In the Spring of 2010, bicycle riders from all over the country will stage a relay race in the 8 western states of California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas and Missouri. Approximately 500 selected bikers will attempt to ride the actual Pony Express Trail as it exists today faster than about 500 veteran horseback Pony Express riders. The 2010 Pony Express Bicycle Challenge authentic head to head relay race is a separate event from the historic Pony Express Reride and will compete day and night until there is a winner. The goal is to ride the roughly 2,000 miles from Sacramento, CA to St. Joseph, Missouri in just 7 days, 16 hours.
Not for 150 years has there gone out across the country an urgent call for ‘wiry 18 year old’ riders. Today, the Pony Express Bicycle Challenge is looking for great young bicycle riders from bike shops, bike clubs, college racing teams, military personnel, noted individuals and racing pros. You need not be an ‘orphan willing to risk death’ to apply.
Horses are clearly favored when climbing and powering through soft soil conditions. Naturally, there are huge advantages horses have over bike riders climbing up the Sierra Nevada range and up the western side of the continental divide. Nevada's 40 mile desert and Utah's Upper Sonoran Desert have hundreds of miles of less famous but no less difficult terrain conditions. The single most advantageous factor for the cyclist is that much of the original trail has become gravel roads and paved highways. Horses must run on roads and are at a disadvantage here. Wind and weather will also be a huge factor. Ultimately, the real ‘horse race’ of this horse race is in the marginal areas of terrain where decades of horsemanship experience may trump technology.
Both racing groups have taken advantage of technology. Horses are bred for better blood lines. Bicycles have drastically improved on the simple concept of two wheels and a frame. We intend to use all types of human-peddled bicycles just as horsemen select from Thoroughbreds, Mustangs, Pintos, and Arabians.
In addition to the 80 lb Mochilla (mail pouch), Pony Express riders will carry 150 years of history as a virtual burden. Bicycles, on the other hand, will carry 150 years of history, literally! Their 20 lbs bicycle mochilla contains all manner of portable digital devices filled with the last 150 years of recorded history, including the genealogies of original riders and their horses.
The Pony Express Bicycle Challenge is a historic moment with public morale riding on it. In truth, the Pony Express Bicycle Challenge itself has little meaning in terms of actual accomplishment. Modern bikes with the best riders could not compete over the original Trail with the motivated horses and horsemen of 150 years ago. Mostly, the country needs to be reminded its own historic struggles as a strength and regain an optimism for the future to build on. Motivated citizens can make the unusual and the seemingly impossible happen. Cross country mail delivered in days instead of weeks by boat: imagine that! Elect a black President: imagine that. Bicycles beating horses at their own game on their own 2,000 mile long turf. Imagine that. What’s' next? Imagine it.
The theme of the challenge is “Men propelling themselves on machines at speeds rivaling horses”. But, man against beast has its own tantalizing appeal. Beyond that, 200 horsemen racing against 500 bicyclists is interesting, competitive and just plain fun. Certainly, competition on the grand stage of the original Pony Express Trail speaks for itself.
The race is on for 2010. The country needs a spark to get going again. This head to head match may light that fire.
YouTube has spawned many sudden sensations. Take scraper bikes, for example. A music video about the tricked-out bicycles posted to the site by some teenagers in Oakland, Calif., has attracted a cult following, with nearly 3 million views.
The video spawned what is becoming a worldwide movement, even as it changed the lives of the young men who customized the bikes and made the video.
"Actually, scraper bikes saved my life," says Tyrone Stevenson Jr., who prefers the title "Scraper Bike King."
"Because I was at a young age, getting into a lot of serious trouble, selling drugs and on the verge of going to jail. So my mom told me this is a way to channel anger and frustration, just focusing on something that's creative, something that's me, and the bikes is me."
Oakland is a town where hip-hop is king and cars known as "scrapers" are huge. They're large, bright and have rims so big that they scrape the inside of the wheel well. Stevenson and his friends took those aesthetics and applied them to bicycles, fitting large wheels on small frames.
Stevenson, 19, started making scraper bikes a few years ago. He couldn't afford a car, so he made do with a bike. But not just any bike.
"The idea from the scraper bikes, it basically came from the cars that ride in Oakland — we call them scrapers — basically it's an old model car, such as a Buick, that's painted a custom color to match the rims. I wanted to take that and put a bike onto it."
To do that, he put the few resources he had to work. He added colorful foil food wrappers — from Oreos or Skittles — to the spokes, so when they roll they flash with color. Then he spray-painted the frames to match.
But scraper bikes didn't really catch on until he and some friends recorded a music video about them and posted it on YouTube. And now…
"Oakland has been taken over by scraper bikes," says Stevenson. "On the Internet, it is worldwide. There's people from literally across the world making these bikes, from Portland, Oregon, to Japan to Australia to Jamaica."
Stevenson says he's already making a living scraperizing bikes, but he's got big plans for the future: trademarks, patents and, someday soon, a scraper bike shop.
"The true meaning of a scraper bike is basically, I want to give back something positive to the community," Stevenson said.
"Because there's so much going on. Drugs and killing and stuff, this is a way of giving the kids a way to a positive future, but being creative at the same time."
Jacob Fenston reports from member station KQED.
This design resembles a freshly shaved bald head my friends....CLEAN!
This Columbia is unrestored and has its original head badge and stove enamel paint. When I obtained the bike, the front rim, which is made of wood clad with steel, was broken. I suspect it had not been ridden for over 50 years. A new old stock rim one was obtained and the front hub reconstructed by Keith Hellon. Except for the seat, the new single-tube original style tires from West Virginia, and one of the cork handlebar grips, all of the components are original. The hubs have straight pull spokes, proving that concept was not a recent innovation in the cycling world. The original owner did not order the optional spoon brake which pressed on the surface of the front tire. Many of these Columbia chainless bicycles are in museums, but this one is now ready to ride.
I was recently meditating on the sheer magnitude of what it is I envision doing with this project. What an enormous burden to resurrect such a great icon from yester year as Marshall 'Major' Taylor. The burden of resurrecting a legacy of a forgotten sports hero should be handled very delicately and not rushed into without thinking of all the ramifications. I have personally read the Autobiography written by Major Taylor himself and the biography written by Andrew Ritchie withmajthe help of Taylor's daughter, Sydney (named after Sydney, Australia where Taylor was treated with the utmost respect and color wasn't an issue) in 1988.
Taylor's Autobiography, written with his own pen, presents a man that had many struggles on the Bicycle Race Track because of his race. Although the book, titled 'The Fastest Bicycle Racer in the World', was poorly written, through the pages of his book, I found him to be a very dignified man whose ceaseless focus was to overcome all obstacles thrown in his way regardless of the personal cost to him. He rarely spoke of his family or how his post racing days affected his outlook on life. A broader more objective look was given to Taylor by Andrew Ritchie in his 1988 Biography of Taylor called "The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racer." After alot of research that stretched from the United States to France and Australia, interviews with Taylor's only child, Sydney, I gained much more appreciation for Taylor than I derived from his own writings. Taylor's writings, while a few struggles with other riders were mentioned, painted a very rosy picture of his career while Ritchie's writings gave much more detail.
What I found of particular interest in Ritchie's book that Taylor never addressed was around 1907-1910 when Taylor's career was winding down and he no longer was the best of the best (age started to catch up with him) how he struggled and felt incredibly insecure about not making as much in prize money as he used to and his worries (indicated in letters to his wife Daisy) about wanting to buy his wife nice things but he could no longer do so because he wasn't winning as much as he had just 4 years earlier. After his 2nd retirement from racing in 1910, he really struggled to adapt because he was no longer traveling the world and was forced to be at home with his family. He started getting depressed and would isolate himself, within his house, from his wife and daughter.
I said all of that to say this, my project of presenting Marshall Taylor to the world is going to present the man as dignified, driven, a pioneer, and as the greatest African-American sports hero of all-time. Taylor did something no other African-American in the history of the world had done, become a World Champion Bicycle racer which was an all white sport at the time, he integrated a major sports team (bicycle racing) at a time when integrating anything in this country was unheard of! Marshall Taylor Bicycles is going to do what no other bicycle company has done, that is to totally capture the inner-city consumer through bicycle design and decor that speaks directly to their culture. It will be done with the class and dignity that personified the man, Marshall 'Major' Taylor.
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