningham’s and Ellee Thalheimer’s guide to Portland's craft beer scene.

Flann O'Brien wrote People who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles … get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle. And so it's the same with bike books. What are your favs? Why? Make this a robust resource with your comments below!

The Steel Bitch is Back!

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:48:00 +0000

at our 4th Annual Guy Fawkes Bonfire

Tweed Ride

10 November 2010

The Big ... 5 ... 0 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:30:00 +0000

B'day at the Lake Pepin 3speed Tour!

The Man ...

and his Machine!

11.11.11

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:14:00 +0000

A bastard finally caught

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Fri, 27 May 2011 11:17:00 +0000

and another
has a new cellmate!

Serbian President Boris Tadić confirmed during a news conference in Belgrade that Hague fugitive Ratko Mladić has been arrested.

It's been a long, long time...

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:02:00 +0000

and so much
has been happening!

a new bike

a new marriage

and
a whole new spring

Rilke, Tolstoy, and travel...

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:33:00 +0000

your house is just
this side of great distances

Of course this has to do with bikes and books ... but first, I figure about half of you out there use Internet Explorer to view Bicycle Diaries. Microsoft's nefarious product doesn't load it very well. It often center justifies the posts putting the right sidebar all the way down to the bottom of the page. Try instead Mozilla Firefox as your browser. It's FREE, only taking a few minutes to load. It also has a great reputation in contrast to the Windows-based Explorer.

Someone who wants to run Windows on servers should first be made to show what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo and Amazon don't know.
Paul Graham

You'll not only see my blog as I intend it to be viewed. You and your computer will both be very happy. Firefox is more secure against viruses and hackers as well as less buggy than Explorer.

Speaking of explorers, I've been wanting to post one of my favorite poems about travel.

Entering

Whoever you are: step out in the evening
from your room where all is known to you;
your house is just this side of great distances:
whoever you are.
With your eyes which, exhausted,
barely free themselves from the worn threshold,
you raise up, slowly, a black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you've made the world. And it is vast
and like a word which ripens still in silence.
And as your will begins to grasp its meaning,
your eyes release it gently.

In 1900 Rainer Maria Rilke, a rather restless traveler, sought refuge with Leo Tolstoy at his ancestral estate, Yasnaya Polyana. Rilke, only 25 years old, already had an impressive array of publications to his credit. Unfortunately, this had done almost nothing to help his anxieties about writing. He shared them Tolstoy; later describing their conversation in a letter to friend,

I still lack the discipline, the being able to work, and the being compelled to work, for which I have longed for years. Do I lack the strength? Is my will sick? Is it the dream in me that hinders all action? Days go by and sometimes I hear life going. And still nothing has happened, still there is nothing real about me . . . .

To which Tolstoy gave a completely unexpected response. With neither sympathy nor pity, he simply said, Write!

Tolstoy could have easily said, bike! At the age of 67, he started teaching himself to ride. Visitors to Yasnaya often commented rather humorously on the sight of the aging anarchist rolling around his estate. Tolstoy was as brief in his response to them as he had been to Rilke.

I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy.

their passions a quotation

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:48:00 +0000

w/apologies
to Oscar Wilde

As I hit the mid-February dull-drums, I've been turning my head towards spring with a little restoration project. It's not only keeping me from self-medicating the darkness away in my local neighborhood joint. There's nothing like scouring several decades worth of rust off steel rims for ruminating about the vélotariat.

Why do researchers who've never been on Critical Mass write as if it just popped out of nowhere on the streets of America?
Why do they typically recycle masser statements about the anarchy and celebration without ever going deeper beneath the surface?
And why do they never explain the mass's staying power, now in it's second decade and spreading around the world?

In other words, where the hell did the mass come from and where the hell is it going?

The simple answer is that Critical Mass began in 1992 in San Francisco. Seven years later, it appeared in Chicago. Most academic research concludes that it's the anarchistic step-child of the aging hippies and student protesters of the 60s. That's usually where it ends.

Although a good start, refusing to go further ignores the rich history of bike activism both during and after the heyday of counter-culture America. In Chicago, Keith Kingbay was bugging Mayor Daley the Elder for bike lanes which first went in the early 1970s. Hippy longhair? Wild-eyed radical? Not in the least: Keith was the Cycling Activities Director for the Schwinn Bicycle Company and member of President Nixons's Council on Physical Fitness.

So where to go from here? On to Humboldt Park. Lula's was getting ready for the dinner rush. I decamped to the Black Beetle Bar & Grill in Humboldt Park. There I discovered an obscure (to Americans at least) Parisian group that gave the May 1968 student revolt its intellectual uhmpf. And quite surprisingly, Kingbay seems to have been familiar with many of their essays.

Led by Guy Debord, The Situationists came down hard on Western society. France had finally emerged from the poverty and despair of the post-WWII period. Rebuilding war-ravaged cities and villages was almost complete. Unemployment was virtually non-existent. Under De Gaulle, France was a serious US Cold War partner. The baby-boom generation was flooding the universities ... and it was bored, angry, and primed for action.

In contrast to today's conservative revisions of history, the Situationists were much more than a group of spoiled middle class kids. The French were in Algeria. The Soviets were in Czechoslovakia. The US was in Viet Nam. Countries in Africa and Latin America were struggling for national independence or true sovereignty from former colonial masters. Western governments, as well as the traditional opposition parties that did little real opposing, demanded loyalty, rather than questions, from their supporters. They specifically demanded young people to Sois Jeune et Tais Tois, or Be young and shut up.

It was a mistake to say the least. In this grossly patronizing atmosphere, youthful opposition to foreign policy quickly grew into an overall critique of Western society. Like the revolutionary movements of the 1920s and 1930s the Situationists focused on the power of capitalism, propped up by the state, to overwhelm individual freedom. Unlike their predecessors who sought to revolutionize politics, they sought to revolutionize life itself.

Raoul Vaneigem, in The Revolution of Everyday Life, observed that poverty in modern Western society went deeper than simple economic depravation. Social conventions, reinforced by political institutions and an all-encompassing media, compelled individuals to not only consume but what to consume and how. Locked in this daily routine of consumption, life was futile, barren, and dull.

The history of our times calls to mind those Walt Disney characters who rush madly over the edge of a cliff without seeing it, so that the power of their imagination keeps them suspended in mid-air; but as soon as they look down and see where they are, they fall.

What does this have to do with Critical Mass? The creative, spontaneous, and joyful potential of the human imagination was crushed everywhere in Western societies especially on the very streets of its large cities. Well before the San Fancisco Critical Mass, Debord highlighted the subtle connections between what he called the Spectacle of modern life and the automobile. In fact, his nine Situationist Theses on Traffic reads as if it were a Critical Mass manifesto.

1. A mistake made by all the city planners is to consider the private automobile (and its by-products, such as the motorcycle) as essentially a means of transportation. In reality, it is the most notable material symbol of the notion of happiness that developed capitalism tends to spread throughout the society. The automobile is at the center of this general propaganda, both as supreme good of an alienated life and as essential product of the capitalist market: It is generally being said this year that American economic prosperity is soon going to depend on the success of the slogan "Two cars per family."

2. Commuting time, as Le Corbusier rightly noted, is a surplus labor which correspondingly reduces the amount of "free" time.

3. We must replace travel as an adjunct to work with travel as a pleasure.

4. To want to redesign architecture to accord with the needs of the present massive and parasitical existence of private automobiles reflects the most unrealistic misapprehension of where the real problems lie. Instead, architecture must be transformed to accord with the whole development of the society, criticizing all the transitory values linked to obsolete forms of social relationships (in the first rank of which is the family).

5. Even if, during a transitional period, we temporarily accept a rigid division between work zones and residence zones, we must at least envisage a third sphere: that of life itself (the sphere of freedom and leisure — the essence of life). Unitary urbanism acknowledges no boundaries; it aims to form an integrated human milieu in which separations such as work/leisure or public/private will finally be dissolved. But before this is possible, the minimum action of unitary urbanism is to extend the terrain of play to all desirable constructions. This terrain will be at the level of complexity of an old city.

6. It is not a matter of opposing the automobile as an evil in itself. It is its extreme concentration in the cities that has led to the negation of its function. Urbanism should certainly not ignore the automobile, but even less should it accept it as its central theme. It should reckon on gradually phasing it out. In any case, we can envision the banning of auto traffic from the central areas of certain new complexes, as well as from a few old cities.

7. Those who believe that the automobile is eternal are not thinking, even from a strictly technological standpoint, of other future forms of transportation. For example, certain models of one-man helicopters currently being tested by the US Army will probably have spread to the general public within twenty years.

8. The breaking up of the dialectic of the human milieu in favor of automobiles (the projected freeways in Paris will entail the demolition of thousands of houses and apartments although the housing crisis is continually worsening) masks its irrationality under pseudopractical justifications. But it is practically necessary only in the context of a specific social set-up. Those who believe that the particulars of the problem are permanent want in fact to believe in the permanence of the present society.

9. Revolutionary urbanists will not limit their concern to the circulation of things, or to the circulation of human beings trapped in a world of things. They will try to break these topological chains, paving the way with their experiments for a human journey through authentic life.

That to which we should all aspire

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:30:00 +0000

roll long
and prosper

From the Daily Mail on-line:

It was six decades ago that Owen Hook fell in love with the shining bicycle in his local department store window. But today, the Raleigh push bike is still going strong. Mr Hook, 72, who paid for the top-of-the-range, three-speed Raleigh bike in 36 monthly installments of just ten shillings (50p) 57 years ago, said yesterday that it showcased British craftsmanship at its best.

You have to love pedestrians...

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:42:00 +0000

Pedestrians make up
the greater part of humanity.

And so begins The Little Golden Calf (Золотой телёнок or Zolotoy telyonok) by Soviet authors Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. A new English translation of the 1931 book, by Konstantin Gurevich and Helen Anderson, is getting a lot of enthusiastic reviews. When I went looking for it, I came upon another, but incomplete, translation by Maciej Ceglowski and Peter V. Gadjokov. The novel's hilarious and, much to my surprise, rather apropos to this humble blog. The opening pages continue with a clever, trenchant comparison of pedestrians and cagers!

... The best part, no less. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built the cities, raised skyscrapers, laid sewage and water lines, paved the streets and lit them with electric lights. It was they who spread civilization throughout the world, invented movable type, thought up gunpowder, flung bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade and established that soybeans can be used to prepare 114 tasty, nutritious dishes.

And when everything was ready, when our home planet had taken on a comparatively comfortable form, the drivers appeared.

We should note that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians. But drivers somehow instantly forgot about that. They started running over the peaceful, intelligent pedestrians. They took over the streets the pedestrians had created. The pavement doubled in width, the sidewalks narrowed to the size of a tobacco pouch, and pedestrians had to start pressing themselves against the walls of buildings in fear.

Pedestrians in the big city lead a martyr’s life. A kind of transportation ghetto has been created for them. They are only permitted to cross the streets at pedestrian crossings, that is, in precisely those places where traffic is the heaviest and where it is easiest to sever the hair by which a pedestrian’s life usually hangs.

In our expansive country, the ordinary automobile—designed by pedestrians for the transportation of goods and people—has taken on the terrifying outlines of a fratricidal missile. It mows down rows of union members and their families. And if a pedestrian somehow manages to escape from under the car’s silver nose, he is fined by police for violating the rules of the traffic catechesis.

And in general, the authority of the pedestrian has been rather severely shaken. Having given the world such notable persons as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg, and Anatole France, he must now go the most undignified lengths simply to remind the world of his existence. Oh God, oh great God who does not actually exist, what have you brought the pedestrian to?

A smashing success!

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:43:00 +0000

Saturday,
23 January 2010

The BBC's
Cozy Hearth Tweed Ride
from Aaron Bussey
on Vimeo

Dead certainties...

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:26:00 +0000

in the Amazon Basin

I just finished reading a fascinating book lent to me by a drinking buddy. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by New Yorker writer David Grann, is actually a tale of two obsessive journeys, separated by nearly a century, to the same place in the Amazon jungles. The first concerns the repeated attempts of Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett to find material evidence for a lost civilization, or El Dorado, in the Green Deserts. The other involves the author trying to find what happened to Fawcett and two others after they disappeared on there in 1925. After going to the region where Fawcett was last reported, Grann simply ends his narrative. It's the most surprising thing that's ever happened to me as a reader. We'll never know what happened to the early 2oth Century British explorer - FULL STOP.

His death as well as those of his son and son's best friend are certain. The cause (as in who or what did them in) will forever be uncertain, particularly as it is disputed by those tribes who continue to claim the best of hospitable intentions while accusing the others of deceitful murder. What is certain at the end, however, is that Fawcett was onto something. Today's anthropologists and archaeologists have discovered mounting evidence of ancient, complex civilisations in Amazon. Perhaps that's the better epitaph for Fawcett. He was right. Everyone else ... wrong.

We'll all be dead one day anyway.

Let your tweed flag fly!

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:25:00 +0000

on the Cozy Hearth
Tweed Ride...

Once again, the Central Committee of the BBC chose an unseasonably warm day to gather together nearly 40 ladies & gentleman for a fab tour of the Windy City's posh fireplace pubs. As always there were a lot of new punters who joined last Saturday; but a lot of cheery ole' timers and Ocean Pearls as well. We also had a journalism student along to vid the first stop at Jack's Bar & Grill on Southport just below Lincoln.

The growing interest in our little collective reminds of an article that appeared in The Spectator a few weeks back. It so often happens on the opposite shores of the Atlantic. The Brits despair over the passing of a well-worn tradition just their American cousins herald its rebirth. This time around it's the demise of that dowdy English fashion sense: the threadbare, genteel poverty so valued by the upper classes since the late 18th Century. Harry Mount writes,

The idea was born that it should always take a few seconds to notice if someone is well-dressed. Nobody who was really smart wanted to appear so — that would be ostentatious. Enter those frayed shirt collars, jumpers with the elbows gone, battered chintz rather than fresh new seat covers.

The usefulness of things, no matter how old or time-worn, is what mattered. But now both the masses and classes of Merry Olde are in the thrall of the new, the minimal, and the modern. Think of London's Millennium Wheel and Beetham Tower, both representing the UK's squeaky clean embrace of the 21st Century.

For the first time in history we live in a civilisation where, the richer you are, the fewer things you have, and the newer, cleaner and more stripped-down those things must be.

When I read this I looked around the genial clutter of my apartment and realized that shabby chic is indeed alive and well in this colonial outpost. It's even catching on among the punters on Madison Avenue. Back in November last year, The New York Times described the new wave of hipsters giving up their skinny jeans for tweed trousers and spotty t-shirts for high-lapel vests. And here our Tweed Rides are attracting more bikers than the venerable Midnight Marauders.

Perhaps it has something to do with George Bernard Shaw's observation that England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

Passeo Guernika

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:06:00 +0000

journey of discovery
Part II

I wrote, back in November, about my new journey of discovery in the Boricua neighborhoods of the West Side. My intention was to start a series of posts focusing on interesting things I discover on my daily commute to and from my new job at North Avenue & Rockwell.

My first discovery, so far, is this community mural along the viaduct at Rockwell & Bloomingdale. I have no idea who or what organization might've painted it but it's a beautiful adaptation of one of my favorite Picasso paintings, Guernika. I first viewed the original in Madrid at the Museo del Prado about eight years ago.

All along the wall opposite Guernika there is long and wide, light blue smudge about three feet from the floor. When I asked a guard what it was, he replied wryly smiling, blue jeans. It seems that so many people lean their asses against it, lost in contemplation, that they've left a faint, collective reminder of their awe. I won't belabor Guernika's history or meaning here. There are plenty of links that already do that quite well. Suffice it say, I appreciate the personal connection it creates with my new neighborhood .

Bike community 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:37:00 +0000

the rise of
the vélosphère

A major facet of my nostalgie de décennie in The Windy City has been comparing my life in 1999 to that of 2010; especially the differences. Perhaps the biggest is the subtle change in the bike community here. When I did my first Critical Mass in May 06 I was aware of only a few bike groups. There were organized clubs like UIC's College of Cycling and the Chicago Cycling Club. More underground groups included The Rat Patrol and our city's chapter of the Scallywags. Then there were the more informal groupings, organized around regular monthly or annual rides. The Midnight Marauders and Santa Cycle Rampage come to mind. All were supported by a diverse range of bike shops and co-ops; the most famous being Working Bikes.

I even tried my hand at organizing The Square Wheelmen. My efforts, beyond a nifty graphic and some bike caps given to friends, didn't get that far. It didn't fail as much as sputter because nobody but me got the connection between Lincoln SQUARE (my 'hood) and a none-to-subtle anti-hipster dig. Also, it may've had something to do with the lack of a proper website. Blogs I could do in 06 - HTML was still a mystery. Perhaps things would've been different if I'd had a social networking platform like the one that appeared a year ago: The Chainlink. Since its inception, nearly 3,000 bikers have started and joined over 100 groups. And like in 06, they're spread along a wide spectrum of themes, rides, issues, self-help, and the just plain silly...

What really fascinates me is that I'm not all that sure if The Chainlink promoted this blossoming of Bike Community 2.0 or is merely a reflection of it. Either way, it's definitely a fact that the city is a far richer place for our idiosyncratic bikers than when I first moved here!

10 Years of Chicago BikeWinter

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:29:00 +0000

by the
numbers

Total Seasonal Snowfall
in inches...

1999-2000
30.3
(with 11.1 on 18 Feb 2000)

2000-2001
39.2

2001-2002
31.1
(with 12 between 30-31 Jan 2002)

2002-2003
28.6

2003-2004
24.8

2004-2005
39.4
(with 11.2 between 21-23 Jan 2005 )

2005-2006
26.0

2006-2007
35.6

2007-2008
60.3

2008-2009
52.7

South Side Ride

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:20:00 +0000

and a surprise
3 mins, 36 secs in...

from Aaron Bussey
on Vimeo

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:13:00 +0000

some
thoughts

It took me a while to realize two things about 2010. It not only marks the start of a new decade. It marks my first ten years in The Windy City! When I first got here I wasn't planning on staying that long. I had come with enough baggage to sink the Titanic. I had just given up on academe. I was newly divorced and a typical 1st post-divorce relationship was typically imploding. I wasn't all that sure where my future was going. The drift didn't bother me all that much though. This was the first big city I had ever lived in. I had a great job with enough money to enjoy the night life here. I travelled overseas for work quite a bit. I got to see India, China, Eastern Europe, and even Central Asia. These were certainly enough distractions to keep me occupied as one year became three. Then I found another job then another and the 1st three years became ten...

Slowly; almost too slowly for me to notice, I stopped drifting. I became rooted in my neighborhood - I've lived in the same apartment over the last decade. I made friends - perhaps the closest I've ever had. I came to think of this place as my home - perhaps for the first time since I moved away from the home of my awkward adolescence in Upstate New York. In a word, I think I've become a Chicagoan...

South Side Sledding

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:09:00 +0000

gravity's
a bitch!

What a better way to celebrate the arrival of BikeWinter as well as the New Year but with a bit of sledding? On Monday a bunch of us headed down to join this month's South Side Ride. Of course gravity and a slippery slope can and will conspire against you at the end of the run ... especially if there's a fence waiting for you!

Darkness...

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:50:00 +0000

the cure?

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day

Lord Byron

Merry Xmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 11:32:00 +0000

another vid from
the Vulgar Lad

Tweed in the 21st Century!

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:10:00 +0000

by the
Vulgar Lad

Let it snow!

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:47:00 +0000

and thanks to
The Capitol Fax Blog
for this!

On 28 December 1953, Windy City kids were introduced to the whimsical story of Suzy Snowflake "tap, tap, tappin'" on every windowpane, seen on Garfield Goose and Friends then on WBBM-TV. Suzy too was brought to life by the stop-motion animators of Centaur Productions. Norma Zimmer was Suzy's voice and the song was sung by The Norman Luboff Choir, a premier studio group who recorded with well-known artists, such as Frank Sinatra and Harry Belafonte.

Bike with a little extra somethin'

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:09:00 +0000

whether you
like it or not!

From
Chicago Craigslist...

A new bike adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Da' Square Wheelman,) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:58:00 +0000

gone but
not forgotten!

Today marks my last official day of work until September 1, 2010. It was a balmy September afternoon when I sprung the idea of an eight month sabbatical on my boss as we biked back to the office from a downtown meeting. She was reluctant but willing to listen. I presented a detailed plan for how my duties could be carried out during the proposed leave. I would like to think my well thought out proposal convinced her to agree, but the prospect of forgoing most of my salary in the upcoming tight budget year probably played a role as well.

So writes Michael Burton, fellow biker and the guy who got me my new gig at Bickerdike. He, his wife Gin and son Miguel are all on their way to join another scion of The Windy City's bike community, Jim Redd at his Eco-Hacienda in Ecuador!

Both Jim and Michael were rather influential in getting me into the bike community; the former by his example and the latter by his enthusiasms. Even though he and his family will be returning, it's sad to see them go. It marks yet another small generational turn among those who've made biking here fun. On the other hand though, their departure on a new adventure is hardly surprising. Having contributed to the ballet of the streets for nearly a decade, I think they've earned it. Besides, it's time for some others to influence the folks coming up ...

Michael, Gin & Co.
Good Luck & Bummel On!!!