We saw this in an alleyway in Harvard Square earlier this evening. A fence full of bikes is a surer sign of spring's arrival than crocuses!
Some seemed to be particularly effected by Spring Fever. Are these bikes up to no good?
The old Roadster was bemused, recalling his own wild youth in the '60s.
Of course, our Miles and Marianne were more discreet and only nuzzled affectionately. Happy Spring and happy cycling!
Posting this at the end of April Fool's Day might raise suspicion, but I promise it's true: I have another "new" bike. The Co-Habitant and I were returning home from some errands and minding our own business, not even remotely entertaining the possibility of new bike acquisitions...
...when we saw a striking, if slightly decrepit, cream and black Mercier mixte outside of a nearby bike store. This was not the typical mixte we tend to see in these parts, so we got curious. After trying the bicycle I was amazed at how wonderfully it rode - despite the slick 20mm tires the bike shop chose to fit it with! The poor, lonely Mercier was for sale at a very modest sum.
Half an hour later, I was pedaling it home (after paying for it of course), and now the Mercier is mine!
Mercier was a well-respected French bicycle manufacturer in the 1960s and 70s, competing with Peugeot, Motobecane and Gitane. Mysteriously, almost no information is now available on the original Mercier (even the wikipedia entry has been deleted). Though a new company now exists under the same brand name, it has no relation to the original manufacturer.
I don't know where to start describing why I like this bicycle and feel that I must have it. For one thing, there is the attractive lugging. Here is the seat cluster with pinstriping detail on the top of the stays.
Split headtube lug for the twin lateral stays - something my Motobecane mixte does not have.
Headtube lugs, fork crown, and pinstriping on the fork. Downtube shifters (which I do not find particularly attractive, but can easily replace). Overall, the lugwork and other aspects of the bicycle's "decor" are charmingly eccentric compared to other mixtes I have seen.
The components seem to be a mixed bag of lower and higher end. The stem, which I find beautiful, is an AVA stem, which Sheldon Brown described as follows:"Many higher-quality French bicycles of the '70's came with AVA brand bars and stems. These have a reputation for failure, and should be replaced if the bike is to be ridden hard or fast."Hmmm... "higher quality" and "failure" in the same sentence? Should I interpret this to mean that as long as I don't race on the bike, the AVA stem will be okay? That is how I would like to interpret it. Advice welcome.
The handlebars are a narrow version of North Roads (what I imagine Nitto's "Dove Bars" are like) and seem original. I prefer narrower bars and love how these feel when I ride the Mercier: they give me a great deal of control and my hands don't seem to grow tired.
The beautiful Lyotard pedals feel great.
Simplex front and rear derailleur, as well as Simplex dropouts. Classic 10-speed gearing.
From what I understand, this rear Simplex derailleur is not good. I am pretty sure it's plastic. The spoke protector ("pie plate") is also original and stamped "made in France".
Mafac "Racer" centerpull brakes, which I believe are pretty good. However, the bike has steel rims (bad for braking), so I need to think of a solution to this.
"Beacon" pleather sprung saddle. Feels comfortable so far, but I imagine that after a long ride it will not. I will probably replace it with one of my vintage B72s - but first I want to ride on this one down Beacon Street.
This Mercier is a 20" frame, whereas my Motobecane is a 21" frame. This is visible in the heights of their seat tubes, but oddly enough their head tubes and stems are about even - despite the fact that the Motobecane has a modern, extended Nitto stem. The Co-Habitant thinks that this is because the Mercier's virtual top tube is upward-sloping, allowing for the handlebars to be higher in their standard position. Whatever the reason, the Mercier does not feel like it is too small; it feels just perfect and is extremely comfortable to ride.
Here is another side by side comparison. Though they are both French mixtes from the 1970s, I find the Mercier to be a considerably more comfortable ride than the Motobecane. What elusive aspect of the bikes' geometries and/or components account for this I do not know, but it is so. The Mercier was a pleasure to ride from the first moment, whereas the Motobecane required "taming" and is still a bit too "racy" for me even with the many changes I've made in attempts to make it more comfortable for everyday cycling.
Der Spiegel has a really great, long article (in English) on the troubles facing the climate science community (the image above is from Der Spiegel's 1986 cover story on climate change). The article characterizes current debate in blunt terms:A religious war is raging between alarmists and skeptics, and it threatens to consume levelheaded climatologists.The article has a very interesting and new (to me, at least) discussion of the CRU temperature data that was given by Phil Jones to Georgia Tech's Peter Webster that will no doubt tantalize those looking to find something amiss in global temperature records:
Under the pressure of [Steve] McIntyre's attacks, Jones had to admit something incredible: He had deleted his notes on how he performed the homogenization. This means that it is not possible to reconstruct how the raw data turned into his temperature curve.Hans von Storch explains what is needed to regain lost trust:For Peter Webster, a meteorologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, this course of events is "one of the biggest sins" a scientist can commit. "It's as if a chef was no longer able to cook his dishes because he lost the recipes."
While amateur climatologist McIntyre spent years begging in vain for the raw data, Webster eventually managed to convince Jones to send them to him. He is the only scientist to date who has been given access to the data. "To be honest, I'm shocked by the sloppy documentation," Webster told SPIEGEL.
Unnoticed by the public, Webster has spent several months searching for inconsistencies in the Jones curve. For example, it has been known for some time that there are noticeable jumps in ocean temperature readings. The reason for the inconsistencies is that, beginning in the 1940s, water temperature was no longer measured in buckets filled with seawater, but at the intake valves for the water used to cool ship engines.
But when he analyzed Jones's data, Webster discovered suspiciously similar jumps in temperature -- but on land. "Water buckets can't explain this," says Webster.
The Jones team attributes another sudden jump in temperature readings to the decline in air pollution since the 1970s as a result of stricter emissions laws. Particles suspended in the air block solar radiation, so that temperatures rise when the air becomes cleaner. Air pollution in the south has always been much lower than in the north, because, as Webster explains, "there is less land and therefore less industry in the Southern Hemisphere."
Oddly enough, however, the temperature increase in the south is just as strong as it is in the north. "That isn't really possible," says Webster.
Webster doesn't believe that inconsistencies like these will invalidate the Jones curve altogether. "But we would like to know, of course, what's behind all of these phenomena." If a natural mechanism were at least partly to blame for the rise in temperatures, it would decrease the share of human influence in current global warming.
German climatologist Hans von Storch now wants to see an independent institution recalculate the temperature curve, and he even suggests that the skeptics be involved in the project. He points out, however, that processing the data will take several years.
"There is no other way to regain the trust that has been lost," he says, "even if I'm certain that the new curve will not look significantly different from the old one."
And if it does? "That would definitely be the worst-case scenario for climatology. We would have to start all over again."
