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http://road.cc/content/news/84634-richard-ballantine-rip
I learnt pretty much all I know about bicycle maintenance from this book. This was back in the day when a hammer and dumbell spanner could be relied upon to fix most things. Featured a very nice Fairisle jumper and an equally nice Evans on the front cover.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30875466@N03/8892826423/sizes/m/
PS Can somebody remind me please of how to post photos here ?
Find share (tiny button on pic with new Flickr style) and grab code for BBcode pic 500 width.
Or copy URL for image and put in img tags -
ta
Sad, but not a great surprise, I believe he's been unwell for a while.
I think it's easy to underestimate his influence on 'cycling' in the UK.
If he had done nothing else (and he did plenty) other than write a single edition of his famous book it would still have been enough to have had the profound and energising effect on 'cycle campaigning' that is resonating today.
He almost certainly demonstrated that 'cycling' was a perfectly acceptable adult activity beyond 'too poor to own a car' and 'roadie' stereotypes.
I freelanced for Bicycle, so met him quite a few times.
Large, energetic, enthusiastic, unique.
Will be missed by those who knew him, but his legacy will continue to encourage people to ride bikes - of all sorts.
Is it Richard himself on the front cover ?
Richard himself on the front cover ?
I think so. I met him once when he came to the house I was staying at in 85-86. What I remember of it was he had a bike with wide handlebars before mountain bikes were common. The house had lots of bikes and only a narrow hall. Richards wouldn't have fitted in the space but he just twisted the handlebars parallel to the wheel, explaining he left the bolt slack enough to do that but it was still tight enough to keep control while riding. A simple solution without any fancy mechanisms.
Book was required reading and maybe sold by Bike Coop mark 1?
He'll be missed by many, including BHPC members. More here.
"Is it Richard himself on the front cover?"
Oh yes - though a younger version than I ever met.
His bike too.
At one time the Evans shop near Waterloo (The Cut) was one of the best known in London.
Apparently (after the book came out) they said something like 'if you'd told us, we'd have lent you a new bike for the photo'.
Can't have done their business any harm.
Been sent these -
"
“A good bike shop is a source of effective solutions,” says Ballantine. “Anyone can buy on price these days. What cannot be obtained so easily from the internet or a discount outlet is good advice.
...
“Cycling does not have to mean just one bike. It’s good to have a ‘hack bike’, and a machine for gritty winter conditions and hauling home stacks of nappies and provisions. But there is a good part of the year when the weather is fine and days are long and the fun in life is rolling out a bike that is fast on the tarmac or agile on the dirt. Two, even three, bikes is not too many to own.”
This sort of message is music to the ears of bike shops. It’s not consumerism gone mad, it’s plain common sense.
"
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/interview-richard-ballantine/0288
This was like a bible back in my University days (the 80s). RIP.
Dogs around the country breathe a sigh of relief!
"Dogs around the country breathe a sigh of relief!"
Not clear if he did what was suggested in first edition (only).
The idea is still out there...
"Hugely influential author who brought lots of people into cycling"
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/richard-ballantine-rip/014889
If you were a keen cyclist in the 1970s and 1980s it was highly likely you owned a well-thumbed, grease-smudged copy of Richard's Bicycle Book.
Check!
I had known for some time that Richard Ballantine was ill, but I think that his death is a tragedy of the first water. I would consider him a giant in the cycling world, both inspirational and informative. I did of course have the original Richard's Bicycle Book which was indeed required reading in the cycle club of which I was a member in the 80s. Unfortunately a mouse ate it and some other less valuable books, and it was replaced by his 21st Century Bicycle Book. For what it's worth, I have a signed copy of his excellent "City Cycling", and in fact it was the original bicycle book which inspired me to lust after a recumbent bike, like his Windcheetah, which I now have, thank you laidback. I am truly sorry that he has died, but his legacy and impact will live on.
"
Carlton Reid (@carltonreid)
31/05/2013 15:36
Man, Richard Ballantine would have liked this video - grapes crushed by a recumbent to make wine.
HT @SparksJon
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"
“Today is as golden an age of cycling as has ever been,” Ballantine wrote in a revised edition of his classic book in 2000. “The questions are no longer, 'Should I have a bike?’ and 'How do I make sure I get a good bike?’, but rather, 'How many bikes?’ and 'What kinds?’ Bikes are so wonderful, so much fun, so useful, it makes perfect sense to have several.”
"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/10092280/Richard-Ballantine.html
A loss but equally a great gain for the time he was with us. Bumped into him at a bike show a couple of years back and the illness had taken its toll on his ability to communicate ans apply what obviously was still working inside.
Funeral today -
"
Richard is travelling by a bicycle powered hearse and people are invited to join the procession
"
"
Richard Ballantine, author, publisher, human power advocate and "cyclist guru" to the world, died peacefully at a hospice center in London on the twenty ninth of May; Sherry, his wife of 39 years and their three grown children, at his side. Richard, who had waged a long battle with cancer, was seventy two years old.
Hailing from a family of brilliant eccentrics including the first owner of an automobile in Edinburgh, anarchist Emma Goldman, the discoverer and life-long editor of Eugene O'Neill, [with] a member of the British Raj for one grandfather, and actor, sculptor, race-car driver EJ Ballantine for the other--Richard was also the only child of paperback publishing pioneers Ian and Betty Ballantine. He grew up between Bearsville and Manhattan.
It could safely be said that young Ballantine looked upon life as a series of adventures to be survived if possible, the first of many involving his being passed as an infant from the window of a burning apartment to a fireman on a ladder. Born near-deaf, Richard compensated by learning to read lips at an extremely young age. Separated from his father, once, in the dangerous confusion of New York City, he thereafter became the most organized and "emergency-equipped" individual imaginable.
When his father lost control of Bantam Books in 1952 and those " loyal to the cause" met clandestinely in the family penthouse apartment on 24th street to form Ballantine Books, Richard--aged 12--was obliged to give up his bedroom from 5 to midnite Monday thru Friday. Publishing was not a job for the Ballantines, it was a way of life--or more specifically a way of PERCEIVING and CREATING life, fast passed from parents to son. It was Richard's uproarious appreciation of Mad Magazine, for instance, which sparked a comedic revolution when that irreverent weekly was adapted into a hugely successful paperback series. It comes as little surprise, then, that of his many illustrative forbearers, Richard was most drawn to the anarchist writings of his great-aunt Emma Goldman, and that of the dozens of authors filing through his home, he became fondest of Marxist, C. Wright Mills. It was--in fact--on a motorcycle borrowed from Mills, that Richard effectively dropped out of Columbia and rode across the country and back--embracing a Call of the Wild he would never completely abandon.
I was four when my mother married Ian's brother, David Ballantine, in 1960. I became aware and ever-more devoted to Richard as he was proving himself a new centurion on the more radical vanguard of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) at NYU, where he and a flock of bearded friends seemed bent on burning the world, as it was presently configured, to the ground. But though rebellious, Richard was powered primarily--or it seemed to me--by an even more unstoppable sense of fun. Every time he turned up on Ballantine Hill it was with a new girlfriend in different old car. His favorite was an F-85 Oldsmobile, once stolen from him in New York. I remember him triumphantly arriving atop the hill in the middle of a blizzard having freshly stolen it back. Over the years this older cousin gave me my first serious bicycle: a Peugot ten speed; and my first guitar--a Stella steel string. Richard, who could tune a guitar precisely, only played and sang the blues herewith creating a memorable cross between Huddie Leadbelly and a lovesick bear. He was also the first person I ever saw dive (without injury) from Fawn's Leap into the Palenville gorge. Richard was a dancer on skis, over rocky Catskill trails, and on ever sleeker bikes. Assisted and enraptured by adrenaline I followed close behind.
Deafness provided Richard a concentrated clarity which could prove positively spooky. A drunken Bob Dylan once stuck a pistol into Rich's beard in the Espresso Cafe, the zen-like stare from its owner sobering up the poet laureate sufficiently to inspire a rare apology. Given a Jaguarundi kitten the size of his fist, Richard named the cat "Pepe." It grew into the fastest, wildest creature ever witnessed in The Catskills, and before being shot by a farmer, revealed a side of Richard nothing less than cat-like.
While supporting himself indexing non-fiction, and cutting his teeth co-authoring books with friends John Cohen (Africa Addio) and Joel Griffiths (Silent Slaughter), at about thirty Richard began work on a long manuscript about bicycles which--it was decided--would be published by the family. His mother, Betty (who happened to be one of the great line editors of her day) remembers being vaguely terrified. "Here was my son--hard at work on an incredibly involved book concerning a subject I knew absolutely nothing about which I was supposed to edit. Of course, upon reading it I was immediately put at ease--nothing less than marvelous! Precise, witty, chock full of energy...an editor's dream!"
The title was pure Ballantine. At once audacious but with a child-like simplicity: "Richard's Bicycle Book" appeared as a new, larger-than-usual "trade" paperback picturing the lean-mean author tuning a crackling-new machine on the cover. Yet it was not only Richard's research and writing, but his timing, which proved superb. The civilized world was reeling from the first oil shortage since WW II; cheaper, lighter, faster bicycles were just coming into production, Ballantine Books already lead the field in ecology books but this how-to encyclopedic omnibus bristled with a fearless eloquence placing its reader squarely on the brink of a self-powered revolution. Nor was Richard's rebellious spirit shy in announcing itself. Though an animal-lover you'd never guess it when RB advised how to take on a ferocious dog. Nor would his reader even begin to tolerate a polite, hat-in-hand deference towards the far larger, vast majority of motorists as Ballantine became the first to declare war on roads full of smoke-spewing behemoths sure to kill you if you let them.
Richard's Bicycle Book went through innumerable editions, incarnations and sequels, including an updated edition for the new century; its author would eventually create several award-winning bicycle magazines, his hands-on approach making him a favorite at bike shows, races, on commitees and as advisor for new designs. Teaming up with Richard Grant (and making spectacular use of an apostrophe) Richards' Ultimate Bicycle Book is easily the most handsome of the brood. But back at the very beginnings of fame, and providing most necessary ballast in maintaining it, love struck hard. I was accustomed to meeting a stream of interesting women attached to Richard. The newest, Sherry Rubin, seemed to step from the pages of one the family's famous Tolkien novels. Sherry was otherworldly to say the least--I might have made a comment something to this effect, when Richard turned and in that king-like manner pronounced very simply: "She's the one." And that, as they say...was that.
Circa '84 Richard and Sherry married and moved to London, beginning a new line, consecutively titled, Danielle, Katharyn, and Shawn--Richard's true education to begin. He became quite the puddle-jumper, writing, editing, and creating book series on both sides of the Atlantic. His full-on style enlisting a literate, highly adventurous readership willing to follow him from bicycling to rock-climbing, to sailing, snorkling and scuba, from aviation and space travel to actually living with wolves. Among his many publishing achievements Richard assisted his father with an 18 volume illustrated history of Vietnam and a 36 volume Air & Space series for Bantam Books, yet his greatest success and interest remained: the fervent promotion of self-propulsion. Having imported the first mountain bike's to the UK and creating a hugely popular fat-tyre race, RB maintained his "Godfather" status in the bicycle movement, writing columns for The Guardian--among many periodicals-- while chairing the first Human Power Vehicle (HVP) Club in the 1980's; the sanest of these alternative contraptions being the "recumbent" pictured above. Richard earlier helped start the London Cycling Campaign a bicyclist charity and advocacy group of 11,000 members. And--as proof of the pudding--neither he nor any of his English-based family have owned an automobile for well over a decade.
A later profound interest in T'ai Chi (assisting Richard greatly in "the inside job" of living with cancer) contributed to making his last years what he described as "the happiest of my life." An extraordinary marriage, a particularly tight-knit relationship with his children, a lengthy, old-fashioned handwritten correspondence with his mother back in Woodstock, all tended to shift the adventure inwards. In a rare visit to London last spring, I found a great calm had settled over the warrior-hero of my youth, while the ponderous speeches Ballantine males seemed compelled to provide the world with had all but disappeared. There were silences in our conversations now, glowing with a meditative warmth.
As I write Richards' body is being conveyed by cycle-pulled hearse among a cortage of motorlessly-moved-mourners to a memorial at the Golders Green chapel in London
...an epic farewell party thereafter to commence. To this stellar send-off I can't help but compare Richard's Great-Aunt Emma's death which came to her exiled and disillusioned in 1940--the year of his birth; "The Revolution" as she'd envisioned it having succumbed to virulent corruption; her assessment of her own life--a near total waste. While the Human Powered Revolution her great-nephew inspired is growing pedal, spoke-'n-chain stronger by the minute, surging into a deceptively mature and powerful force. Nor may I resist noting that structures Richard Ballantine once sought to topple must soon fall of their own unsustainable weight, while the Glory-Day of the life-sustaining conveyances his name will forever be associated with is a growing, living, breathing reality, right here; right now.
Richard is survived by his wife Sherry, their children Danielle, Katharyn and Shawn, grandchildren Alexander and Norah, his mother, Betty, cousin Lucy, and by a world of grateful cyclists. Richard! Ride on!
"
Only just seen this. I'm very sad. I remember an oily copy which I tried to follow in the 1980s. I never did master bike maintenance and take my machine to a cycle shop, but it was wonderful to feel the love and enthusiasm for cycling radiating from the pages.
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