Remembering Sheldon Brown

I got the news about a week ago that Sheldon Brown had passed away of a heart attack. He was the webmaster and all-around guru at Harris Cyclery in Massachusetts and maintained an encyclopedic website of bike knowledge at sheldonbrown.com. He had been diagnosed several years ago with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, but kept a positive outlook and continued to be a major figured in the cycling world, and especially in its online manifestation, while he adapted to riding a high-performance recumbent tricycle. He was a man of many interests and great humor. I posted a remembrance of him on a friend's inline skating board and thought I'd put a version of it here too.

I once corrected an article in the Washington Post that referred to Sheldon Brown as "a crotchety bike mechanic from Massachusetts." I only met him once, but my impression matched that of everyone else who'd known him: that he was an extremely open and friendly and charming man who knew a lot and had opinions that he'd state in no uncertain terms, but always with charm and good humor.

When I was teaching math at UNC-Greensboro, there was a trigonometry exercise in one of the textbooks involving the geometry of the tubes in a bicycle frame. At the end of the problem, it stated "For more information, see this url:" and gave a link to a page on Sheldon's site. That gives an idea of how wide-spread his influence was.

The one time I met him was at the 2005 Cirque du Cyclisme, where Sheldon was honored with an award for his many contributions to vintage bicycle lore and wisdom. Incidentally he tripped and fell while leaving the banquet with his award, which he later said was one of the first signs of his incipient MS.

Earlier that day, we'd attended some afternoon seminars on bike history at the Lewis Recreation Center, adjacent to Country Park. I had brought my skates and was planning to skate the Country Park loop when they had ended, but Sheldon apparently picked me out at random and, in a gracious and good-natured way, drafted me into giving him a ride back to his hotel. Of course I thanked him right off for his web pages which have helped me so much. He deflected the thanks by commenting that he originally started putting stuff up because he could never remember all of those details himself, and that he probably looked things up on his own website as often as anyone else.

We had quite a fine conversation in the car on topics ranging from literature to history to music to politics to computers, and of course bicycles. And we had some extra time for talking since I got mixed up about where his hotel was located and drove about five miles out of the way, which he laughed about and half-jokingly thanked me for giving him the chance to see more of the city.

Interestingly, Sheldon was never a fan of organized charity bike rides, writing:

"Bike-a-thons" grew out of "walk-a-thons." The idea of walk-a-thons is that the participants demonstrate their concern for the selected cause by undergoing the painful ordeal of a long walk, with the understanding that each mile they walk will enlarge the contribution given by the donors who they have signed up. The donors, in turn, get to feel that their contribution has been "earned" by the suffering of the participant who has sacrificed time and comfort for the sake of the cause.

The problem with translating the "walk-a-thon" into the "bike-a-thon" is the application of the concepts of "sacrifice" and "suffering" from walking to cycling. Cycling shouldn't be seen as a painful ordeal; cycling is fun! [...] Although "thons" do get people out on their bikes, and maybe even bring some people into cycling in a serious way, I believe that they send a message that cycling is a painful, unpleasant chore that you should do because it is good for you, or because it benefits some charitable organization.

But you have to hand it to someone who had a webpage titled "The Bright Side of MS", saying, "As nasty, rare, incurable diseases go, it's one of the better ones. If you must acquire a nasty, rare, incurable disease, MS is one of the best things going!" describing his condition as "not so much a "tragedy" as a Really Major Inconvenience."

Although I love skating, I really think that cycling is one of the best things in the world. It's recreation, it's exercise, it's practical transportation, and it's undeniably great for the environment (except perhaps for driving 100 miles each way with a bike strapped on top of your car to do a charity ride!) And Sheldon was a major positive factor in helping people to keep good old bikes on the road and to enjoy riding them.

The cycling world has lost a true giant. He was absolutely one of a kind, and as the outpouring of memorials and tributes this week shows, there's no way to begin to count the number of lives that he touched with his wit, his good nature, and his great generosity.

A Boston Globe story remembering him can be found here.