bike touring 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 Jul

Avoiding freebies in Barcelona

“Custom House” by flickr user Davido

During our one day in Barcelona, we started with an early morning walk to Las Ramblas, the main drag and tourist trap. Seeking a city map, we approached a tourist information booth.

The booth was surrounded by barkers for a tour bus, who mobbed us, and anyone else passing by.

We studiously ignored them. Having lived and traveled in Asia, where people on the streets are extremely interested in catching your attention to sell you something, anyone who starts following us on the street saying “Hello!? Hello!? English? How are you?” just gets tuned out. I mean, we walk past those people as if they are invisible. Whatever they’re selling, there is about 0.01% chance we want it.

No one in China ever seemed bothered when you ignored them, or answered with the standard “bu yao” (don’t want)[1], but these Barcelona pushers seemed genuinely offended by us.

When we made it past them to the actual booth, the woman there explained that she could sell us a city map for 1 euro. Lame, we thought. Everywhere else they give you maps for free. But, she continued, pointing to the tour pushers who we’d snubbed, they will give you a map for free.

Ah, well, then. Guess we should have listened to them this time around.

Of course, we still didn’t want to engage with the barkers. So, to save face, we asked where we could acquire a regional map, which we needed for route planning anyway. A bookstore.

The moral of the story? Well, there’s a couple conclusions to draw. First, that the taller half and I are stubborn and have a lot of (perhaps occasionally misguided) pride about traveling independently without falling into tourist traps. Second, Barcelona is no Beijing. And finally, what the heck, 1 euro for a map?

(We got along fine with a smart phone and the system maps in the metro.)

[1] Funny story from someone’s China memoir, although I’m sorry to say I can’t remember which one. After passing the same street sellers for weeks, and every day telling them “bu yao!” this particular expat had been learning some Mandarin. One day as she went by, she expanded her statement on noninterest to “don’t want yesterday, don’t want today, don’t want tomorrow!” And they smiled and laughed at her. And probably continued to pitch to her the next day and every day until she left the area.

03 Jul

Packing list critique

Back when we were packing for the trip, I made a post about everything I was taking with me. Now, for the edification of future bike tourists, I thought I’d go back and revisit the list.

Ortlieb Backroller Classic Panniers – count me on the list of people who love their Ortliebs. Kept things dry in the rain, and at campgrounds I put our food in one and had no fears of small wildlife helping themselves during the night. The taller half got the backpack attachment for one of his bags, but I prefer to use the long strap and carry it over my shoulder. The backpack attachment is permanently fixed to your pannier once you add it, and needs to be rolled up and fiddled with any time you adjust your bag.
Orange REI stuff travel pack – After the first two or three weeks, we almost exclusively carried stuff in this littlepack rather than pannier+backpack straps when walking around without bikes. It can hold raingear for two, lunch, and a camera, or quite a bit of groceries. Definitely glad to have this along
Upper body clothing – Having a button up shirt ended up being really good because I could quickly take it on or off, or leave it unbuttoned for temperature regulation. The taller half had arm warmers, but I tried to avoid single purpose clothing. The rest of the layers I wore at various times, but probably got the least use out of the black long sleeve, because it was harder to take on and off quickly around a helmet. I did also find myself wishing for a tshirt length bike jersey instead of sleeveless, for sun protection.

Gray North Face polyester/merino long sleeve warm layer
Light blue tank top, light blue sleeveless bike jersey
Black Mountain Hardware long sleeve (something like this)
Tan long sleeve button up quick drying shirt

Merrell Women’s Bare Access Arc shoes – Weighing less than 10 oz. for the pair, these were super lightweight and squishable into a pannier. I also found them comfortable for the walking we did, although the soles were thin enough that really lumpy cobblestones were worth avoiding.
Shimano mountain biking style bike shoes – Part of the stitching came undone, but since my shoes all scuff in the same spot, I think it has more to do with my style of walking than the quality of the shoe.
Novara Express 2.0 bike jacket in beautiful purple, black rain pants – We were lucky enough with the weather that I only wore the rain pants a handful of times, but I was glad to have them when I wanted them. The taller half didn’t bring rain pants, and was comfortable enough in leggings. If it had been any warmer in the rain, though, the steam inside would have defeated the purpose for me. The jacket worked great, and made a good warmth layer in the evenings or in the wind on descents. The visibility of the color I think was also a plys.
Lower body clothing – The gel pad on the liner shorts covers a smaller area than some of the padded shorts I left at home, but having the versatility was key. I was able to easily swap around between longer and shorter length of shorts and capris. However, I found that I wore the cotton pair of shorts more than the quick-dry synthetic ones, which I might leave out if we ever did a trip like this again.

2x Canari gel liner cycle shorts
2x pair of shorts, one purple, one blue-gray, and a pair of capri length spandex, something like this

Merrell Alexandra dress, which is so comfy that I sleep it in all the time, and black leggings to wear under it or on cold cycling days
3x non-cotton quick drying undies, 2x Moving Comfort sports bras,
4x cycle socks – the two pairs of thinner smartwool cycle socks, which I bought new before the trip, quickly developed holes in the toes. A slightly thicker pair, looser around the toe box, from a no name brand which I’ve had since 2006 has no toe holes. Thinner socks seemed like they’d be better in the heat, but the smartwool ones were not a long term solution. Boo.
Bike helmet
1x batik sarong for use as scarf, towel, skirt, etc and 1x purple tiedye bandana
Mess of toiletries/first aid, incl. one wee loofah, one bottle Dr. Bronner’s soap, one large bottle sunscreen, bandaids, neosporin, painkillers, hand sanitizer, tiger balm, chapstick, handwarmers
Small camera w/ case & battery charger – since the taller half took all the pictures, I took barely a dozen and could have left this at home.
Little blue flashlight – ditched before departure in favor of bikelight
Kindle, small notebook, pencil – I got a lot of use of all of these, although we had to acquire a pencil sharpener. The taller half had a tablet, and nearly every hotel and campground we stayed had wifi (everywhere in France and Spain, although Italy was more of a tossup), so I could check out ebooks from the library at home and update the Kindle. I kept a written journal of our travels.
Lady kit – ladies, you know what you need!
Shea butter and tea tree/vitamin E creme for prevention and treatment of saddle sores – I went on a fruitless search for Hoo Ha Ride Glide in the days before we left, couldn’t find it, and read on the Team Estrogen forums about the wonders of shea butter. I got 2 oz. of shea butter from Whole Foods, and transferred it from a fancy glass jar to a sturdier plastic jar. It was applied to saddle sore prone spots, used as chapstick and as skin moisturizer, fulfilling my desire for multipurpose items, and working fairly well on all accounts.
REI Halo 40 degree down bag and Women’s Prolite Thermarest – After the first week or two, it was warm enough that this bag was overkill. I have slept cold so many times in the mountains, though, that I found it really luxurious to sleep with a bag unzipped. The taller half had a much thinner summer weight bag and was occasionally cold; because I was extra toasty I was able to keep my bag unzipped and wrap part of it over him, giving back some of the body heat I have leached from him over the years. I returned a 1 inch Thermarest for a 1.5 inch pad before we left, and I have no regrets. Really, sleeping comfy in the tent for several weeks was key to a successful trip.
3L platypus bladder – We were rarely without a place to fill up on water when we needed it, and the bladder was superfluous. On a ride through less populated areas, though, it would have been handy.
Sunglasses – Totally left my sunglasses in America when we left (on a rainy day) and had to get a new pair in Rome, because sunglasses are crucial.
Leatherman, multi-tool, bike lights, spare tubes, patch kit, chain lube – Somehow we were lucky enough to never have any flats, but we regularly checked bolts for tightness and oiled chains a few times. Even though we didn’t use most of the repair gear we brought, I wouldn’t leave it behind.
You can never have too many zip ties – Actually, yes, you can. I was absolutely convinced of the utility of these, but I only used a few to attach a papier mache rose to my bike after a holiday fair in Spain. I imagine most people could put two in their kit and be happy, instead of the twenty I had.
Bungee cargo net – The taller half got this and although I wasn’t impressed at first, I now find it one of the most awesome things ever. It held the tent to the back of my bike, and I could easily take off a layer and stick it under the net without having to mess with a pannier. When we had damp laundry, I put it in a mesh bag under the net to air out during the day. It was incredibly useful.
Cook set – We brought along the cook pot, teeny gas stove, iodine pills and whatnot that we take camping. We never used them once. Okay, we ate with our sporks all the time, because we consumed vast quantities of yogurt, but the pot? the stove? Shoulda left them at home, and never bothered buying fuel which we donated to the apartment where we stayed the last few nights through Air BnB.
Quick dry pack towel from REI – Although small and yes, quick drying, I think I’d leave these at home next time. We got the smallest size, and constantly wished they were bigger and more absorbent. I started using my cotton handkerchief towards the end of the trip after showers, and liked it better. It absorbed more, wrung out as well, and was not unravelling at the edges.

Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on your trip duration, time of year, and location, but hopefully this is useful for those planning their own tours!

28 Jun

Laundry on the road

Laundry drying in Italy

One of the issues that comes up when you have only three sets of clothes and you are sweating in them most every day is laundry. Not washing your clothes really isn’t an option – you’re just asking for saddle sores, among other reasons.

Since we were camping or staying in hotels, there weren’t a lot of easily accessibly washing machines on our route. Actually, some of the campgrounds had washing machines, but we balked at the idea of paying 3 euros just to wash a load of laundry. Good grief, we don’t have that much! And I’m the one who decided to drive to the laundromat (and do other errands once a week) when the laundry in our last apartment went from $1.50 to $2.00 for either washer or dryer.

The first option was to rinse things out in the shower while you wash yourself. We brought a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s, and figured it would be good for washing pretty much everything. I knew about the shower technique because I read Andrew X. Pham’s description of just that in Catfish and Mandala. In campgrounds, then, we washed our innermost layers with ourselves in the shower, then hung them to dry overnight on trees or bikes. That worked okay, as long as it didn’t rain during the night.

Inevitably, though, after a few days it seemed like pretty much everything was dirty. Then we would stop at a hotel, and do a larger operation.

First, put all the laundry in the bath tub, fill with hot water and soap, and let it sit for a bit. Then, the agitation cycle, aka stomping and trying not to slip and fall down.

Human powered laundry agitation

After two rinses, the next step is to wring everything out, and try to get out as much water as possible so there is a hope of it all drying out before the next morning. After wringing and re-wringing, we would roll things up in a towel, and stomp on it a bit, to absorb water from the laundry into the towel. We created a fairly humid atmosphere in some places.

Even with the limited amount of clothing we had with us, this became quite a chore. Mostly the wringing. Stomping in a tub full of wet clothes is kind of fun. But you wring things out, and then you twist them up again and pull and turn and there’s always more water, but you start to feel something giving. Am I destroying the elastic? Pulling out seams? But if I don’t wring it out vigorously, will I be facing wet shorts in the morning?

The taller half got a blister from vigorous laundry-wringing. We gained a new respect for washerwomen of old. We also decided, by the time we left Spain, that the 3 euro price we’d seen for use of a washing machine in the first campground? Not so exorbitant as it had seemed at the time.

Throughout France we visited self-service laundries, where we found prices ranging from 3 to 5 euros for 5 kg capacity washer, and another 4 euros or so for a dryer. There were often machines that took 1 euro or so to dispense a cupful of powdered soap. In Italy, the self-service laundry was rarer, but still available.

These little laundries were not too much like American laundromats. Most only had a few machines, 3 to 5 on average. And they are of various sizes, 5 kilos, 7 kilos, 10 kilos, maybe as large as 14 kilos. The price for using the machine is graded accordingly. There is not a slot on the machines to put in your coins, though. There is a central paybox, where you put in your coins and then push the number of the machine you want to start up. Every time I triple checked the number, frightened that I would waste 4 euros by pressing the wrong button.

Then, I would wait for 40 minutes while the washer went through its cycle, writing in my journal or my novel (oh yes, I’m working on a novel, but no, it’s not about bike touring in Europe), and people watching on the sly. In Narbonne, France, I had a chat with a (probably) German young man about how the machines worked. I also had a non-conversation with an old lady who asked me questions in French that I couldn’t understand. In Cavaillon, France, I listed to the squishy foam rubber sounds of talk between a Portugese woman and her mother while they waited for their clothes to dry. In La Spezia, Italy, I had a half-conversation with a group of four tourists who were trying to figure out the system of the paybox. After they began talking amongst themselves, I realized they were Spanish, and we probably could have communicated better in that language than my pieced together Italian. I’m sure there were locals using the laundries as well, but they are certainly a boon to the traveler.

Now that we’re back in the States, we have a washer-dryer unit in our apartment, and it’s pretty amazing. I never have to look for change, or worry about wandering away while the load is running. And I can read all the instructions.

13 Jun

Cats of Italy

So, once we really got into the meat of the tour and started biking every day, I ran out of extra energy to make blog posts. And we had issues with our electronics. But of course we had more adventures, and I did manage to keep a paper diary, so there will be some retroactive adventure sharing coming soon.

In the mean time, here I am with a selection of Italian cats.

I have the habit of addressing pretty much any cat I see, and we saw plenty of cats. Some of them ran away, some of them were extremely busy napping, some had been told by their mothers not to talk to American tourists, but some were interested in international friendship missions. As we like to say, they were willing to subscribe to our newsletter.

Enthusiastic subscriber in Monciano, Tuscany

Possible subscriber in Pitigliano, Tuscany

Purring and Drooling subscriber in Manorolo, Cinque Terre

Napping too hard to move or subscribe in Corniglia, Cinque Terre

18 Apr

The waiting box at Toscana Est

If you’re ever in Livorno/Leghorn Italy and looking for the Grimaldi Line ferry to Barcelona, it is not where you think it is. It is a couple miles north. If you don’t speak Italian, this may be hard to understand as you go in circles for a while and are turned away from the entrances of two different cruise terminals by Italian folk who look like this may be the first time they have heard of a boat going to Barcelona from their city.

Or maybe this look was because its the first time they had encountered a pair of cyclists looking for a boat to Barcelona and they knew already what we were about to find out. As one review of this trip by an earlier traveler said, this port is not optimized for non-car traffic. We went in vaguely the direction we had been pointed and followed signs that sounded something like what we thought we had been told until we got to the point where the way we were pretty sure we were supposed to go was an on ramp to a highway that had pretty clear signs indicating no motorcycles under 249 cc, no mopeds under 149 cc, no bikes, no pedestrians and no horse drawn vehicles. So tough luck to us.

We decided to take the other option, because although it died not have the same name as the terminal we had been directed to, it did match one set of the directions on the ferry line’s website. These directions are helpfully provided for drivers to get to two different terminals in Livorno, although no mention is made of which terminal you should go to if you are going to Spain, or which if you’re going to Sardenia, or wherever else their ships go from this port. And no, of course there was no information on our printed ticket either.

So forward we went, as there was no point in staying when we were, on the side of a wide road about to turn into an elevated highway. We followed a road which went around and under the highway and after a bit to a roundabout next to a a bar and restaurant full of big rig trucks. We were well into cargo territory now, with the port and all. Towards the restaurant looked like one way with loaded trucks coming down, so we went with the other option, and eventually came to what I thought was a weigh station for the trucks, but the taller half looked a little closer and noticed a hand written paper sign in the window that said something like Barcelona check-in.

And on the other side from where the trucks where being weighed was a dingy window where a woman took our printed confirmation and gave us official tickets, and we discovered that despite the high price we paid for tickets for an outside cabin (no inside available and 20 hours with only a deck chair space sounding extremely unpleasant) we are assigned separate cabins. On account of cabins having the capacity for four, and our being different genders. This is not the way it works on trains, of course, where you share a sleeping compartment with a mixture of people.

Anyway, the ticket woman indicated we should go back and take a left at the bar. Which we did, after figuring out there was an option which went not onto the highway, but under it and along the other side. We went and we got to a point where we could see the ship, but we were definitely overshooting its location. So we went back, but we had to stop a bit at a gate where a lone of big rig trucks were coming out. Then as we started off again I looked and realized the trucks were bringing cargo from the back end of what had to be the ship we wanted!

When we entered this gate, a security fellow came up to tell us we couldn’t be there. We showed him our tickets. Oh, okay then, yes. We should wait and he would call us. After a bit he sent us around the corner to a bare and temporary little building unit, the sort of thing that is the office at a construction site. It had chairs (blue, in connected sets of three) and lights (fluorescent) and that was it. It was a waiting box, and so we waited.

About when we were done wondering what miracle had led us to find both the check in office and the boat itself, a man in a brightly colored and official looking jacket and hat came and led us to another man who scanned our tickets and turned us over to a third man, who directed us to put our bikes in a little room marked luggage deposit, just off the car deck.

And now we are aboard, waiting til the ship sails to see if either of us has bunkmates, but so far, no, so maybe we get one more bit of luck. We’ve already looked at Google maps for Barcelona, and thank goodness it doesn’t look half as complicated as this was.

I should mention, though, that since Friday we were staying in a small Tuscan town with an Italian friend I made when I was an exchange student in high school, and she and her boyfriend made everything wonderful. Then, today, as we took the train to Livorno, we met two Italians in the bike/luggage car and chatted with them. The young woman got off at the same stop with us and said her way home was on the way to the ferry, so she led us from the train station first to a sandwich shop for the local favorite food – chickpea pancakes with pickled eggplant in a focaccia sandwich – and then to a grocery store so we could get food to survive the ferry journey. Cecilia, I only know your first name, but you are an angel and I will have to help twenty lost tourists when we get back to Seattle.