Midlife Bikes

 

Yesterday I pedaled Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike, to City Island and back. It wasn’t a long ride: about 16 miles (26 km), and only because I took a slightly convoluted route on my way out. But I was happy because I felt good: My body and bike felt as if they were were one, an absolutely perfect form of energy spinning across pavement and dirt.

I have been riding Tosca for nearly two decades, longer than any other bike I’ve ever owned. It was repainted once. I can’t think of anything I’d change on her. I feel the same way about my other bespoke Mercians—Dee-Lilah, my Vincitore Special and La-Vande, my King of Mercia—and Vera, my Miss Mercian mixte.  

Why am I praising my bikes now?  Somehow Infound myself thinking about how, in my youth, I would’ve followed the Tour de France (running now) and other races and wanted to make my bikes more like those Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Lance Armstrong (before I knew how much he’d cheated) and other champions. Their bikes weren’t very different from the Colnago or Land Shark I rode. But I always felt the need to keep my bike “up to date,” even long after I’d stopped racing or even riding with wannabe racers.

Today I hardly follow racing and am much less interested in professional sports (except for women’s) than I once was. Today I ride only for transportation or pleasure. My bikes serve those purposes; the ones ridden by the pros would not. Integrated cockpits might be great for efficiency, but they don’t allow for adjustment. Disc brakes are more work than I am willing to do; I have not had trouble stopping with caliper brakes as long as I keep them adjusted.  And I don’t need 12 or 13 gears on the rear of my drivetrain.

In other words, the bike I might’ve wanted if I were, today, the young rider I once was has no use or appeal to me as a midlife cyclist.

“Senior Citizens” Should “”Limit” Their Outdoor Activities

 We’ve been warned to limit our outdoor activities if we have chronic medical conditions or are “senior citizens.”

Since I am, ahem, in midlife and know that the definition of “limit” can be, shall we say, elastic, I did go for an early ride.  City Island and back: entirely agreeable—especially on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike—and fits the word “limit,” at least for me.

The island looks like a bit like a New England fishing village. But the thing that reminds you it is, after all, part of New York City (and a tourist trap) are the restaurants and their patrons.  I could smell the fried clams which, somehow, I don’t think New England fishermen eat—and I know weren’t bivalves from local waters. I also noticed the youngish couples who, I assume, were “doing brunch” even if, by most people’s standards, it was breakfast-time.

But, of course, nobody goes to those restaurants for the seafood which is delivered frozen, in trucks, just like the fish and crustaceans one might order anywhere else in the city.  And those restaurants aren’t exactly bargains.  People go to those eateries for the same reason the island is one of my “limit” ride destinations:  the views.

So I will not judge anyone for “doing brunch” at overpriced mediocre restaurants where they could eat exactly the same stuff served on the mainland. I will not judge them, any more than I will judge anyone else riding a bicycle, no matter how decrepit or simply inferior it may be—precisely because I used to judge such riders (some of whom brought their bikes to the island on carriers attached to their cars). It was a lovely morning, and wildfire smoke had yet to shroud the sky.  Let them enjoy it as they will!

Code Orange

 This evening the sun will set at 20:26 (8:26 pm) where I am. 

This was the view from my window two hours earlier:

The cause? Wildfires in Canada, like the ones that blazed our midday skies three years ago.

But remember; Climate change is a Chinese hoax. Dear Leader says so.

(Sarcasm meter: Code Orange.)