Sheldon “CaptBike” Brown 1944 – 2008
February 8, 2008
A couple of days ago Todd informed me that Sheldon “CaptBike” Brown had passed away this last Sunday. After reading the first line of the forwarded email link I felt a cold knot begin to tighten in the pit of my gut. I’ve always had a kind of morbid fascination with death (call it my way of confronting the terrifying reality of my own mortality), but rarely do I feel this sense of tragic loss — especially for someone who lived the rich and full life that Sheldon obviously had. Stranger yet is the fact I never even met the man. (Or so I think. There’s a better-than-average chance I stopped by Harris Cyclery during the week I helped Meggin move to Newton Center, MA; the shop is not far away and I recall stopping by a place to pick up some stuff just before setting out for Chicago.)
To start, I never knew Sheldon personally, though over the past seven years or so I’ve come to greatly admire and respect him. (He even was kind enough to answer several email inquiries of mine, though lord knows he had a lot more begging for his time and attention closer to home.) Bicycles and bicycling never had a more passionate or enthusiastic advocate.
My first introduction came — as it likely did for so many others — when I stumbled upon Sheldon’s encyclopedic website of bicycle knowledge and fancy back in late 2000 or 2001. (I knew I liked him from the moment I saw that photo of Sheldon with the eagle taped to his bicycle helmet.) At that time I was living in Japan, and because of my schedule, Wednesdays were spent either hired out to elementary schools or parked behind a Bureau of Education desk at City Hall. (It comes down to being the lesser of two evils, really.) The stultifying boredom of the B.O.E. was mitigated somewhat when we (myself, Reg, and Damian) were alloted a notebook computer to use for preparing class materials, or, as was hoped for, studying Japanese.
I actually did do a lot of class prep at City Hall (after raiding the stocks of double-sided tape, magnets, and colored paper in the supply room), but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also do a fair amount of web surfing. It was during one of these online forays that I must have clicked on a link for SheldonBrown.com (and more likely days later before I got back out again). At the time I was doing quite a bit of research on bikes, either because I was in the market to buy or was in the process of modifying my own from parts off other junkers in the neighborhood. It’s hard to remember which.
The short of it is this: I found more than I’d come looking for and in effect began my education of how bikes really work. You know, for someone who likes bikes as much as I do, it’s pathetic how poor my mechanical knowledge has been in the past. For me it was always more about the ride than the repair.
But that soon changed as I began to explore the articles, references, and layman’s explanations that Sheldon was constantly updating to fill but one branch of his massive website. (He was equally fervent about his family, camera collection, community theater, music, traveling, books, and film, to just get started.) Sheldon’s unassuming writing style and utter love for his subject matter were evident in his posts. He had nothing to prove; only a desire to teach and eagerness to let some of his excitement rub off on us. Eccentric? Renaissance man? It’s tough to put a label on someone, but Sheldon definitely seemed like the kind of guy you’d love to have in the neighborhood.
The funny thing is, when it comes to bikes, I see much more of my brother in Sheldon than I do of myself. A lot more. For me, I’ve always identified more with Sheldon’s avidity for journaling, for getting it all down. For keeping the record. I mean, the man was a producing, publishing, and posting workhorse. And it’s the central paradox of this sort of effort — the record being only as temporal as the recorder — that I find both absurd and comforting. Making mention gives me pause to think: about what happened, about what it means. And this is good.
Looking at his journal over the past week or so of his life, Sheldon writes about doing some carpentry around the house, seeing his daughter’s music recital at M.I.T., joining a Revels Pub Sing, and hunting down a power supply for an older-model hard drive. He even throws in a few book and film reviews for good measure. In the entry for January 24th, Sheldon mentions the “spaces” feature of Mac’s new OS Leopard. He ends with, “I’ll need to play around with it a bit before I decide if I like it or not.”
In the very last entry, posted the day of his death, Sheldon gets excited over voting for Obama on Super Tuesday. And that’s where the site just freezes, the links inviting us to “Send eMail to Sheldon Brown” still there. It’s eerie to go there now because everything just looks so normal: a snapshot of the most recent update. I suppose this is something that is becoming more commonplace, but it’s still weird.
What I wasn’t aware of is how MS had kept Sheldon off two-wheelers for the past year or so. I can’t help but admire his attitude, referring to the disease as merely a “Really Major Inconvenience”. I’ve been stressing a bit myself lately over a lot of things I can’t control (or shouldn’t even waste time worrying about in the first place), when the truth is I don’t even allow myself enough time for the few things that truly bring me joy. That’s one reason I’ve asked Todd to send my guitar. I’ve got more music than I can possibly listen to (not least because I’m too busy ripping even more), and fretting over bit rates when the truth is my won’t ever be as acute as they once were. Better to just stop, sit down, and spend some time with a few good chords. Music is best felt.
But I digress.
Sheldon, god speed and thank you for everything.
(Link: Sheldon Brown memorial page)
(Link: 12-minute interview with Sheldon on Australia’s 3RRR radio)
