From The Boston Globe:

He was a fin-de-siècle Lance Armstrong, celebrated in the streets of Paris for his blinding speed and his unflinching endurance. He was a black world champion, a decade before legendary heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson. He was an athletic prodigy akin to Tiger Woods, a quietly defiant racial pacesetter almost a half-century before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line.

His name was Major Taylor , one of the world’s greatest cyclists during the sport’s heyday at the beginning of the 20th century, when people would flock to velodromes by the thousands to see the “Worcester Whirlwind” outpedal white competitors for lucrative purses.

Today was the first peduting (pedal-commuting) ride of the season on the just-tuned-up bike. It is so good to be outdoors in the morning!

(Funny story: as the clouds cleared during my ride, I realized I had forgotten my sunglasses— until I went to shower at work, when I found them in my jersey pocket, where I had put them so I wouldn’t forget. My foresight would be a lot more useful if I remembered I had it!)

I got my bike back from the newly-opened Landry’s Bikes in Boston. They did an overall tune-up, fixed my seatpost, supposedly loosened the left pedal so I can get it off next time I disassemble my bike, and retaped my handlebar. They even replaced my front brake which, while functional, was screeching (they were supposed to have done it by the time I got there but they wound up doing it on the spot. Oh, well…)

The one thing they, and all the other bike stores I’ve been to, haven’t been able to do is give me a replacement adjustment screw for my left rear brake. The head on mine is getting worn and is hard to adjust. You know the screw I’m talking about; it would be the one in the middle of the following picture:

All the bike stores say they don’t have any. What’s up with that? Same goes for the standard bicycle bolts. Last summer I had to bike out to the Home Depot to get some because not even my local hardware store carried them. I’m not sure I even got the right threading.

You’d think bike stores would be able to sell you little kits with all the standard bolts, screws, and other paraphernalia you may need to work on your bike on the road. Grumble.