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.