Category: Bikes

Just about the time I was feeling really good about my Surly Long Haul Trucker, I discovered the PoleRider.

Jeff describes it as a bicycle rickshaw with a mobile stripper pole in the back. It’s the mullet of bicycles- business in the front, party in the back. The PoleRider was engineered and built by a team of three professional industrial designers to withstand immense leverage loads without failing. Yes mom, that’s what that expensive industrial engineering degree is going towards- keeping strippers balanced. I’m sorry, I mean “pole dancer”. The stripcycle makes the rounds in NYC and you can rent it out by the hour complete with pole-dancing hottie for $300 for the first, $200 each additional.

The PoleRider melds cycling and exotic dancing, giving a new meaning to the phrase exercise in bad taste.

Of course, I’m being too hard on the PoleRider folks, who  have a classy mission statement:

PoleRider is a new invention that unites two great things that are even better together: bicycles and pole dancers! Our mission is to raise awareness of the immense potential of pedal power and to bring pole dancing to the streets where dancing belongs. PoleRider was engineered and built by three professional industrial designers to withstand immense leverage loads without failing. Our dancers are trained professionals. Don’t try this at home!!! If you are driving, remember to look out for bicycles. One of them might be PoleRider!

For some reason, most pictures don’t emphasize the bike’s chassis

But, the site does have one shot of the guts of the PoleRider. That must be one heavy puppy.

There are lots of technical things to consider, based on this comment,

I’m thinking about rotating the bars forward a bit. The thing is so heavy that my climbing/riding position is a big priority. Raising the stage is out, but I will be experimenting with pole length for PoleRider2 since the Veloettes have asked for more pole. The leverage on the base of the pole increases tremendously with only minor increases in length so there is a limit. We are working with signals and choreography to overcome the problem.

Andrew Katzander notes that “I get kicked in the head a lot, but it’s worth it.”

They don’t need any more “pilots” AKA Flesh Pedalers

But they are looking for more dancers who are described as professional athletes, acrobats, aerialists and dancers who perform with amazing strength, flexibility and showmanship. They are also bicycle racers, bike commuters and regular bike riders themselves.

For more “information” about PoleRiders

Visit the PoleRider website.

I couldn’t afford the accessories

I gave some thought about asking if the PoleRiders would take my Surly LHT in trade, but then I thought the better of it.

I might be able to afford the bike, but I’d never be able to afford the accessories.

Before retirement, I used to be active on a telecom manager listserve. Telecom, as you might suspect is mostly Old Technology, inhabited by old farts. There are exceptions, like Jess G, the 20-something editor of Voice Report, who thinks I should be Twittering, but she doesn’t count. I have Power Bars in my bike bag older than she is.

The Sears Spyder was perfect for that demographic

At the risk of going seriously off-topic, which I’m known to do, I posted a link to the story about Bro Mark’s Sears Spyder to the group. (I slipped back on topic by pointing out that my mother still has the rotary dial telephone that we used to talk on when Mark was riding his bicycle. She had been paying a monthly charge on that phone from the late 50s until the 80s when I happened to look at her bill.)

A Schwinn Stingray, not a Sears Spyder

Within minutes, Don, a list member chimed in:

This is almost a newspaper story….

In 1963 I got my first paper route at the age of ten. 86 papers, twice a week, 1.5 cents per paper, wore the over-the-shoulder double bag (pull from front till empty, spin it around). I was gettin’ rich and used the money to buy a new bike.

Enter my shiny new single speed Schwinn StingRay – knobby rear tire (white sidewalls), sissy bar, padded banana seat, riser bars, chrome fenders, the works. Somewhere there are photos of me lovingly washing that blue and chrome steed, but can’t put my hands on them.

Thanks for drawing a memory from deep in the banks. Oh, and we’ve talked cycling before, thought you might like to see what my latest crazy passion is.

I currently hold the 55-59 age record for fastest lap at 9.636 seconds (once the good guys get to the track it will be shredded I’m sure). I’m also sporting some scrapes from a couple of spills so wondering just how foolish this is for an old man…

Hope retirement is serving you well, and glad to see you still posting. Ride on!

Velodrome has 45-degree banking!

I had seen some of the Tour de France stages end in a track finish, but I never had any idea about how steep the banks are.

There is just something wrong about wanting to ride your bicycle on a slant a mountain goat couldn’t negotiate.

Don’s a better man than me.

The Aussies weigh in

Two members of an Australian biking forum came up with suggestions.

hey Ken
I’m with you there, my brother tore up my Felix the Cat comic back in about 1958, still can’t let him off for that. At least the bike looks complete, which is always a good start, maybe you’ll have a change of heart after thinking about it for a while.

Haunt ebay and craigslist

Another Aussie had a better idea:

… bugger him, restore it for yourself or your kids. Collect more for parts, then restore them after finding more for parts, spend up big geting a stupidly rare one for your “partner”, dont worry if they protest they dont like riding it, it will look great in the shed under a white sheet next to the others, start buying some NOS stuff , start hording it just in case, spend hours on ebay searching for that special mild steel bolt you need to finish the complete NOS frame you found on craigs list (you know the bolt I mean, the one that has a squiggly line on it, not like the one at the local bolt shop for 10c without the squiggly line)…… etc etc etc……………….

Spyder claims a tooth

Bwana, a poster in another group didn’t have happy memories about his Spyder:

I lost a tooth riding a Sears Spyder in the mid-60s. The handlebar hadn’t been properly tightened in the stem, and I was pedaling out of the seat. Next thing I knew, I was doing a faceplant. After that I didn’t much care for the Spyder/Stingray look.

When I suggested that he at least learned a valuble lesson: make sure your bolts are tight, he replied:

Well, I was like 8 or 9 at the time, and I’m fairly sure my father didn’t have any tools other than a hammer and a screwdriver. But a few years later, with what I’d learned from my maternal grandfather and some tools he gave me, I did start doing my own wrenching. Still, tall handlebars like on the Spyder seem inherently unsafe, lots of leverage there to rotate them in the stem.

Kid Brother Mark sent me a crankygram all the way from frigid St. Louis yesteday complaining that I hadn’t updated the site in a couple of days. I didn’t really owe him an explanation, but I said that I had been busy with mandated projects around the house. One of those is cleaning out a storage shed behind the house. It was tented for termites this summer and Wife Lila’s brother John is coming in a week to repair the damage.

This fell out of a box

While shuffling boxes around that hadn’t been touched in 20+ years, this clipping fell out. It looked like Bro Mark’s Sears Spyder bicycle that shows up as a header on this site from time to time.

Yep, big tire in back, tiger-skin banana seat, sissy bar, high-rise bars, that’s it all right.

Don’t you agree?

No doubt about it, THAT’S the bike.

Just to be sure, I pulled it out of the shed where it had been collecting dust since last summer.

What was it doing there?

That’s a long story. It seems like Bro Mark must have gotten tired of his faithful steed at some point and it was consigned to an outside lumber shed at Dad’s construction company’s complex at Dutchtown, MO.

You may have heard of Dutchtown on the national news. It has a minuscule population, but it tends to have a 100-year Mississippi River flood about every 10 years.

Here’s Mark – who was a whole lot cuter when he was riding his Sears Spyder – in a canoe surveying the four feet of flood water in the mechanic’s shed during the Flood of ’93.

He has that look because I had just pointed out that water moccasins were probably perched all around looking for high ground.

I rescued it

A couple of summers ago, I rescued it and hauled it up to St. Louis on one of our visits. I thought he’d like to make a wall hanging out of it. (He collects old and worthless things. Perhaps that’s why he always makes me feel welcome.)

That’s when I started feeling guilty

A really considerate brother would have restored it to its original beauty before delivering it. I mean, let’s overlook the fact that he trashed all my 50’s comic books, broke all my toys and tried to kill me on a bike ride a few years back.

I had Matt bring it to West Palm Beach

Kid Matt was back in the Midwest, so I had him swing by and pick up the Spyder and bring it here for restoration. He threw it on his bike rack and hauled it 1,100 miles. Unfortunately, the tiger-skin material on the saddle didn’t like being buffeted by hurricane-force winds and deteriorated a bit more on the trip home.

What the heck is this thing?

At first, I thought it might have been a Schwinn Stingray.

Then I actually looked at the bike. It had a Sears logo on the head tube.

Patience isn’t my strong suit, Wife Lila likes to point out, so I immediately started Googling Sears vintage bicycles. A gazillion hits popped up, but none that looked exactly like Mark’s bike. It SOUNDED like a Spyder, but most of them had top tube-mounted shifters that were short-lived because they made too many riders change gender. I was confused.

When in doubt, LOOK

Right there, just barely sticking out above the rust enough paint survived to spell out Spyder name on the chainguard.

Apparently they made a single speed model in addition to the three and five-speed ones that were more common. Santa Claus probably figured that a one-speed was all he could handle.

Mississippi River mud ain’t lube

Somewhere along the line, one pedal came up missing, the tires are rotted (but look like they might have been the originals) and the front crank has many coatings of Mississippi River mud.

The seat tube has a pretty severe bend, but the metal’s not broken. Either Mark was chubbier than he looks in the black & white picture or someone heavy rode it at some point.

Fenders have a nice flare

Despite all the rust, the fenders still have a nice flare to them. This is NOT a light bike. Even though it’s a lot smaller, it feels about as heavy as my base Surly Long Haul Trucker. It’s definitely heavier than Mark’s Trek Madone.

So, what do we do with this thing?

My first stop was to see Wayne at Bicycle. He likes working on old bikes and making something out of nothing. I figured he’d say something like, “I’ve got just the thing that’ll make that look new. It’s gonna be fun.”

Actually, what he did was let out something like a low whistle and started talking about sandblasting it down to bare metal and taking it to a place where they would do powdercoating and how much of a challenge it was going to be to come up with the tiger-skin fabric.

When he reached for the calculator I knew I was in trouble.

There were too many commas and zeroes in the numbers I saw him punching in. Before it overheated and set the shop on fire, I turned and slowly (which is the only way it goes with those dry-rotted tires) pushed the bike back to my van.

In reflection (bad pun of the day)

You hit the point where the lottery numbers continue to elude you and your 401K is more like a 199.5K, so you have to make some hard choices. Yep, you love your Bro Mark. But not THAT much.

Now, if you hadn’t torn up all those vintage comics books, THEN I might have been able to restore your bike for you.

Too bad. That’ll teach ya.