Long overdue

This has been a whirlwind summer, especially the past month or so, but all for good reasons, thankfully. There have been trips and rides galore and I’m only now just getting around to writing them down. The most recent was what began as a 3-day, but turned into a 4-day bike camping trip in the Catskills with some friends. Luckily, I have the coolest job ever and they were totally fine with the extra day off that I needed in order to complete the trip to Albany.

We started on Friday morning, a bit later than we normally would have because we were taking Metro North to Poughkeepsie and they don’t allow bikes on the train during morning rush hour. We made friends with one of the conductors but not so much with the other one. It was through no fault of our own, he clearly had preexisting anti-bike sentiments.

After arriving in Poughkeepsie, we found our way to the pedestrian/cyclist bridge over the Hudson, which was a truly beautiful way to start the trip.

After we crossed the bridge, we headed to New Paltz, along a fairly uninteresting road, with the exception of the Brooklyn Brewery billboard, which we all noticed and commented on later, all of us being Brooklynites (or at least, Brooklyn transplants).

It was HOT, though. It must have been in the mid-90s with the sun beating straight down on us. I felt like I was going to faint and was struggling to even bring up the rear. The heat seriously disagrees with this Scandinavian girl.

Quick lunch in New Paltz (complete with another anti-cyclist, anti-New Yorker local) and hit the road again quickly thereafter. Friday afternoon was a bit of a blur, probably due to the scorching heat. I have little memory of much of it, except for my leg cramps, which was a new phenomenon for me, maybe also due to the heat. Laughing hard seemed to aggravate them, which in and of itself is pretty funny. I guess I have a whole-body laugh.

The store we intended on stopping at to buy dinner supplies was closed, as in boarded up closed, but luckily the liquor store was still going strong. We stopped in there to get a few bottles of wine and whiskey for the night and made friends with the Russian owner. She was a salty broad who claimed she was from Brighton Beach. Fitting. After some directions from a local, we found a grocery store and loaded our bikes up with food & water for dinner. I have never ridden a heavier bike and would soon be riding it up (read: walking it up) one of the steepest “hills” I’d ever met. To top it off, the sky had started looking ominous and we ended up in a downpour. Once I’d covered my sleeping bag with my raincoat, though, I found it entirely refreshing. I’d much rather bike in the rain than in sweltering heat. The rain eventually thinned out as we rode along the Rondout Reservoir, which supplies much of NYC’s drinking water.

I felt so energetic that I didn’t stop until I reached the end of the reservoir and then realized that not everyone was behind me. Turns out their delay was due to the discovery of wild raspberry bushes. There’s a yogic lesson in this, I can feel it. Rushing through life obscures the subtler pleasures. **Mental note to stop and eat the berries...literally.** Thankfully, they harvested a plentiful bounty for all to enjoy as dessert later on and throughout the trip.

After we regrouped, we started up Sugar Loaf Rd, which kicked my butt and continued to kick my butt in the morning, because we camped partway up that night. The Bike Hudson Valley website categorizes it as a “Very Steep Climb” and says this: Total climbing on Sugar Loaf around 1650 vertical feet in 4.5 miles (or 1700 vertical feet if finish with a sharp left turn onto Red Hill Rd, which we did), including 850 vertical feet around 11% grade (with several sections even steeper). Let’s just say it was *not* my favorite thing to wake up to the next morning.

The dinner that night was quite good, despite a few minor mishaps. Camping in the dark provides some challenges, which include proper setting up of the tent (at which I failed—though in my defense it was my first time using this tent) and identifying the correct ingredients while cooking (hilariously ended up with minty, soapy pasta, due to the misidentification of a bottle thought to be olive oil, which in fact turned out to be liquid, peppermint soap).

Home stretch

After I got the frame back from Leon's son, I rode it back over to Greenpoint to get the color powdercoat done. We took a moment to lament Leon's fate. Apparently he was sharp as a tack up through his last days. He was 93. I wonder what his secret was.

I decided to go with a deep bluish indigo for the frame color. The color scheme (blue frame and gold decal) is a little kiss to my Swedish heritage. Here's how it turned out (waiting for the final moment to christen it with the decal):

The last detail that remained was the fork, or more specifically, the absurdly long steerer tube. You can see how long it is in this photo:

For several reasons that will go unshared, I had to go on another wild goose chase to find someone who would thread and cut the steerer tube down to the correct height. This was easier said than done, but yet again, the internet provided the answer. I found an eccentric guy on an online bike forum who offered to do it for $25. I just had to take the train up to Westchester to come to his shop. He was clearly one of those old school roadies who loved talking bikes to anyone. In fact, he even knew the guy from Madison who had modified the frame! He told me that it was very unusual for this guy to make a mistake, so of course it had to be the one irreplaceable frame that he messed up. (I'm obviously not naming the Madison guy or his shop on purpose, out of respect, if you haven't figured that out by now.) He seemed very knowledgable and confident in his abilities, so I decided to go for it.

His "shop" turned out to be the 2nd floor of a huge warehouse with an office in front that hadn't been redecorated and perhaps not even cleaned since the mid '70s. Piles of paper, miscellaneous tools and bike parts adorned every bit of free space. There were probably 60 rows of bicycle brakes alone lined up on the floor of one room. This man was *quite* the character and clearly not someone who liked to play by the rules. I learned almost his entire life story in the brief time that I was there. He wasn't a fan of the environmental nonprofit at which I work--said we resort to "scare tactics". Whatever. I just kept my mouth shut and struggled to keep my facial expression neutral. He did seem to have some respect for my other career (opera) and shared memories of singers from the Met coming to perform at his high school auditorium in the Bronx when he was a kid--I guess we did have some common ground.

So, all in all, a funny experience and just another colorful detail to add to this already outrageous story. Unfortunately, the fork didn't end up working for technical reasons that didn't have to do with the threading and that only the biggest bike fanatics would find interesting. Maybe not even them. Maybe only bike mechanics. Anyway, if you ask, I'll tell you, but I won't bore everyone else with the details. We chose a chrome lugged fork to replace it and I'm actually quite happy with how it looks. I may be able to make the original fork work in the future, if I find a framebuilder to weld a different steerer tube onto it. I'm pondering the various ways I can enshrine the fork at home in the meantime. Suggestions welcome.

With the frame modifications complete, all that remained was to put everything together. My shop built me some beautiful wheels with 36-hole silver Mavic Open Pro rims and Panaracer Rivendell Ruffy Tuffy gumwall tires, armed with a Kevlar belt to withstand the rubble-laden streets of New York. I tried to be as patient as possible while my shop made the final tweaks. Any day now...

Leon's legacy

The frame arrived while my Dad was still in NYC, but after he had left Brooklyn. I got the email from my shop during the intermission of Lulu at the Met. Every time my dad comes to visit, he takes me and his sister, Joan, to a matinee. My dad was off to Connecticut to stay with Joan after the opera, so unfortunately he would miss the chance to see the frame with his own eyes.

Naturally, I headed over to the shop as soon as I could to check it out. Despite my apprehension over the size, I couldn't help but grin as soon as I saw it. It was really gorgeous. The joints were stripped of their paint and down to the bare steel, but they had this beautiful patina that took my breath away. We put it up on the stand and took some measurements to see how we could modify it to make it work. It would need a longer seatpost and spacers between the head tube and the stem--we would essentially "add bike" (additional height) to what was already there. Of course, all the guys in the shop had varying opinions as to whether or not it would work, but I remained hopeful...or perhaps just stubborn.

Here's a before and after:


The next task was to get it painted. Always susceptible to the power of suggestion, I decided that instead of stripping it and repainting a new color, I would just get it clearcoated and preserve its current deconstructed state.

Well, the string of snags really began when I took the frame to the powdercoater.

Powdercoating is different than painting. I think it's what auto body shops do to paint cars, but basically the frame is coated with a dry electrostatically charged powder and then baked in an oven at high heat in order to adhere it to the metal. This creates a durable finish and is more reasonable (though still not cheap) than "wet" paint.

I asked the guy at the powdercoating shop if he could put a clear coat over the current paint job. He took a look at it, verified that it was a factory paint job, and said yes, it should work. Awesome.

He called me the next morning saying it was ready to be picked up. Wow! That was pleasantly speedy. I hopped on my bike and made the trek to Greenpoint, Brooklyn to his shop. I got there and took a look at the frame and something didn't look right. The decal had blistered. I sort of timidly asked what had happened and he mumbled something like "oh, there must've been a sticker there or something." Of course there was a "sticker", you #@*%&! It was the name of the bike and you told me it would be fine! But in a moment of Midwestern submissiveness, I just paid and left. So, Nolan's name had gone from how it looked in my previous post to this:


Ugh. What to do? Try to scrape off the blistered area and put my decal on the bare steel? But then there would be a big patch of gray beneath it, and besides, the new decal I had made up was gold, because I was anticipating a different frame color. (This is what I get for being both indecisive *and* impulsive). Get a new decal made in the original reddish lettering with a gold background? No, what are the chances of getting the same shade of gold to match the rest of the frame?

After consulting with my shop, I decided the only option was to get it redone. This also meant another decision was being made for me--I would have to get a completely new paint job. Was this the universe telling me to trust my gut and go with my original instincts? Or is that reading too much into it? Anyway, I hoped the powdercoater would give me a break the second time around, since he had initially told me it would work.

I pushed through my Midwestern timidity, mustered up some Brooklyn assertiveness and got him to agree to do it again at a discount, though not without first enduring a bit of attitude. This time, however, the frame had to be stripped first. He recommended taking it to the sandblaster with whom he often worked, whose shop was in NoHo, around the corner from Joe's Pub and nearly across the street from Great Jones Cafe, this great Creole restaurant. (Not for vegetarians, but sinfully delicious if you're a carnivore.)

So, I slung the frame over my shoulder, hopped on my bike and commenced another trek through the city streets with the frame bouncing on my leg as I pedaled. The funniest part was the two feet of steerer tube on top of the fork sticking out the side of my bag. (The steerer tube had yet to be cut down, it was still absurdly long.) I was just waiting for a car to get too close to me and smash its mirror on it, of course blaming me, but I arrived unscathed.

The sandblaster was this old gentleman named Leon--a real salty New Yorker, the kind of man who you could see definitely had some stories to tell.

I dropped it off on Thursday, May 13, and his assistant said it would be done that afternoon. I think I had rehearsal or something that wouldn't have allowed me to pick it up that night, so I didn't think much when I didn't get a call from them. By Saturday afternoon, I was starting to wonder and by Tuesday, I started calling the shop. No answer. Called Wednesday several times. No answer. No answering machine. No website or email address. I rode by Thursday morning and there was a padlock on the door and a sign saying "Closed due to family emergency." Geez, what happened? I started to call this Snag # 553 and joked to my friends, "Leon was really up there in years, I hope he didn't die!"

Um...

See here.

He had died that past Friday, the day after I dropped off my bike. I got a call the next afternoon from his son, telling me his father had passed away, they were closing the business and could I please come get my bike frame? ..."Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry for your loss I'll be there right away."

Leon sounded like a pretty great guy. He was in the army in WWII as a radio and cryptography technician. He bought the sandblasting business the year before my mom was born in Staten Island. New York was a pretty different place back then. The obituary says the shop was the last industrial business left on Great Jones today, and now it's gone, too. Now this bike is a little part of another lost legacy.

Snag # 1

In April, my brother drove the bike down to Madison. The shop stripped the frame of the components and shipped them to my shop in Brooklyn. The plan was to use all the original components, if possible. Turns out they were all good quality and in great condition. Excellent. So far, so good.

My next task was to figure out the aesthetics. I can be pretty indecisive, which is kind of funny considering I'm a relatively opinionated person. I originally wanted to replicate the look of the original bike, same paint job, etc. However, apparently most of the paint was going to be destroyed during the rebuild, so I had to decide if I was going to repaint it the original color (gold with a reddish logo) or completely reinvent the look of the bike. I wavered for a long time but eventually decided that since I was going to all this trouble to rebuild the bike, I might as well really make it my own. It would still be an awesome tribute to my dad--a different paint color wasn't going to change that fact.

This also meant that I had to find someone to make decals to recreate Nolan's name. The shop owner in Madison said the letters were either Zipatone or Normatype (K & E) letters, which meant nothing to me. Apparently they're now considered vintage so I was having quite a time trying to find a replica. Luckily, thanks again to the internet, I found a guy out in California who makes bicycle decals, including a huge amount of vintage ones. I sent him a photo for him to work off of and he sent me a mock-up the same day--awesome. I decided I would get the decal in gold in order to pay tribute to the original frame color.

Here's the original:


And here's the new decal (blurriness only the fault of my unsteady hand, not the decal itself):

So, all that remained was to wait for the frame to be finished. My dad was coming to visit soon, so I thought it would be cool for him to be able to see the frame in its new state. I emailed the shop in Madison to ask if it might arrive soon and yes, it was almost finished! I could barely contain my excitement.

A few days later, my high came crashing down when I received the following email:

"Here are snapshots. I was about to add the final cable fittings tonight when I reviewed the papers for it.

You said 57 but I wrote 54 on the worksheet. That's over an inch difference. I'm not sure what to say at this point."

What? It took a few seconds to sink in. He cut it too small? Did I read that right? He cut my dad's frame too small. My dad's one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable bike frame. Okay, what does this mean? Oh my god, is this fixable? I don't think it's fixable. How could it be fixable?

Still in shock, I forwarded the email to my mechanic and another bike friend. I'm big on advice (a habit that my indecisive nature only exacerbates) and I definitely needed advice from someone knowledgeable at this moment. I was distraught. I know it's "just a bike", but at the moment I was sitting in the middle of my bed, staring at my laptop, tears streaming down my face at the thought of not only having maybe just lost the chance to ride this bike, but having potentially ruined it for all eternity. (...ok, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but that's why I'm an artist. This stuff just spews forth effortlessly.) Three centimeters may not sound like a lot, but ask any bike person and they'll tell you it is. Was I ever going to be able to ride this beautiful machine? Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep that night.

It took almost a full day before I had gathered my wits enough to write back and I still didn't really know what to say. I tried to convey my dismay as politely as possible and asked him what my options were. He responded immediately, saying he was so distraught that he rode home and slept on it. He said he would ship me the frame immediately and I could decide from there. So, with a bit of trepidation, I awaited the frame. Despite my now soggy spirit, I was determined to find a way to make it work somehow. It just had to.

Inaugural post

I'm taking the plunge.

My Communications Director at work always says, if you wrote an email today, you probably wrote a blog post. I write plenty of emails, so I'm going to think of this as an exercise in overcoming my perfectionist tendencies. No editing (or not too much) just writing.

Bicycles, opera and food...and maybe Brooklyn...and probably knitting, in the winter. Oh, and bread. Ooh, Bicycles, Brooklyn and Bread! My penchant for alliteration is coming out. It's a hard thing to squelch. Squash. Suppress. Okay, I reserve the right to edit my topics. They are still yet to be determined as of post #1. The thing that really prompted me to start this blog was Maria Divina, my "new" bike. It's a long, complicated story and it keeps getting longer and more complicated so I thought I should start writing it all down to capture it before I forget all the details. And there are some pretty unbelievable details, trust me.

Stay tuned...