mardi 13 septembre 2005

My Life on a Bike... part 2 Drop-Handlebars were The Thing! Turning the pages of old family photo albums is probably the same for folks still fortunate enough to have them... there may be plenty of photos of family, relatives and friends - but most of them will be posed. Limited camera specifications and slowness of film stocks of the day shouldn't have restricted photography to such stilted, frozen situations... you only have to look at the wonderful action shots taken by Jacques-Henri Lartigue in the early years of the 20th century of his family and society friends. When interviewed by Stewart McBride for "American Photographer" (August 1987) Lartigue said, "In taking pictures, I was truly spoiled to be surrounded by restless people." One of his finest images showing movement was of the "Grand Prix de l'ACF - Circuit de Dieppe" in 1912, where the subject and spectators appear to have been moving at 100 mph... although in the attractive and much larger poster reproduction the given title is... Car Trip, Papa at 80 kilometers an hour, 1913 Lartigue, Jacques Henri 24 in. x 18 in. Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com Framed   Mounted Hmmm... looks faster than 50 mph (80 kph) to me... and I think the poster's title is wrong, but you do get the image of the Delage racer! My family's old albums are filled with static, posed shots... and even from 1942, two years before I was born, I find posed photos including my father (intro photo - 3rd from right of group) with other Polish airmen standing by their bicycles when they could have been photographed on them... even if not actually pedalling. I don't think my mother took that photo - although she was certainly stationed in Exeter for a time during the war with the A.T.S. - but maybe she did and asked them to stay still for the snap. When I look at many of the other family photos I can recall mother imploring me to stand still, brush the hair out of my eyes, look at the camera, and smile... after which there would be a delay of a few seconds as mother waited for me to blink... then she snapped the "still moment in time" when my eyes were wide-open again. She was full of the joys of life as a person, but was no Lartigue with a camera... and because of that I'm shown not just frozen in time, but frozen in space. It's hard to believe that as energetic children and youths, which many of us have been, by and large we're depicted in non-active poses. Perhaps, because I rode my bicycle to and from school - and after school raced off somewhere with the other boys in the street, mama was unable to keep up with me... so most of the cycling pictures she took were at the front garden gate. Within seconds of the camera's click I'd be off with a ring of the bell and hardly a glance back. It's true that in those days all boys were cycling mad... in fact there was a dubious encouragement to arrive at school well before morning assembly otherwise there would be no space in the cycle shed to keep your wheels safe and dry. But of course wheels meant independence... and whereas the limit of one's playing range on foot was the local park, on a bike it became ten times further with hardly any extra effort required getting there and back. For me it became easy to cycle to Ringway (now Manchester International) Airport for a day's plane spotting... or on a hot day a trip to an open-air swimming pool where there were girls to splash! A bulging saddlebag stuffed with towel, trunks, sandwiches, soft drink, puncture repair kit, Kodak box camera, box of matches (because we liked lighting fires... and a cigarette or two) and a couple of "I-Spy" books to tick off another air-plane not seen before, or bird seen in the woods. These longer trips were done at a faster average speed than normal cycling around town. Long straights on main roads, far from crowded by modern standards, meant you could get your head down, lean forward over the drop-handlebars, and pedal powerfully, changing down a gear or two on uphill grades and back into top to get up to speed for a fast freewheel on the downhill swoops. And then I became more aware of those girls sitting on the edges of the pool, idly flicking water at us with their toes as we cajoled them to get their costumes wet. Our imaginations ran wild but all we were ready to do was puff our chests out and bob under the water like ducks. When you were fifteen or sixteen, and masturbation was rampant in the school showers and practised under the covers every evening after lights-out, you had no chance of romance against the twenty year-old "Teddy Boys" with their slicked back hair, boot lace ties, drape jackets, drainpipe trousers, brothel creepers and mean looks. To be different (and more interesting maybe) I stripped my ordinary sports bike down to the bare essentials... 10-speed gears were replaced with a single "fixed wheel" cog; rear brake removed (only a front brake was lawfully required with a fixed wheel); lights and dynamo were dispensed with; the cissy mudguards were discarded... and I bought proper cycling shoes. This "cool" attitude had benefits too... I became fitter, stronger and could ride for several hours and many miles without resting. In fact girls were relegated from my daily thoughts as more routes and rides were planned, made and written up in my logbook... date, destination, distance and duration. It would be a few years before those descriptions were written up as a secret diary of my first love... for a time my concentrated efforts were a combination of dropped head and dropped handlebars. Part 1 of My Life on a Bike is here. Part 3 of My Life on a Bike will follow soon. 11:56:11 PM    comment []