Bicycle Sightseeing

Nope, not sightseeing by bicycle, which is grand, but rather seeing the sights of neat bikes. Spring has truly sproinged, and along with the periodic shedding of my longjohns and the fast approaching solstice (come on hip healing, don't let me down!), the bicycles are coming out in droves, and in amongst the fray of ever increasing ebikes, there are some unique examples that catch my eyes.

At least last week ago, I rode my flattish ramble out the railtrail to the Lilly Library in Florence for my collection of Sunday newspaper puzzles they offer. Out front, my bike had company waiting at the racks, not an entirely rare occurrence, but this Peugeot was obviously crafted by a person with more than a passing interest in bikes. Yup, old 80s frame with horizontal dropouts is the perfect landing spot for a modern internally geared hub!

On closer inspection of the photo, I'm wondering if those are 650b wheels.

On my way home, I rode the Norwattuck Trail to the eastern terminus of its pavement in Belchertown where I saw two people with a recumbent tandem. I've ridden tamdems, and even found people with the poor judgement to trust me captaining one through the woods, and yes, I even managed to ride a friend's shockingly difficult recumbent that took multiple attempts for me to get rolling with minimal stability, but I'd never witnessed the combo in action.

I turned around and asked the pair if they were just starting or finishing their ride.

"Starting, this is my friends first ride on the tandem."

"Do you mind if I watch? I've ridden tandems and even a recumbent, but never seen the combo!"

Beginners luck or not, they started with absolute grace, so I gave them a cheer before continuing home.

But that was last week, and yesterday was yesterday when I used a much appreciated bike lane on Route 9 heading to my physical therapy appointment. Not only is a bike lane with buffer space next to the busy two lanes fantastic, the state recently made it even better by squaring off the entry from Route 116 and replacing those car's yield with a stop sign. It warms my heart to see genuine improvements in bicycle infrastructure, and it warmed it even a little more yesterday to see I wasn't the only person making use of it!

Where DOT removed the high speed,

 gentle angle entry from 116,

and zoom in,

you'll see my fellow user.

Years ago, I'd come to the conclusion I should aspire to having extremely unpopular taste. It's the whole supply and demand metric. If I like what nobody else does, there's hardly any demand and I can have it cheap. Or free. After having the extreme fortune of being paid to take bike parts, my perspective on buying bicycle equipment is generally unhelpful to the bike industry, and I have the luxury of being able to make most anything work well enough for me, but there are some parts I've purchased intentionally, two of which were hanging off the free bike that followed me home yesterday!

Aero mountain bike bars

(my touring bike preference

before accepting bar-middles 

as my personal saviour)

and

Suntour top mount shifters!

The old school

Dia-Compe brakes 

are pretty rad too.