Dusty Lens: Golden Spike Salamander

Almost ran over this fella on Sunday, as we were out riding on Golden Spike Road, west of Edmonton. The tiger salamander was crossing the road and scurried out of the path of my wheel at the last second. We stopped and went back for a second take. He/she was about 8-inches long, prehistoric looking, and feisty. Penn transferred Sal to the ditch, where life is a little more laid back.

Muscle on Wheels

It’s a common claim of cycling historians that women didn’t ride the high-wheel bicycle, the so-called “ordinary” or “pennyfarthing” that was, hands down, the most popular bicycle from the mid 1870s to the late 1880s. The high wheel, so the story goes, required too much athleticism for women and was wholly incompatible with Victorian women’s fashion. So female cyclists rode tricycles until safety bicycles revolutionized the market in the late 1880s. High wheelers, so the theory goes, were the exclusive domain of men.

Edmonton author M. Ann Hall debunks that theory in her latest book, which tells the story of women who not only rode high wheel bicycles but raced them, often against men, more than holding their own. Muscle on Wheels: Louise Armaindo and the High-Wheel Racers of the Nineteenth Century (McGill-Queens UP, 2018) focuses on the exemplary racing career of one woman in particular, French Canadian Louise Brisbois, who competed under the name Louise Armaindo, and who was the first “highly successful woman high-wheel racer.” Armaindo was based in Chicago for a lot of that time and raced all around North America but especially in the midwest.

Advice from The Modern Cyclist, 1923 (Laws and Customs)

LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ROAD

    "Whenever a dubious traffic situation arises, such, for instance, as led horses on the wrong side of the road and two motors approaching from opposite sides, the cyclist is not only wise, but dignified, who stops at once and looks on while the others muddle through.
. . . 
     Whenever you propose to turn to the Right hold out the right arm horizontally and never the left. To hold out the left arm and turn to the right, as I have seen both cyclists and motorists do, is a symptom of imbecility.
. . . 
Although the law requires you to keep to the left when required to by other traffic, you have a legal right to ride on any part of the road at other times. But modern conditions make it very risky to stand on one's legal rights in the matter. It strikes me as bad manners for cyclists to ride more than two abreast at any time or anywhere."

Lanterne Rouge

“[S]uccess, especially your own, is not a good subject; failure is.” --Tim Krabbe

Of the many Tour de France color-based designations (yellow, green, white, and polka dot jerseys; red number for combativity), my favorite is the lanterne rouge, a completely unofficial designation “awarded” to the last place finisher in the General Classification. The term comes from the nineteenth-century tradition of hanging a red lantern on the back end of a train. It was some time in the 1910s, in the second decade of the Tour’s existence, that lanterne rouge also came to refer to the final finisher of the overall race. Riders themselves, or sometimes fans, would give the last place rider a symbolic paper lantern to carry on the final stage.

Tour organizers have never been that crazy about the concept of the lanterne rouge, which could be seen by some (though not by anyone who really understands grand tour cycling) as celebrating failure and distracting attention from the front of the race. But British journalist Max Leonard, author of Lanterne Rouge: The Last Man in the Tour de France (Yellow Jersey, 2014), makes the compelling argument that the front of the race is only one of many stories at any tour, and, in some ways, the story at the back end can be just as fascinating--perhaps even more relatable to most fans. Leonard’s book explores some of the most entertaining stories of this unique sporting tradition. 

Dusty Lens: Self-Portrait with Canola

Near Kaleida, Manitoba

Gull-Sylvan Lakes Loop

Why is it a good idea to drive 1.5 hours to some random part of Alberta and ride a half-day gravel loop? Think of it as a low-stakes micro-adventure. The landscape may not be that different from home but it’s new territory nonetheless and it just might offer a refreshing break from the same old same old.

Advice from the Modern Cyclist, 1923 (Luggage)

"What you take with you in the way of luggage on a cycling tour is largely a matter of your age and the distance you are going. The young man will set off for a week with nothing but a waterproof cape--I have done it very often. For a shirt is good for a week, even worn day and night. If your knees and stockings are wet when you cease riding for the day you push newspapers down inside your breeches, one in front of each leg, and it is sound practice in both physics and physiology. You don't worry about wet stockings, because the area of evaporation and radiation is not large enough to chill the whole body. If it stops raining after tea or supper, a sharp walk will dry all your clothes and destroy the last chance of chill. This tourist does not carry a shaving kit because there are barbers en route. He may carry a spare soft collar and "hanky" in his breast-pocket; and if he has any disreputable old hankies he may take two or three and leave them behind as he goes. After elementals, you take just what you 'cannot do without.'"

Highwood

The snow on the road appeared suddenly. One moment we had clear pavement, with patches of snow in the ditches here and there. And then the next, most of the road was covered in a couple of inches of snow. We were close to the top, maybe a kilometer from the summit, but that was as far as we would get. On our skinny tires, we weren’t going to make it far in this snow.

On a warm day in late May, Strava Jeff and I had ridden our bikes up to Highwood Pass, exploring, for the first time, a classic Alberta rite of spring. Calgarians do it all the time, I know, but we’d never made it down to Kananaskis during the brief window between when the snow melts and the high mountain road, which is closed for the winter, re-opens to vehicle traffic June 15.

Dusty V Report

For a while there last week, it looked like the Dusty 100 might not happen at all this year. The apocalyptic smoke-sky of last Thursday had me and others wondering if we might get smoked out in Smoky Lake County. It’s hard to blow a bugle while wearing a surgical mask.