Cycling Lessons From Miss Brodie

Don't know whether others have seen the classic film, The Prime of Jean Brodie, based on the novel by Muriel Spark. It ends badly, and the main character - a deluded school mistress in 1930s Scottland - is not somebody one would strive to emulate. But I do admire her beautiful cycling skills! In fact, the opening scene of the film - where Miss Brody is shown gracefully cycling to the school where she teaches on a loop-frame bicycle with a basket - has no doubt influenced my own choice of bicycle and my notion of what "riding a bicycle" should be like. So here are some stills from the sequence that inspired me.

Miss Brodie mounts her bicycle with ease using the proper Sheldon Brown method. Her long, narrow skirt does not seem to impede the mounting maneuver one bit.

Notice how straight her leg is on the pedal as she cycles: completely extended. She would definitely not be able to reach the ground with her toe in traffic.

Ah, here she indicates that she is about to stop. Look at all that stuff on her bike! Rolls of paper in the basket, and what looks like a wooden trunk strapped to the rear rack. You can hardly tell due to the bad quality of these images, but it looks like her bicycle has all blackout parts on it. Does anybody know what year they began doing that?

To get off the bicycle, she takes her right foot off the pedal and swings the leg over the frame while the bicycle is still in motion.

Then she coasts for a bit in this standing position - with the left foot on the left pedal and the right foot supposedly in the air next to it? - until she hops off and the bicycle comes to a stop. Impressive! - and no way can I pull that off.

In the film, one of Miss Brodie's catch-phrases was that she was "a woman in her prime" - even though she was distinctly old-maidish by 1930s standards. My theory is that her cycling is what kept her feeling young and beautiful.

St. Clair Michigan to Jefferson Ohio

Can Stop, Will Stop: TRP Mini-V Brakes

I have embarked on a long term test ride of a Honey cyclocross bike, similar to the one I rode in the Kearsarge Klassic last summer. When asked about component preferences on the demo bike, one thing I requested was stronger brakes. I had remarkably poor stopping power with the cantilever brakes on the bike I'd borrowed earlier, and I generally have not had good luck with cantis. I described these problems to Honey and we decided to try v-brakes. They suggested the TRP CX8.4 "mini-vs."




The TRP CX8.4 linerar pull brakes were designed for maximum stopping power oncyclocross bikes. Unlike full sized v-brakes, they were also designed to work with integrated road levers (this particular model works best withCampagnolo and SRAM)without requiring an adapter- reducing bulk, weight and complexity. These brakes have a number of features to recommend them for cyclocross racing, but having no experience with that side of things I will stick to describing them in the context of "just riding."




Under my weak grip, theTRPs feel reassuringly powerful. Those with strong hands could in fact find this problematic, but for me it is a welcome change from having to worry about stopping a fat-tire roadbike with cantis at the bottom of a hill. This is the first time I have used v-brakes on such a bike, and the quality of the braking does feel different from centerpulls and cantilevers. I have to apply pressure differently to regulate exactly how much I want to brake, but it didn't take long to train my hands to "understand." When attempting to slow down at high speeds, the braking is not harsh or jerky, but it is stronger than typical - so it helps to have a gentle touch, or else to use only one finger on the lever. For harder braking, there is a luxurious, modulation-friendly margin before coming to a full stop that I find especially helpful. In the past, I have had to get creative in order to stop on downhills during unpaved rides, and I've even employed my foot as an auxilliary brake on a couple of occasions. The TRPs are at their best precisely in those situations.




I have ridden the bike only a couple of times so far, but our winter conditions have allowed me to immediately try it on snow and slush. Getting the rims slushy did reduce braking power, but there was so much of it to begin with that it remained manageable. Basically, with the mini-vs the bike rides with slush-clogged rims like it did with dry rims when it had cantis.




The Honey cross is set up with a carbon fiber fork, and I have not detected any judder with the TRPCX8.4s. These brakes easily clearthe 700Cx35mm tires currently on the bike, and look like they could fit a fender. My understanding is they will not clear a 650B x 42mm tire; for that full sized v-brakes may be required.




With an MSRP of $149 per set, the TRP CX8.4 brakes seem like an excellent and accessible option for those seeking extra braking power on a roadbike with canti/v bosses. As I get the opportunity to try other brakes worth mentioning, I will continue the "can stop, will stop" series (See also: Paul Racer centerpull brakes).

SST Update!

Sorting, scanning and trashing are coming along nicely ;-)

Last night I "finished" the three "shoeboxes" of pictures mentioned in my post of May 22nd, having scanned an additional 620 images, which took a little more than 26 hours over the past ten days, for a total of 970 images scanned. That covers my family pictures for the time period of 1979-... I bought my first digital camera in October .. so the pictures taken from then on are already digitized. Family pictures taken before 1979 are in half a dozen albums and still need to be scanned. Those pictures will have to be removed from the "magnetic" pages, scanned, and then put into archival quality albums. So they will take a little longer. Also those three shoeboxes have been reduced to two - there were a lot of duplicates and more than a few were blurry and out of focus.

A friend said she had a slide viewer so I borrowed it. However, it doesn't work! So I still need to figure out a way to view my slides to select those to send out for scanning. . . and, of course, I still need to caption and add identifying information to all of the recently scanned images.

That's me. Six years old. Summer of 1954 at Goose Lake.

Crystal Cavern

This is another image from yesterday morning's amazing time spent photographing the Lake Superior shoreline at Hollow Rock Resort in Grand Portage, MN. There were a couple of small ice caves in the area which were very beautiful but difficult to photograph because of their location and their small size. To get this image I had to crawl down along the rocks, lay on my side on the rocks and configure my tripod so it was as low to the ground as possible, then look sideways through the viewfinder to compose the image (remember, I was laying on my side to compose this image!). The distance from the ground to the top of this little ice cave was two feet at the very most. It was probably more likely about a foot and a half tall. I was only on the edge of the cave, I didn't want to risk crawling into it in case it chose that moment to collapse. The result was worth the effort!

Muddy Creek

Jemez Creek looked very muddy yesterday when we took a drive up to the Jemez Mountains. There have been several good rains there and the dry conditions have probably caused a lot of very dry dirt to run into the creek.

Blue Skies from Pain

What is it like to ride here? I never quite know what to say. Because, you see, it is so distinct, and at the same time it is more about a feeling than about the landscape or the weather or the road conditions. If I close my eyes and try to evoke the experience of it, the thing that comes to mind is tunnels. The winding narrow farm roads with their tall hedges form a mazeat the edge of the Sperrin mountains, and navigating through it - always climbing or descending, always either going around a bend or just about to - is a unique form of meditation.There is a pressure and an intense concentration to it, and at the same time a release and a complete lack of focus.




The back roads here have some peculiarities, and one of them is the reverse dip. The road is convex, with the center forming a ridge and the sides sloping down toward the gutters. I have heard several explanations for why this is so. One is that the roads were made this way to begin with, to facilitate drainage. Another is that heavy farm machinery has deformed the surface over the years. Whatever the reason, one soon learns to keep off that central ridge - in particular while descending. The ridge is wide enough for a tire, but there is something wrong there - a slickness, or maybe some Twilight Zone force - that makes the bike behave unpredictably should you allow it to drift to the center of the road while cornering sloppily. This adds an extra layer of excitement to the already wild descents.






One of the things I love about Northern Ireland is the weather. People laugh when I tell them this, but I am not joking. Both physically and mentally I thrive in these damp, chilly, overcast conditions, under these temperamental skies. When I cycle over the mountain with the dark clouds so low I can almost touch them, and the mist so palpable the moisture gathers on my face, I can feel my mind emptied and my emotional palate cleansed and my limbs gone weightless and free. The road and I dip and rise and twist together, maybe even breathe together.Everything is at peace with everything else as I float, painlessly, through and over and under it all.None of this happens in the sunshine. It just doesn't. And so on warm sunny days I will, more likely than not, have a rest from the bike.




Yesterday was such a day, and in the morning I was walking home along a footpath through a wheat field at the back of the village. In the distance a tractor circled. Moving slowly and with an air of purpose, it gobbled up loose piles of hay, spitting out perfect round bales. The farmer was literally making hay while the sun shone, and maybe it was the scorching 20°C heat gone to my head after a week of bleak winter weather, but this realisation hit me so profoundly that I had to sit down to really take it in. I leaned my back against one of the hay bales, which was heavy and enormous and rough-textured. Then I went on a mountain bike ride through the forest, seeking shade and that soothing feeling I get from a place where everything is covered in moss.




On an overcast day, sometimes the sky will be dark down low, with patches of bright blue peeking out up higher. One afternoon I was pedaling up a tedious climb through a tunnel-like road and, about 6 miles in, just when I thought it was over I went around yet another bend only to find that the pitch grew steeper still. As I felt the intense pain in my legs, I looked up over the wall-like hedge and was blinded by a bright cerulean opening in the cloud cover. A light at the end of the tunnel.

OBX From My Window

It's been a bit since I took pictures while we are driving somewhere, so I decided to do it yesterday while we drove up to Nags Head. I am so in love with the scenery here. When Austin was here with us, he wasn't impressed in the least with it. BORING is what he said. I can see why it would seem kind of monotonous to some. I never tire of it though.

I normally hate driving with the windows down. I didn't even like riding with the top down when Nathan had a convertible. Here, I want to not only roll the windows down, I want to hang my head out the window like a carefree dog.

It's just soothing to me for some reason.

There was quite a bit of smoke up that way, and it really triggered my allergies. Still, it was worth it. Once we arrived in Nags Head, we did a bit of shopping and scored some greatly needed beach shoes and new shirts for a great price. As we were leaving the store, we ran into Jack and Ruth, a couple that I work with. We ended up eating dinner with them at the Mexican restaurant Azteca and it was very good. It was a nice bonus to have good company too.



Ok, back to the scenery. It's postcard perfect, isn't it?

Valles Caldera

Sorry to put so many photos on one post but I felt it was the best way to tell about the tour we took of the Valles Caldera. The Caldera, Spanish for when a volcano blows and then falls in on it's self, is about half way between Jemez Springs and Los Alamos, New Mexico. For many, many years we have driven by here on the road seeing only the part that can be seen from the highway. From the mid 1800's to the year .. it was a private ranch owned by several different families. In .. the US Government bought it to make it into a big national park. Over the past 13 years the government has continued to run it as a ranch and let biologist, geologist, and many other 'logist type scientist onto the ranch to see exactly what is there. Not only did two big volcanos explode here but several smaller ones making it a very unique landscape. Because of the volcanos there is still a lot of geothermal activity in the area even though the volcanos are considered extent. We didn't know it but recently a Visitors Center had been built and the road to it is now open for people to come in a see part of the Caldera. Most of it can only be seen if you get special permits for hiking or take one of the bus tours that are run frequently.
















This little creek is considered the upper part of the Jemez River. From the gates we came about 2 miles on a narrow dirt road and across the river before getting to the Visitors Center.







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Parking at the Visitors Center. The red Chevy pickup on the right is ours.



We were glad to see the Center is run by Solar Power. Here is the solar panel and the shed for the batteries. While there we learned of the tours and one that was leaving soon was only a 45 minute tour for only $5.00. We quickly decided to go and were glad we did. We learned a lot more about the Caldera, the geology and history of the area. We got to see most of the orginal ranch buildings that are still standing. We were glad to see that the firefighters were able to stop the big firejust about 50 feet from the buildings. Most of these buildings have been usedin a lotof movies from long ago to recently in the new Lone Ranger movie with Johnny Depp in it as Tonto.






This is one of the older buildings and you can see the sandbags on the left hand side where they are afraid the rains might wash it out due to the damage done by the fire.



These 2 buildings are over a hundred years old.




Volunteers putting out sandbags around the buildings.















This is a round house, made of native stone. I think in about the mid 1950's. Made round as the Navajo hogans are round, and the Pueblo kivas are round. Our guide said there were 8 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and a big center area with a huge fireplace. It was used for guests, hunters, scientist's, and other special guests. I sure would have liked to have seen the inside of it and the other buildings.




























we didn't get to get out of the van but were told that the Lone Ranger movie was filmed in this area and under the hill here.




The tour van and our guide Tom.











It really doesn't show but most of the trees on the hill side had been burned.


Tom, our guide, whodid a great job. There are other tours that require reservations that are all day, or about 2 hours and one on weekends in the evening for seeing elk, as there are many herds of elk and deer on the ranch.







We had to get some sort of souvenir, so hubby got me a deer horn whistle at the Visitors Center Gift Shop. After I got home I saw on the card where it washand made in Wyoming. Since deer and elk loose their antlers eachyear no animals are harmed for these. They have been cut, and a piece of wood added to make it whistle. It will go well with the 2 bears I have carved out of elk antler.