Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Lightweight SOLID-STOCK ffi\ \\JD R AIA ALUMINUM rn mJ. ,r om'M ,.e - HANDLEBARS Anodized Silver Anodized Blac k Anodized Gold Some weekends just leave you with a bad case of low-down blues. This one just past was one of the worst for me. President Ford consulted his cide d th at ex-prez be granted a full pardon. The kind God and deNixon should and absolute of God who dispe nses justice by police IU"e, and bullets to Camilla Hall for her transgressions and pardons Nixon fo r his fills me with the sort of gothic horror that has only really been deal t wi th by people like Ingemar Bergman and Sartre, The Sunday Times, ordinarily one of the brighter spots of the weekend, did nothing this weekend but make the blues a little bl uer, First there was Jo yce Haber, an intellectual flyweight if there ever was one, d evo ti ng the second of two full pages to th e put-down of movie critic, Pauline Kael of the New Yorker, at t a c king like a blind -drunk , over-the-hill prize figh ter trying t o kill a was~ with a baseball bat. Further on I come to a zillion or so column inches on what surely must be one of th e most wretched ex cesses of all time, th e Barb ie Doll. Scanning that bit of flo ts am yields one bi tt erswe et bit of iro ny , th e ' knowledge that the real Barbie for wh om plastic obno xia is named is curren tly divorced an d living t home with Mama. Co m es no w , I uppose, Barbie 's ali mony wardrobe. At last there is Evel, and I must make choice. Shall I, in the interest of what ight be ca lled my profession, read hat the Times has to say about the orld's most well known motorcyclist? For the past seve ral days Evel has been nescapab le, Both the radio and the television ve been filled with stuff about Evel. Sat urday , as I was wo rking in my e the postman stopped and after he usual exchange h e asked mbarrassedly what I thought of Evel's ances, Yes, I recalled that last week, ur own editor called Evel a "genuine o lk hero" or some th ing to tha t effect, here was proo f. Is anyone m ore enuinely fo lk th an the mailman? Until that ti me, I had been ab le to ore Evel in m uch the same fashi on h at I igno re th e yearly hy pe for the c:wcst cars, razor blades, haircolorings, eodoran ts, tooth pastes and what have ou , Media hype. Yo u can sell anything m a " man 's n hair dye to a tar-spangled canyon-jumper. But could afford to ign or e a genui ne fol k hero? Two related in ciden ts came to mind , co uple mon ths ago a fe llow in New o rk strung a wire between two uildi ngs som e tw en ty stories ab ove the ound an d th en got o ut and played on e wire fo r abo ut thirty minutes in the Iy ligh t of dawn, Dangerous? Yes, credi bly so . But there was no ggestion t ha t the man was committing .cide. He was well-trained, superbly onditioned athlete who ch ose a angerously spect acular way to rn ons tra te his ability. There was no hype, no boast, no ads, j ust a poetically beauti ful performance high .ab o ve the pedestrian crowds headed for work. The police, naturally, arrested him. It seemed to me that there was m uch more technical ingen ui ty involved in getting that wire strung between those two buildings (it had to be done secretly of course) than there was in Evel's not very technically exciting rocket . And the danger to the high wire performer was real : He had no parachute. His performance was something special to ' watch, even at ground level The judge who tried his case ordered him t o repeat the performance for some children - at a lower level. The other inciden t that c omes to mind is the tennis' match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Riggs is as much a hus tie r as Knievel but again there is on e difference. Where Evel oozes sincerity, Riggs is patently phoney, and he makes sure everyone knows that whatever he says, the only truth is that he expects to make money on his operation. And again his big promotion was something special to watch: Two athletes trying their level best to win a tough co mpetition. Finally , not in his words but in his .deeds, there was truth, Evel may be a genuine folk hero. Certainly his view of reality is as far off as that of the people he enticed to his show. He let Bobby Riggs hustle him for $25 ,000 because he was under the impression that Riggs co uld n ' t ride a mo t orcy cle some 600 miles in several days. Riggs is an honest athlete who could probably take Eve! in any sport he could name. For Evel to think Riggs couldn't ride a bike 600 miles is really funny. In case you haven't h eard, Riggs ma de it with a day to spare, and is now 25 grand richer, When the mailman asked me if I thought Evel would make it, I said something along the lines of what I've written. It was a dangerous stunt, (b ut not very dan gerous), and it certainly wasn't worth watching from any point of view that I could perceive. The mailman misread my feelings and asked, "Are you ho pi ng he gets killed?" I thought about that a minute. There seemed a t that time only two alternatives. Making it wo uld be a farce, as Sh ak espe ar e said, "full of sound and fury signifying nothing." On the other on e could har d ly want to turn bad co me dy in to worse tragedy by havin g him get killed . "No," I re plied, "1 hope he cli mbs into that thi ng and then can't get it started. I'd like to see him honestly sweat for aw hile trying to get it to go . If the crowd t hen picked him up and threw him in t o the Snake R iver, that might be a fitting end to the whole unseemly mess." ~ But what happened was almost as good. Ro n Schne iders Finally, a really SUPER RALTERNATIVE IO in Handlebars. Most handlebars are made from # 1018 mild steel tubing that hasn't changed since motorcycles were invented. Well, it's changed now. Meet the all new, super-light, superstrong "SUPER-BAR" from lnter-Am, Made from ;; 2024 solid-stock anodized aluminum, these bars have almost twicethe reo sistance to bending as chrome-moly units, and almost four times that of mild steel bars. (·S chart for comparative figures ee compiledby an independent metallurgical lab.) The lab also state s that although stronger (i.e., they are harder tobend permanently out of shape) they will deflect more with a given shock. This ability to flex has a shock absorbing affect, eliminating much of the impact transm itted to the rider! The conclusion, that is substantiated by many riders wh o have switched to the Inter-Am Aluminum Handlebar, is that the result is LESS RIDER FATIGUE! These "SUPE RBAR eliminate the need S" to have any cross bar, and reduce possibility of injury in an " endo." The above statements apply only to 2024 aluminum, as is used by Inter -Am Bike S upplies, Inc. Available in beautiful anodized SILVER, GOLD and BLACK colors. Force Required Alloy Form to Bend lnter-sm's Solid-stock Aluminum Ya - dia 2650 in Ibs. Standard Chromemoly ¥s ' dia .1639 in Ibs. Standard Carbon steel ¥s ' dia 721 in Ibs. II~ I~TER.AM:~~~~eU:.~L1ES, ;ah{ ~ INC. Placentia, CA 92670 Area Code (714) 993-2603 3

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