Farewell to a great curb that never hurt anybody

In June my local government in Newtown, PA, sent me an $8000 estimate for the replacement of perhaps 100 foot of curb, in the middle of the pandemic and with me living 3 hours away working multiple jobs to pay my bills and get ahead.

The house has been there since 1964, and my father and I put in the curb ourselves in the 1970s when I was a child. I have distinct memories of hauling sand using my wagon from the back yard to the front. There’s never been an issue with water retention or ice or anything. The street itself has been repaved multiple times over the decades with the existing curb.

I appealed and the Newtown Borough Council respectfully listened. My position is that the curb is not needed. It has existed in its present form for decades and I do not want it replaced. They say that it is required for the repaving of the road, but really could not explain why the previous several road repavings over the years (I can distinctly remember two) went just fine with the existing curb. It is apparently just part of the master plan — which also may include a monorail at taxpayer expense* — and there is just no way to stop or amend the bureacratic ‘progress.’

It should be stated that there is no sidewalk there and my property is actually partly in the township, not in a commercial area that gets foot or car traffic (although a massive building project nearby is seeing lots of construction workers parking on the street these last few months).

I virtually attended a borough council meeting after sending an email requesting that the unneeded, unwanted  construction that they were billing to a local resident be reconsidered. The council members were all good, courteous people but they were clearly completely out of touch with how a sudden $8000+ bill send to a resident might be local government overreach and cause additional stress during a stressful time.

Again, they were nice to me and I appreciate that, but when a local government can undertake projects such as this and then bill a homeowner who does not want that project done, I have to protest. Will they put in a new street light next, and charge me $20,000 for something I do not want that is not needed. Does their master plan include 100 foot of sidewalk next year, which terminates at the township line (which actually dissects my property). Will they then start fining me if snow is not removed from said sidewalk on their schedule? This is not the main business street, State Street, it is literally the last house in town that is partly in the adjoining township.

My family has lived in or owned that house since 1964, and I took on a second mortgage to purchase the family house from my brothers when my mother passed. To my knowledge this is the first time the local government has done anything like this in the 50+ years of the house’s existence. To my knowledge there has never been any interaction before with the local government, which is really the way it should be. You leave me alone and I will pay my taxes on time and maintain the property in a reasonable manner. If I had a 300 ft tall oak tree that threatened life and property, bug me about that. Not a silly, unneeded bit of curb.

I just mailed a check for $5768.04 for local property taxes, and I just paid around $1700 in local residency taxes in April or May. Tiny Newtown Borough has become more expensive than Montgomery County, MD, where I have my primary residence. Montgomery County Maryland is a high tax near-in suburb of Washington, DC, that makes middle class people like myself suffer and work multiple jobs so they can expand ‘services,’ every year. Is this where Newtown is heading? Perhaps it is aleady there?

It also strikes me that the first thing Borough Council did when I balked was offer a $4000+ stone/slate curb option, which was always available with a glance at the plan. They only offered me that after I questioned the excessive $8000 that they wanted me to fund. The $4000 curb actually resembles the curb on my side of the street that currently ends at the house next door to me and looks appropriate for the borough. The $8000 option that would have happened if I had not appealed would have resembled the big city ugly concrete curbs on the other side of the street. Apparently the $4000+ curb option existed from the outset, but when a government is spending someone else’s money, there is little incentive to dig deep to save money.

When spending other people’s money, people don’t look for ways to save. Good government knows this, and the  decision like the $8000 option appears to just be the way the bureaucracy makes decisions. It appears to have been left to the contractor, who chose the expensive option based on the fact that the modular concrete and stone curb needed to be replaced with a much more expensive concrete curb.

Nothing nefarious, it’s just the way a bureaucracy and contracting works. There’s a fox and henhouse thing going on here — the contractor has no incentive to shave costs. As a bike mechanic I hate it when customers say ‘do whatever you need to do.’ I like it when we evaluate the bike together and only do what is needed. This keeps cost down. I treat the people who I contract with the way I would want to be treated … and I’m talking about something small like a new cable that may or may not be needed.

The pandemic has forced the closure of multiple trade shows in the media industry, and I have lost about half my freelance writing income for the year.  I used to drive for Uber a bit as well as one of my several side hustles to fund my retirement and stay well ahead of my bills. I won’t do any Uber driving again anytime soon. And as a freelance writer I really have no access to all that unemployment I have paid in to for decades. The only way I could access that is if I quit my existing bike shop job. If I told my boss at the bike shop that I feared Coronavirus and thus would no longer work, I could get paid unemployment and not work. That is nuts. There should be an incentive to work. It’s backwards.

The house in question is a rental property that pays all of its own bills but delivers little profit.  The account that I use for the property will have about $633 in it after the taxes are paid this month.

I own a house in Newtown Borough, and I have established a GoFundMe page to pay for the privilege of trying to keep my family house. My goal was to eventually move back to the borough, but I will need to reconsider this if this local government overreach is the new normal.

When somebody like me who works 50-60 hours per week already has to take on another job to pay for something nobody really wants, the system is broken.**  Is Newtown now only for the six figure income folks?

 

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* The monorail bit is just a joke of course. I have to state that because everything else I’ve written is factually correct to the best of my knowledge. If this was fact checked, this post could be smeared as containing lies, so no the borough plan does not contain a monorail. Moving sidewalks, yes. But no monorail.

**I am not poor, but certainly not rich. I am frugal and constantly keep costs down and work extra jobs for extra income. This morning I woke up at 530am to fix a bike to sell on Craigslist for a quick $100.

Anyone who grew up around Newtown in the 70s or early 80s might remember the budget wine commercial where an ostensibly rich person was drinking inexpensive wine on a yacht or in a penthouse or something. A fellow reveler would ask the host why he drank the inexpensive wine when ‘you’re so rich.’ The response was ‘how do you think I got sooooo rich.’ I couldn’t find the commercial on YouTube, but according to one post I found these adverts were for Chateau Luzerne Wines, which were bottled in Philadelphia and they were apparently the first California wines to be bottled outside of California. Since that commercial is missing, how about a classic bit of Aldo Cella, whose tagline was ‘chill a Chella.’

 

 

Sheldon and classic three speeds!

 

This 1973 beauty sold the same day it was posted. And I have the original Brooks B-72 saddle on Ebay.

So I have half a dozen or more Raleigh and other British 3 speeds under a tarp in my driveway that need to be sold while cycling is the hot thing … anybody who has kicked around bikes for the last 50 years or even more knows the type of bike. I just got a dozen 590 BCD 26 x 1 3/8 tires so these old bikes need to be fixed, cleaned and sold with new tires.

These bikes do have some peculiarities that I knew more about back in 1987 when I was working on them quite often, but I have forgotten much of this. Whitworth wrench sizes and threads, a front wheel that must always be put in the same way, the little square washers on the rear wheel etc.

For a refresher I knew where to go: Sheldon Brown, with some of his musings here and more tech help accessible via that link.

It was a perfect quick read that gave me a mechanical reminder and also gave me a slightly new perspective on the bikes.

I will sell all of mine, and retain just a Peugeot Mixte three speed from the 1980s as my own. These Peugeots are sort of uncommon but I like them because they are lighter by more than a few pounds and they seem geared lower (for tres petite French ladies who don’t want to develop big thighs?). I guess I have a Brompton that is a 3 speed as well, and maybe a Peugeot folder from the 1980s. And a 1970s Peugeot folder which might have a Sachs hub? Hmmmm, I just acquired a weird made-in-Romania Rapido that has a three speed freewheel on it. That’s a rare bike around here.  i couldn’t stand to see it destroyed so now it is in my driveway, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modern Pedals

Cinelli’s system had a lever the rider had to push (pull?) to disengage the cleat from the pedal.

When I started riding seriously toe clips were the only option, really. I guess there was a choice between a platform style pedal (that looked a bit aero) or the standard Campy or Campy copy pedal, with a metal toe clip and leather toe strap. The platform style pedals sometimes required proprietary toe clips… but in general it was a standard world. Plastic toe clips and good and bad nylon straps were alternatives. Cinelli of all companies had a ‘clipless,’ pedal system  which sort of resembled a more modern ski binding style system. These were mentioned in magazine articles but I think I saw them just once in person.

My Virus Experience

I’m posting this as an update as we all hopefully emerge from lockdowns of various stripes.

While my writing work of course saw a steep decline with the cancellation of multiple broadcast trade shows and events, and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, my part time gig at a local bike shop became an exhausting yet exhilarating experience.

Bike shops were deemed essential as ‘transportation,’ here in Maryland, so we never closed. On March 13 (a Friday!) we suddenly had our best Friday ever as every family in lockdown realised that riding a bike was one of the few things one could do if almost all businesses closed.  All the people who had been going to a gym, or a yoga studio, or a spin class, or youth soccer, or whatever, had to find something new. A lot of people caught on quickly that cycling was one activity that was still allowed and quite safe from a virus perspective.

Many saw it as an opportunity to get young kids on a bike more than they otherwise would have, and it quickly became common to see families riding around. Many people decided to start the process of becoming proper road and trail and mountain cyclists, either solo or with friends.

Bikes and helmets and water bottle cages sold like never before, with every day for months being similar to the best busy Saturday we had ever had. Bikes became rare, and things like helmets and water bottle cages and racks for cars sold out, were replaced, then sold out again. Scores of bikes came in for repair. While we initially maintained normal 8 hour days, we quickly switched to reduced hours … a shift would end and I would head home, shower, then fall asleep. Work was hugely exhausting.

Today, in late July, about four+ months later, and we are out of new bikes and selling bikes that we know will be coming in off back order in weeks at best, or sometimes months. I have sold dozens of bikes that the customer will not see for two or three months, and I just sold one that won’t be in for six months!

For repairs, parts and tires are getting hard to source, as we continue to fix up scores of bikes that had been languishing in the shed for decades. We have had more than 200 bikes in for repair at one time, and that means that we need to store them outside during the day, and then pack the floor with the bikes waiting for repair at night. We have been backed up 3 weeks on big repairs but the July heat has slowed that down a bit thankfully.

It remains crazy busy although we now occasionally get a few minutes without a phone call or line of customers. At the shop I am selling bikes that will be delivered in September, October and November right now, taking half down.  We ordered hundreds of bikes on back order in April and May, and now the bikes are trickling in each week, with 95% or more already sold. The bike factories in China had closed back in January-Feb-March so there is a supply issue that met huge demand basically.

 

It has been our best four months ever and surely will be our best year ever. And 2018 and 2019 had been our best years as we are a good, established local shop.

 

The industry had been weakening as kids were on the silly phone, and adults were riding exercycles together in candlelight while listening to Enya, followed by group stretching and emotional support animal therapy, rather than just riding a bike as they should have been. Many bike shops had gone away in recent years, and only the strong had survived.

The repair shop is open normal hours and I work a modified 5 hr sales shift 5x/week. Selling 2-4 bikes over the phone and sometimes in person, and selling tons of helmets. A 5 hour shift is exhausting and there are often 2-10 people in line at the door, waiting patiently for repair evaluations or accessory or bike buying.

It is physically and mentally exhausting, and we all wish for normal again. Even the owner, who of course chases every penny, would be happy to stop working so hard … it is exhausting for me as I also ride 1000km per month or more. But I get a small commission and that is nice, and the owner buys beer most days at the end of the day and we all decompress in back. We have a very experienced staff with and average age of 40+, so we are allowed to make rude jokes and insult each other, and the couple of guys we have under 30 are good and haven’t yet demanded a ‘safe space,’ or anything like that when we make fun of them for wearing white shoes in a dirty, dirty bike shop.

 

 

SOLD: VINTAGE PEUGEOT SUPER VITUS 980 LUGGED ROAD FRAME 63/64cm PSN-10 Circa 1985 25”

THIS BIKE SOLD: Measures 63 center to center seat tube and 64 center to top. Might have been sold as 25?inch in the catalog.

 

Top tube is 60cm; fairly clean no dents and minimal scratches (zoom in on pics). Also note the chrome fork condition. It will clean up but may never be perfect

 

Includes rare expander bolt style seatpost… English BB threads and French fork threads! Those headsets can be found on Velo Orange

Hot Day in 100 Year-old Wool!

No time to write now so some pics will suffice. Check back later this week … The Philadelphia Fliers Brompton Racing team got 2nd somehow in the team competition in our first outing, and more importantly I met at least 2-3-4 people who want to race for us in the future. Perhaps getting three people to form a team may not be so difficult next time. Next time I will exchange the century old wool uniform for something fast and cool—perhaps a double breasted semi-aero black or orange jacket and aero helmet. Nobody races in double breasted anymore, maybe I can start a trend. And no massive front 15 lb. front bag to push against the wind. That was tough. And the silly WWI Brodie M1917* plastic copy helmet I wore over my real helmet would slide back at least once per lap, as seen in a picture below. Not made for racing!

 

* Reading from Wikipedia, the Brodie helmet is a steel combat helmet designed and patented in London in 1915 by John Leopold Brodie. In modified form it became the Helmet, steel, Mark I in Britain and the M1917 Helmet in the U.S. Colloquially, it was called the shrapnel helmet, Tommy helmet, tin hat, and in the United States the doughboy helmet. Worn by Australians during WW2 and sometimes known as Panic Hat. It was also known as the dishpan hat, tin pan hat, washbasin, battle bowler (when worn by officers), and Kelly helmet. The US version, the M1917, was copied from the British Mk 1 steel helmet of 1916. The German Army called it the Salatschüssel (salad bowl).[1] The term Brodie is often mis-used. It is correctly applied only to the original 1915 Brodie’s Steel Helmet, War Office Pattern,[2]