Ride with the Rebels to Gettysburg

“In great deeds something abides.  On great fields, something stays.”

~Joshua Chamberlain, 1888

Chamberlain made those remarks at the dedication of the 20^th Maine monument at Gettysburg.  Chamberlain was a Union officer during the Battle of Gettysburg and his steely defense and determined leadership saved the strategic high ground of Little Round Top from a Confederate infantry charge.  Chamberlain’s men from Maine found themselves protecting the left flank of the Union Line early on the second day of the battle, July 2, 1863.  The high ground of the small bump of Little Round Top was key to the battlefield.  Chamberlain, sensing a swing in the battle’s momentum ordered bayonets be fixed and rather than repulse the oncoming Rebels, the 20th Maine charged down the slope into a hornet’s nest of hand-to-hand combat with the 15^th Alabama Regiment.  Rallying under the orders of Chamberlain the Mainers beat back the Alabamans and Round Top and the Union line was secured.  Chamberlain was wounded twice in the fighting.  He was already suffering from dysentery and was later sent behind the lines to recover.  He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

This week the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg begins with festivities leading up to the largest battle reenactment ever.  Over 10,000 reenactors, 130 artillery pieces, and hundreds of men on horseback will take spectators back in time to 1863 in a series of mock battles held over four days (July 4-7).   Over the last decade the Gettysburg National Battlefield Park has done painstaking work to take the battlefield back to the look and feel of July 1, 2, and 3 of 1863.  Anything that had been built or moved to the field in the years after the battle has been removed.  Today, the battlefield is as it appeared in 1863.     

   

Take a bike ride with the ghosts of Southern rebels.  Start in Taneytown, Maryland.  Park the car at Taneytown Memorial Park.  Take a quick warm up ride through town.  The small hamlet was for a short time the headquarters of Union General George Meade around the time of Gettysburg.  The ride to the battlefield will take you out of town on Harney Road (route 134).  Roughly six miles into your ride you will cross the Mason-Dixon Line and enter the North.  When Robert E. Lee entered Pennsylvania on the march to Gettysburg it was the first time Southern troops had ever crossed the Mason-Dixon.  They would cross the line again just days later in retreat.  It would be for the last time.    

 

Once in Pennsylvania Harney Road becomes Taneytown Road and in another six miles you will be on the battlefield.  Taneytown Road bisects the great meadows and fields of Gettysburg.  It is from across these meadows that Gen. George Pickett and thousands of Confederates made one final and catastrophic assault at the formidable Union army.   So many men lost their lives in these fields that to this day scores of vultures return expecting to find the remnants of soldiers.  

Once inside the Battlefield Park numerous serpentine roads allow riders to view the monuments and statues erected to honor the valor of men--what Lincoln called the “last full measure of devotion.”  It has been said that at night those statues come to life to continue the Battle of Gettysburg.

Please visit our website for new Product and Bicycle Reviews at www.stickybottleteam.net.  We are preparing now for the 100^th Tour de France which begins this Saturday.  In the meantime please re-read our post “Le Tour to Challenge Ancient Aragon” from October, 2012.

Fool for Manhole Covers

By now you have read on this blog or other cycling-focused outlets about sharrows, the road sharing program that encourages the co-mingling of bikes with traffic.  The idea is catching on and more towns are adopting sharrow roads and more bike riders are cruising along with the flow of traffic.  The cars are no problems for bikes, we see them and they see us.  One thing that the SBT has been thinking about when it comes to sharrows is the unseen danger of manholes.

Manholes and manhole covers can be a problem.  First, let’s correct the vernacular, the PC world has come to the idea of a manhole.  The preferred term is subsurface chamber.  Now that is out of the way we need to look a little more into the problems manholes create for bike riders.  The things are a necessary evil, they have taken most of what is unsightly out of our field of vision: wires, cables, sewers, storm drain run off and much more.   Each time something new is built the possibility of a new, or many new manholes, appearing on a road surface is real.  Today’s construction moves many things underground.  That’s all well and good but and once a shiny new 110 pound manhole cover gets put into place it looks just fine sitting flush with the asphalt.  That flushness only lasts for a little while.  The combination of gravity, weight, and the elements cause manhole covers to sink into the blacktop.  That sinking creates a lip, a road anomaly that our front wheels can catch if we aren’t careful.  Once our wheel gets knocked out of round we are looking at a period of no riding as the machine heads to the local bike shop for some wheel truing.  

Metropolitan and suburban riders will have to deal with manhole issues more than our rural rider friends.  Out in the country most service cables and wires are still carried by utility poles.     

The surface of the manhole can get slippery, more so than blacktop or concrete.  The little nubs on the top can add some bounce to your passage as well.  And last, years of sitting and baking in the sun causes them to fade into the same color as the faded blacktop on which it sits.  The things after time can be an unseen nuisance.  The worst possible scenario is a cover that becomes electrified due to a phenomenon known as “stray voltage.”  On this very rare occasion a manhole cover can deliver an electric shock. 

The photo is all you need to know about the problem manholes create.  When you are riding in a sharrow road be aware of manholes.  In Europe, be doubly aware, they tend to get stolen on the Continent for their scrap value. 

Note about the photo: Most rock fans will recognize the cover of the 1975 album “Fool for the City” by Foghat.  The fisherman is the band’s drummer Roger Earl.  Earl was angling in the middle of 11^th street in Manhattan.  Foghat was formed in the UK in 1971 and adopted the name Foghat after a night of Scrabble in which one of the band members tried to pass off the made-up word as real stating that it is a type of cap one would wear in a heavy London mist.  "Fool for the City" was Foghat’s most successful album earning platinum status.  

Visit our website for a new Product Review, new Bicycle Review and the Craft Beer of the Week at www.stickybottleteam.net 

Happy Birthday to our 35th State.

Did you hear about the New $3 Million West Virginia State Lottery?

~You get $3 dollars a year for a million years.

Yet another of the many, many jokes directed at the 35^th state.  West Virginia has been the brunt of jibes for decades.  West Virginia is unique, it is the only state to secede from the Union twice.  First, when the area was still part of Virginia and Confederate secession came about thus becoming a contributing factor to the Civil War and second, during the “Wheeling Conventions” of 1861 when a group of legislators decided their large swath of land in the Appalachians should secede from Virginia, become a state and join the Union.  West Virginia was accepted into the Union in 1863 and for much of the war was a border state.  Like the other Border States, West Virginia sent men and munitions to both the North and the South.  This year marks 150 years of West Virginia statehood.  What better way to celebrate than with a bike ride in mountaineer country.

A good place to select for a nice ride is the New River Gorge region.  The area is a National Park and open to the public daily.  The park encompasses 70,000 acres and has over 50 miles of trail and roads for riding and hiking.  A number of quaint towns exist allowing for a step back in time.  One such town is Thurman (pictured) and a good way to get to town is along a rail trail that was once part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad.  The C&O brought quick prosperity to Thurman.  Between 1900 and 1925 the coal coming out of the Appalachians was moving into Thurman on its way to Eastern and Rust Belt factories and homes.  Thurman is a prime example of an American boom town. More railroad revenue was generated by Thurman than by Cincinnati and Richmond combined—two other large C&O depot towns.  At its height Thurman received 15 passenger trains daily.  When Appalachian coal went bust so did Thurman.  Today a ride through Thurman is of a place frozen in time.  When the coal stopped coming through town so did change and progress.  

Back in the New River Gorge Park, the New River powers its way on a flow to the Ohio River.  An interesting note to the New River is that it is not new.  Geologists who study such things have determined that the New River is the third oldest river in the world.  How that is determined is to look at the mountain ranges that contribute to a river’s creation.  The Appalachians are the oldest mountains in North America.  They were actually part of the prehistoric super continent of Pangaea and before that an undersea range in a giant salt water sea.   Out of the eons of time comes the New River.  Today the river is part of the American Heritage River System and also designated as a Wild and Scenic River by the federal government.  The roads along the New offer spectacular rides.

Most of what people know of the New River is the iconic bridge across the gorge near Fayetteville.  For many years it was the largest steel arch bridge on earth (it is now fourth).  At nearly 900 feet in the air the bridge is also very high and base jumpers flock to the place every October for the annual “Bridge Day.”  Unfortunately the bridge cannot be crossed on a bicycle but guided tours can cross on foot.    

So Happy Birthday to West Virginia.  We have posted on our website a cool video of a sold out Milar Pusker Stadium all singing a John Denver classic following a WVU victory at www.stickybottleteam.net.

Classic Speedline Airflo - A unique history

At the beginning of the last century Tuberculosis was a major problem.  In fact, the disease (rather an infection) has been with the world since the dawn of time.  Egyptologists have found traces of tuberculosis in the remains of ancient mummies.  TB, or “consumption” attacks the lungs of the infected and it was not fully understood until the 1880s when it was determined that unsanitary conditions led to the spread of the infection.  By the 1950s medical treatments had been perfected to control TB.  At one point in the late 1800s 25% of all deaths throughout Europe were TB related.  It was also a major problem in the United States, so much so that special hospitals were created not so much to heal the sick but to quarantine the disease.  One American, George Pepperdine had TB.  In spite of his illness he was building a large fortune.

Pepperdine (pictured) was a Kansan by birth and he was a car fan.  In 1908 Pepperdine saw the public’s reaction to Ford’s all new Model T.  It was the car for the everyman: affordable, practical and it came in black.  Pepperdine just one year later started a mail order business shipping auto parts throughout the United States.  New owners of the Model T and other new cars needed replacement parts and Pepperdine was ready to handle the orders.  The company was a minor success in Kansas but it really took off in 1916 when Pepperdine with his young wife and family in tow, moved to Los Angeles.  His wife felt the agreeable Southern California weather would help with his consumption.  She was right.  The Golden State was also the salve the mail order company needed.  Soon, the business evolved into a retail store and Western Auto was born.  By 1960, 1,200 Western Auto Stores stretched from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

 

Western Auto sold just about everything automotive related: New parts, replacement parts and specialty parts.  They also sold bikes and one in particular has become somewhat legendary, the Western Flyer.  Pepperdine had manufacturing contracts with many US-based builders such as Huffman and Murray.  One company to build Western Flyers was the Shelby Cycle Company in Shelby, Ohio.  In the late 1930s Shelby unveiled the Western Speedline Airflo (pictured).  Like most of the balloon tire bikes of the era it was heavy, just about 75 pounds but the lines and tubing were classic.  The bikes sold for about $70 then but today an Airflo in great shape can fetch over $1,000.  Each year Western debuted a new bike design and each year had a specific color scheme and unique serial numbering system.  The bikes were so popular they sold well each year until being discontinued in 1959. 

It was also in the late 1950s that Western Auto began to see some decline.  The company had done well for decades but Mr. Pepperdine was in ailing health.  Pepperdine loathed his great fortune.  A Godly man, he was devoted to a higher power and felt his fortune would be better served helping youth.  In 1937 he founded Pepperdine University and at his death in 1962 the school received the bulk of his net worth.  One year prior to his passing Pepperdine sold Western Auto.  The company then had a number of parent companies (Sears and Advance Auto Parts were two).  Advance finally ended the Western Auto brand in 2003.  The company headquarters building still stands in Kansas City, Missouri.  In recent years the 12-story structure was converted to luxury condominiums.   

Please visit our website for other news and updates at www.stickybottleteam.net

Ride of the Bumblebee

Ah, yes, the flight of the bumblebee.  The bumbling, too-big-for-their-own-good insects can be found the world over.  The orchestral classic was penned in 1900 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan.  In the story the Tsar’s son, missing his long lost father, transforms into a bumblebee (with the help of a mystical swan with magical powers) in order to fly in an effort to find the man.  At full steam, a worker bumblebee can reach speeds of 10 miles per hour.  That doesn’t sound like too great of a speed until that bee meets the eyeball of a bike rider moving at 20 mph.  And, like Sir Isaac Newton taught us; when two opposing forces meet, bad things can happen.  Old Newton knew a bit about this stuff.  So much so that today a unit of force is known as a Newton.  The other day the SBT noticed a rider moving along without eye protection and we thought of Sir Isaac.

The world needs bumblebees, they are one of the foremost pollinators of plants on earth.  Their big, hairy bodies absorb copious amounts of pollen and with all of the traveling they do to working for their queen they make plenty of stops in a given day.  And they don’t even have to stop to pollinate.  Bumblebees vibrate in flight and those vibrations shake off the collected pollen onto whatever is nearby.  So, the valuable bee is good for us humans.  We ride in their world.  The best way to do it is with eye protection.  

The Prevent Blindness Society of America reports that close to 1,000,000 people will sustain an eye injury at work or at home this year.  Another 40,000 people will injure one or both eyes playing sports.  The number one eye injury reported from a sporting activity is a fish hook cast by an errant angler (paintball is second and closing in fast).  The Society notes that 90% of all eye injuries are preventable.  It makes sense to ride with eye protection.  Safety experts recommend glasses with the following requirements:

High mass impact.  In order to test impact “a one-inch diameter steel projectile weighing 17.6 ounces is dropped through a tube from a height of 50 inches onto a safety lens mounted in a frame. To pass, the frame must fully retain the lens, and no piece can become detached from the inner surface of the frame component that holds the lenses.”  That is enough to fend off a bumblebee or any insect, even most road debris. 

High velocity impact. This test “involves shooting a quarter-inch steel ball at the lens and frame at a velocity of 150 feet per second from a distance of just under 10 inches. The pass criteria are the same as for the high mass impact tests.”  Again, nothing you will encounter on your bike will get past that.

Also, consider purchasing an elastic band that attaches to the back of your temples to keep your safety glasses securely on your head during active sports.  On a bike it is easy to bounce over a road anomaly and lose your glasses.  

And last, you will want to eliminate glare.  Not having to squint will keep your eyes fresh and will fend off fatigue.  Photochromic lenses change for outdoor lighting conditions. An eye care professional can advise you as to which tints are best for cycling.  We want you to have a good ride, and a safe ride.  

The SBT is working on a product review of the best  glasses at this moment and will post it to our website soon.  In the mean time please visit www.stickybottleteam.net for our current Product and Bicycle Reviews.  

The 10 best "Story Songs" in Rock n Roll

It’s all about sex, drugs and rock n roll.  Music that is.  Rock music since time immemorial has had as its central theme the trifecta of sex, drugs and rock n roll.   Nearly every song in the vast rock music catalog deals with one of the three subjects.  Sometimes, even when we think it is a love song, it isn’t.  Take for example the Rolling Stones classic “Angie.”  Speculation for years was that the tune was inspired by Angie Dickinson, or David Bowie’s wife Angela, or a lady by the same name the band met backstage.   Angie is not a woman, Angie is heroin and the song is about Keith Richards’ trying to kick the horse habit.  But every once in a while a rock song comes along that tells a great a story--and yes one or all three of the themes inter-mingles making these classic story songs legendary.  The SBT takes a break from cycling and bike riding to bring our dear readers the top ten “Story Songs” in Rock Music history. They are songs with a plot, suspense, and an outcome.  They tell a story

We start with Reg Dwight and the classic “Levon.”  There was no Levon nor was there a chap named Alvin Tostig but it tells the great story of a man and his son.  Levon was so named because Bernie Taupin, Elton’s lyricist loved listening to Levon Helm and The Band.

Speaking of The Band, our next selection is “The Weight.”  The song is a well told tale of stranger “feeling half past dead” wandering through the town of Nazareth.  Along the way he chats with Crazy Chester, Miss Moses, “Old Luke my friend,” and the Devil--three characters in the New Testament.  Like the classic “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (see the blog post Virgil Caine is the Name for more) the music draws inspiration from the Old South and the harmonies of the Bible Belt.  

“Hotel California” is a bad dream set to music.  We have all stirred in a cold sweat from a dream similar in vein: traveling with no real destination in mind only to finally find a place from which “you can never leave.”  The song conjures up the spooky images of “dark desert highways” and wine brought by sinister “captains.”

To move into something heavy we find a great story of the American west by a group of headbangers from Leyton, London, England—Iron Maiden.  “Run to the Hills” is simply a great heavy metal song.  It tells the story of the sometimes tragic “Manifest Destiny” and America’s population surge from the East Coast to the Pacific.    

Often times travel makes a good story, of being on the road.  A common theme about rock is that the second album for most artists is written on the road and hence most of the songs on a sophomore effort deal with the rigors of the road.  No song tells that better than Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page.”  He writes about being “strung out from the road” and “shaking off the cold.”  The song begins and caps off with some haunting saxophone.

One strange song that tells a story apropos of today is “Spirit of Radio” by Rush.  The song, thanks to Neil Peart had some pretty heady lyrics.  Example, who uses “unobtrusive” in a song?  But the band does such a thing in “Spirit of Radio” and it works.  It talks about the power of music coming through the speakers, of finding your favorite radio station and jamming out.  “The magic music makes your morning mood” the band says and it speaks to those days before iPods, internet and satellite radio.  We relied on the DJs and they delivered.  “Invisible airwaves crackle with life.”  They still do.

A group of longhairs from Jacksonville, Florida tell a great story of excess in “That Smell.”  Released on Street Survivors, Lynryd Skynyrd’s final studio album, the song talks of drinking, driving too fast, popping pills and more.  What makes the song great is not one blistering guitar solo but two blistering guitar solos and each solo is not one guitar but three.  The tragic note to the song is its release date of October 17, 1977.  The band’s devastating plane crash took place on October 20, three days later.  

In a great example of art imitating life or life imitating art is Bad Company’s “Shooting Star.”  The song of Johnny the schoolboy and his rise to rock n roll guitar hero is well told and poignantly sung by Paul Rodgers.  The listener cheers Johnny and his going “Straight up to number one.”  Yet, moments later we all come down with the knowledge that Johnny dies one night, “whiskey bottle, sleeping tablets by his bed.”   

Led Zeppelin epitomized the idea of sex and rock n roll.  Robert Plant, with the lean frame and long blond mane was perfect in the role.  He is without question one of rock’s all-time front men and lead singers.  The band consistently rocked out bluesy and sexy three minute sticks of musical dynamite.  Other times Zeppelin would veer off into songs inspired by The Hobbit.  (“Misty Mountain Hop” is a fine example).  But on occasion the lads would give us an epic story like “Kashmir” or “In My Time of Dying” but the song that makes this list is “Achilles Last Stand.”  The song is strange blend inspired by Morocco’s Atlas Mountains (“The mighty arms of Atlas”) and a spring drive through the Greek countryside (“It was an April morning, when they told us we should go”).  The drive ended in a crash in which Plant sustained a broken ankle.  It is one of the few songs where the listener can play air guitar but also lose his/her mind playing air drums thanks to great skin work by the late John Bonham.  

“Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge, drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain” is the type of lyric that immediately brings the image to life in our minds.  Throughout “Jungleland” Bruce Springsteen creates unique mental pictures of people like the Magic Rat, the barefoot girl, and “lonely hearted lovers struggling in dark corners.”  The Big Man's great sax work is epic as is the subtle piano by Roy Bittan.  The song is great story of taking a stand, albeit for naught, down in Jungleland.   

Please visit our website for a live version of “Jungleland” at www.stickybottleteam.net.