Riding To Trees And Light Ahead Of The Storm

Tomorrow we're supposed to have torrential rains, courtesy Tropical Storm Bonnie, ready to slam into the Carolinas any second now. To me, it's one thing to start a ride with the possiblity of rain, or even in a shower.  But riding in a hurricane or monsoon is beyod the limits of even my insanity!

So, I am happy I embarked on today's ride.  For the first time this year, I pedaled to Connecticut and back.  True to other predictions I heard, I saw very little traffic, even along Boston Road in the Bronx or in downtown New Rochelle or by the state line.  Almost anybody who planned to travel this weekend is already at his or her destination and will probably return tomorrow afternoon and evening.

Aside from the light traffic, today's ride was a delight in other ways.  For one thing, I rode Arielle, my Mercian Audax, again.  (The flat just before the state line on my return trip wasn't her fault!)  And while the temperature reached 33.3C (92F) in downtown Greenwich, the heat didn't feel oppressive until the last few kilometers (out of 125) in the Bronx and Randall's Island.  That may have had as much to do with my relative fatigue (I wasn't drop-dead tired!) as with the weather.

But what I found most enjoyable was the light of this day: the kind one might see, depending on where one is, on the cusp between late spring and early summer.  Thin wisps of clouds dissipated the sun's refulgence to make it reflect the former, but that light was bright and warm enough to signal the arrival of the latter.  I especially noticed that light around the trees by the war memorial in Greenwich.

Those trees reminded me of one of the loveliest coins ever produced in this country.  In the late 1990s, the US Mint inagurated a series of quarters, or twenty-five cent pieces to the rest of the world, commemorating each of the fifty states.  The Connecticut quarter is my favorite:

US Mint Image

Anyway, I noticed something else rather interesting during today's ride.  Quite a few people were riding bikes.  Some were families; others were on social or training rides.  Most of the riders in the latter category were men; most were on road bikes and the rest on mountain bikes.  Fixed-gear bikes were conspicuously absent. 

On the other hand, I saw a few riders on fixies yesterday after I crossed the city/county line into Nassau County on my way to Point Lookout. Not as many as I might see in Williamsburg or even my neighborhood of Astoria, but enough to be noticeable.  One reason might be that the terrain on the South Shore of Queens and Nassau County is completely flat, while there are some hills in Westchester County on the way to Connecticut. Also, the riders seem to be a bit older in Westchester than on Long Island and, at least from my observations, fixie riders are younger than other riders.

Whatever...I had another great ride today.  What else can I ask?

How I--And Arielle--Gave Thanks

I certainly had reason to give thanks yesterday.

Just after I posted, the friends who'd invited me for dinner called to say that the start time was pushed back--from 2 to 5 pm due to an "emergency". Whether it was in the kitchen or elsewhere, nobody said.  Not that it mattered.

I didn't mind.  You see, after I posted, I glanced outside and was treated to a picture-perfect late-fall morning:  The sun, totally unimpeded by clouds, mist or anything else (well, nothing that I could see, anyway!), set the last red, yellow and orange foliage aglow and burnished the brown leaves with a warmth, to the eye anyway, that felt like brick fireplace just starting to spread its heat.  

It was so beautiful, I didn't care about the temperature--which stood exactly at the freezing mark.  How could I not ride on such a morning?

Or afternoon?  Arielle, my Mercian Audax called, and I hopped on.

Well, I felt so good  The brisk air braced my skin and I saw almost no traffic anywhere.  In fact, in this normally-busy shopping area, I saw no traffic at all!

Now, if that picture

or this one

looks familiar, it's because the shopping area and the "Connecticut quarter" tree are, in fact, in Connecticut--Greenwich, to be precise.  I felt as if the town, the hills I climbed on my way in, the roads and the world were mine, all mine.  OK, I shared--with a few other cyclists I saw.  

I don't normally boast (really!).  But I couldn't help but to tell everyone about the ride I took--140 kilometers (about 85 miles) round-trip.  

The food was great.  And I felt absolutely no guilt about how much of it I ate.  I'll be eating some of it today--  there were leftovers for everyone--and I'll get to re-live, for a moment, a fine Thanksgiving Day.

A Quarter Or A Memory? Either Way, A Pleasure

Yesterday was balmy compared to most of the weather we've had in NYC for the past few weeks.  In fact, the afternoon high temperature of 11C (52F) was about the same as that of a couple of days last week in Florida.

The funny thing is that it actually seemed chillier in Florida.  Perhaps my body had acclimated itself to warmer weather--or to the expectations of people who live there. To them, it was cold.

For me, it was a day filled with more of that diffuse but austere winter light Bill and I enjoyed the other day.

So where did I ride?  Here is a clue:

I can't see defoliated trees in the Nutmeg State without thinking about the "Connecticut quarter".  Of course, the ride was better than that coin:  That 25-cent piece, like most money, is worth less and less every year, while the joy of a ride does not depreciate for me.

Not even after seeing the Greenwich Veterans' Memorial against such a stark background.

Part of the joy was, of course, that I was doing a ride I don't normally do at this time of year.  In spite of the mild weather, not many people, cyclists or otherwise, were out.  The good thing about that was that I saw little traffic, even at the highway entrances by the state line or in New Rochelle or the Bronx.

After 140 kilometers of riding and a good dinner, I was happy, to say the least!  So was Arielle, my Mercian Audax.

Cloud Chase To Connecticut

 Yesterday was, for me, a great day to ride:  A predawn thunderstorm dissipated the heat of the previous few days, and masses of clouds moved across the sky, revealing the sun just long enough to brighten up the ride without bearing down on my melanin-deprived skin.

So I took a ride to Greenwich, Connecticut.  Along the way I felt I was playing hide-and-seek with the sun and clouds.  The clouds caught up at the Greenwich Common, where they retreated behind the Veterans’ Monument—and trees like the ones on the Connecticut state quarter—in full bloom.

A Currency Of Pleasure

Now tell me:  Is there a surer sign of an early summer day than this?

It was a little cooler than normal (high temperature of 27C, or 80F) but I didn't mind.  From that tree, you might know where I rode:  Connecticut.  

(I have to admit, I couldn't help but to think of the quarter coin dedicated to the Nutmeg State--one of the prettiest pieces of currency ever issued.)

Anyway, the sky was as bright and blue as my cell-phone photos make it seem.  I rode into a fairly stiff wind on the way up, which meant, of course, that I had it at my back on my way home.

I couldn't have asked for anything better. Nor could Arielle, my Mercian Audax.  

Ride Before The Storm

It's here.  

I'm talking about the snow.  Ever since the middle of the week, the weather forecasters said we'd get the white stuff this weekend.  Well, they were right on target:  Flurries that fluttered down early this morning have turned into big, puffy flakes.  I don't know how much will accumulate, or stay, but everything looks like someone opened up a big box of confectioner's sugar and sprinkled it.

Good thing I went for a ride yesterday--specifically, the ride I took.  Although you could have guessed that snow was coming even if you hadn't heard the forecasts, there was no threat of it yesterday. Nor was there a hint of sun:  The overcast sky spread a blanket of that particular kind of gray seen just when late autumn is turning into winter--and the pyres of fallen leaves are flickering their last embers of color.

I tried to get those colors and that light without becoming a road pancake.  Oh well.  At least I managed to capture, I think, the you-wouldn't-know-it-was-the-Bronx-unless-you-were-there feel of that scene.

Anyway, at that point I was about a quarter of the way to what would be my destination:  

You guessed it--Greenwich, Connecticut.  That's the Town Hall, across from where I sat and consumed some dark chocolate and nuts.

Trusty Arielle, my Mercian Audax, got me there and back.  She seemed particularly quick and comfortable today.  Perhaps I was simply enjoying my last-chance-before-the-storm ride.  

So what am I doing today (besides writing this post)?  Reading some students' papers, and making some beet soup.  And enjoying yesterday's ride.

Lightning Crashes

I didn't do a lot of cycling today:  just short hops for errands to the bank, post office and dry cleaner.  The day grew oppressively hot and humid very early and very quickly, and the haze that stretched like a gauze over the sun actually made it seem hotter somehow.  But, of course, that haze was a prelude to the weather about which the forecasters were warning.


I was tempted to go out in the rain.  I used to do that often when I was younger:  On warm, wet days I would hop on my bike while wearing as little as I could get away with.  I reasoned that on a warm day, I didn't need insulation, and that whether or not I wore anything, I'd be soaked to my skin anyway.   

Plus, I used to love the feel of the rain against my skin.  Actually, I still do.  And I'll tell you a secret:  It's better when you're not high or drunk.  It's even better when you're full of estrogen.  


Anyway...I didn't go for a ride in the rain.  What the National Weather Service issued was not just a forecast for rain; it was a warning of severe thunderstorms.  Somehow I get the feeling that getting struck by lightning wouldn't enhance my experience of the ride.  Plus, it got very windy.   There was a tornado in Connecticut last week, so I was thinking of that.  


Now, I've ridden--though unintentionally--through thunderstorms.  Why do they call them "thunderstorms" anyway?  The thunder is just a lot of noise:  It doesn't do much more than make my cats hide.  It's the lightning that really matters, especially when you're riding.

Of the times I've ridden in thunderstorms, two in particular come to mind.


The first was some time in my early adulthood.  It was about a year after I'd gotten back from living in France.  My grandmother had died a few months before, and I was still grieving and angry (and would remain so for a long time afterward).  I had moved back to the town where I went to college.  That wasn't a good move, except for one thing:  New York wasn't far away.  Sometimes I would make a day trip out of pedalling in, riding in the parks or along the Verrazano-Narrows promenade, or through some neighborhood that looked interesting, and having lunch and/or going to book and record shops before riding back.  


Well, on that day, I pedalled out to Coney Island--which, in those days, looked like the Atlantic City of Louis Malle's eponymous film, but without the colorful characters.  All that you could find there in those days, besides Nathan's (whose French fries I used to love), were whatever the tides deposited on the beach and the subways expelled onto the streets.  It was literally the end of the line, in every way you could think of.


And that was part of its appeal for me. It was a time in my life when I was disguising my self-loathing as some sort of somewhat hip misanthropy--and I pretended not to be aware of what I was doing.  I convinced myself that I hated all those people who looked like they were having fun when the truth was that I wanted to be one of them.  That would have violated almost everything I believed --or professed to believing --in.


So...When I got to Coney Island--after about forty miles of riding--I bought something that was, at the time, illegal everywhere in the US and is now allowed for medical purposes in a few states.  (I can say this now, as the statute of limitations has expired!)  In those days, it wasn't hard to find on Coney Island.  And, let's just say that afterward, I spent I-don't-know-how long watching the waves before going to Nathan's and eating three orders of French fries, the way I have always liked them:  garnished with spicy mustard and diced onions.


As I passed under the viaduct for the trains, rain began to drop.  As I crossed the bridge over Coney Island Creek into Bath Beach and Bensonhurst,  the drops turned into a fall, then a deluge.  I heard rumblings, but I kept on riding.


Then I climbed the stairs to the Brooklyn Bridge.  (The ramp to Tillary Street hadn't been built yet.)  Enough rain had fallen that the pavement and pedestrian path weren't slick; the rain was washing everything away.  So, I wasn't concerned until I was near the middle of the span, a couple hundred feet over the water.

Then, the lights of the city got bright--really bright.  Lightning flashed all around me:  Only Roebling's hundred-year-old steel cables stood between me and it.  High as I was, I started to get nervous.  I remembered--from Boy Scouts?--that lightning will strike the tallest thing in its path.  All right, I thought, the towers of the bridge stood a couple hundred feet higher than I did.  But each of them was about a quarter-mile away from me, in either direction.  And I was at the point on the bridge where the long transverse cables dip.  So, as there were no other cyclists, and no pedestrians, on the bridge, it looked like I was the tallest structure between those two towers.  


Nearly two decades later, I would have a much closer encounter with lightning while riding.  Tammy and I were touring the Loire Valley.  We had left Chinon that morning and were pedalling along one of the many pleasant roads (Routes Departmentales) found in that area.  The early sunshine continued into afternoon; about an hour after we had lunch, the sky darkened quickly.  We were in flat farm country:  The only things that stood before us, besides the tall poppies, grain and trees, was a silo that looked to be a few kilometers away.  

Seemingly within an instant, we went from glistening with our sweat to slick from the rain that poured down.  She spotted what looked like a lean-to, but we both decided it was better to press on:  We were soaked and we didn't know how long the storm would last.


I felt my skin tingle that turned into a subcutaneous electric shock.  I yelled, "Watch out!"  A bolt of lightining crashed only a few meters, if that, in front of me.  That night, ensconced in one of those charming gites one finds whether or not one is looking for them, we agreed that it was the loudest boom either of us had ever heard.  At least, I'm pretty sure that's what we said:  I think my hearing was just starting to come back.


Hmm...If I'd been struck by lightning that day, I could have been a hero, sort of.  After all, it would have hit me because, I was riding in front of Tammy.  (I did through most of the trip, mainly because I'd cycled in that part of France before, could speak French and had navigational skills that were less bad than hers.  That's not to say mine were or are good:  I inherited them from Columbus!)  Would I have been given la Legion d'Honneur for protecting a woman's honor?  

Of course, I've since learned that a woman is the only one who can protect her own honor, and that we perpetuate the patriarchy--and, sometimes, simply get along--when we let men think they're doing that for us. But I'm digressing--really digressing!


That day in the Loire Valley, I was many years clean and sober and could practically feel the lightning coursing through me.  I can only imagine how it would feel now, as the hormones seem to have removed one layer of skin all over my body and the surgery seems to have pulled away another.  Actually, it did, but that's another story. 


P.S.  If you're worried that cycling will make you impotent, don't read this.  

Afternoon Nourishment

Over the past week or two, clouds have blanketed, and rain has fallen on, this part of the world more often than the sun has shone.  But the days have grown noticeably longer:  Every day, it seems, the sun sets a few minutes later.

That means I can start early in the afternoon and still get a decent ride in.  On Monday, I rambled along local streets and roads to the North Shore and central Queens to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.  

The cherry blossoms were, well, not quite blossoms, not yet.  But the buds were visibly more open than they were over the weekend: open enough that I could envision the pink canopy the grove will soon provide.

I deliberately used the word "provide" because such sensual spectacles are sustenance for me:  They sustain me on my journey and the journey.

The following day, I didn't see cherry blossoms after I pedaled a few miles from my apartment.  I pedaled north and east, across the RFK Bridge into the Bronx and Westchester--into Connecticut.  I realize now that the difference in latitude, however slight, may have been enough to make a difference in the blooms:  Festivals in Washington, DC and much of Japan happen early in April (or even late March) because their trees, at a more southerly latitude, are exposed to the necessary sunlight, and therefore bloom, earlier.

I did, however, enjoy a snack or late light lunch*, depending on how you look at it, by a bed of tulips:

The soldiers, sailors and flyers commemorated at the Greenwich Memorial aren't buried there. Throughout my life, as I've become increasingly anti-war, I have become more pro-veteran.  Maybe I still have the hope that one day, whether or not it happens during my lifetime, no one else will have to do what they did--and that beauty can flourish in the ruins.

All right, enough faux-profound commentary.  It was great to start after noon and finish a 145 kilometer ride well before dark--and to chow down on some Italian American soul food--baked ziti and salad--after feeding my apartment mate.**

*--A quarter of a whole wheat baguette with Brad's peanut butter and Bonne Maman preserves--cherry on half, wild blueberry on the other half.

**--I always feed Marlee before I feed myself.  I got into the habit of feeding my cat(s) first years ago, with my first feline companion.

  

Will The Idaho Stop Come To Oregon?

Until recently, I was a disciple of John Forester's "bicycle as vehicle" philosophy.  It's explicated in his "Effective Cycling" book, which--along with the C.O.N.I. manual (which has, possibly, the most beautiful cover illustration of any cycling book)--were my touchstones for cycling.

I haven't looked at the C.O.N.I. manual in a long time.  I'm sure it's still valuable, though some of its specifics might be dated. (To my knowledge, no new edition of the book, at least in English, was published after 1972.)  But I still check out Forester's book on occasion.  Some of its information is dated. That is inevitable, of course:  The book came out about 40 years ago, and, for example, much of the equipment he mentions is no longer made.  But I think his notions about how to cycle in traffic are just as dated.

But they were needed at the time.  As I've related in other posts, many was my commute or training ride in which I would not encounter another cyclist.  Most motorists--which is almost the same thing as saying most adults, as defined by law--didn't ride and regarded the bicycle as a kid's toy.  And if they saw an adult riding, they thought it must be for a bad reason, such as loss of driver's license or inability to afford a car.  The "car is king" attitude was, I believe, even more prevalent than it was now.  Forester was, I think, trying to establish the bicycle as a viable and valid means of transportation for grown-ups in the US.  Four decades ago, that meant cyclists asserting themselves themselves on the road and behaving exactly like drivers in the ways we took lanes, made turns and such.

The conditions at the time also meant that almost no policy-makers were cyclists.  So, whatever laws and policies were created in the name of "safety" were wrongheaded, if not flat-out malicious.  Thus, while folks like Forester advocated for more enlightened rules, they knew that they would be a long time a'coming, if they ever came at all.  Cyclists asserting their rights as operators of vehicles therefore seemed like the best way to "establish" cycling, if you will, in the US.

Now, I'm not sure that drivers' attitudes toward cyclists have changed much.  If anything, I think some have grown more hostile becuase they feel bike lanes are taking away "their" traffic lanes, and because they have the misinformed notion that we use roadways and other infrastructure without paying for it. In fact, a driver parking in Brooklyn (at the formoer site of the library I frequented in my childhood, no less!) made that accusation as he shouted other fallacies and epithets at me.  I waited for him; he probably expected me to punch him in the nose.  But I calmly informed him that the only tax he pays that I don't pay is on gasoline.  I don't know whether he was more surprised by what I said or my demeanor.

Anyway, while drivers might be hostile for different reasons than they were four decades ago, there are some changes in the wind.  There are, at least in a few places, a few policymakers who cycle to their offices, and perhaps elsewhere.  And at least a few of the drivers I encounter have ridden a bike, say, within the last month.  So there is a small, but growing recognition, that while bicycles aren't the lawless hooligans some believe us to be, we also can't behave exactly like motor vehicles and live to tell about it.

That bikes aren't the same as cars is a point made by Jonathan Maus, the editor/publisher of Bike Portland.  In an excelllent article he published the other day, he uses that point to advocate for something that has become one of my pet causes, if you will, as a cyclist:  the Idaho Stop.

As I've mentioned in other posts, the Idaho Stop is when you treat a red signal as a "stop" sign and a "stop" sign as a "yield" sign.  In essence, it means that you don't have to come to a complete stop at an intersection unless traffic is crossing. That improves our safety immensely because if we can cross before the light turns green, we get out in front of whatever traffic might approach from behind us, as well as oncoming traffic--which keeps us from being hit by a turning vehicle.

Maus wrote his article because a similar law is up for vote in the Oregon state senate.  Governor Asa Hutchinson recently signed a similar law in Arkansas, and Utah is considering something like it.  A few municipalities in the US as well as the city of Paris have enacted similar policies during the past decade.  But it's called "The Idaho Stop" because the Gem State has had it on the books since 1982, and for about a quarter-century, it was the only such law in the United States.

Let's hope that Jonathan Maus's words move the legislators of Oregon.  Let's also hope that as Oregon goes, so go New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and...well, you get the idea.