4-1/2 Ft.

Probably the most famous objet d'art that has anything to do with cycling is the "bull" Pablo Picasso fashioned from a bicycle saddle and handlebars.  

There are others, of course, including Marcel Duchamp's bicycle wheel.  On the other hand, we don't often hear about performance art based on bicycles or bicycling.

Now an artist and librarian based in Oakland, California plans to help fill that void.

Lisa Conrad plans to cycle across the state of Nebraska from Thursday, 30 May until 15 June.  She will be accompanied by other artists who plan to traverse the state from west to east.  After the Cornhusker State, they plan to ride across Iowa. 



Now, they are not the first cyclists to ride across either state.  What will be different is their route, which will trace abandoned railroad tracks and the gaps between them.  The purpose, she says, is to explore the role of the railroad in the making of the United States, in particular through examining the tension between the romance of the rails and the reality of making them, which was often exploitative, to put it mildly.



While she doesn't mention anything about it, the ride/performance piece--called 4 -1/2 ft, after the standard width of a railroad track--the  coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental railroad. 

This isn't the first such ride for Conrad and the other artist-cyclists.  Previously, they did a similarly-themed ride across Washington State and Northern Idaho, and another through Montana into Wyoming.

You can learn more about 4 -1/2 ft at their website.

The FIrst Bike Lane?

Now  here's an interesting way to commute by bicycle.

Arthur Hotchkiss envisioned this monorail for bicycles as the future of getting to and from work when he built it during the 1890's.  Most roads then would make today's potholed city streets seem like magic carpets; amazingly, many cyclists still pedaled "high-wheelers" or "penny farthings, which were much less stable  and were more likely than today's bikes to be toppled by ruts and potholes.  Hotchkiss' bike "railroad" spanned muddy fields as well as a stream. 

Hezekiah Smith backed the project.  He owned a factory in a western New Jersey hamlet--named for him-- that, at the time, was making about a quarter of America's woodworking equipment.  Poor conditions, particularly when it rained, caused tardiness in his workers.

The bicycles that glided along the rail bore little resemblance to today's two-wheelers.  They had two mismatched wheels (one 20 inches in diameter, the other 12). Instead of pushing on pedals, the cyclist had to repeatedly depress a ratchet mechanism as if he were pumping air into a tire.  

There was only single rail.  So one cyclist had to dismount and allow the other to pass before resuming his trip.  As you can imagine, head-on collisions were frequent and tempers flared.

But these problems were not the ones that doomed the "railroad."  Rather, the introduction of the "safety" bicycle (with both wheels the same size, along with improving road conditions, made bicycle commuting more feasible.  So, the railroad's ridership declined and it went bankrupt in 1898.  No trace of it--or Smith's factory.  His company didn't survive the Great Depression.

It's interesting to think of what bike lanes would be like today if Hotchkiss and Smith's "railroad had survived a few more years.

To The Beach--By Bike Or Train? Why Not Combine Them?

After work, I did what a lot of other people are doing this week:  I took a trip to the beach.  It's the last "unofficial" week of summer; after Monday--Labor Day--most people will be back at work.

Of course, you know I rode my bicycle to the beach--Orchard Beach, to be exact, as it's the one nearest my job. Other people did, too, but others drove or took the bus.  Still others took the train to beaches on Long Island--or the subway to the Rockaways and Coney Island.

It's probably no surprise that during cycling's first heyday--roughly the last decade of the 19th Century and the first decade of the 21st--people cycled to the beach, especially to Coney Island.  The Ocean Parkway Bike and Bridle path--the oldest extant bike lane in the US-- was constructed during that time.  Also, during that time, construction of the subway system began.  There were, however, smaller, independent railroads that ran from Manhattan and the nearby areas of Brooklyn to the beaches. Some of those railroads later became part of the city's and region's mass transit system.

At that time, it was even possible to combine bikes and trains on a ride to the beach.  Well, sort of.

The Boynton Bicycle Railroad linked the southwestern Brooklyn neighborhood of Gravesend with Coney Island.  It ran for only two years, and inspired a few other short-lived imitations, it is commemorated with Boynton Place, at the intersection of West 7th Street and Avenue X, in Gravesend.

So, what made it a "bicycle railroad"?  Well, it ran on two wheels on a monorail.  So, you may ask, how did it keep it balance?  Well, there were rubber-faced trolley wheels on top of the trains that guided the train along a rail that ran fifteen feet above the rail on which the "bicycle" train ran.

When it debuted, the trains could achieve speeds of 80 mph.  The following years, technical improvements upped the maximum velocity to 100 mph.

The Boynton Bicycle Railroad, as shown in an 1894 issue of Scientific American

Inventor E. Moody Boynton said his intention was indeed to marry a new technology of the time to a newish one:  the bicycle and the railroad.  He was convinced that his system was more efficient than conventional railroads because there was less friction on a single than a double track.  The speeds of his trains seemed to make his case.  Still, he couldn't find investors--possibly because the automobile was on the horizon-and neither the Boynton nor the other "bicycle" railroads survived past the middle of the first decade of the 20th Century.

It could be said, however, that his idea lives on in modern monorail and light-rail systems.  Perhaps one day tourist hubs will have "pedi-trains", much as some places now have "pedi-cabs".

Crossing The Tracks

One of the invaluable life skills I learned in my youth is that of crossing railroad tracks on a bicycle.

If you've done it before, you know that you should approach them with your tire at a 90 degree angle--a.k.a. perpendicular (I remember that much from my geometry class!)--to the rails.  This is especially true if you are riding skinny road tires.

However, at many railroad intersections, this is not possible.  I have seen junctures where the road or path is nearly parallel to the rails when they meet.  Such intersections are all the more hazardous when, as often as not, the road or path has a sharp turn or curve just before it meets the tracks.  You then are faced with the same hazard presented by many urban bike lanes:  You are riding into the path of turning cars--at the same time you're negotiating the tracks.

So, perhaps, it's not surprising that in at least one locale, the most dangerous spot for cyclists is a railroad crossing.  

Knoxville, Tennessee is one such location.  Chris Cherry knows the spot all too well:  He watched his wife "really mangle her knee" after taking a spill at the Neyland Drive crossing.

Turns out, her mishap was one of 53 crashes recorded over a two-month period (2 August-3 October 2014) by a camera at the site.  As hazardous as railroad crossings are in general, this, city authorities acknowledged, is an unusually high number.

Cherry, an associate professor of engineering, at the University of Tennessee, decided to investigate.

 

  The problem was that the Drive crossed the tracks at a 45 degree angle--and, not surprisingly, the stretch of the drive leading to the tracks had a sharp curve.  

As a cyclist and engineer, Cherry knew that he best solution would have been to reconfigure the street so that it would cross the tracks at a right angle.  The city wasn't going to do that, however because the involvement of the groups it would have required--and the crossing's proximity to the Tennessee River--would have pushed the cost to $200,000.  Instead, the city used the "jughandle" approach (If you've cycled or driven on New Jersey State routes, you have seen it) to create a 60-degree angle.

Cherry, who was consulted on the project, knows it's not an ideal solution.  But, he hopes, it will reduce the number of crashes at the site.  So far, he thinks it's been effective.

Still, I think the intersection is one I'd approach with heightened caution:  I've pedaled through many others like it.

Diverting My Commute Through History

The bike/pedestrian lane on the Queens spur of the RFK Memorial (a.k.a. Triborough) Bridge has been closed for "painting and repairs."  The signs said the lane would be closed from 9 am to 5 pm from the 1st to the 26th of this month.  I didn't figure that it would affect me much, if at all, since I always go in to work before 9 and usually am heading home after 5.

Last Tuesday, however, I didn't leave work until 8 pm.  I pedaled across the Randall's Island connector and the island to the Queens spur of the bridge.  There, the gate was still locked, with the same sign announcing its closure.

All right, I told myself.  Maybe they just forgot to reopen it.  That night, it meant backtracking to the north end of the island and the Manhattan spur of the bridge.  Then I rode down Second Avenue from 125th Street to the Queensborough (a.k.a. 59th Street) Bridge.  It was a longer commute home, but I didn't mind, really.

Well, the Queens spur of the RFK hasn't been opened since.  No one from the Department of Transportation has returned my calls.  (Should I be surprised?)  So, I've been taking another route to and from work.  To get to the Bronx, I've been crossing the Queensborough to First Avenue, which has a bike lane all the way up to 125th Street.  From there, I take the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx.  It's not bad, really:  Above 96th Street, there isn't much traffic, and below, there are other cyclists so, if nothing else, we're visible, though one has to watch for pedestrians who step into the lane while looking at their electronic devices or simply not looking at anything in their surroundings.  One place where you have to be careful  is at 96th Street, where traffic enters and exits the FDR Drive and there are several schools, a hospital and the largest mosque in the US within a two-block radius. 

(Along the way I passed several fruit sellers.  I stopped at one and bought my first cherries of the season.)

I often think that I ride, write and teach for the same reason:  to learn.  Well, today, I did just that on the Willis Avenue Bridge--or, more specifically, what's below the Bronx side of it:

 

Now, I know it looks like just another lot in an industrial landscape.  But this plaque, on the bridge, told of its significance:

It may be hard to believe that until 1840, most of the Bronx was farmland or woods.  That changed when the railroad cut through the area around that lot, which is now crisscrossed by highways, bridges and railroad tracks. 

Port Morris--the part of the South Bronx by the bridge--became the first commercial and industrial area of the Bronx.  (In fact, one nearby section became the nation's center of piano-making and has recently been dubbed "The Piano District" by realtors who are envisioning the next DUMBO.)  It also became a railroad center, which is why the roundhouse was built on the site under the bridge. 

Hmm...You never know what a slight change in your daily commute can teach you, eh?

They Rode Like They Were On Rails

Some of you have benefited from the work of the Rails-To-Trails Conservancy.  As their name indicates, they have worked to convert disused and abandoned railroad right-of-ways to paths for cycling, hiking and other non-motorized means of transportation.

Like canal towpaths, railbeds make for all-but-ideal bike paths.  They are usually flat; if there is an incline, the grade is gradual and even.  Plus, towpaths and railbeds are usually well-conceived and well-built, at least in part because the best engineers of their time worked on them; the Pennsylvania, New York Central, Union Pacific, and Baltimore and Ohio railroads attracted, and paid for, scientific and technical acumen as the major automobile manufacturers and aerospace companies would in later years.

Also, many old railroad viaducts, bridges and overpasses have endured because, ironically, in the early days of railroad engineering, nobody really knew which materials and methods were most suitable.  So, the early railroads--particularly the Baltimore and Ohio, erred on the side of caution and used what they thought were the strongest materials--as often as not, granite and iron.

What all of this means, of course, is that to make a good trail, sometimes it's not necessary to do much more than remove the tracks.  

Or maybe not even that.  

Believe it or not, in 1891, one Frank Brady of Chicago, Illinois got a patent for a bicycle much like that one.






Apparently, he wasn't the only one to patent a railway bicycle.  This one sprung from the mind of Allegheny, Pennsylvania native Henry Mann, and was patented a year after Brady's contraption:

Given that the 1890s were a Golden Age for both railroads and bicycles, it's no surprise that Brady and Mann weren't the only ones who, in that era, thought that "pedal to the metal" meant a velocipede on rails:




Note that in all of these patents, the vehicle in question is referred to as a "velocipede".  That was the common term for any pedaled vehicle; the Teetor vehicle in the 1898 patent has four wheels.  



Also note that the Teetor vehicle is referred to as an "inspection car".  Can you imagine how the world would be different if our cars were like that instead of the ones we have now?  Would our Interstate system consist of rails of steel rather than ribbons of asphalt?

Apparently, as the Bike Boom of the 1890s and early 1900s ended, so did attempts to make bikes that rode on rails.

Off The Railroad And Onto Bikes: Reading, Pennsylvania

Whenever a city builds bike lanes or starts a bike share program, there is resentment.  As often as not, it's voiced as a class argument:  Cyclists are seen as young, rich and "privileged", and that poor working blokes are subsidizing their fads and fetishes.

One reason for this, I believe, is that most urban bike lanes have been built, and most bike share ports installed, in central downtown areas or in nearby areas where the young and affluent (who, as often as not, come from someplace else) congregate.  As an example, here in New York, the first Citibike ports installed outside of Manhattan were placed in the Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods closest to Manhattan:  the "Hipster Hook" communities situated directly across the East River and at the ends of bridges.  You won't find many marked paths or  Citibikes in East New York or South Jamaica, or even in relatively affluent (but further from Manhattan and less hip) areas like Mill Basin and Fresh Meadows.

What is often forgotten, however, is that in neighborhoods like the South Bronx and East New York--and in cities like Newark--there are people who ride to work, or wherever else they need to be, not because it's fashionable, but because they can't afford any other way besides walking.

They don't have the funds or a credit card to buy a new Linus "Dutch" bike or a Trek Chelsea.  The bikes they ride, in fact, may have come from tag sales or dumpsters, or been given to them.  Those machines may have parts that were not intended for them:  For example, a wheel may have been replaced by one of a different size.  And those riders aren't stopping in the trendy bike cafes for Marin Macchiatos or Linus Lattes.  If anything, they might be holed up in the local Dunkin' Donuts, if they can afford even that.

The communities in which they live have low percentages of people who ride to work.  Part of the reason for that is, well, a lot of them don't work:  They lost jobs and weren't able to find others, or they didn't have jobs in the first place.  

Many of them live in areas where there is little or no mass transit--and, even if it was available, it would be a strain on their budgets, if not financially out of reach altogether.  Or the nearest bus stop or train station is, say, a 45-minute walk away (as is the case for some residents of Red Hook, Brooklyn).  That makes it difficult, to say the least, to keep appointments with doctors, government agencies and the like, let alone get to work on time and have any time left for anything besides commuting and working.

Reading resident Harrison Walker doesn't own a car and bikes everywhere.

Almost everything I have said in the previous four paragraphs can be said about the city of Reading, Pennsylvania and its people.  Once a thriving railroad hub (If you've played the classic version of Monopoly, you've bought and/or sold the Reading Railroad!) situated halfway between the anthracite coal mines of central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, this city was beset by many of the problems older industrial cities like Detroit and Cleveland experienced when their industries died or moved away.   

Five years ago, the New York Times published an article declaring Reading the poorest city (of 60,000 or more people) in the United States.  More than 40 percent of its residents were living below the Federal poverty line.  Things seem not to have changed much:  While the official unemployment rate has dropped, at 8.3 percent it still is three percentage points higher than the national average.  And, of course, that number doesn't include the people who gave up on trying to find a job or whose unemployment benefits ran out--or those who returned to school or entered some sort of retraining program after they could not find jobs in the industries in which they had been working.

Those un-, under- and never-employed Reading residents make up most of the city's cyclists. "Reading's poor, and a lot of people who live here are poor," explains Dani Motze of ReDesign Reading, a nonprofit group that's trying to revitalize the city.  "[S]o bike riding is how they get from place to place."  

The demography of Reading's cyclists may be a reason why the city hasn't attracted the attention of urban planners involved with cycling infrastructure--until now.  Craig Peiffer became the city's zoning administrator a few years ago.  He was shocked at what he found.  "As a planner here in Pennsylvania," he relates, "I've seen smaller towns--significantly smaller towns--where they were already putting in designated bike lanes."

He and a colleague decided they were going to make Reading a more hospitable place for cyclists. However, their aim in doing so would be different from what has motivated officials in other cities to make them more "bike friendly."  In those communities, bike amenities are often used to attract outsiders--especially affluent millennials and sustainability advocates.  "Other cities have used biking because biking is cool and hip," declares Brian Kelly, executive director of ReDesign Reading.  He has no problem with that, he explains, but that is not the point of what he, Peiffer and others are trying to do in Reading.  

Jason Orth, manager of the Reading Bike Hub, fixes a bike for a customer.

Instead, they are--in addition to working on acquiring the money for bike lanes--making cycling more affordable and convenient for the city's residents.  Bike racks have been installed on all of the city's buses.  The city has also launched a bike-share program.  But, perhaps most important of all, it opened Reading's first bike shop. Unlike the bike boutiques of trendy neighborhoods, the Reading Bike Hub, in addition to conducting safety workshops, sells used bikes and affordable parts--and loans tools.  "If I were to go buy this tool, I'd have to go to Sears,"  says Harrison Walker, who rides his bike "everywhere".  The tool he had just borrowed from the Hub would "probably cost upwards of $20 just for this one wrench," he observes.

I am glad that the folks at National Public Radio, where I learned of Reading's programs, were able to see and communicate some of the challenges faced by people who are forced to rely on their bicycles for transportation.  It is only with such knowledge that American cities can make bicycles a viable transportation option for all of their citizens.

The Promenades

Here's what I had for breakfast today:

Now, you might have a difficult time finding this product in your local store.  However, it might be worth finding, as it promises really good things:

The nutritional value goes like this:  Joie de vivre, 19 9 grams  Soleil (sunshine), 33 grams.  Synergie, 12 grams.  Energy, 13 grams.  Poesie (poetry), 21 grams. Addictif, 2 grams.  The "sacoche de banane" is what the French call a "fanny pack", "waist bag" or "bum bag."  Sometimes they're simply called "banane".

"Menil Monkey" is the name of a collaboration between the office of the 20th Arrondissement--which includes the neighborhood of Menilmontant, or "Menil" for short--and DJ Joachim Touitou, or Joachim.T.

Menilmontant is a neighbor of Belleville, the neighborhood that gave the world none other than Edith Piaf.  Both neighborhoods are in the hilly northernmost area of Paris that includes Montmartre and the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, where none other than Chopin, Oscar Wilde and, yes, Jim Morrison are buried.

On Menil Monkey's "cereal box", there's a warning that consumption of the contents can cause addiction to the 20th Arrondissement, among other things.

Well, I was there the other day...and the last time I was in Paris...and the one before that.  The 20th is indeed interesting because it's Parisian and cosmopolitan at the same time.  It's an area where you can eat and drink at old-school Parisian cafes or in West African, Middle Eastern, Asian or  Kosher (mainly Sephardic Jewish) establishments.

And I saw a lot of bike riders--of all kinds.  Some were on Velib (the Paris bike share program) machines; others rode bikes older than themselves; still others pedaled classic touring and racing bikes.  It was, in short, an interesting procession of un-self-conscious utility cyclists, cognoscenti  and folks on trendy bikes.

That procession seemed to spill down the Avenue de la Republique toward the bike lanes of the Canal St. Martin. There were some hipsters and wannabes on fixed-gear bikes.  (These days, most fixed-gear bikes in New York are being ridden with single-speed freewheels.) And there were a few riders on the kinds of bikes that seem to be sold, under different labels, but with the same cartoonish graphics, everywhere in the world.  But I got a kick out of seeing young people on bikes that would be considered "vintage" but to their riders are simply bikes that are getting them from wherever to wherever--and, possibly, did the same for an older sibling, parent, aunt, uncle or someone else before them.

The canal, like most others that are no longer used for shipping, offers a calming time for those who ride along its paths or sit on its banks.  I've been told that some of those romantic or painterly photos that look like they were shot on the Seine were actually taken along the canal.

Its calm surface, though, belies a tragedy that took place just steps away last November:

The Bataclan bar and concert hall, a site of the November 2015 terrorist attacks

But that didn't stop people from enjoying their afternoon there, whether they were dangling their feet into the water or spinning pedals.  

One equally-pleasant place where you're not allowed to ride, though, is the Promenade des Plantes.  You can bring your bike up there, but you're not allowed to ride it.  Still, it's worth climbing the stairs from the Avenue Daumesnil, near the Bastille and the Gare de Lyon  (where the Orient Express originated), to see what became of a former railway.

At the Grand Train exhibit I saw the other day, sections of old railroad tracks in a disused rail yard were turned into patches.  The Viaduc des Arts is, in contrast, a botanical garden about two kilometers long in the former track beds.  At street level, cafes, restaurants, shops and art galleries are in the vaults that hold up the railroad by way.  

This project is said to be the inspiration for New York's High Line, which was also a disused railway.  The difference, though, is that while the High Line does indeed have gardens, it's lined with all of the kinds of touristy shops and restaurants you can find at the South Street Seaport.  With the Viaduc des Arts, you can choose to go to the galleries and shops on the street level, or go up to the Promenade des Plantes for the flora and fauna--which, interestingly, do more than anything on the High Line to evoke (at least in my imagination) the tracks that once lined, and the trains that ran along, them.

After descending from the Promenade des Plantes, I rode by the Gare de Lyon--faster than any of the trains ;-)--to the Seine and the bridge back to my hotel.

Ah, yes, another fine day!

Which Way Was He Supposed To Go?

Few things vex me more than a designated bike lane that's poorly designed, constructed or maintained--or that ends abruptly or simply doesn't go anywhere.

Such lanes are not merely annoying or inconvenient:  Riding them is, as often as not, more dangerous than sharing the roadway with motorized traffic.

That is especially true if the direction of the bike lane is not clearly indicated--or, as in one case in northern California, a new lane is under construction or has been constructed to replace an existing one, but there is no indication of which one the cyclist should use.

For Matthew James Newman, such confusion proved fatal.  According to his widow a lawyer representing the family, Newman was riding along Highway 29 when he came to a railroad crossing.  

The safest--really, the only safe-- way to cross railroad tracks is at a 90 degree angle. According to reports, there was no way to do that where Newman met his fate:  the road crossed at a "severe" angle.  When he approached, his wheel got caught in a flangeway and he was thrown off his bike, which injured his head.  He died the next day from his injuries.

Now, some might argue that he was at fault for not wearing a helmet. But the suit his family has filed alleges that Caltrans was at fault for not clearly marking the hazard. 

Actually, that intersection had been marked with a sign warning riders to get off their bikes and walk across.  At least it was until some time before Newman made his fateful crossing.  When that sign was taken down is not the main issue, however.  Rather, it is another sign that was or wasn't nearby:  one indicating whether a new route was open to cyclists.

According to the family's attorney, Bill Johnson of Bennett & Johnson LLP in Oakland, the new path still appeared to be under construction--at least to Newman. "It was ambiguous and confusing which route he was supposed to take," according to Johnson. "If you didn't make the right decision, you were in peril."

Had there been a clear indication that Newman should have taken the new path, he would have, according to his family and Johnson.  He had traveled the route he took once, years before, so he probably thought he was making the "safer" choice.  Apparently, though, during that time he'd forgotten about the way it crossed the tracks.  

In addition to Caltrans, the suit includes the Ghilotti Brothers Construction company of San Rafael.  Johnson believes they were doing work on the bike path at the time of the incident, and therefore shared the responsibility for warning of dangerous conditions.

For The Skyway, Higher Goals Than For The High Line, I Hope

There are many definitions of a "true New Yorker."

Here's one:  We don't go to the Statue of Liberty, and we wouldn't be caught dead in Times Square (at least in its current iteration)--or on the High Line.

I took a walk up on the High Line once, shortly after it opened.  At the time, I was recovering from my surgery and couldn't ride my bicycle.  I liked the idea of taking an old industrial railroad viaduct and turning it into a venue lined with art, plants and unusual buildings, from which one could take in some stunning views of the skyline and even the sky itself.

The next time I went, a few months later, I was on my bicycle.  I knew riding wasn't allowed, but I discovered that you couldn't even bring your bike onto the High Line.  And I wasn't about to lock it up on the street.

So I returned another day, sans bike.  I found myself hating the place, but not only because I couldn't ride my bike.  What I realized is that the High Line is just another tourist trap offering a sanitized view of the city--except, of course, for the part where you get to see inside the apartments that line part of the High Line.  I'm long past being titillated by what people do in their own rooms, on their own time!

Anyway, other cities are starting to think about ways they could use abandoned or disused railroad trestles, elevated highways and other kinds of viaducts.  One of those cities is at the other end of New York State: Buffalo.

Like other industrial towns in the "Rust Belt", the Nickel City has gone through some very hard times.  That has left abandoned and seemingly-obsolete structures.  They won't lure young people with education or money back into town unless they're used in appealing ways.

 

One such structure is the city's Skyway.  Slated for demolition, it's now the subject of a $100,000 contest for alternative ideas.  One such idea is to turn the old highway into an urban linear park for "use by bicycles and pedestrians, like the High Line."

The local news media report, of course, has misconceptions about the High Line.  Now, if they actually allow bicyclists on the Skyway and make it truly pedestrian-friendly--unlike the High Line, which is clogged with herds of tourists that move at an amoebic pace and stop for sunbathing and "selfies"--they might have something that could help turn Buffalo into a livable, sustainable city.

Their Side Of The Tracks

Most days, my commute takes me along an industrial stretch of East 141st Street that dead-ends at Park Avenue.

It is not, however, the Park Avenue that comes to most people's minds:  the one lined by canopied buildings to which well-dressed residents are escorted from taxis or limousines by white-gloved concierges.  Rather, it is the Park Avenue bound by the Metro North commuter railroad tracks after it crosses the Harlem River from Manhattan into the Bronx.

As I pedaled down 141st Street, I saw, those bicycles parked by the railroad tracks.

That, in itself, was unusual, as the few bikes one sees in the area are locked to light poles or sign posts.  But, in a move so cinematic it couldn't have been scripted, I turned to my right and saw this:

Those young men are living in that tent, by the tracks, and use the bikes to get around--just three blocks from the college.  At the end of a street where construction materials and chicken tenders are made.  Next to the tracks where trains, at that very moment, were ferrying commuters from Greenwich and Rye and Mount Kisco to Grand Central Station, where they would board subways and hail taxis to the places where they work and get paid.

Most likely, none of the passengers saw the bikes, the tent--or the men who ride those bikes in search of food and bottles, cans and other castoffs to sell.

When All Ways Lead To The Sunset

Today I did something I don't normally do:  I rode Tosca to work.  I had no particular reason; I didn't have much to carry today, so I thought it might be fun.


And I took a slightly different route home from the one I'd been taking.  I had just passed through Flushing Meadow-Corona Park when I saw how I was going to ride the rest of the way (well, most of it, anyway) home:

It was enough to make me ride alongside the railroad tracks.  The tracks are lined with, well, what one expects to see along railroad tracks: some warehouses and dirty, sad-looking dwellings facing the concrete barriers by the tracks.  But even they, and the wires over the tracks, felt serene, bathed in the simmering orange light:

As you know, my bikes are very well-trained, so Tosca knew exactly what to do.

And, yes, by the time I got home, everything was just starting to turn to dusk.  And Max, my dusty orange cat, greeted me.

An Adventure To The Familiar

Perhaps you've done something like what I am about to describe.

I packed lunch-- salsa I made myself, with some excellent locally-made tortilla chips--into the front bag on Vera, my green Mercian mixte.  With no particular destination or route in mind, I started riding. 

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The first few kilometers--along Sunnyside and Woodside streets, under the #7 train, into Corona and Flushing Meadow Park--were all familiar.  They could have taken me to some of the rides I do regularly:  the Rockaways, the South Shore, the North Shore.  But once I exited the park, I turned onto unfamiliar streets in a familiar (more or less) neighborhood.

I knew more or less the direction in which I was riding. But I didn't know, exactly, what I was riding into.  Mind you, I wasn't worried:  I wasn't beyond the reach of civilization or even in a place where I didn't understand the language.  But the rows of houses, surrounded by their patches of lawn and hedges, aren't the best of navigational aids.

No matter.  I kept on riding.  A turn here, another turn there.  Turn around where the road ends, then turn again.  Cross under a highway.  Spot a sign for a pond hidden by trees.  Do I take the path through the park on the left?  Or...are those old railroad tracks on the right?

Before I knew it, I had diagonally traversed Queens and was somewhere in Nassau County.  Mid-island, as they'd call it: somewhere between the North and South Shores.  More suburban developments, except now the lawns are bigger.  Some even have flower gardens. Then I found myself in a downtown area of one of those towns and noticed a sign for "Tulip Bakery".  OK, I guess that works:  cute cookies and pastries in the window, cute name on the sign.  

After running out of bakeries and cafes and boutiques, the street provided another stream of houses with lawns.  And its name:  Tulip Lane.  All right.  That bakery wasn't trying to be so cute after all.  Tip toe through the tulips.  Ride along Tulip Lane.  I continued:  It was longer than I expected, through a couple of places with "Franklin" in their names:  Franklin Square.  Franklin Lake.  Franklin something or other.  Then the Rockvilles.    Under another set of railroad tracks, and across still another.  Faces lightening and darkening and lightening again.  Still on Tulip Lane.

After crossing a state route, it stopped being Tulip Lane.  I didn't notice until much later, when I noticed I was riding on Long Beach Road.  I really had no idea of how far I'd ridden; I had just a vague notion that I'd been riding mostly south and east since I got on my bike.  The suburban houses had turned into garages, boat repair shops, a fishery and a tatoo parlor.  They didn't look like anything I ever saw in Long Beach before, on previous rides.

But the bridge at the end of them took me right into the heart of the town.  Over the bay, to the ocean.  I really enjoyed my lunch--and the unfamiliar ride to a completely familiar place.

Cycling In Atlantis

I got up late today and had to run a couple of errands--including a trip to the farmer's market on Roosevelt Island.  As the day was a hot and humid day, I waited until it was almost over to go for a ride.



So I let Tosca take me wherever she wanted.  Being a fixed-gear bike, she tends to favor flat areas.  As I am still not in my best shape, I am happy to go along with her.



Among other places, we went to this:

And this:

 t

In Newark, there's a section of the city called "The Ironbound" because railroad tracks form its borders.  That's not where I rode today.  But the part of the Bronx shown in the photos could just as easily have been so named.  It's ringed, bound and criss-crossed by elevated highways and railroad tracks, all in steel of one kind or another.


I don't spend enough time in the neighborhood on weekdays to know whether or not the tracks shown in the photos see very many trains.  I know that the neighborhood is still an active industrial area:  the fleets of trucks and vans parked in lots and on streets are testimony to that.  But on the weekends, it could just as well be one of those ancient Greek and Roman ghost towns I've seen along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts.  The people are gone, but the looming monoliths stand, and probably will stand for some time to come.


As you might expect, on the other side of the tracks and highways are low-income neighborhoods populated almost entirely by people of color.  Hip hop music was born on those streets.  Someone, I forget who, referred to the Bronx as the "Atlantis of Hip-Hop."  


Sometimes I feel as if I am cycling in Atlantis, or among shipwrecks.  However, the viaducts and buildings, while gritty, are hardly ruins:  They're intact, and on Monday they will be full of people and vehicles.  But, for now, they're empty.



All of the neighborhood is near water--specifically, the East River, which is really an inlet of the ocean.  However, you wouldn't want to swim in it, even if these guys do it:

Actually, they're in the Bronx Kill, which is a branch of the East River.  It separates the Bronx from Randall's Island and may be the most polluted waterway in the United States.  I took the photo from a spur of the RFK/Triborough Bridge.


If you're in the neighborhood and want to swim, this is where you go:

It's a floating pool in Barretto Park.  I always thought the idea of swimming in one body of water that floats on top of another was rather surreal, though, in practice, it's not much different from swimming in any other kind of pool.  Well, I don't know whether I can generalize.  I've swum in only one floating pool:  the old Piscine Deligny.  Going there was more like going on a cruise than it was like going to any other pool I've ever seen. 



I understand that a new Piscine Deligny is being constructed to replace the one in which I swam.  But that's not the reason why it's being replaced:  The old pool sank in 1993.  (I had absolutely nothing to do with that!)



And so people will continue to swim in one body of water that floats on another.  Then again, any journey-any bike ride-- we take is a bit like surfing the march of time.