Reminder: WE Bike Party Tonight

Tonight is the WE Bike Party, in which we celebrate the end of our first cycling season.

Doors will open to this event at 7 pm at The Grand Victory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  The venue for our party is at 245 Grand Street, at the corner of Roebling Street.  (Roebling is the engineer responsible for the Brooklyn Bridge.)

I'm going to call one of the raffles, which will be held every hour.  And I'll be at the door for an hour. At other times, I'll be helping out in other ways and helping myself to some of the refreshments.  You'll recognize me because I'm wearing a maroon/burgundy WE Bike T-shirt. ;-)

The cover charge is 8 bucks.  Not bad for a night out in a hip place in Williamsburg!  

WE Party In Williamsburg

If you're here in New York next Wednesday, you'll want to trek over to The Grand Victory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

There, at 7:00 pm on the 10th of October, the doors will open on WE Bike's end-of-season party.

Don't worry:  I won't do karaoke.  And I definitely won't take off my WE Bike T-shirt!

But I do promise a good time.  There will be live music, bike videos and hourly raffles, among other things.

And you'll get to meet all of the interesting women who are WE Bike.  

I've mentioned WE Bike in a previous post.  Briefly, it's a New York City-based bicycle group open to all women and transgender people who enjoy biking, or believe they might.   WE Bike seeks to break down barriers by offering social and training rides, and mechanics' workshops.  It also plans to offer scholarships.

You can learn more about it at www.facebook.com/WEBikeNYC.

Oh, and by the way, the cover charge is $8.00.  Not bad for a night out in Williamsburg, eh?

Bikes Along The Way

On my way home today, I saw two interesting bikes.  Both are European.  I know that one is from the 1970's; I believe the other is.  Beyond that, though, they are interesting for very different reasons.

I espied the first one when I stopped in Greenpoint Bikes on Manhattan Avenue, near the Pulaski Bridge.  There I was greeted by a friendly young man who didn't mind my browsing or photographing this bike:

Actually, it's the bike in the middle.  As in many shops in the area, space is at a premium, so I didn't ask whether I (or he) could move the bikes, although I think he would have obliged me.

The green machine is a TMS.  At least, it's the only brand marking I could find.  The friendly young man believes it is German and from the 1970's, which makes sense, given what I know about such bikes.  The lugwork was clean and neat, and the paint well-applied in an attractive color scheme.  What really caught my eye, though was a particular detail:

It looked as though the white stripe was painted (or otherwise applied) to the fender at the factory.  That detail is even more striking, I think, on the rear fender:

The bike, as one might expect, is solid and sturdy, not light.  Those characteristics are typical of German bikes of that time:  They were well-made and often attractive, but utilitarian rather than sportive.

The second bike I saw, parked near PS 1,  clearly belongs to  the "sportive" category.  In fact, it was one of the better racing bikes available in its price range in the early to mid-1970's.  

If I'm not mistaken, it's a Gitane Tour de France from sometime around 1975 to 1978.  I make this judgment based on the paint finish and decals, which look original and are consistent with that time:

Also, the bike is made from Reynolds 531 tubing and has a Stronglight 93 cotterless crank, which was original equipment on that bike (as well as the Peugeot PX-!0E).  It was actually quite nice:  strong, brightly polished and lighter than even Campagnolo's offerings.

 (I apologize for this image and the others; I took them with my cell phone.)

One extremely interesting detail is the way the brake cable "tunnels" are brazed to the top tube:

On most bikes, the "tunnels" are brazed down the center (top) of the top tube.  However, Gitane brazed them to the right side, which allows for a more direct line to the brake (a Campagnolo sidepull).  Of course, the advantage of this would be lost if a brake that pulled on the right side, or a centerpull, were used.

The tunnels lead me to believe this is a later-production Tour de France, as the earlier-production TdFs use the clips you see on so many old racing bikes.

It seems that every time I ride through "Hipster Hook," I see more and more interesting bikes that aren't variations on the "hipster fixie."  And the area is about as rich in bike shops as any I've seen:  Within blocks of Greenpoint Bikes are about a half-dozen other shops, including B's Bikes, which has become one of my favorites.  Greenpoint looks very promising as well.  

Not so long ago, there weren't any bike shops in the area at all:  If you were to ride from Astoria to Brooklyn, you wouldn't see another shop until you got into the neighborhood around Pratt Institute, a distance of about seven miles.  And you wouldn't see very many cyclists. Now it's turning into Amsterdam on the Hudson.  It will be interesting to see what happens when those cyclists--most of whom are in their 20's or 30's age.  Will they stay in the neighborhood and continue to ride the bikes they have?  Or will they stop riding, or move?  Or will some as-yet-unenvisioned  type of bicycle be invented and sweep as-yet-unborn cyclists off their feet (or pedals)?  

Whatever happens, I expect to see more interesting bikes--and cyclists--along the way.

Another Song At Sunset

This may not seem terribly bike-related, save for the fact that I saw it while riding by the pond in Prospect Park yesterday:

Somehow the loneliness of the long-distance runner doesn't seem so terrible.  In fact, it's quite beautiful, even in an image taken with a cell phone and my photographic skills!

After A Storm

It's hard to believe that less than 24 hours earlier, a storm that spawned tornadoes battered this stretch of shoreline at Point Lookout:

To my knowledge, a twister didn't blow through here.  However, funnels touched down in Breezy Point, near Rockaway Beach, and the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.  

Miraculously, I encountered scarcely a puddle on my ride to Point Lookout--in spite of all the rain every part of the Tri-State Area had yesterday! That made life easy for me and Arielle:

L'Enfer du DUMBO

I've been to Hell.


All right.  I confess (Do you still go to Hell if you confess):  I wrote that first sentence to get your attention.  I didn't see lakes of fire or papal prelates or industrial/military plutocrats with encased in ice up to their necks.  And I didn't have an out-of-body experience.

But I did ride over something that, on a fixed-gear bike, can very closely resemble Hell:

Riding over this street made me think of the Paris-Roubaix race, often called L'Enfer du Nord (The Hell of the North).  Every year in April, the race organizers look for the roads in northern France and Belgium with the pointiest cobblestones or with all sorts of other hazards.

Bernard Hinault is a five-time Tour de France winner and very old-school racer:  Unlike, say, Lance, he used to ride--and, very often, win--all sorts of races all over Europe.  But he flatly refused to ride in L'Enfer.  It's hard to blame him:  He had chronic tendinitis in one knee, a condition that caused him to abandon the 1980 Tour de France while he was wearing the leader's yellow jersey.  Finally, the following year, he rode Paris- Roubaix--the only time he would do so--and won.  


Wouldn't you like to see a race like that run through DUMBO, where I took the photo?  From there, such a race could spin through other nearby industrial areas along the Brooklyn waterfront.  There are also other areas--most of them industrial or post-industrial--with Belgian cobblestones like the ones you see in the photo.  


When I had a mountain bike with shocks, I used to ride over those streets for fun.  The experience was still jarring, because most mountain bike shocks are designed to keep the bike stable rather than to cushion the rider.  It's the kind of joyously harebrained thing you do when you're young--or, as I was, full of testosterone (and, possibly, other substances).  


After bouncing along the DUMBO cobblestones, I stopped in Recycle A Bicycle, where I have been volunteering.  The young woman there was working on this bike:

She assured me that the paint job was as it appeared to me; I was not seeing an optical illusion induced by the ride I'd just done!

Getting Caught Without My Raingear

Last week, I wrote a post in which I asked you, dear readers, how you decide whether or not to ride in the rain--or when the weather looks chancy.  I also asked whether you bring rain gear if there's a chance of rain.


Well, on my way home last night I felt like an utter fool.  You see, I had to Kingsborough Community College for a workshop and because I agreed to proctor an exam.


Both appointments were in the morning.  So, I anticipated leaving some time in the afternoon.  The day started off bright, sunny and a little bit cool.  The air warmed up, but the skies didn't become any less clear, during the ride--parts of which are quite pleasant.  My destination is in a part of Brooklyn called Manhattan Beach, which looks more like a town on coastal Long Island or Connecticut.  


Well, for various reasons, I ended up staying later than I'd planned.  And, by the time I was ready to leave--around 7:30--rain had begun to fall.  No, forget that.  It was as if the sea, which abuts the campus, was pouring itself over the buildings, paths and gardens.


Of course, I didn't have any rain gear with me.


I thought I could wait it out. After about half an hour, the rain let up.  Not even two minutes after I pedaled off the campus, I rode by the eponymous beach.  You can guess what happened next:  Another deluge, even harder than the one I waited out, came raining down.  The only problem was that there was no shelter.  There were no houses on that stretch, no lean-tos or even trees.  Worse, lightning started to flash all around me.


Within seconds, it seemed, my skirt, blouse and sweater were soaked.  My sandals were like completely full sponges under my feet.


I rode another couple of minutes, to a mini-plaza with a pizzeria, a coffee house and a couple of small stores.  I was about to stop there--the thought of a slice of hot pizza (at a place where I'd had good pizza on other rides)appealed to me.  But the idea of sitting someplace, soaked to my skin, did not.  Then I thought about taking the train, about half a mile away. When I got to the station, though, I realized that the train's air-conditioning might be running.  Sitting in it, in my besoaked condition, definitely would not have been a good idea.

From The Guardian (UK) Bike Blog

So, even though I knew it would take me about an hour and fifteen minutes to get home, I continued to ride.  Somewhere around Brooklyn College, in the middle of Brooklyn, the rain started to let up.  It had all but stopped by the time I crossed the Pulaski Bridge from Greenpoint into Queens.  From there, it's only a few minutes to my apartment.  I stopped at a greengrocer:  the boxes of strawberries and the piles of cherries (both red Bings and yellowish Queen Annes, which taste like a cross between a sweet cherry and a nectarine) in their bins were even more appealing than the pizza had been an hour earlier.  So, after filling my Carradice Nelson Longflap with the luscious fruits, I pedaled home.


The most interesting thing--to me, anyway--was that, except for my sandals, I was dry.  And so was everything in that bag.


That fruit sure was good.  So was the concoction I threw together:  chicken, corn kernels, scallions, chili peppers, Italian green peppers, red bell peppers and mushrooms, all stir fried with a little bit of curry powder and soy sauce, and tossed over some Japanese buckwheat noodles.  Max and Marley were all over me:  They liked the chicken, too. (All right, I cooked some without the vegetables and sauce and noodles for them.)

Hipster Hook Bikes

How do you know you're in Hipster Hook?


Well, first of all, I should tell you where and what Hipster Hook are.


Roughly, HH rims the East River in Brooklyn and Queens from the Williamsburgh Bridge to the Queensborough (a.k.a. 59th Street) Bridge.  From the river, it stretches a few blocks inland, to about Driggs Avenue in Brooklyn and 11th Street in Queens.  Hipster Hook includes parts of the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburgh and Greenpoint, and the Queens Community of Long Island City.


All right. You don't always have your map or GPS handy.  So, how else can you tell you're in the Hook?


Well, just take a look at the bikes parked locked to the sign posts, parking meters or other immobile objects:

I mean, where else are you going to find a '70's Bob Jackson, with a full set of Campagnolo Nuovo Record Components, converted to flat-bar use and locked up next to two other bikes?

If you've been following this blog, you have probably realized that I favor purple and deep green (especially British Racing Green), cobalt blue or burgundy bikes.  But I also have a soft spot for orange bikes of that time.  (I include Marianela, the Schwinn Le Tour I used to ride.)  Somehow, the orange bikes made since then just don't have the same kind of character:  Instead of glowing, they shout.

Anyway, I think that bike also has the only thing that, to me, could have made it even prettier:  a somewhat-aged Brooks B-17 saddle in honey.


I wish I could have gotten a full solo shot of the bike.  Oh well.  At least one of the bikes locked next to it was a Masi from the same era.  Today, bikes bearing the Masi name are being made in Taiwan and seem to be, at best, parodies of the real thing.

And how else do you know you're in Hipster Hook?  Well, the bike locked next to the Bob Jackson and Masi was a current KHS bike.  Not bad, really:  I once had a KHS myself.  But you simply can't compare it to those other two bikes!

You Never Know What You'll Find Or When It Will Come In Handy

Today was beautiful.  But it was still hard to believe that summer is--officially, at any rate--just a month a way.  


It was pretty brisk when I started to ride down toward Coney Island.  But it warmed up fairly quickly as I pedaled through Long Island City and across the bridge into Brooklyn.  I could even feel the sun warming my face in the cool breeze as my wheels spun--without any effort on my part, it seemed--by the East River on the Kent Avenue bike lane.  


The air felt positively summery as I passed the Botanical Gardens and crossed Empire Boulevard--near the site of the former Ebbets Field--into Flatbush.  In fact, I was starting to wish I'd brought one of my water bottles with me.  Of course, riding through Brooklyn isn't the same as riding through the Mojave Desert: After all, there are plenty of delis and bodegas where one can get something to drink. 


Still, I kept on riding.   I felt as if I were actually going to ride straight into summer until I crossed under the Belt Parkway overpass.  As soon as I emerged from its shadow, the sun seemed even brighter.  But it also seemed about twenty degrees cooler--as if I'd pedaled from July back into April.  That's because I was by Sheepshead Bay.  The ocean lay not much more than a kilometer away.  


That's one of the differences between a spring and, say, a fall ride around here.  While the air temperature rose to about 75F (24C), the ocean temperature has yet to reach 60F (15C).   The differences between inland and shore temperatures were even more pronounced a few weeks ago, but they were still noticeable today.


As it happened, I'd left something in Arielle's bag that came in handy:

It's an old Sugoi jacket with a light lining:  One of the last pieces of cycling apparel I have from the days when I was the "before" photo, if you know what I mean!

The Bikes Stop Here--And There

A series of neighborhoods dangles along the banks of the East River like a cedille from Astoria Park to the Williamsburg Bridge.  They include Astoria and Long Island City in Queens and Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn.  There may be more cyclists, per capita, in this corridor--in which I happen to live--than in any other part of New York City. In fact, I doubt many American urban neighborhoods outside of Portland (and, perhaps, Seattle) can rival the concentratration of bicycles and cyclists found here.

So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see this near the Long Island City (Queens) side of the Pulaski Bridge.

The first time I saw it, I wondered what all of those bicycles were doing in a bus kiosk.  Then I saw the sign.


On the block before it, there is a row of bike racks that's almost always full.

The bike at the front makes me wonder just how good an idea unsecured open-air bike parking facilities actually are.  On one hand, I'm glad to have dedicated bike-parking spaces. On the other, I can't help but to think that maybe they're targets for bike thieves and cannibals.


Maybe I'm just too accustomed to locking to parking meters and such--or not parking my bike and not doing business with stores that don't allow me to bring my bike in.  


Anyway, I got in a quick ride after work the other day. At times like that, I'm thankful for Daylight Savings time, and Tosca likes rhe photo ops available on the Greenpoint (Brooklyn) side of the bridge:

Riding Off Into The Sunset Out Your Window

Yes, I've hit Lotto.  Just to prove it, here are photos from my exotic midwinter cycling vacation.

Hey, who wouldn't want to see the sun setting over the ocean on a clear, mild day?

Or see the blue of the sky consumed into the blaze of orange and red and purple, and spreading in waves of deepening blue?

If any of you have not yet entered the workforce, you can look forward to long meetings and workshops.  It's not a sign of a character flaw if your mind wanders during them.  In fact, I'd argue that if you see what I saw out the window, and you pay more attention to it than to what's going on in the room, it's a sign that you're spiritually healthy.

Just don't tell that to the people who were running the workshop.  

I got outside, and on my bike, just in time for this:

In what exotic locale was I?, you ask.  Would you believe Kingsborough Community College, at the southern edge of Brooklyn.  I took the long way back, so in all I still managed to ride about 40 miles yesterday.  And I didn't even have to leave home.  Well, not really, anyway!

Girls, Bikes And The City

On my way home from my "Hasidim and Hipster Fixies" ride, I met and chatted with another woman on a bike.   She's been living in Brooklyn for a while and wants to find some new rides.  And Bruce has told me that I make a good tourguide. So, we exchanged e-mail addresses and today we went for a ride along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts, across the RFK Bridge into Randall's Island and alongside the East River in Manhattan. 


Helene was definitely "up" for this one.  She's wanted to have a girl's night, or day, out in the city!

One of the wonderful things about introducing someone to places you know well is that you discover new things in and about them.  We ventured into a part of Greenpoint I hadn't visited in a while, where we found a workshop of some kind:

Look at her, and look at the second statue from the left.  Of course, I had to get into the act:

I guess I'm not quite the performer she is.  Then again, I may not have had the right role.  Last week, in the midst of the sleep deprivation nearly all instructors experience at during the last days of a semester, one of my colleagues said I was looking a bit like Pierre de Wissant as he appeared in Rodin's Les Bourgeois de Calais.  

Anyway, I enjoyed the ride and the company of my new riding companion.  After we parted, Helene insisted that we stop here:

I mean, she has a point:  I have three Mercians (including her) with paint finish number 57:  a purple that turns green when you look at it from certain angles.  So now I need a house to go with them.  Hmm...If my book sells....

Hasidim and Hipster Fixies

Today I took one of those "no destination" rides.  Helene and I just sort of wandered from one place to another, doing about 30 or 35 miles in total without getting more than a few miles from my apartment.  Such is an enjoyable way--for me, anyway--to spend a warm, humid afternoon after waking up late.  


Along the way, I stopped in an Old Navy store. (They didn't stop me from bringing my bike in.)  I was looking for at least one nautical-stripe T-shirt.  For the longest time, I wore one that I bought in France. You've probably seen them:  the kind worn by Breton fishermen and Marseille dock workers and, for a long time, by sailors in the French Navy.  They are white, with horizontal navy stripes.  For a long time, it was the only white article of clothing I owned.  


I also used to have a wool sweater that was the inverse of the T-shirt:  navy with cream stripes.  It was one of those sweaters with buttons on the left shoulder.  I actually wore it on many a cold-weather ride, as the wool was of a very nice grade and tightly woven, and the sweater was of just the right weight and thickness for a variety of conditions.


There are imitations of them available in this country.  For all I know, they're not even being made in France anymore.  In any event, as I expected, Old Navy didn't have the originals.  But they didn't have any imitations, either.  On the other hand, I found interesting tank top with a tied back in a kind of "fade" from blue to green to purple.  And the green and purple just happen to be the shades, more or less, of Helene as well as Arielle and Tosca, my other Mercians.  So of course I couldn't pass it up.  One of these days, I'll post a picture in which I wear it--and, of course, I'm riding one of my Mercians.


I also rode to someplace I haven't been in quite a while.  It's one of the neighborhoods in which I spent my childhood:  Borough Park, in Brooklyn.  This is the church in which I was an altar server:

And, diagonally across the street is the school I attended. Here is a section of it:

They are the Holy Spirit parish and school.  Between them, I saw this:

Even if I hadn't seen that, I would have been surprised that the school, and even the church, were still open.  Even though the temperature rose to just above 90F, all of the females I saw on the streets were wearing thick hosiery (some with seams running down the rear) and long skirts, while all of the males were wearing even longer coats.  If they noticed me, I can only imagine what they might have been thinking.  For one thing, I was alone and riding a better bicycle than most of them even know exists. Plus, I was the only one riding a bike who was more than about ten years old.   And I was wearing a short (by their standards, anyway) denim skirt and a tank top.


I know, from an earlier experience, that the Hasidim don't like to be photographed. Of course, I respect that.  But at the same time, I wasn't about to ask any of them to take a photo of me with my bike!


You've seen Hasidim if you've been Williamsburg, another Brooklyn neighborhood. (In fact, shuttle buses run between the two neighborhoods.)  What's ironic is that they're in the hipster-fixie capitol of the universe. That makes for some very interesting visual contrasts.  One is between the black of the males' coats and hats and the females' skirts, and the day-glo or neon colors of the bikes rolling down the Kent Avenue bike lane or parked in front of the book and music stores, "retro" boutiques and self-consciously funky coffee shops and restaurants of Bedford Avenue.  The other contrast, of course, is between the presence of hipsters and their fixed-gear bikes in Williamsburg and the absence of same in Borough Park.


If I could have found a way to photograph what I've just described while respecting the wishes of the Hasidim, I would have done so.  All I can do is hope that I've described it enough for you to visualize, at least somewhat.

Cycling Through The Gates of Autumn

I got up late today.  So my ride took me to a sunset:

The sun has just set behind Jamaica Bay, near the place it meets the Atlantic at Breezy Point.  I stumbled over this view on the Queens side of the Gil Hodges-Marine Park Bridge.  That view led to another bridge:

To get to these views, we crossed another bridge:

The day was chilly and windy, and became more of both after we crossed this bridge from Beach Channel to the Rockaways.  But somehow I didn't feel the cold.  Maybe I was channeling the sky:  Clouds spread like a shawl across a graying sea and houses that still have some of the warmth and light the sun within them.

And the way to these views was a bike ride through the gates of autumn:

Some of us have to carry a lot to get there:

Sometimes the journey is long, or seems that way:

And where does it lead?  Hopefully, to some place like this:

And it continues.  There is no escaping it, though some will try:

b

That's a washed-out stretch of the Greenway, where it parallels Belt Parkway along Brooklyn's South Shore.  I asked someone to take a photo of me, but I didn't like it.  So I took this photo of a couple I saw cycling.  

Where else could they have been riding but through a sunset in the gates of autumn.

Dreaming of A Bridge To The Next Journey

It's a little odd to write in a cycling blog when you haven't ridden in a couple of days.  We've had some rain, and I feel like I have a chest cold.  I think it may have developed when I fell asleep the other night in front of my open window with neither a blanket nor very much clothing on me.  And the temperature dropped steeply.




Anyway, the parts I ordered from Velo Orange came today:  handlebars, brake levers, fenders and a bell.  They're all going on the Schwinn I bought over the weekend.  I guess it's appropriate that I ordered Velo Orange parts to go on the orange bike.  But I also have Velo Orange stuff on my Mercians, and my Miss Mercian will also have some of their parts and accessories.  Sometimes I think a velo orange is a state of mind--even if the bike is "flip-flop purple/green," a.k.a. Number 57 on Mercian's colour chart.




Now that I haven't ridden in a couple of days, I've found myself thinking about someplace where I'd like to ride again, but can't.  Actually, one can ride there only once a year:  during the Five Boro Bike Tour.  I've done that ride a number of times, including a few of the early editions.  Those were the best because it wasn't quite as big as it is now.  Although I'm happy to see more people cycling, I get wistful sometimes about the days when we were the fringe.




But I digress.  There's one part of the ride that can be done only on the day of the ride, for it is off-limits to bicycles at any other time.  Here it is:

I took this photo from the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, on my way home from my ride in Jersey.  Even though I have seen this image--or some reflection of it--thousands of times, I still get woozy with deja vu, as Kurt Vonnegut said in Breakfast of Champions.  




I saw an image very much like the one you see here from the window of my room on Dahill Road in Brooklyn when I was a child.  It was like a neon sign in a window of my dreams.  And, of course, when I woke from the dream, I saw the bridge and wanted to cross it, wherever it went.




The bridge in the photo is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.  There is a promenade that winds under it as curls around the rocks and flotsam on the Brooklyn shore, from Coney Island to near the old Brooklyn Army Terminal. If you're ever down that way, take the ride:  The bridge, the rocky shores and the wide expanse of the bay could make you think, if only for a moment, that you're in San Francisco.  




Even though I know exactly where the bridge goes, it still is the symbol for every crossing, if you will, I encounter.

And I think of it when I get on a bike, wherever I am and wherever I'm going--especially if I still haven't decided on my destination when I start to pedal.