Happy Father’s Day

 

She Will Always Be In The Middle of Her Life

This blog is called “Midlife Cycling.” Today’s post will emphasize the first part of a title.

Opal Lee of Fort Worth, Texas is 98 years old. But she is still in the middle of her life.  Like 99 percent of us, she doesn’t know when her life will end. But, as I will explain later, there is another reason why she still is, and most likely will remain, in midlife.

When she was a girl, her family, like many in Texas and in the African-American diaspora, celebrated “Juneteenth” (a portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth “) with picnics and other gatherings.  On 19 June 1865–two months after the US Civil War ended and more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation—Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army read, from several public places in Galveston, the proclamation that the slaves of Texas we’re free.

The following year, newly-freed slaves held commemorations in the places where General Granger made his pronouncement. During the ensuing years, observances and celelebrations spread to African-American communities in other parts of the country.  They petered out, ironically, as the Civil Rights movement began in the 1950s, mainly because the Great Migration slowed down and there were very few surviving former slaves.

The happy memories Ms.Opal, as she calls herself, ended on Juneteenth of 1939:  White vigilantes took the occasion to burn down her family’s home and toss out all of their furniture. That act, barbaric as it was, actually strengthened her connections to the day.  After earning a Master’s degree and retiring from her work as a teacher and counselor, she became active with the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society, which was responsible for overseeing local Juneteenth celebrations. 

She soon realized, however, that those celebrations (which included picnics that made my mouth water just from reading about them) weren’t enough, given the importance of the day.  So, at age 89, she began the campaign, which included some very long walks and impromptu visits, to make Juneteenth a national holiday. Her persistence paid off on 17 June 2021, when President Joe Biden signed a bill to recognize this day, 19 June—“Juneteenth”—as a Federal holiday. Banks, post offices and other institutions are closed in observance.  

Now I am going to explain something I said earlier. Ms. Opal knows that, even at her age, her work is not finished. She continues to do what, she says, is the purpose of Juneteenth: informing and educating people about the significance of the event that prompted it.  “Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments,” she says.  “They embrace them.”  Echoing Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr. and other freedom fighters, she explains that she wants to bring all people together:”Nobody is free until we’re all free.”

Anyone who thinks that way knows her work, and life, aren’t done.  Ms. Opal will always be in the middle of them.

The First Time, Again

 They say you never forget how to ride a bike. That’s true, more or less.

At least, that’s the case for “Carrie.” She’s the S.O. of “Sam,” the friend and riding partner I met not long after moving into my current place. We have become friends, not only because of her relationship with ‘Sam:” We “got” each other in spite (or because?) of our differing backgrounds.  Turns out, we have more in common than I ever would have imagined.

Among those common experiences is cycling, at least in her youth.  She hadn’t ridden in at least  25 years. At first, I thought she wanted to ride again simply to join “Sam” and me. After finding a suitable bike for her and seeing her on her first rides, I realized that she was looking for something else.

Getting a bike on which she would be comfortable was the first step.  She is about 5’3” 160 cm) and, while a few years younger than me or “Sam,” has trouble lifting her leg over the top bar of a “diamond” frame. (She tried one “Sam” found.) And she wanted something pretty, which I can well understand.

Here in New York City, shopping for a bike on Craigslist is, shall we say, an adventure. Some of the listed bikes are stolen. Others are billed as “vintage.” Translation:  The seller wants $400 for something they fished out of the Gowanus Canal. 

Somehow I lucked out:  A Trek bike with an aluminum frame and 24 inch wheels for a decent price. Although the location was given as “Upper East Side” it was, in fact in East Harlem. But the seller seemed OK:  She described the bike as accurately as she could and explained that she’d bought it for her daughter who no longer lives with her.  The bike was actually in pretty good condition:  The wheels were true and spun smoothly; the tires and tubes weren’t punctured or dry-rotted.  I did, however, replace the cables, as I would on any used bike.

Her first ride nearly stopped my and “Sam’s” hearts:  She wobbled and fell.  Fortunately, she didn’t have even a bruise or a scrape. And she wanted to try again.  And again. Finally, she rode straight as the chainline on my fixie down the block and back. “I did it! I can’t wait to do more!”  

“We will.”

Now I believe I understand why she wanted so much to ride. She probably wanted to share another aspect of my and “Sam’s” lives. But her exultation told me something else:  Getting on the bike and riding, even for such a short distance, is a genuine accomplishment. It’s something we need at any stage in our lives, especially as we age fret that “we aren’t what we used to be.” It doesn’t matter what that achievement is, whether it’s as big as earning a degree or writing a book, or as “small” as learning how to cook a new dish.

Oh, and “Carrie” looked like she was having fun she hadn’t had in a long time, if ever.  She needed it; we all need to experience that kind of joy, for the first time again, at any age.

What To Wear, At My Age?

 You’ve heard of MAMILs:  Middle-Aged Men In Lycra.

Although I am in the middle of my life, I can’t be a MAMIL for one reason, and won’t be one (or, for that matter, a MAWIL—it doesn’t have the same ring) for another.

Acting Our Age

“Sam”’s observation got me to thinking about my experiences as a young cyclist and one in the middle of my life.

When I first became a dedicated cyclist, in the early-to-mid 1970s, I participated in a few organized rides. The ones for charity (e.g., UNICEF or diabetes research) included riders of varying ages. Some adolescents, like me, rode with friends or alone. Younger kids, on the other hand, were accompanied by parents or other adults; I am guessing that was a requirement for children under a certain age.  The adults who weren’t accompanying kids seemed to go alone or as part of a contingent from some workplace or other organization.

The rides that weren’t charity events, like the ones the Monmouth County parks commission organized, had an entirely different demographic makeup.  I was almost invariably the youngest rider, often by decades. I hadn’t thought about that until now. It begs the question of why.

All of those adult riders, unless they grew up in other countries, lived through decades when few adults rode bicycles and nearly everyone traded two wheels for four, and two pedals for one, as soon as they had their driver’s licenses.  Some, I am sure, participated in that American rite of passage before re-discovering the joys of cycling. But, judging from their comments and conversations among themselves and with me, it didn’t seem as if they’d abstained from cycling for very long: They seemed to have a breadth of experience and wealth of knowledge beyond what my peers or the books and magazines could offer me.

I didn’t mind being the new kid, literally and figuratively, on those rides. Those riders treated me well; for what may have been the first time in my life, I was with adults who weren’t condescending, even if they had reason to be. No one told me I needed a better (lighter) bike than my Schwinn Continental, though I must admit that I envied their seemingly-otherworldly Peugeots, Bottechias, Raleigh Competitions and Fujis. 

I now realize that, ironically, I was, in a way, doing the same thing as my peers who stopped cycling as soon as they were allowed to drive. We were, to the degree we could, emulating the adults in our lives. In the US, for the past century or so, learning to drive, getting a license and finally taking one’s place at the steering wheel has been equated with growing up. I am sure that the adult cyclists I met on those rides were, unless they came from elsewhere, inculcated with that belief. So, in order to become what I saw, they had to be confident and un-self-conscious: I am sure that they were told, at some point or another, they were “too old” for a “kid’s” activity like bike-riding.

I wanted to be like them. It didn’t matter whether they were teachers, aviators, store managers, artists or iron workers: They all looked like they belonged on their bikes.  And they were simply having fun:  something I didn’t know adults were allowed.

Looking back, however, I can see one glaring problem:  All of those cyclists were men. Not that their maleness was a bad thing; I knew, even then, that whatever I became when I “grew up,” I didn’t want to be a man. I don’t think I saw an adult female cyclist on an organized ride that wasn’t a charity event until I rode, years later, with the Central Jersey Bicycle Club.

Which brings me back to “Sam’s” observation: The riders we saw on non-electric, non-motorized bikes were indeed “older.” But at least some were women, a few of whom rode alone.  Now those are the adults I would have loved to have as role models!

In The Middle Of Our Journeys

 Yesterday Sam and I rode the Van Cortlandt Park trail to Yonkers, where we picked up the Westchester County trail to Millwood. Both of these routes are part of the Empire State Trail.

As we neared the end of our ride, he made an interesting observation.  “All of the riders we’ve seen on pedal bikes are older.”  He added that the e-bike and motorized scooter riders were young.

Now, I must say that given our ages, it’s a little odd to refer to “older” people, even if we are in the middle of our lives. Sure, some had gray or graying hair on their heads and faces.  But do they see themselves as “older?” Or so they share my belief that we’re in the middle of our lives as long as we don’t know when we’re going to die?

And what of this one, out for a walk on a beautiful day? Does she know whether she’s near the beginning or end, or in the middle of her life?

The Bike Knows

 “Where are you riding today?”

“Wherever the bike wants bike wants to go!”

The bike knows…

Poking (Or Drilling) Holes In Their Defenses

 Why?

The “drillium” craze reached its peak during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The ostensible goal was to save weight. So many folks beleved, then as now, that extra gram on a brake lever would cause them to lose a race, or simply face. So they went against manufacturers’ warnings not to “try this at home and bored into cranks, chainrings, brake calipers and any other part they could reach with a carbide bit.

While some “hokey” parts made sense and were even beautiful, there are some I will never understand. For example, unless you do all of your riding in surgically antiseptic environments, I cannot understand why you would make the inner workings of a hub vulnerable to dirt, dust and moisture.

The funny thing is that this hub has what looks like a partial freewheel attached to it. Did someone remove two cogs (it looks like a five-speed freewheel) to save weight?

Manufacturers always insisted that they drilled—or did anything else to save weight—only as much as they believed was safe. Ironically, some perforated parts—like Campagnolo’s Super Record brake levers and the version of Huret’s Jubilee derailleur with pinpoint holes in its pulley cage—actually weighed a few grams more than their un-drilled counterparts.

I would love to know how (or whether) that hub and freewheel were ridden.

If It’s Brown

 Throughout my decades of cycling, I’ve heard all sorts of advice about cycling, training, nutrition—and the bikes themselves. Sometimes, after receiving one dictum, I got another that contradicted it—sometimes from the same person or other source.

For example, I saw an article touting the benefits a new paint job. In the same publication, a few months later, another item by the same contributor said repainting a bike frame is not worthwhile because no refinishing is as good as the original.  The work Mercian did in restoring Vera, my Miss Mercian mixte and Tosca, my fixie, is evidence against that argument.

Then again, I can understand not wanting to give your frame a new coat. Perhaps you can’t afford it or justify the cost. Or you don’t care about looks or don’t believe your frame will rust or corrode away. 

I think the reason the owner of this bike might have had for not painting it is self-explanatory.

I tried to get better photos, but the position in which it was parked, between a scooter and a building, foiled my efforts. You probably can see, however, how well that rust-streaked frame goes with the brown rims and saddle.

16=6,000,000?

 June is only two days old. Yet this month already includes two milestones for this blog.

Yesterday, this blog’s total number of views reached 6 million. That may not seem like a lot, at least in comparison with some other blogs.  But recently, days of five-figure viewer counts have become routine; a few days have included more than 100,000 visits.  When I first started this blog, I felt fortunate to have a double-digit daily viewership.

That was 16 years ago today. What, aside from the numbers, has changed? Well, this blog began as a sort of spinoff from “Transwoman Times” as I was returning to cycling after my gender reassignment surgery. I wasn’t quite sure of what recounting my experience as a transgender cyclist would or could mean. But I felt my gender affirmation was a turning or “middle” point on my life and, for the first time, I realized that if I didn’t know, exactly, when my life would end, I am still in the middle of it,That is one reason why I chose to call this “Midlife Cycling” rather than something like “Trans-portation” or “Tne New Girl on a Bike.”

( No, I won’t rename this “The Six Million Viewer Blog” because it sounds too much like “The Six Million Dollar Man.”)

Turns out, that title has given me flexibility: I do not have to write exclusively about cycling, bicycles, gender, age or anything else.  I realize now that what I’ve always wanted is a writing forum that allows me the freedom to go wherever my thoughts, dreams, memories—and wheels—take me. But I also wanted something that would seem, or at least feel, more meaningful, if only to me, than the diaries and journals I’ve kept at various times in my life. 

Now you know why I have not monetized this blog. After sixteen years and six million views, I want it, and my other journeys (on or off my bike) —and I—to continue wherever and however we want and must.

His Offense?

 I am not a fan of parades.  I’ve marched in a few, mainly because of social pressures. In some cases, like the Pride March (formerly known as the “Gay Pride Parade), I was in solidarity with the people, and wanted to commemorate the occasions, it represented. But I don’t like being forced to be on display, or part of a crowd, and nonstop loud noise drives me crazy. Also, I question the motives of many, especially politicians and other celebrities, for showing up.  Call me a cynic, but I think their appearances are mainly for photo ops and, in the case of politicians, endorsements and votes.

That said, I can understand why some were upset when the Mayor of my hometown didn’t appear at its Israel Day parade. I won’t get into what I think of the country’s leadership during the past few decades—that is well beyond the scope of this blog—but, having visited the sites of Jewish arrests, deportations and executions, I can understand the desire, and arguments for the need, of a Jewish state.  On the other hand, having seen people who are now Muslims, Arabs, Turks, Armenians and of other Middle Eastern religions and ethnicities on lands occupied by their ancestors before they were called Muslims, Arabs or any of their other names by which we call them today, I also understand their ties, and their rights, to those lands. And because I have experienced decency, kindness and hospitality from members of all of the groups I’ve mentioned, I can bear no ill will toward any of them.

Having said all of that, I can also understand some of the criticism of Mamdani (for whom I voted) for being the first New York City mayor to skip the Israel Day Parade since it was first held, in 1964. After all, New York City has the second-largest Jewish population of any city or metro area in the world. (Interestingly, the only city and urban area among the top ten that isn’t in Israel or the United States is Paris, France. And the only two others in the top fifteen are London, UK and Buenos Aires, Argentina.) And Mamdani is Muslim, albeit of Indian heritage and Ugandan birth.

Therein lies one of the complications in making his “no-show” at the Israel Day Parade into a Muslim-Jewish conflict. For one thing, his background (and that he doesn’t seem to be an overtly devout Muslim) doesn’t place him in the typical narratives about such a conflict.  Also, the only US metropolitan areas with larger Muslim populations than New York’s are Los Angeles and Detroit. Moreover,  Muslims in New York come from a wide variety of sects and cultural backgrounds spanning every continent except Antarctica.  (Just blocks from my apartment resides one of the largest West African Muslim communities outside of West Africa, and barely a mile from that is the largest Yemeni Muslim community outside of Yemen.) Thus, someone practicing, or simply descending from, Islamic roots is more likely to have something in common with someone like Mamdani than the young men who flew planes into the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

So…what to make of Mamdani not showing his face at the Israel Day Parade? Perhaps better minds than mine can answer that one. But the New York Post did what you can always depend on it to do: get it wrong.

I mean, they would have you believe that going for a bike ride on a beautiful Sunday afternoon was as big, or an even bigger, offense.

For Olivia Hooker, And Those I Never Will Know

 Nearly a decade ago, I wrote something that, whatever its merits or lack thereof, is far more important than anything I’ve written on this blog.  I am mentioning it here,  not to promote it or myself, but to help keep the memory of its subject.

When I wrote that article, I, like many other people, was just learning about the incident I described. Though only a decade has passed, the day it was published seems like a lifetime, even an historical era, ago. During the previous few years, historians, public officials and the few remaining survivors of that tragedy were doing everything they could to ensure that it isn’t forgotten.  Now in the US, we have officials at every level, from the President to school board members, who are trying to keep it—and anything else that makes them uncomfortable—from being taught or even mentioned.

I am referring to the Tulsa Race Massacre, which took place 105 years ago today.  Like too many other tragedies, a false rumor sparked it. And, like too many of the most horrific episodes in history, it resulted in the destruction of, not only individual lives (the exact number will, most likely, never be known) but of a community: Mobs of white residents, deputized by the governor himself, wiped the Greenwood district off the face of the earth.

I have told my students they should take history personally. Possibly my worst failing or, at least, one of my biggest disappointments, was knowing that none of the students in a Women’s Studies class I taught seemed to understand as much.  In fact, some resisted the idea:  They were required to take the course as part of a program and, I now realize, were resistant simply out of resentment.  Then again, I remember when my mother, even when she did paid work, couldn’t open a checking account or get a credit card without my father’s signature. I also remember girls smarter and more talented and ambitious than I was being discouraged from, or outright denied the opportunity to, attend college because “It would be a waste of time, you’re going to get married anyway.” 

And when I wrote that article, a few survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre remained. I came into contact with one:  Olivia Hooker, who witnessed the pogrom as a little girl and was 101 years old when that article was published. She passed away two years later. I hope that, if I have done nothing else, I have honored her memory—and those of hundreds, possibly thousands, of others whose names neither I nor the rest of the world may ever know.

A Lesson Refreshed, Decades Later

 Some of the lessons you learn while you’re in school have nothing to do with school itself—or, at least anything that happens in a classroom or laboratory.

Sometimes you don’t realize you’ve learned those lessons—or they don’t make sense—until much later.  The reason could be that you forget, or don’t think about, whatever brought about those lessons for a long time.

Yesterday I took an afternoon ride to Randall’s Island and came back via a series of paths and streets that more or less parallel the Harlem River. As I passed Yankee Stadium, I thought I saw a somewhat familiar face. Indeed he was: a neighbor with whom I’ve exchanged friendly greetings. He was selling baseball caps and other souvenirs of the baseball team and New York City, he said, not because he needs the money, but to “get out of the house.”

I told him I understood: It’s one of the many reasons I ride my bicycle.

“And you look so strong, so confident,” he said. 

I demurred. “ Well, I’m not so strong…”

“You are. And you look so happy.”

Vicki told me the same thing, almost verbatim. She’d seen me spinning my pedals—on my Nishiki International, if I remember correctly—from Buccleuch (Rumor had it that spelling it correctly was a requirement for graduating from Rutgers) onto College Avenue.

We met in a class and went for a beer. (You could do that as an 18 year old in those days.) The attraction wasn’t sexual, at least as best as I could tell, nor was it “spiritual” or even platonic. We simply “got” each other: We were exploring creative and intellectual endeavors, and learning about ourselves in ways we never could have in the milieux each of us left.

One thing she immediately noticed about me was my lack of confidence in myself: something I still struggle with.  “But I saw a whole different person on your bike.”

“Nobody ever told me I wasn’t good enough to ride my bike.”

“The way you rode your bike, you’re good enough for anything.”

I thanked her, even though I didn’t believe what she said. I don’t think she was trying to give me false hope; she simply was describing who she saw riding by the Rutgers campus.

I hadn’t thought about that moment, or Vicki, in decades. And it took a random encounter with a neighbor selling baseball caps by Yankee Stadium to give me a “refresher.”

Playing Chicken On Memorial Day

 Today is Memorial Day here in the US.  I suspect that some people in this part of the country are not having the picnics, cookouts or other outdoor events they might’ve planned for today.  It has rained or drizzled almost steadily for the past two days and the heavy clouds hovering over us are trapping dampness that could turn to rain at any moment. That is one reason I am not at the Tour of Somerville.  That, and I woke up later than I’d planned.  But I might play chicken with the rain later today and sneak a ride in.

I Needed Him More Than I Knew

 In my previous two posts, I reminisced about things that would change my life, and the world—even if I didn’t realize it at the time—that began during this time of year, specifically during a too-early-for-the season heat wave.

My most recent post described how a morning ride with a friend became a journey to the end of fifth grade, a time just before my body and so much in my surroundings would change irrevocably.

That was May of 1969. Now my “Time Machine”—in this case, Tosca, my Mercian fixie, on which I took another early ride—will bring us to 1991. 

My bikes in those days:  a Colnago Arabesque and Bianchi Aelle.  I’d spun the Colnago’s pedals up and down the “seven sisters” on the Jersey side before crossing the George Washington Bridge back to my place.  After showering and eating, I took the subway downtown to a workshop led by poet Martha Rhodes.

One of the workshop’s participants had a cat who’d just had kittens.  As much as I love anything with whiskers that meows and purrs, I could have understood had Martha been annoyed at my fellow student bringing her little ones to the class. But Martha adopted one.  I took another. Or, rather, he took me:  He gave me a look that combined vulnerability and confidence in a way I’ve never seen in any other living being before or since:  He seemed to say, “Oh, I’m just a little kitty” and “You know you’re taking me home” at once.

We didn’t look away from each other on my way home. When I brought him to the vet, the receptionist, technician and vet himself fawned over him: He seemed to be cuter by the minute. And he would develop a bond with me and Caterina, my other cat, that deepened.

I quickly became as impressed with his intelligence as his friendliness.  But at the time, I didn’t realize how much, and how soon, I would need him.  That is not to say that Caterina wasn’t loving. She was already eight years old (according to the vet) when I adopted her five years earlier.  My new “fur baby,” on the other hand, would become the first—and, to date, only—friend I’ve had from the beginning (He was two months old) until the end of his life.

I named him Charlie. Why? It just sounded right—like a “buddy” name.  Like someone who showed up at just the right time.

My ex and I had separated; it would soon become a divorce. Although I wanted our (dis)union to end, it was difficult. For one thing, she fought it, at least in the beginning. Part of me said I should give it one more try, because she wanted it,  but I knew, almost from the beginning, how untenable our relationship was. Also, as much as I wanted out of it, I never realized what else would end with it. Even in a bad relationship, there are some things that are pleasurable or meaningful only when you are together—like the cafe where the waiter knew us. I never went back. 

Sometimes the very people who knew your relationship shouldn’t have happened in the first place are the ones blame you for “abandoning” your former partner. Or you find out that people with whom you thought you would remain friends were really friends of the couple, so to speak, not you.

On the other hand, the breakup gave me a chance to do things simply because I wanted to: the bike ride, taking Martha’s workshop, adopting Charlie.

I joke sometimes that he got me through my first semester of graduate school and college teaching that Fall. Who do you think helped me read and write all of those papers? Seriously, though I was happy to be doing those things, they were at times stressful because they were new to me (and because I didn’t get my first paycheck until the middle of November even though I started teaching in late August). I had to relate to people—my students, my fellow students and colleagues—in ways to which I wasn’t accustomed, in part because more than a decade had passed since I was last a student, and because the environments in which I’d worked had been very different. And, of course, I looked at relationships, all of them, differently as a result of my marriage.

Oh, and there was one other reason why I would need Charlie in ways I could not have foreseen. A week and a half after I adopted him, I learned that a college friend, Robert, had died. While I stayed in touch with him episodically after we graduated, he was always important to me because he was the first person to utter the words, “I am gay” in my presence. I had suspected as much, but it mattered, in ways I couldn’t realize at the time, that he would make such a declaration. He wasn’t trying to get a date with me; it simply came up in the course of something he, another friend and I were talking about. In that place and time, such an admission could be anything from risky to deadly. To this day, I really don’t know why he told me; I don’t believe that I was one of the more sensitive or open-minded people, even in that environment.

Since we are in 1991, you might have surmised what took his life:  AIDS-related illness. By Christmas of that year, four other friends or friendly acquaintances would die the same way. Another took her life; still another was murdered. (Actually, I consider the AIDS deaths, like those from COViD, to be murders because they resulted, directly or not, from what health and government officials did or didn’t do. ) And on the day before Christmas Eve, Caterina passed away.

What would I have done without Charlie—or cycling?

(Note: The cat named “Charlie” in this post is not the same as the one I mentioned in some of my early posts, although they were eerily similar in looks and personality. Charlie II came into my life as an adult cat a few months after Charlie I died. Charlie II was rescued; his rescuer named him Charlie.)

From An Island To A Memory Of A Street

 

My friend Sam—one of the first people I met when I moved into my current apartment—took an early ride: me, on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear and he, on the aluminum Trek road bike I fixed up for him.  The breeze we felt as we crossed the bridge into City Island and at the end of the island itself would be the last relief we would feel before the sun would turn brick-lined streets— which we followed from Pelham Bay  to Bronx Park—into ovens.

The bricks—faded, cracked and pockmarked like faces who have survived winter, poverty, betrayal and the births of those who have died along those streets—smoldered with their remains and the last buds blown away from cherry blossoms, magnolias, crabapples and early spring flowers like tulips and hyacinths planted around those trees.

The too-early-for-the season heat, which reached 95F (35C), turned their shadows, all of them, into the pores, wrinkles and cracks in bricks and concrete slabs that will endure, perhaps, longer than the street—at least, as I have know it—will.

I walked down a street like it, a couple of blocks from where I lived in Brooklyn, on a day like this, which had followed and preceded another like it, near the end of my fifth grade year.  1969: The world was about to change because of events I would know about as they happened—Woodstock, the Apollo 11 moon landing and protests against the Vietnam War and racial prejudice—and ones I wouldn’t know about until later, like Stonewall.

But, even though summer had not officially begun, it seemed to have always been. The faded, flaked bricks and pinks, purples and yellows turning green felt suspended in the haze of that heat. Just as the world beyond it was changing, I somehow knew that what I was seeing and feeling that day wouldn’t be there forever. Nor would I. The heat was no longer only a meteorological phenomenon: I felt, in a way I couldn’t describe, that it was flaring within me.  And within a year it would change me, as it would change my neighborhood.

On my way home that day, I saw a man who, at the time, seemed ancient to me, sitting on his stoop, as he did nearly every day. I would never see him again.

Sam and promised each other we’ll ride again, perhaps tomorrow morning. The afternoon is forecast to be as hot as today.

(More to come.)

Heat: A Harbinger?

I have taught my last class. Now I am reading stray overdue assignments, writing reports and doing the other bureaucratic things faculty members have to do at the end of a semester.  Oh, and I have been exchanging emails with the students I mentioned in an earlier post.

The AIDS walk has just ended in Central Park. I don’t know whether this particular date was chosen for any reason. But it just so happens that yesterday was the anniversary of what some have argued was the beginning of AIDS in the US, even if no one—including the young doctors who treated the first patient—knew it at the time.  Robert Rayford, a 16-year-old Black boy who had never been outside of his home town of St. Louis died.  The ostensible cause was pneumonia, but the two-year-long downward spiral of his health, in which his immune system basically shut down, baffled the doctors so much that they saved samples of his tissue for nearly two decades.

I could say something about why Rayford, raised by a single mother, was not recognized as “Patient Zero” even after tests confirmed the presence of AIDs proteins during the late 1980s. As a poor Black boy who never left his a hometown of St. Louis, his story didn’t fit the narratives constructed by LG (we—T’s and B’s—weren’t included) organizations, which were dominated mainly by White affluent and middle-class gay men.  

Anyway, I mentioned that episode because, in a way, it’s emblematic of this time of year, at least for me. We are in that part of Spring that’s a prelude to Summer and, perhaps, changes no one is anticipating.  An early heat wave is beginning today.  A week from tomorrow will be Memorial Day, the “unofficial” beginning of Summer, even if a cold spell, possibly accompanied by wind and rain, will strike before the “official” beginning of Summer.

That chronological and weather pattern transpired several times in my life, and each time was a prelude to changes in my life, or changes in the world that would affect me, whether or not I recognized, or even could recognize it at the time.

(To Be Continued )

Ross Willard R.I.P,

 About two weeks ago, I mentioned finding a Bike Library in Shirley Chisholm State Park. Until then, I was aware of only one bike library, in Iowa City, which I learned about by chance.

If the idea is spreading, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, when I first encountered Recycle-A-Bicycle in my hometown of New York, I thought it was the only program of its kind. Now I see that the concept—which involves fixing bicycles for sale or to distribute to kids and people who can’t afford them—has spread all over the country.  Those programs often involve classes in which kids learn to fix, and earn, bikes as well as volunteer opportunities. 

One thing I have always loved about such programs is that they bypass the elitist racer mentality that intimidates people when they walk into shops.  I was once one of those cyclists who believed that if you weren’t pedaling what Grand Tour riders used and didn’t  live on and for your bike, you weren’t a real cyclist.  I now realize that riders like me were a reason why the US didn’t (and in most areas, still doesn’t ) have a cycling culture.  On the other hand, programs like Bike Recyclers show people that bikes can be a viable form of transportation and that you don’t need to have the newest, latest and most expensive, any more than you need a Formula One car to drive to your family’s holiday get-together in another state.

Folks like Ross Willard are the reason why at least some people understand that new bikes aren’t the only good bikes and,  most importantly, how tomake cycling practical and safe.  Best of all, he started Recycle Bicycle Harrisburg in a city that, while it’s Pennsylvania’s state capital, has faced economic challenges. Also, because it’s more spread out than, say, Philadelphia, and lacks public transportation, residents rely heavily on cars. 

Like most worthwhile change, the shift toward bicycling and other forms of non-automotive transportation has come slowly. But Ross Willard got the wheels rolling, if you will.  He, who passes away last weekend, should be remembered and honored for that.

Happy Mothers’ Day

 Happy Mothers’ Day!

Leaving: The Road Ahead

 

Yesterday I rode down to Rockaway Beach. From there, I pedaled into wind that, at times, reached 40KPH (25MPH) to Brighton Beach.

Along the way, I thought,  among other things,  about the encounters with students I mentioned in my previous post. They could’ve changed my mind about a decision I made earlier. But something one student said made me realize I made, if not the right choice (if there was one), but one that could work out in ways I hadn’t planned.

Someone asked a food writer or chef—I forget which—what he would choose for his last meal. “Wait—I thought you hated those foods,” the interviewer interjected. “Exactly. I don’t want to be unhappy about leaving this world.”  For me, the conversations I had with the two non-binary students, particularly a comment one of them made, left me satisfied that this coming week, I will be teaching my last classes.

Not long after I had the dream about a classmate I hadn’t seen since graduation—and finding her name on my high school’s “In Memoriam” list—I wrote my letter stating my intention to retire as of 1 June, just after the semester ends. While there are ways in which college teaching has changed that are not to my liking (e.g., online classes), I am not leaving because of dissatisfaction or even burnout, though I find that the work seems to take more of my energy than it did years ago. Rather, I am satisfied that I am leaving on a good note: The in-person class that included those two students is one of my favorites, and the two online courses I taught this semester at least had students who seemed friendly and worked diligently.

My student is right: Wherever I go and whatever I do next, I will offer people like them, young and old—and myself—what  I have given them and what I did not have when I was their age or when I started my gender affirmation process.