Because I Want To

 Yesterday I mentioned that I am leaving a job because I felt “it was time.” There was no specific moment or incident that precipitated my decision. Nor had I checked all of the boxes on a list of things I wanted to accomplish. I can’t even say that I was bored or needed a new challenge. 

Have you done something simply because of a want or need that you have because, well, you have it? Some people will feel superior and be condescending to you if you can’t give them a rational explanation—or, at least, one that fits into the ways they frame their own narratives. I spent decades as the round peg trying to fit info a square hole, or the square peg in the round hole, because I couldn’t explain, at least in ways family members, colleagues, authority figures why I didn’t couldn’t make the career, lifestyle or other choices they proscribed for me.

The funny thing is that, as often as not, they didn’t or couldn’t make the same choices they were trying to make for me, or they were miserable with them (example:  marrying and having childfen). Or had ideas about how I should be doing what I did, even if it was something they didn’t do themselves.  I have had completely sedentary people wonder why I ride my bike as much as I do, why I don’t ride more or why I’m in the saddle when it’s “too” cold or wet or whatever.

I admit I have my limits:  We had combinations of rain, sleet and snow through much of today.  I didn’t ride.  There wasn’t anyplace I had to be, so I didn’t go anywhere, except to the store next door and the cafe across the street to pick up my dinner. (Taco Tuesday!) I curled up with. Marlee in the middle of the afternoon. It was time for all of those things, and perhaps it will be time to ride again tomorrow. Only I can decide.

If I Want To

 

Woke up late yesterday. To those who live their lives measured out in coffee spoons, as per T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock, the results could’ve been anything from inconvenient to catastrophic: embarrassment on arriving late for mass or service, a missed appointment or a lost job. But as it was Sunday, and I haven’t gone to church in years, there was no place I had to be.

Now that I think of it, I “had” to be at church, or any place else, only to the extent that someone or some people expected me.  I guess most people have a moment—usually (or at least hopefully) well before midlife.  You can sleep in, make an omelet and go for a bike ride on Sunday, as I did yesterday. Or you can go to a gallery or museum (as I’ve done on other Sundays) for your own interests rather than some pedagogical agenda or to uphold some reputation you thought you had to uphold to whomever.  But then you realize you’re the only one who cares whether you rose with the sun or lay before yourself before the moon. Or whether you made yourself breakfast, went out for brunch or ordered takeout.

If I sound melancholy, well, perhaps I am. I enjoyed the ride, the omelet (with curried onions and red sweet peppers) and dinner with Sam and his girlfriend. Perhaps I am more affected by seasonal depression than I realize: Yesterday was the first day of winter. I didn’t mind the cold or even the wind when I was pedaling into it. I knew the sun would set—around 16:20–and night would fall earlier than on any other day of the year. But somehow the day seemed to end earlier still. 

Perhaps my feelings have to do with the other climate: the one ushered in part by the Fake Tan Führer’s return to (and defacement of) the White House.  When I told my friend Jay in France that I felt so calm in Japan, he suggested that I may simply have been happy to be out of the United States. He was right about that, but I also realized during that trip that I didn’t have to fulfill anyone else’s idea of what it “should” be: If I wanted to spend the day riding around and simply enjoying the sights; what whether I felt like spending my time in a temple or a thermal spring, it was my, and no one else’s time.  And I didn’t have to report to anyone.

Oh, and during the past week, on Thursday to be exact, I wrapped up my semester.  I submitted grades—for the last time, at least at where I’d been teaching since the Fall of 2021. (I lost my old job during the pandemic.) Another university is taking it over (but calling it a “merger), so my future there would’ve been uncertain. That isn’t  a reason I’m leaving, though.  Nor is my relationship with colleagues, which has been very good. The commute, longer than I expected after moving last year, has something to do with it. 

Really, I just felt it was time. I mentioned in an earlier post that I felt my trip to Japan is motivating me to make some life changes.  This is one but, I expect, a prelude. I worked to the best of my abilities. My department chair and a coordinator, whom I enjoyed working with, thanked me for my contributions.  And a student wrote to tell me how much she enjoyed her class. And I wrote back to tell her how much I liked working with her.

She will have other professors in other courses.  A colleague or, maybe, a new hire will teach the courses I’d been teaching. Or the university that’s taking over might cancel them. Whatever happens, will happen, whether or not I am there. Perhaps the only person, place or thing—animal, mineral or vegetable—that absolutely depended on me was:

He scampered up and let me stroke him as I was leaving.  I left him a can of Friskies Mariner’s catch and shed tears, for him as I mounted La-Vande, my King of Mercia, and pedaled away.

Perhaps I will return—for him, perhaps for some colleagues, but mainly if I want to. 

Fame (No, Not The David Bowie Song)

 About 20 years ago, I was talking with a fellow faculty member who, like me, had written about sports for a local newspaper.  Somehow the length of professional athletes’ careers became a topic.  He pointed out that while Joe Di Maggio lived 84 years, we know him for what he did for only 13 of them. I am referring, of course, to his time playing for the Yankees, which was interrupted by World War II. Ironically, his career as a commercial spokesman for various products and businesses, such as the Mr. Coffee and Emigrant Bank, lasted nearly twice as long as his baseball tenure.

Why am I thinking about that now? Well, although I am in—ahem—midlife, I am still a good bit younger than Joe was when he passed. And I have worked in a career even longer than he spent making TV commercials, let alone playing center field. Even so, my time as a university instructor and writer (I still have a hard time calling myself “professor,” even if it comes easily to my students!) constitutes only a fraction of my life. That will be the case even if I continue for another decade or more.

That work won’t make me famous, nor should it. And one of the few things that I’ve done for longer won’t, either (unless you count the readership of this blog as fame): cycling.

It’s funny, though, that being off my bike for most of the past week seems like an eternity.  And I know, intellectually, that I’ll be back in the saddle once my pain subsides.  But it’s still odd, and troubling, not to be doing, however temporarily, something I’ve done just about all of my life.

I wonder whether Joe Di Maggio—or, for that matter, Eddy Merckx, whose professional cycling career spanned as many years as Joe’s with the Yankees—ever thought about how short a segment of their lives so defined them.

Since I have mentioned two famous male athletes, I can’t help but to think that almost all who have been able to live off their exploits on the road, track, court, field, rink or other athletic arena have been men, I wonder how many great female athletes—say, Caitlyn Clark or Simone Biles—will have the same privilege, or will be so thoroughly defined by the relatively brief part of their lives when they could dominate and elevate their sports. 

An Early White Christmas

 I haven’t owned a mountain bike since I gave my Cannondale M300 to someone who worked in an emergency room during the COVID lockdown.

Do I wish I still had it, now that we’ve just experienced our first real snowfall in a couple of years?

Well, I guess I could put knobby tires on one of my bikes.

They Told Me There’d Be Days—Weeks—Like This

 When you’re young, people in midlife tell you about things you dismiss as “old people stuff.” They include what most grown-ups do: work mundane jobs, pay bills and navigate adult relationships, including those with the family you’re born into or create.  

Then there are the changes in your body.  Dieting and exercising but still gaining weight? Hair growing in places you didn’t know it could—or falling off the places you want to keep it? And discovering you need glasses to read books and menus?

Then there are those “mysterious aches and pains.” You know, when a limb, joint or some other part of your body hurts for no apparent reason. Did I land too hard when I stepped off a curb? Reach for something without using a step-stool or ladder? Put too much weight on one side when I got out of bed? Bump into something a little harder than I thought I did? Or is some injury I brushed off decades ago coming back to nag  me?

Of course, my cycling always gets the benefit of the doubt. I never want to blame it for any of my aches and pains, especially since it’s accounted for most of my physical conditioning and, along with my cats, nearly all of my mental health.

So what, exactly, caused that ache in and around my left ankle:  the one that’s kept me off my bike for most of this week?

I can live with mysteries about the big questions:  you know, the meaning of life, whether there’s anything after this one and why JFK, RFK, Martin, Malcolm and John were murdered. (Actually, I know who…wait, is that a sniper on the roof?!) But, dammit, I want to know why my body develops more glitches than my workplace IT system or breaks down like a Yugo when I think I’m doing everything right.

They warned me there’d be days—weeks—like this. But they never told me why, except that it’s part of “getting older.”  But as a wise old philosopher said, “I ain’t dead yet”: I am in midlife.  And I want to keep on cycling.

Why Won’t I Go There?

I have cycled to and through places that stirred up seemingly-conflicting emotions in me. For instance, during my recent trip to Japan, I pedaled to temples, shrines, gardens and other places with great beauty and terrifying histories. The Nijo Castle in Kyoto was one such spot: It is wonderful to behold and can teach so much about Japanese culture and history, including the fierce battles and brutal ways in which rival families and groups vied for, and held, power.  I also felt awe and terror all over Osaka, which the Allies bombed heavily during World War II. (Kyoto, in contrast, wasn’t as much of a target because it didn’t have the military-related industries found in other Japanese cities.)

I similarly felt awed by the beauty and devastation of Cambodia and Laos where, as a legacy of the Vietnam War, there is said to be more unexploded ordnance per square mile, kilometer or whatever unit of measurement you choose, than anywhere else on Earth.

And I could write more posts, possibly even a book, about former battlefields of France and other European countries I saw during my bike trips, not to mention the Place de la Concorde: Today it’s one of the most elegant public squares in the world, but contemporary accounts describe “rivers” of blood flowing from the guillotines stationed there during the Reign of Terror.

I got to thinking about that today. While not an official holiday, this date—“Pearl Harbor Day”—was, until fairly recently, marked by parades and other commemorations to the attack on the American naval base.

 While such memorials still take place, they aren’t as numerous or prominent as they were, say, in 1991 (the 50th anniversary) or even twenty years ago because there are so few survivors of the attack or World War II generally.

From what I have read, there is a very popular bike lane that passes the attack site and offers beautiful views of mountains, ocean and rain forest.  Were I to ride it, I probably would have a similar combination of thoughts and feelings to what I experienced in Japan, Southeast Asia, France, Belgium, Italy and even some sites (the World Trade Center, anyone?) in and around New York City, where I live.

But I probably won’t ride the Pearl Harbor bike lane because I have never had any desire to go to Hawai’i. Any time I’ve ever embarked upon a journey (Doesn’t that sound quaint?) to some faraway place, one of my friends insists that I should go to Aloha land. I can’t explain why I’ve not only never had any wish to step off a plane in Honolulu; I have actively resisted going there. Something about it just scares and repels me. ( It has nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.) I understand that Anthony Bourdain had a similar feeling about Switzerland, where he never set foot in spite of spending considerable time—and hosting episodes of his show—in the surrounding countries (France, Italy, Germany and Austria). Could I, one day, find that I’ve cycled all around the Pacific Rim while skipping Hawai’i?

Till Rides Do Us Apart—Or Not

 

Photo by Everton Vila

Yesterday, during my bike commute, I saw a man and woman—he, on a Canyon, she, on a Cannondale—pedaling down Creston Avenue, a narrow Bronx thoroughfare that parallels the Grand Concourse. They seemed about as equally matched in their pace and durability as their bikes: one didn’t seem to outpace the other.

Later, I got to thinking about how rare, at least ini my observation, such cycling couples are. When I have ridden with clubs, it seemed that cyclists’ spouses or partners rode with family or some other group that wasn’t connected to the club—or not all.  In fact, I can recall only three or four “marriages” (whether de jure or de facto) in which both members participated in the same rides and kept apace of each other. That I didn’t see same-sex couples may’ve been a consequence of the times and places in which I joined club rides.

I have never trekked, trained or raced with a boyfriend or other intimate male partner. But I have been accompanied by girlfriends and long-term partners. Only one—Tammy, my last romantic partner before I started my gender affirmation—did much cycling before we met. And I suspect she is the only one who continued after we broke up.

One long-ago paramour, Jeanne, gave her bike away after we split up.  I suspect she wanted to get rid of it because it brought us together in the first place: I fitted it to her when she bought it from Highland Park (NJ) Cyclery, where I worked.

 I wouldn’t be surprised if the other girls/women similarly parted with—or discarded or sold—bikes I gave them.  Upset as I may have been, I can understand why, apart from not wanting things that would remind them of me, they didn’t want to keep the Motobecanes, Miyatas and other machines I gifted them. Before meeting me, they did little or no riding once they got their driver’s licenses, and perhaps not much before then.

Did I pressure them into riding with me? I don’t like to think I did (of course not!) but it would be fair to say that at least one thought she should ride with me, even though she obviously wasn’t enjoying it. I’m not sure of whether she simply didn’t care for bike riding or she was frustrated because she couldn’t ride as long or fast as I did.

I have long enjoyed riding solo. But I couldn’t help but to wonder whether I will some day ride in a romantic liaison with someone-of whatever gender identity or expression—who is my equal, or even better. 

I’ll Keep On Riding

“Are you going to keep on riding your bike?”

Photo by James Brey

Every year, as the days grow shorter, colder and darker, I’m asked that question, or some variant of it, even by people who’ve seen me pedal through winters past. But I think I started hearing it earlier and more frequently this Fall than in years past.

Perhaps it has to do with living in a senior citizens’ building. But—admittedly with a lack of empirical data—I don’t think I was so queried so often last year, my first in the complex. Maybe it has to do with familiarity:  More residents know me or, at least see me as a familiar face and are thus more willing to approach me.

But I believe another factor is at play. A number of my neighbors have expressed, to me and each other, their belief this winter will be exceptionally long and cold.  Something tells me they might be right. At any rate, whatever the coming season brings, it probably will be harsher than the past few, relatively mild, winters.

Then again, some of the folks among whom I live may be listening to their bodies: Their old wounds are throbbing, and their joints are aching. That, of course, could be a matter of health issues or simply aging. 

I can’t help but to wonder, though whether their personal Farmers Almanac weather forecasts might have as much to do with the political and social climate as El Niño, polar vortexes or the warming oceans, the latter of which causes weather extremes of all kinds.

One fellow I talk to, who was once a graduate student in Political Science and is not given to hyperbole, compares what has transpired since the Fake Tan Führer was re-elected to the Nazi regime’s early days.  If he’s right, and we don’t change, we are indeed headed for a long winter in more ways than one. And cycling through it could be a form of protest or subversion, depending on one’s political and social beliefs.

I plan to keep on pedaling.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Happy Thanksgiving!

An Auntie—Or Just Not That Guy

 I have a confession:  Last night, I took the subway home.

It had nothing to do with the weather: chilly but neither unseasonable nor as inhospitable as some other conditions through which I’ve pedaled. I also didn’t forego riding home due to a lack of lighting or reflective gear.

Riding to work was great. I arrived invigorated and more than ready. Perhaps that, paradoxically, was the reason why I felt so tired at the end of the day: I stayed late and finished a bunch of mundane but necessary tasks. I had the energy, but I also was motivated by my wish not to go in tomorrow.

So I took the 4 train from Fulton Street, across from the World Trade Center, with gray-suited Financial District workers and pastel-jacketed tourists and tried not to be this person:

I took an end seat and held my bike as close as I could, at 45 degree angle to my left. That left the other seats open as my bike took up no more floor room than another passenger. With each stop, I offered my seat to boarding passengers. Some looked as if they needed it more than I did. All refused.

What struck me, though, was that I sensed no hostility from otner passengers. A few even smiled even though I suspect their day was harder than mine.

I wonder whether they were simply happy I wasn’t that guy in the photo. Or did they see a woman in the middle of her life—you know, someone’s auntie.

Spin, Spin Spin!

 Many years ago (yes, I can say that even though I am in, ahem, midlife), I dated the coxswain of a university’s crew team.

I don’t know how or why this question crosses my mind: Is there an equivalent in the world of cycling?

All I Cared About

 Yesterday I rode to Point Lookout. About an hour in, I chided myself for a late start: Since the end of Daylight Savings Time, it’s been getting dark around 17:00. But I stopped worrying once I saw this:

On my way back, I definitely needed my lights by then time I got to the stretch of Rockaway Boardwalk from about 38th to 52nd Streets:  It was unlit. To my right were undeveloped swaths of shrubs and sea grasses all the way to the elevated tracks;  to my left, the unprotected beach and ocean. 

The first time I went to that part of Queens, just on the other side of the tracks, I was leading creative writing workshops as an artist-in-residence at one of the schools. Teachers and pupils cautioned me against the stretch of boardwalk early last evening: Because of its relative desolation, strollers and joggers were beaten, robbed and worse.  

That was, if I recall correctly, not long after the Central Park jogger incident. You couldn’t escape the fear of crime. While, according to statistics, crime is way down from those days, the stretch might’ve been even more deserted than I’d been warned.  Before passing through that forlorn strip, the Boardwalk skirts an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Far Rockaway. Because the sun had set on Friday, the women in long skirts and flat shoes, the men with tzitzit dangling from their shirts weren’t riding or walking by the sea; they were at home, having lit their candles half an hour or so earlier.

I wasn’t worried; if anything, I felt more peace than I usually feel. Perhaps it was the knowledge that I was keeping up a good pace and, like a younger version of myself, could out-ride almost any danger.  

Some of that confidence may have come from riding my best bike: my custom Mercian Vincitore Special. But I wasn’t thinking about the bike which, some would argue, is a good sign: It fits and runs well.  Perhaps my confidence had to do with the fact that, in a stretch devoid of distractions, I could only ride, and I only wanted to ride. I had no reason to care whether anyone would be impressed (or not) with me or my bike. 

I wonder whether being in Japan and having spent considerable time in Europe, among people who simply ride, has something to do with my attitude. Or, perhaps, I have reached that stage of midlife I’ve heard about: when you stop caring about what other people think. (Hint: Many don’t think, or they’re simply not thinking about you.) Whatever the case may be, I had a great ride.

Becoming Whole

 Orange you glad you did?

They Can Ride

 Tall, rawboned Felix is about my age but looks younger. We often pass each other when entering or leaving the building.  Today, as he often does, he asked where I planned to ride.

I told him I had no destination in mind; I simply wanted to get out. “I’m going to do that, too,” he declared, “when I get my bike, after the new year.” Sometimes he and Sam, my neighbor and sometime riding partner, hang out beside the building. “Perhaps me, you, Sam and a few other people.  We could have our own little cycling group.”

“Maybe…,” he intoned.

A couple of weeks ago, “Elena,” who lives two doors away from me, wheeled her machine—a mountain bike in white and Easter-egg hues—into the elevator next to Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear. “I would like to ride like you,” she sighed.

“You don’t have to ride like me.” I was about to suggest riding with me when the elevator stopped on another floor and someone, apparently a friend of hers (whom I don’t know) started chatting with her. I didn’t want to interrupt.

And then there is “Richard,” who lives on a lower floor. When he sees me with my bike, he has to tell me about the rides he took “all over the city, and even further away.” I believe him; he seems to know about riding and looks like a former athlete. But, he explains, his life took some “really bad turns” through illnesses, which led to homelessness and “losing everything, including my bike.”  Many years have passed since then. “I wish I could ride again, but it was so long ago,” he lamented.

Not so long ago, I would have been dismissive of them, at least in my mind. I was one of those young (even when I wasn’t so young) cyclists who thought anyone who didn’t spend a certain number of hours or miles (or kilometers) on the “right” kinds of bikes and clad in “proper” bike clothes wasn’t a “real” cyclist.

Though I had begun to change long before I met Felix, Elena or Richard, I feel another shift (pun not intended) has happened for me since my trip to Japan. There, I saw probably as many, if not more, people pedaling to work or for pleasure as I saw in France or other European countries. But there didn’t seem to be the kind of self-consciousness (and, at times, self-righteousness) about equipment and other things that “cycle culture” seems to engender in my hometown of New York and other cities.   Most people rode utilitarian bikes with wide tires, fenders, racks and generator lights. You can’t one-up anybody who is riding a bike like yours, or those of most other people, for the same reasons you and they are riding. 

Even the cyclists—mostly young and male—I saw on lighter racing bikes didn’t seem to define themselves by their bikes (or, more precisely, those bikes’ price tags) or what they were wearing. They, and the commuters and families I saw, reminded me of why I came to love cycling. And I wish Felix, Elena and Richard could see them and realize they don’t have to ride like them, me or anyone else. Oh, and I don’t care that Elena’s bike is a Kent:  She’s riding it.

All For Veterans

 Today is Veterans’ Day in the US. 

Some time in my current life, my midlife, I noticed that I was becoming more pro-veteran as I’ve become anti-war. Those positions seemed contradictory at first. Then I realized that the best way to honor veterans—and people still in uniform—is to do everything we can to avoid needless, pointless conflict.  Oh, and to ensure that all enlisted people remember that they took an oath to defend the Constitution, not an office-holder.

Four Veterans and a VA Menlo Park Recreational Therapist pose for a photo on the first day of a 7-day cycling ride from Santa Cruz to Carmel, CA, called the California Challenge.

The next-best thing we can do is to make sure that everyone who serves has whatever they need, whether for their physical or mental well-being, for the rest of their lives.* If I had my way, I would give a bicycle to every veteran who wants one.  After all, what better way—for those who can ride, of course—to deal with stress and trauma while staying in shape?

*—Recently, I heard a mental health professional argue that everyone who serves in the armed forces, whether or not they see combat, ends up with PTSD. That actually makes sense to me. After all, the military trains people to, on command, do things very few people would do, and would result in severe penalties if they did them, in civilian life. Also, most service members join or are conscripted at a very young age, when they are more vulnerable to moral injury. Moreover, they are encouraged to bear or mask their suffering and call their denial “toughness” or “resilience.”

Where Did I Go?

Since my previous post--a week and a day ago--I haven't done a lot of riding. But what little time I've spent in the saddle has been interesting.

First, the question of why I haven't been on my bikes.  Short answer:  Didn't feel well.  More precisely, I struggled to stay awake when I didn't work (I took a day off) and didn't do any non-commute riding until Saturday.  That is when I had one of my interesting experiences.

As I pedaled up the short by winding hill in Starlight Park, along the Bronx River, a boy--about eight years old, I guessed--trailed me on a Schwinn beach cruiser-type bike. (It was not an original.)  Just past the penultimate turn, the bike lane branches:  to the right, where I rode, you continue climbing until you reach the pedestrian bridge to 172nd Street and Bronx River Avenue; to the left, a narrower, unpaved path cuts across a terrace and leaves riders and walkers at the foot of that same bridge.  He took the flat route. When we arrived at the bridge, he boasted, "I didn't have to climb!"

Then we continued riding down to Westchester Avenue, where we crossed to the Concrete Plant Park.  There, he voiced what I suspected: "I'm following you!"  His sweet gap-toothed smile beamed innocence.  For some reason, my inner cynic was quiet:  I didn't hear, "He won't be that way for long!" or "He's up to no good."  I realized that he was nothing more, or less, than a kid who was enjoying the sunshine and wind on his bike, just like the adult in front of him.

He didn't have a phone.  I asked him whether he lived nearby and whether his mother would be OK with him riding with me.  Nod to both.  Part of me wanted to lecture him about trusting strangers.  But I realized that wouldn't have done him any good.  All I could do was be an adult he--and his parents--could trust, and have fun riding with him.

Although we were only a couple of kilometers or so, he had never before seen the Concrete Plant Park--or Crotona Park, to which we rode a few minutes later.  He also hadn't pedaled along the bike lane that parallels the Park Avenue railroad tracks or the one that winds underneath the Bruckner Expressway. He marveled that I knew of those places, where I ride often.  Perhaps more important, he learned that he could ride to them.

After about an hour and a half of riding, we stopped at Southern Boulevard and Hunts Point Avenue for one of his favorite snacks:  garlic knots from Domino's.  Then we crossed Southern, where his father and brother were selling Yankees caps and other items from a stall. I expected suspicion; instead they greeted me as a friend and his father thanked me for spending time with him.  

Perhaps I will see that boy--Zane--again, on his bike or off it.  I will not think about how many (or few miles) I rode or that I didn't go to anyplace I hadn't been before.  Then again, maybe I did, after all.

 

You Silly Goose!

 For all of the times I’ve had to dodge geese while cycling the Hudson River Greenway, I’m surprised that this question never crossed my mind:  “What if a goose could ride a bike?”

Funny, how often I find answers to questions I never asked.

Well, all right, it’s a duck. Close enough. (Then again, I am not an ornithologist.)

The Ghost of Bicycle Larry

 For today, the Day of the Dead, there’s nothing like a good, spooky mystery.

While Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and others have written many spine-tingling tales, there is no shortage of real-life accounts of the scary and unexplainable (or yet-to—be-explained.)

Take Lawrence Farrell, a.K.a., Bicycle Larry—as an example. Fittingly enough, he lived—and perhaps died—in Maine, King’s home state.

Locals remember him as a friendly, if eccentric, presence. When people last remember seeing him, he was living with someone more menacing—Norris Perry, a.k.a. Lonesome Loon—in a trailer at the top of the Narrow Gauge Trail, near Windsor. 

As the name implies, the trail was a railroad route. It led to a Veterans’ Administration hospital and some locals say they hear the mournful cries of long-lost pass, especially at night during this time of year.

Anyway, Bicycle Larry was last seen in late October 2004. He didn’t collect his Social Security check the following month, or any time thereafter. Before taking his own life that Dece, Lonesome Loon left his sister a voicemail in which he confessed to killing Larry and disposing of his body by a brook behind the trailer.

Given the rugged terrain and long, harsh Maine winter, authorities couldn’t search in earnest until Spring. Neither Larry nor his bike have been found.

During the intervening twenty-one years, some have reported seeing a “spectral presence” of Bicycle Larry riding along the Narrow Gauge Trail—especially at this time of year.

It’s Not All About Aging

 Those of you who have been following this blog probably have noticed that I haven’t been posting as often as I did, say, a couple of years ago. I haven’t stopped cycling or lost interest in blogging.  Rather, I have been busy with other things, some out of necessity, others by choice.

Even though I am not working as much as I did in the spring, it seems to take up more and more of my time and, more important, my mental and emotional energy. I am exhausted when I come home. Someone suggested that it’s purely and simply a consequence of aging. The fact that I am not as young as I used to be (if you’ll indulge me a cliché) probably has something to do with how I feel.  But I think it also has to do with the changes at work and in my own life.

From MDLive

While the campus on which I teach hasn’t specifically been a target of the current Administration, I feel varying combinations of fear, gloom and despair whenever I arrive.  Much of that has to do with the upcoming “merger” with another school. I encased “merger” in quotes because the college in which I teach will lose its name and become a location of our “merger” “partner.”

Naturally, many of us wonder whether we’ll still have our jobs or will have to move in order to keep them.  Or else we worry that we will be required to abandon courses, research projects and other activities that, for some of us, are the core of our work. 

While the takeover (I’m calling it what it is) might be necessary or simply rationalize-able from financial and other standpoints, I can’t help but to think it’s a symptom of the same mindset that causes children to go hungry because of a government shutdown. Some of my students are among the poorest and, in so many other ways, most vulnerable. It’s a miracle (if I can be allowed to use a religious term) that some of them are in college and we do what we can to accommodate them in their fearfully complicated lives, let alone challenge and inspire them. Will the institution that’s taking over, which is much larger, understand their needs, both in and out of the classroom? Will it care?

Also, I have to wonder whether that larger institution, which probably receives more government money, will subject me or others to the humiliation faculty and staff members of other larger, more prominent universities (think of Columbia) have suffered.

The students, interestingly, have been nicer, even if they are too often ill-prepared. Perhaps they know that I am on their side or, at least, not “the enemy.”  A few have expressed fears that family members or they themselves will be apprehended, detained or even deported to some country they’ve never seen before.  There are times when I wonder whether I will meet such a fate, even though I am a citizen of the country in which I was born to citizen parents—while my father was serving in the military, no less.

Simply living, let alone working, in the United States , is exhausting. Japan is looking really good. So is France. And Spain. And a few other countries. They have a their crazy nationalists and religious zealots, to be sure. But even though the daytime highs were  34-37C every day I was in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, the temperature seemed a lot cooler, if you know what I mean.

The Horn Of A Dilemma

 I have never been chased by an angry bear. But I would think that even at my age, in my condition, I would have a better chance of evading ursine umbrage by pedaling rather than carrying my bike.

Especially if I were wearing cleats!

A Better Way On The Greenway

 Every once in a while, my New York Cynicism (TM) is challenged.

Remember, this is a city where it took 100 years to build a subway line that basically goes nowhere.  And there are days when I’m still surprised that the Randalls Island Connector was finished in less time than it took for the creek underneath it to form.

So you can imagine my shock upon pedaling down the Hudson River Greenway and finding this:

Now, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s just another short segment of a bike path. But it fixes what disrupted what might otherwise be the best bike lane in the Big Apple.

At West 54th Street, cyclists had to risk unfortunate encounters with tour buses, taxis and ride share vehicles headed for cruise ships and ferry boats or the Intrepid Museum. That crossing (on the far left side of the photo) wasn’t an intersection with a traffic signal like the one at Chambers Street, just north of the World Trade Center. Rather, it was a spot where the street cuts across the bike lane, with no signal, at a point where the lane curved sharply and visibility was therefore not good.

The new ribbon of asphalt curves away from that spot, away from traffic, and goes underneath an access ramp. It is not only safer; it also makes for a smoother ride with greater continuity. A cyclist can now enter the Greenway at 125th Street and not encounter another crossing until 42nd Street—a distance of about 7 kilometers. In essence, it’s now possible to spin your pedals nonstop all the way from West Harlem to Midtown. That certainly makes the Greenway a valid option for many commuters and simply a more enjoyable ride for everyone else.

I am happy we now have it, but we need more if this city’s planners and policy makers are serious about encouraging more cycling and getting more cars off the streets.

How Did We?

About ten years ago, I was talking on the phone as I scurried down the hall to my class.

When I entered, one student wondered, aloud, how I survived with such a “primitive” device:  a flip-phone.

Mind you, neither he nor any of his classmates was wealthy, at least to my knowledge. But I was a couple of years away from having any desire, let alone seeing any need, for a “smart” phone.

Now I’ll confess that before my July trip to Japan, I “upgraded” to an iPhone 16 from the iPhone 8 I’d been using for seven years. I really wanted to stick with 8 because it was familiar, but the software wouldn’t update anymore, the battery took forever to charge and the charge didn’t last. Turns out that changing the battery would’ve cost more than getting a new phone, at least with the surprisingly generous trade-in allowance I got from Verizon.

Anyway, I thought about my old student when I got my new phone. And I wonder what he would think, if he were a cyclist, of some of the bikes I’ve ridden—and still ride.

No, It’s Not Because I Haven’t Had A Baby

 I started to go for regular eye examinations when I was about 45–just around the same time I started my gender affirmation process (what most people—and I—in those days were called my “gender transition”). When I had to cut a conversation with an co-worker short because I had to go to an ophthalmologist appointment, he wondered, “Oh, are the hormones affecting your vision?

That colleague could be forgiven for such an assumption even if, as an “educated” person, he should have known better than to conflate coincidence with causation.  

Then again, I’ve seen and heard of health care professionals who make similar erroneous assumptions.  For example, a friend of mine is, shall we say, Rubens-esque. She laments that when she goes for help with any sort of medical condition, no matter how unrelated (the flu! a broken arm!)  nurses and even doctors have assumed that her weight was the cause. Then again, other women have told me their doctors insisted that their mental as well as physical health issues would disappear if they had a baby.

While such cluelessness or dismissiveness is inexcusable when it comes from trained health care professionals, it (or at least milder forms of it) are somewhat understandable from lay people like my former co-worker. I’ve experienced a it during the past few days.  Neighbors and friends noticed a bandage on my left knee. “You hurt yourself bike riding.” Not a question :  a declaration or an amateur diagnosis.

Now, I can understand why they, especially if they don’t know any other regular cyclists, might think my injury might be a result of riding. But its cause is more banal: I tripped over a divider after I exited the Botanical Garden. I can’t even spin a good story out of it,

Well, at least they’re not assuming my admittedly minor injury happened because of my gender “transition.” Or because I haven’t had a baby.

It’s The Little Things

 It’s the little things…

How often have we heard that expression?

I learned how true it is when I taught English to people who don’t speak it as their native language. (People from Japan and France and Colombia who sound like me? Oh, dear!) “The little words are the most difficult,” I would reassure (or so I thought) them.  I wasn’t entirely wrong: Perhaps the most difficult words for non-native speakers to use properly, let alone well, are articles (Russian doesn’t have any), the verb “to be” (It doesn’t exist in Turkish) and prepositions—you know, words like “to” and “for,” which often don’t translate directly and are used differently from their English counterparts.

The little things are just as important on a bike. I, like most experienced cyclists, check my tire pressures, chain, gears and brakes before setting off on a ride. If I’ve had some bumpy treks—say, on unpaved trails or potholed streets— I might look at my racks, fenders or other accessories.

But there are some things, including some of the smallest screws and other parts, to which cyclists almost never pay attention. Cycling Weekly contributor Hannah Bussey discovered that the hard way—almost.

In addition to being a bike tester, she is a parent in a “multidisciplinary” bike family, which includes a daughter who participates in cyclo-cross. In her household, she explains, there are “more bikes than pedals.” That explains why she hastily “borrowed” a pair of SPD pedals for her mountain bike. “As I took off from what seemed a harmless jump,” she recounts, “I found myself footloose and ended up rolling around in, thankfully, a patch of bracken.”

Turns (no pun intended) out, the spring tension was “looser than I anticipated.” The irony is that people often fear the spring tension (or straps on pedals with toe clips) being too tight.  There is apparently a “point of no return” at which the rider can’t disengage because the binding is too loose. Think of a restraint that makes escaping more difficult because it stretches rather than breaks.

Photo by Hannah Bussey

The cleat retention on SPD, and most other clipless, pedal systems is regulated by a small screw or bolt that can loosen with use and time.  The same is true of the screws (typically 5mm) that hold toe clips to traditional pedals.

So now I am giving you, dear fellow cyclists and mid-lifers, the same advice I gave my language students: It’s the little things (or words).

What’s That About The Hill?

When people say that someone is “over the hill,” they mean that person is too old for some pursuit (usually in sports) or simply old.

As a cyclist, I always found that odd:  Pedaling up a hill (or a mountain), even if it leaves me tired, is a way of reassuring myself that I am not old, that I am in the middle of my life.

At Seventeen

I have never attended any class reunion of any school I graduated. And I don’t plan to be at the upcoming 50-year reunion of my high school class.

It’s not that I don’t want to remember those times.  I couldn’t forget them, even if I wanted to. Among my peers, I had only two friends. Both are long dead. Most of my “social” time was spent among adults: two of my mother’s friends and some teachers, including one whom I hated at first but who influenced me in ways I didn’t realize until much later. 

I wasn’t exactly “date bait.” To my knowledge,  none of my peers considered me physically attractive. I had no social skills. (Sometimes I feel I still don’t have any.) I was bookish, but not in the way I am now: My energies were directed, mainly by my father, toward subjects and pursuits that would help me get into West Point, Annapolis, one of the other Armed Forces academies or an ROTC program. 

And, even if I were less nerdy, I wouldn’t have wanted to date. Like every other LGBTQ kid in that place and time, I was in the closet. Other non-confirming kids might’ve “come out” if the social environment had been less hostile. But I couldn’t have: I didn’t even have the words to express how I felt about my gender and sexuality and knew of no-one who could be a model for me. So, dating anyone, whatever their identity or orientation, wouldn’t have felt right.

About my only solace was cycling: up the Atlantic Highlands scenic route; along the ocean from Sandy Hook to Long Branch, Asbury Park and sometimes beyond; out past the farms and horse ranches in western Monmouth County. That, of course, made me even more of an oddball among my peers, nearly all of whom discarded, abandoned or handed down their bicycles the moment they got their driver’s licenses.

So, if I have no plans to go to my class reunion and make no effort to recall those times, why am I talking about them now? Well, the other day I was in a store when Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” played on the PA system. 

I hadn’t heard it in a long time, but it was all over the airwaves during my senior year—when I was seventeen. It, of course, is about not “fitting in” because of one’s looks, personality or socioeconomic class. Some, including yours truly, have also heard it as a song about being “in the closet.” That makes sense, especially when you realize that she “came out” a while back.

As much as I appreciate the songwriting talents of Joni Mitchell, John Lennon, Laura Nyro and the Bobs (Marley and Dylan), none of their works, or those of any other tunesmith, has ever meant as much as Ms. Ian’s anthem did during that year. And I daresay that even now, almost no other song can move me, again, the way “At Seventeen “ did (to tears) the other day. For that, I will always be grateful to Janis Ian.

Not Extinct ?

 While enjoying my bourgie Sunday brunch and coffee, I looked at a Buzz Feed item in which people recalled cartoons from their childhood that no one else seems to remember. Dinosaurs weren’t really part of the ones I saw (“The Flintstones” doesn’t count!) but they seem to have been prominent in later generations of animation.

Those extinct creatures, it seems, were in the most improbable of situations. I can imagine one of those cartoons including an image like this:

I’ll Show Them My Midlife Body

 The Fake Tan Führer’s deployment of National Guard troops to cities whose citizens voted for Democratic mayors—and, ahem, against him—and his threats to do the same in other cities with similar polling patterns, is one of the most nakedly political actions taken by a US President.

You, dear reader, will see that one of the adjectives in my previous sentence was a deliberate choice after you read what I’m about to say.

Portland, Oregon represents everything our dear leader detests. A liberal democratic mayor is just the icing on the cake: It is full of (or, at least, has the reputation of being full of) the very sorts of people who scare the orange makeup off his face: environmentalists, vegans, queers and (stage whisper) cyclists.

So of course he wanted to send his Praetorian Guard, I mean soldiers, to the Rosebud City. But first he had to claim it was “out of control.” Translation: People are protesting his policies.  And who, exactly, is behind all of the discord he sees in his fever-dreams? An organization he deems as “terrorist”—even though it doesn’t exist.

But the good folks of Portland plan to show their discontent with the armed occupation of their city in a way you might expect of them:  with a naked bike ride.

The emperor may have no clothes. But could a human body—clad, perhaps, only in a bike helmet and gloves—be the uniform of resistance against uniformed oppression?

If Mango Mussolini decides to sick his bodyguards on New York, my hometown—which might elect a Democratic Socialist (gasp!) mayor—I just might show my midlife body during a raw randoneé.

Who Would Win?

 Recently, I saw a bumper sticker that read, “My stick-figure family can beat your stick—figure family.”

I wondered, “At what?”

A bike race, perhaps?

Will Giant Bikes Be Banned In The US?

What does bicycle manufacturer Giant have in common with a Chinese fishing company and a South Korean salt farm?

Aside from being in Asia, this: They are have been tagged with the only Withhold Release Orders issued this year.

A WRO, per a 2011 law, allows US Customs and Border Protection to bar goods from entering the country if they were made with forced labor.

Based partly on a report in Le Monde Diplomatique, Giant allegedly employed guest workers who paid as much as $5500 to recruiters in their home countries. Those workers, who were then signed to three-year contracts, had to pay additional fees that amounted to as much as two months’ pay.

The order bans all bikes and other goods made in Giant’s Taiwan factories, whether they are sold under Giant’s own name or those of the brands they own, or made for other companies. Interestingly, products from Giant’s factories in China and Vietnam are not affected.

Giant is appealing the order, claiming that they have been paying recruiting and other fees and providing housing for workers. In the meantime, the company has made contingency plans so supply chains can continue with “minimal disruption.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I couldn’t help but to notice that the US President most openly hostile to bicycles and cyclists targeted a bike company for one of the first WROs of his second administration.