Sometimes, when I’m scouting up ahead for The March, I
discover more than I wanted to know.
My job: to burden you with this information, so we all come
away from The March with a surplus of wit & wisdom. To
paraphrase Professor Kingsfield, the acerbic law professor in The
Paper Chase: “You come in here with a skullful of mush, and leave
here thinking like comedians.”
For a change of pace, this week we’re going to ride. So, drop
your packs, climb into the two-wheeled saddle and prepare to
pedal....
Bicycles.
Some of the facts to follow were culled from “Bicyclopedia,” an
on-line compendium of two-wheeling facts and folklore, and what I
now believe to be the world’s funniest reference book. Up to now,
the Congressional Record, the U.S. Census, and anything written
by Rush Limbaugh vied for that honor, but the torch is now passed.
The world’s first bicycle was my Schwinn Cruiser, and not the
prototype sketched in 1493 by Leonardo Da Vinci. Because his
model lacked a chrome fork, steel handlebars, balloon whitewall
tires, rubber block pedals, two-tone paint, Phantom grips with
multi-colored tassels, fender and rack mounts, and a 3-spring
padded saddle, it doesn’t qualify.
This may have compelled Leonardo to keep his painting day job,
when he realized that inventing something 300 years before the
technology existed to build it was not exactly profitable. There is
evidence suggesting he’d also drafted a crude version of the
AYOOGAH horn during this period, but abandoned the idea on
pain of being imprisoned as a kook.
Around 1861, Pierre Lallement invented the first two-wheeler to
actually be known as a bicycle. It had tandem but mismatched
wheels, pedals on the front, and was known as the “Boneshaker.”
My Schwinn Cruiser was later modified as same, when I spent a
summer riding on the rims after “Double-Flatting” the tires.
Another early 19th Century version was called the
“Swiftwalker.” It was: “...propelled by a rider striding along the
road while straddling the frame.” About this time, the first grievous
bicycle-related groin injury was also recorded.
Injuries. Any abrasion from a bicycle fall is commonly known as
“Road Rash.” Small patches of this are called “Cherries.” Road
rash inflicted on an upper extremity is “Pizza Elbow.”
>From childhood, I recall once attempting to rest my feet on the
front hub while trying to outrace my buddy down a steep hill. I was
a “Scorcher,” AKA a “Hammerhead,” (fast, reckless rider) and my
buddy was the “Wheelsucker,” a derogatory form of a “Tail-End
Charlie,” (last rider in an event).
Anyone who has found themselves on the highway tucked in the
backdraft of a fast-lane trailer truck’s rear bumper knows what
“wheelsucking” is.
The toes of my hightoppers caught in the spokes and my feet
whipped around until they met the front fork. The radical air &
ground braking that followed then combined the elements
demonstrated in bicycle wheelies known as “Coasters, Floaters, and
Marathons,” and produced not only bilateral Pizza Elbows and
multiple Cherries, but an all-over road rash replete with my own
inventions: “Chili Chin, Fetticini Forehead, and Hamburger
Buttocks.”
High Speed, indeed. On July 20th, 1985, John Howard reached
152.284 mph on an obviously highly-modified bicycle. It had “a
376-inch gear, a 58-degree head angle, motorcycle wheels, hydraulic
forks, and first had to be towed to 60 mph. He rode behind a 600
horsepower car with a large tail section and had to work with a
psychologist beforehand to overcome his fear of the high speed.”
It’s not known how long he had to stick his tongue out, or how
many packs of playing cards and bags of clothespins on the spokes
it took to produce the VROOM sound one needs for such impetus.
Bicyclopedia also neglects to mention the unofficial record of
3,421.603 mph set in June of 1964 on Watson Hill in Gilford,
NH, when your host, still seated on the 3-spring padded saddle atop
his Schwinn Cruiser, went flying butt over teakettle into the
puckerbrush.
Finally, as we pass through the dog days of summer, there are a
host of “Bicycle Games,” you might consider just for fun. I’ve listed
three favorites. Trust me, someone out there is really doing this....
DERBY: This informal event began in California in the 1970’s.
(Didn’t everything?) There are no rules, but a common course of
play is to have everyone ride fast in a figure-eight formation. The
“Hot-Box” is where the traffic crosses. Riders then “attempt to
knock each other over by pushing, pulling, ramming, etc.” A
downed rider can be “attacked or ridden over, and the game goes
on until everyone decides to do something else.”
This game is usually played on mountain bikes by people
without helmets. Enough said.
BALACLAVA MELEE: Male participants wearing fencing
masks adorned with feather plumes ride around and attempt to
whack off their opponents’ feathers with canes. Winner is the last
feathered man. Or, the last man with a recognizable face.
And, lastly, the two-wheeled event that seems to make the most
sense: BICYCLE TOSSING.
I don’t know where I’ve been all my life, to have missed this.
Even a cursory look through the search engines reveals that folks
all over the country do this every summer at “sanctioned” bicycle
gatherings.
A bicycle is “grasped by the rear wheel, whirled around, then let
loose to fly as far as it will go.” In Bike Tossing, points are
awarded
for “distance, speed, originality, style, and the most parts coming off
the bike.” At an event held every year just up the road from here,
someone
once used a “spring-loaded catapult that tossed a bike 60 feet.”
Well, I’m off to find a childhood buddy, who can come forth
and verify that after I pulled myself from the puckerbrush in the
summer of ‘64 --- bruised, bloody and half-skinned alive --- I
retrieved my double-flatted Cruiser and launched it into space,
easily winning all the above points.
Fact is, it’s just now coming back to earth at the end of this
March. What spins around comes around.
It’s the nature of the life cycle.
Copyright 1997 B. Elwin Sherman
Related:
W H Y C O P S H A T E Y O U <<<<&l <
-if you have to ask get out of the way-
Have you ever been stopped by a traffic cop and, while he was
writing a ticket or giving you a warning, you got the feeling that
he would just love to yank you out of the car, right through the
window, and smash your face into the front fender?...
