bike Archives -

22 May

Psycho Ladies Safety Bicycle

I’m finishing up my first historical romance and starting to draft the second in the series, which means I am back into research mode. Book two’s heroine is a cyclist, so I’ve been trying to figure out what she might be wearing — the 1890s is still a period of upheaval in ladies’ fashion, as corsets disappear and “rational dress” appears, and the advent of women’s bicycles leads to debate on where and when it is appropriate for women to wear knickerbockers or should they be riding bikes with drop frames, with nothing for their skirts to get involved in…

Anyway, I was reading an opinion letter in an 1890s magazine and the lady writing mentioned that she and her sisters have all ended up riding the Psycho Ladies’ Safety.

“Safety” is the “safety bicycle” but Psycho Ladies? Really?

Yes, really! Imported from England in 1888 and after, the ladies’ safety bicycle from the Psycho line, manufactured by the Storley Bros. was one of the first ladies’ bikes available in the United States. A search in Google Books brings up two pages of mentions in the late 1880s and 1890s of the Psycho ladies’ safety. For instance, at the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association’s seventeenth triennial exhibition in 1890, W.W. Stall of Boston won a silver medal in the category of “Agricultural Implements and products, carriages, wagons, bicycles, and other vehicles and appliances” with “Bicycles and appurtenances, including New Star Combination Drop-Frame Psycho, Ladies’ Light Roadster Psycho, Ladies’ Extra Light Roadster, Double-Frame Psycho, Coventry Rival Safety, Tremont Safety, Elliott Safety, and others.”

Psycho Ladies’ Safety Bicycle

Sorry, I have to repeat it because I’m so excited that it existed with that name.

Obviously, “psycho” had different connotations at the time. Etymonline tells me that it wasn’t used as a shortening for “psychopathic” until Raymond Chandler used it that way in 1936. If we look at the roots f the word, it’s the Greek term psykhe, meaning “mind, mental; spirit, unconscious.” There’s also the Greek myth of Psyche and Cupid/Eros, a variation on the Beauty and the Beast storyline, in which Psyche is married to a terrible serpent who visits her at night as a handsome man and, after she breaks some rules, she has to complete a number of quests in order to win him back and live happily ever after. I think it’s safe to say that the makers of Psycho bikes had this image in mind,

And not this.

Anyway, the Psycho ladies’ bikes – and there were soon several different options – and ladies’ bikes in general were a big step forward from tricycles, which had earlier been the most accepted form of bicycle for ladies. As one article from 1891 points out, “it was surely not in reason that a presumably robust, lightly-clad man should ride the light-moving fifty-pound bicycle, while the weaker, long-skirted girl was condemned to trundle the hundred-pound tricycle.”

By 1893, manufacturing and technology had improved even on the fifty-pound bicycle option, and Iron Age‘s 1897 history of the women’s bicycle tells us that,

The combination of light steel frame perfectly elastic air tires held on a tough and springy wooden rim makes a bicycle of 25 pounds weight or less to ride which is as near like flying as woman is likely to get in our generation.

Compared to a modern bike, that sounds like, well, a modern bike. I ride a 2013 Trek 520, a steel-framed touring bike, which weighs 27 pounds. Perhaps it would be a little lighter with wooden rims on the wheels!

I still have to decide if my heroine will be riding a Psycho ladies’ safety, which had a drop frame, i.e. no top bar.

This allows it to be ridden more easily while still wearing skirts, but my heroine will be following rational dress and wearing knickerbockers. From this illustration in the novel A Study in Bloomers: Or, The Model New Woman, however, wearing bloomers, or knickerbockers, doesn’t automatically mean a female cyclist would be riding a wheel with a diamond frame.

She’s wearing a velvet suit, which sounds incredibly stylish but hot for actual riding… Obviously I still have more research to do!

28 Aug

My first tri – Lake Sammamish Triathlon

Last Saturday I got up extra bright and early to drive out of Seattle to Lake Sammamish and undertake my first triathlon. Things were pretty quiet on the freeway, but there were plenty of cars at the State Park where the event was. The transition area had opened at 5:30 am, and an hour later it was pretty jam packed. I found a place on a rack to hang my bike and set out my gear on a towel.

At 6:45 they held a meeting to go over a few points about the race with everyone, then the first wave started wading into the water. The sun was just barely up, and the lake was steaming gently in the golden morning light. The beach was cold and gravelly; when I stepped into the water it was warmer than the air and the rocks on the bottom were softened by wave action and algae. I took a place at the edge of my wave, and waited for the start.

The first rush of racing adrenalin pushed me forward and I headed towards the first orange buoy. I remembered to stick my head up and sight every so often, and did a few breaststrokes here and there to keep my bearings and my breath. I had the sense that I was in the middle of the pack. With only a quarter mile to go, the swim was over quickly and then I was gasping and jogging up the beach to the transition area. I heard someone say “seven minutes” so I assumed that was approximately my time, and a minute faster than my goal.

In the first transition I was miserably slow. I wore my bike shorts and sports bra for the swim, with a rash guard over the top. Before I got on the bike I had to take off the rash guard and put on my bike jersery, which was no problem. The problem was that I had thought a pair of spandex capris would be a good thing over the short bike shorts. It’s real tough to put on spandex pants when you’re wet, sitting on the ground, and hopped up on adrenalin. Next time, something baggier for sure!

When I finally got myself together, I jogged my bike out and along the path until there was a sign that said ‘MOUNT BIKE.’ I did so, and set off for the 14.5 mile cycle portion of the triathlon. This was definitely the highlight of the race for me, since I kept a running tally and passed 56 people. The course was out and back along the lake, mostly very flat, with one small hill. I played leapfrog with another woman for a bit, then passed her on the hill and never saw her again. I passed 9 people on the short climb. That’s my reward for crossing the Pyrenees this spring! By the turnaround, one man had irrevocably passed me, and I was playing tag with two other guys. In retrospect, I probably could have pushed harder on the cycle portion, since I was able to be chipper and exchange words with them! As we came back to the transition area, I pulled ahead of one of them, and chased the other into the dismount area.

I changed my shoes relatively quickly and set off for the run jog portion, a 3.2mi/5k course through the park. It was quite flat, and a pleasant route through grassy fields. I’ve never found running particularly enjoyable, but in the last two years I’ve slogged on until I can run 5 miles in a go. I am by no means a fast runner, so I was surprised that only 18 people passed me on the run. I assumed that many of the people I had blown by on the bike would now take their revenge, but I suppose by then the participants were pretty well spread out over the course.

Yes, I have a Sponge Bob bike jersey. It’s a youth large.

Finally I came around back to the transition area and made a short sprint to the finish line. My final time was 1:36 which was pretty good considering I had been hoping to finish in under two hours!

Here’s the breakdown of my time, which earned me 191st place overall, and 10th in my age group.

7:53.8 – swim (119/302 overall, 8/19 F30-34)
3:25.0 – first transition
49:59.4 – bike (150/302 overall, 7/19 F30-34)
1:26.9 – second transiton
33:38.7 – run (230/302 overall, 12/19 F30-34)

For next time, I’ll work speeding up that first transition, I’ll know I can push harder on the bike, and, of course, I’ll keep running. My taller half is talking about learning to swim more competently so he can tri with me next time; in the mean time I think he just signed us up for the Leavenworth Oktoberfest Marathon. Now I definitely can’t put away those sneakers!

12 Jun

My living quarters in Sitka

If you’ve been wondering what the Forest Service bunkhouse looks like, here ya go. One story, four bedrooms, two bathrooms. It’s on the edge of a gravel parking lot, which is surrounded by three buildings – a FS warehouse, another FS building which I suppose is a shop for working on boats/ATVs/cars/whatever, and ye olde bunkhouse. I say ye olde bunkhouse, because yesterday someone was visiting from another ranger district and said it looked the same when she first stayed there in the 1980s.

Also, the truck, as all FS road vehicles, are called “rigs.”

Above is my bedroom. It’s double occupancy, and I do have a roomie. Below is our kitchen.

Finally, here is our living room. As many buildings here do, we have a great big pasted together map of maps to show the area where we are. These vary in scale; the bunkhouse map shows Baranof Island and a bit of the surrounding islands. I think it would be 200-300 miles, north to south, in the territory it covers. We also have a television, and two vcr/dvd players because one of them is crummy on dvds, or maybe it was just the dvd from the public library was crummy. What you can’t see is the 15 vhs tapes that are part of the bunkhouse collection, including the entire set of the X Files. If I were into the X Files, that would be pretty exciting.

Also, here’s my bike. I’m glad I waited and refused to take any of the rusting mountain bikes that were offered to me, because not only were most of them too big, they were not nearly as nice as this bike.

Although I have been to the bikeshop with it three times in the first week – first to get it checked over and air in the tires, second to fix a flat because I went through the spare tube I bought, and third because a piece of the derailleur fell off, and I didn’t really want a single speed bike even though it is super flat here.

23 Oct

Lost, stolen or strayed: my bike :(

Someone took my bike today.

I went to class. I went to seminar. I had some lunch. I went to get my bike.

It wasn’t there.

Did I put it on a different bike rack? Did I move it between class and seminar?

Where did it go?

Did I do something boneheaded and lock it up to itself, and not actually to the bike rack? No sign of the lock. No sign of the bike.

The campus police gave me this (paraphrased) advice: Ride an uglier bike, or get a more expensive lock.

I don’t know the serial number. I have one picture that includes part of the back wheel, behind my photogenic cat.

I have my old bike, but not only is it lacking pedals, but the rim is a tiny bit warped on the front wheel and I’m not comfortable riding it say, down steep hills (the warping makes it jerk when you brake, which is kind of freaky).

Too bad I live on top of a big hill.

Too bad my other bike was stolen.

If they’re selling it for parts, I hope they’re not worth half what they think. I wish the bike had some sort of odd quirk that would cause serious pain and bodily damage if you weren’t aware of it. Like the seat would electrify you when it was wet.

Vittun paskapää. Mene helvettiin ja kuole. Sulla oo kaks persea ja ei oo yks pää.