Do Their Beliefs Hold Water?

 This morning I pedaled to Fort Schuyler and Maritime College. There, I stopped to enjoy some of the bread I picked up at Addeo’s and a piece of Macadam Munster cheese.  As I sipped some Poland Spring, I thought about the controversy over “hydration breaks” in this year’s World Cup football games.

Some commentators, including several former players, have expressed their displeasure over them.  Some claimed, perhaps rightly, that they were instituted simply to allow time for commercials. In most of the world, the game stops only at halftime, and that break is shorter than the typical halftime of an American football game. (That is one reason why soccer games don’t have halftime shows.) There are no stoppages for “time outs,” “downs,” “innings” or any other reason.  That lack of pause for commercials is said to be one of the reasons why soccer (and bicycle races, which also aren’t divided into quarters, periods or innings and don’t have time-outs) doesn’t have as wide an audience as (American) football or baseball:  If potential sponsors can’t advertise, networks won’t broadcast.

Those who complain that hydration breaks allow commercials say that it “cheapens” or “Americanizes” the tournament and sport. Now, I understand not wanting to see commercials, but talking about  “Americanization” reeks of snobbishness.  If they are going to say football is “the world’s game,” they have to be willing to include all nations, even the ones they don’t like.

(Having said that, I am ashamed of how American officials treated the Iranian team.)

Another objection to hydration breaks is that they “interrupt the flow of the game.”  Some athletes may feel that when they are in a “groove,” any sort of stoppage can disrupt their rhythm. But I suspect that they also realize those pauses, whether for halftime or any other reason, can come at any moment in their cycle. I am sure it frustrates them, but they deal with it.

Then there is another group of objectors who wonder, in coded language, whether the need for hydration breaks means that today’s players aren’t as tough—“less manly”—than those of generations past. It’s essentially why Tour de France founder Henri Desgranges wouldn’t allow riders to use derailleurs, even though the race includes “hors de categorie” climbs.

I guess I had some of that macho streak when I was younger. I took pride in riding higher gears at a higher cadence than my riding buddies—and on finishing a “century” (in miles, not kilometers) without taking even a sip from my water bottle.

What did any of that prove? The same thing as running and kicking for 120 minutes in 40c heat with 90 percent humidity. Or making every pitch a 100 MPH fastball. Or, in James Wright’s words, “galloping terribly against each other’s bodies.”

The only thing they prove is that there are some things human bodies simply aren’t designed to do, yet some people will do them with the hope of gleaming whatever rewards, whether in money, adulation or simple ego gratification, may accrue.

Poland Sprins sure feels good on a hot morning ride, whatever my younger self might’ve thought.

We’re Not Bad For Business. Really!

 

In 1979, I rode in New York City’s Five Boro Bike Tour for the first time.  It was the third edition of what became an annual event and marked the first time the Triboro (now known as RFK Memorial) Bridge was closed to auto traffic.

I took the ride with two fellow students from Rutgers. We were among the few-thousand cyclists who participated; it had not yet become the sort of event that gets listed in TimeOut. It also didn’t have the $125 entry fee—a sum I never could have afforded as a university—of this year’s Tour.

I would participate in 19 more 5BBTs—two as a marshal—before deciding that it had become something people “did” rather than rode. (Plus, I had long since decided I would not pay to ride in my hometown.) But a recent news story reminded me of something I experienced on that 1979 ride.

In preparation for being one the World Cup host cities, Mexico City built a 24 kilometer (15 mile) protected bike lane from the city center to the main World Cup stadium. As expected, there were complaints and protests. Were city officials concerned about snow removal? Did business owners worry about parking? Are drivers irate over losing one of “their” lanes to cyclists?

I am sure that those common objections—save, perhaps, for snow removal—were voiced in regards to the Gran Ciclovía Tenochtittlán. But GCT upset another group of people who, as far as I know, have never before been involved in a bike lane controversy:  sex workers.

GCT’s route includes part of Avenida Tlalpan, where sex work has flourished for decades. (I don’t know this information firsthand: I have my sources!☺️)  Before the bike lane came (no pun intended—really!) in, pleasure providers would stand by the outermost traffic lanes. This allowed potential clients to slow down, stop and negotiate.

GCT has “taken” that outermost lane. So the World Cup—which, one assumes, would have been good for business—has instead all but destroyed not only a potential bonanza, but also their future prospects.

Before I make the connection with my 5BBT experience, I have to mention something else that occurs to me:  I have heard of one instance in which someone solicited from a bicycle.  When I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn during the 1990s, the area under the nearby Gowanus Expressway was known to be an active prostitution area at least since World War II. One raid—which took place around the time then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was “cleaning up” Times Square—resulted from a would-be “John” soliciting an undercover cop from his bicycle.  I heard that when he was arrested, his bike was impounded.

The route of the 1979 5BBT, like that of every edition since, included a long stretch along the Brooklyn waterfront. Not far from where that two-wheeled terror met his end years later, there was a checkpoint. Gentrification and hipsters were years into the future for Williamsburg and Red Hook; those then-largely-industrial areas were all but abandoned on weekends.

Note that I said “all but.” At the checkpoint, while we were getting our cards stamped, some of us were greeted, shall we say, by folks wanting to do business. Being a broke student was just one reason why I didn’t. (In case you were wondering:  I have never paid, at least monetarily or with goods or other services, for sex.) I wonder, though, whether any other 5BBT riders did—and, if so, whether it’s proof cyclists aren’t bad for business.

Bikes And Bombs?

 As bad as I am at math, my freshman year of university showed me that I could actually be worse in another subject: economics.  I took one course and have told people, only half-jokingly, that I passed it (with a “D”) only because I promised the professor I would never again disgrace his discipline by taking another course in it.

Although I understood nothing, I remember a couple of things about the class. One is that the professor would exclaim, “MR=MC Always,” while pounding the podium.  And I recall something about “guns and butter.” I think it was about choosing between the two.

Well, years later I saw a poster that read, Bikes Not Bombs.” I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment, not only because I love cycling:  I believe that the only htrue advance the human race can make is by ending war, now and forever.  But I am enough of a realist to see that it probably won’t happen, especially in the current political climate.

It seems, however, that more than one politician has flipped the “Bikes Not Bombs” slogan.   

Here in the US, we might expect a right-wing politician to make the argument that money spent on bike lanes and other cycling-related infrastructure and programs would come at the expense of the defense budget. (They have been making the same sort claim about arts and healthcare-for-all vs the military for decades.) But, interestingly, in the UK, Wes Streeting, a Labour politician who sought the party’s leadership made exactly that sort of false equivalence.  What’s even more astonishing is that as a former Health Secretary, he should know about the health benefits of cycling.

What made the parliamentary debate even more bizarre was not that Andrew Murrison, a Member of Parliament and a Navy veteran agreed, more or less.  It’s that another veteran and Member of Parliament, Al Pinkerton, shot down (no pun intended) their argument. “I am perfectly happy to spend money on both cycleways and defence,” he announced. 

Hmm..bikes and bombs? I guess that isn’t so far-fetched when you consider that one of earliest British bicycle manufacturers—and, for a long time, the most respected maker of bicycle components—was Birmingham Small Arms Ltd.