Seems like a lot of trouble for a bicycle. What's the story?

There's probably a term for it but I'm calling it a sentimental restoration. Fixing up the tandem well beyond any kind of eventual resale value. Why bother?

There is the sentiment. Emily and I rode it a lot, spent a lot of important time on it in the early, formative part of our life together. I'm hoping we'll get back into riding it and maybe get a glimpse of that young love again. Also, it's actually a pretty decent tandem, I think. I'll explain, and it'll get very bike-geeky.

Em and I put the tandem together in 1996, but it was actually a 1994 frame set. Why does that matter? In '93, venerable Schwinn Bicycle Co. went bankrupt (for the first time). Schwinn was a multi-generational family controlled company that had gotten fat and complacent. They fought with their dealer network and with their own workers in Chicago and then turned to production in the far-east and apparently didn't endear themselves there either. The head of Schwinn at that time was Eddie Schwinn, a lecherous playboy, not a bike guy. There was a Schwinn there who did care about bikes, Richard. He went on to start his own company, Waterford Precision Cycles, with a partner he also brought over from the old Schwinn Bicycle Co. They make pretty fine bikes in Wisconsin, under their own name and for some other brands. 

In its heyday Schwinn had real factories churning out bikes in the US, and they built some iconic bikes from many of our childhoods. Newspaper boy bikes, 10-speeds, Sting-rays, tricycles for adults, expensive road and mountain bikes and tandems. There was an intension to satisfy every age and style of bike rider and they did it pretty well. But by the '80s things were going downhill. The labor troubles along with a lack of innovation were partly to blame and competition was increasing. And then there was Trek Bicycle.

Trek was another multi-generational family controlled company, though much newer than Schwinn, with factories and headquarters in the US. Dick Burke, not a bike guy but a CPA with curiosity, was introduced to some passionate bike guys who were making bikes in a barn in rural Wisconsin but who couldn't figure out how to make any money at it. Dick had a hand in other businesses dealing in appliances and heating and cooling equipment so he had some familiarity with manufacturing and distribution. He also had some kids and some cash and a desire to work with things a little bit more fun than washers and dryers and air conditioners. Not being a bike guy, he was able to take a step back and look at this little bike company and the industry it was in and be objective about what he saw. He saw Schwinn in decline, and he saw these guys building bikes in a barn making some pretty good bikes but doing a rotten job of selling them. And the bikes they were selling were aimed towards a fairly small group of folks - bicycle enthusiasts, especially those that liked to load up their bikes and head across the country. 

So Dick came in to Trek and started shaking things up. He also brought in his son John and a few other family members including his daughter Mary. You may remember Mary Burke as the person who unsuccessfully tried to save Wisconsin from Scott Walker by running against him for governor. The Burkes were hard workers and they turned things around at Trek. They noted that at one time Schwinn had a huge and devoted dealer network that were treated well and made money on the products, but that more recently had been taken for granted. With that in mind, the Burkes concentrated on building an extensive dealer network that they tried to make more attractive to consumers and more profitable for the dealers themselves. 

Keep in mind that the bicycle industry had (and still has) a lot of people in it who were passionate about bikes but weren't very interested in having nice stores or making any money, and most of those people owned and worked in bicycle stores. It wasn't easy to convince some of those bike dealers that they should be friendly to customers and have products the customers actually wanted. Eventually, Trek was selling all kinds of bikes for all types of people, including tandems, one of which is the one I'm working on and ostensibly writing about.

I've already told you a little about our tandem bike. How Em and I put it together together, and it was at our wedding. We just celebrated our 24th anniversary, so the tandem went together 25 years ago. For the first 5 years, before kids, we rode it a lot. I maintained it, for sure, but I've never done a full tear-down in that time. It's no lightweight, but we've dragged it to Vermont, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina and of course Maryland, Virginia and DC. Some long drives with it bolted to the roof of the car. Some of them rainy. And lots of sweat.

Last year, with the kids grown and the pandemic and all we started riding it again. Not a lot, but probably more than the last 10 years combined. We still love being together on it, but we don't fit on it like we used to, and the heavy-duty but old drivetrain and brakes just aren't up to current standards and can be a little frustrating. So I decided to bring it up to date, with as little $ spent as possible.

It'll get a new fork, new wheels that I'm building, disc brakes front and rear, new cockpits, and a modern 10-speed drivetrain, though probably not new. With all that, I'm hoping it'll last us another 25 years, which I expect will be all we'll need.

To do all that work on a bicycle, however, first there is some disassembly required. And bikes of this age that have been ridden this much and worked on this little can sometimes not want to disassemble, especially if they were built in haste by a less than careful or skilled mechanic.

Luckily, I was the mechanic, assisted by Emily. And there in the basement of the house I lived in on Farragut St in DC, with Bob

Patten

getting to know

Lois Wessel

upstairs, I'm pretty sure I must have worked ultra carefully to impress my future wife. Because after 25 years, the bike came apart wonderfully, excepting the rear bottom bracket. Penetrating oil is doing its thing now, I'll get the rear bb out too.

Then I'll need to hunt down some more parts, build the wheels, clean and polish the frame and rust-protect the inside of it before I get to put all the modern stuff on it. Spring is coming! I'll keep you posted. 

 Here we are actually RIDING the tandem in June 2020.

 

In the first picture,

Emily North

and I are midway through the Seagull Century. We'd been married 8 months, almost to the day. Known each other less than 2 years. I was working for Trek Bicycle but I was too cheap to actually buy a tandem bike. Instead, possibly with some inside help from

Lester Binegar

, I found a bare frame in the Trek factory and picked all the parts from the closeout/discount parts list Trek had. Em and I built the beast together, in the basement of the place I was living in DC. Voila, less expensive tandem. Second picture shows it at our wedding, right at the front of the sanctuary. We even had waterbottles printed with a drawing of us riding it that everyone at our wedding got, third picture. Want a really good test of a young relationship? Ride 100 miles together on a tandem bicycle. Still have this bike, still ride it, still married!

When I first started this blog I had the usual things parent-bloggers have: delusions of talent, some cute, quirky kids and the privilege to have the time and resources to take a step back and get a perspective from which to document our lives. But then something happened.

One kid became ill.

Not the kind of illness that can kill a child, thank goodness. But also not the kind of illness that can be cured with antibiotics or an outpatient procedure. This is the kind of illness that changes how the child perceives the world, perceives family and even the child’s own self. It is an illness that makes the child lose a sense of self-worth, and creates doubt in the child’s ability to interact with others.

And it is an illness that drives parents to search out different doctors and more doctors and treatments and books and camps and everything possible that might create some positive effect for the child, but it is all groping in darkness.

As time passes the parents realize that the needs of the ill child and their other children are getting further and further apart, and the parents get confused and exhausted and stressed by the desire to give all their kids the childhood they deserve, and find that it is impossible to provide for one of the kids, and may be improbable for the others.

The illness leaves no part of family life unaffected. It dominates the parents’ thoughts and a lot of their time. But it is hard to share the details with friends, to gain support and understanding. The ill child wants to conceal the illness, as if that were possible, from all, and the parents respect that desire, to a point. Distance builds between some friends and family, as they wonder what is going on with the family. Some folks don’t want to interact with the family of the ill child, some want to provide well meaning but unhelpful cures or treatments, and a few are able to just be with the family. Cherished are the friends, who, during a dinner where an episode occurs that involves children screaming at each other, doors slamming and things smashing against a bedroom wall, smile understandingly and refill the wine glasses.

And of course, the parents occasionally indulge in self-pity. Why us? Why our child? Why is the life we planned for and worked for not going according to the plan? Self-pity can turn to self-hatred and despair as the parents realize that no good outcomes were ever promised. Their kids, even the ill one, are alive and with a home to live in and food to eat; so much more than some kids in the world have. How can the parents possibly feel sorry for themselves when there is so much bad in the world and they are enjoying so much good? But their child is ill.

And years pass.

Two Brothers, Three Mothers

When we began to think about adoption we did a lot of research and reading. We went to agency information nights at first and then, once we began the process, we embraced all the many steps – the fingerprints, background checks, driving records, inspections, intense meetings with our social worker and many trips to the notary public. One part we didn’t pay much attention to, because we couldn’t, really, was the birth mother. Having already settled on adopting from Korea we knew that some of our fees would go to Korean programs that worked with birth mothers and also that we would not know much about our future child’s mom.

When his dossier came with his cute picture and the limited information about his mother and her pregnancy we went over the scant details with our social worker. Other than her height, weight and age, most of the other comments had to do with how she met the birth father and general lifestyle information. In response to our avalanche of questions our social worker told us that a lot of the information was nearly boilerplate. She’d seen the same comments in many other dossiers. Whether they were translator’s shorthand or the product of some bureaucrat’s typing we will never know.

And then he arrived. The first three months with him were absolutely wonderful. Having only one easy baby was so nice. We introduced him, joyfully, to our families and friends. We went places and walked around with him strapped to back or belly. We were enveloped in a happy little cocoon, imagining the world from his perspective, delighting in every coo and smile.

Then there was September 11, and the big unwelcome dose of reality. Pain, uncertainty, smoke and the never ending white noise of the scrambled fighter jets making their giant circles above DC, all day and all night, for weeks. I started looking at our boy differently. What had we done? What was this world we were raising him in? I still didn’t give much thought, though, to the world he’d come from.

Another few months and we found out that our assumption of infertility was wrong and by next September the twins came. Now life was more surreal than magical. Our little house got smaller and our time, money and energy evaporated. But as the twins approached four months and older boy was coming up on his second birthday we began to emerge from this fog, at least a little.

Then one evening we got a call from our social worker. That was unexpected, as at this point we’d done everything with the agency we needed to do, although we hadn’t completed all of the paperwork for finalizing the adoption.

She asked if we were sitting down. Using her measured mental health professional voice she explained that our older boy’s mother had just had another son, almost two years to the day from the birth of our boy. This new boy had immediately gone into the Korean adoption system where the records flagged him as having a sibling, our son. Korea contacted our agency and strongly suggested we adopt this boy to keep the siblings together. Neither the Korean adoption system nor our agency was aware that we had twins now. Surreality returned.

The few close family members and friends we confided this news to all shared the same opinion. We could not be considering adopting this boy, our fourth child two or under. All of these people had experienced our family, our harried existence, up close. They were not without compassion; we just seemed so over our heads already.

But this was our son’s brother. He was, in the strange and rubbery way adoption makes this, family. How could we not adopt him? But we could not. We had to. We couldn’t. We didn’t.

Our agency was understanding. Our social worker let us know that the Korean system would probably not even allow it once they found out about the twins as it violated certain regulations about number of children within number of months, let alone the number of square feet in which we were all crammed. This mitigated the grief and guilt for me, somewhat. Our agency was also willing to place our boy’s brother with a family that was nearby and would be interested in having a relationship with us.

Little brother arrived and we met him and his family, all of us trying to be happy and playful while being near tears. And soon after we made the decision to move down here, away from little brother and his family. We saw them again, shortly after we moved. The boys were about three and one and, although curious, really didn’t have any way to understand who they were to each other. Then too much time went by until we finally went back to visit and stayed with little brother and his family, and then again too much time went by.

I found myself getting mad. We kept going up there – why weren’t they coming here? Why were they always gone when we made our summer trip to DC for camp and visiting? But the anger wasn’t really about them. I know I felt, feel, guilt and anger about not stepping up to adopt little brother when we had the chance. And then moving away. Even though it truly was the right thing that we did, or rather didn’t. I know we would have coped somehow but it would not have been a good thing for our kids, for our marriage, for us, to have brought in another baby at that point.

And so we went up there and visited little brother and his family this fall. The boys are old enough now to know exactly who they are, at least in relation to each other. And little brother is so obviously and beautifully in his family, where he is loved, cherished and nurtured. I still feel some sadness and regret but I am also feeling the wonder of it all. How strange these families work! Siblings that share no blood and friends that do. Strange interrelationships like little brother’s friend from down the street who came over to meet our older boy because he couldn’t wait to meet his pal’s brother. Marvelous. Mindboggling. Magical. So there it is. Our family has three kids, and our older boy has two brothers and a sister. New math at its crazy best.

Kodak Moments

Since he first learned to ask to see them, our older boy has been enthralled, possibly obsessed, with pictures and videos. He has watched the video of his own arrival (at the airport, not the hospital) dozens of times and has spent many happy hours looking through stacks of pictures, remembering old neighbors, special days and places.

Somewhere along the way he also became enthralled with the envelopes the pictures used to come in. He considers which is finer: the envelope with the picture of the over-exposed little girl or the boy blowing a bubble. He spends long minutes trying to decide whether the picture with the patented photo correction treatment is better than the one without, and he asks me and M over and over which one we like better.

And the name: Kodak. So bizarre, so made up. He loves it.

This is an obsession I can relate to. Kodak and I share a hometown, and when I began to explore the many thrift-stores of Rochester I found lots and lots of Kodak cameras which I started to buy, quite inexpensively. As my collection grew, friends and family began to pick up cameras for me and I began to amass variations: the same camera but one made in Rochester, another in England and still another in Canada. Or different years with different lenses. Or special cameras made for dentistry, that were basic snapshot cameras but with focal distances of nine inches to one foot, with a little string measuring tape attached so that the hygienist could hold the string against the patient's gum and then pull the camera back until the string was taut to get the picture perfectly in focus. Those cameras had special flash covers so if the bulb exploded, as they sometimes did, they wouldn’t burn the patient’s face.

When I was only a little older than our older boy is now I had a Kodak Instamatic that took film that came in black plastic cartridges and used Flashcubes that had four bulbs in each cube and would pivot 90 degrees every time a picture was taken. Film was expensive and I hoarded my pictures, passing up many opportunities to snap so that I’d still have a couple pictures left when an even better thing to photograph would come along. I never had as many flashcubes as pictures so I would ration my indoor shots. Pressing the shutter was always a leap of faith because it could be weeks or even months before I’d ever see the picture. Sometimes I couldn’t remember what the picture was of, when I’d finally get the roll developed.

So when he asked if he could take some pictures of flowers on a grey day last week, I gave him a brief lesson on the digital camera and turned him loose while I did some chores. Fifteen or twenty minutes later he was eager to download the pictures to the computer so I plugged the camera in expecting to find four or five and HOLY COW he took TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN PICTURES! Actually, somewhere in the twenty minutes he gave the camera to his brother so he only took 201. The following pictures are all by the artist, exactly as he took them. But not all 201. No way.