Miles, Sounding Off The Miles

As I've mentioned in other posts, tatoos aren't my thing.  Sometimes I enjoy seeing other people's "tats", but I have never had any inclination to "get inked" myself.

Perhaps I still hold, on some level, the attitudes I was inculcated with:  that only sailors, Harley riders and other rough-and-tumble characters get themselves tatooed.  If so, I don't know whether, let alone how or when, I'll change.  

But if I were going to use a part of my body as a "canvas", if you will, I might consider this:

This image, etched and painted in the King of Ink tatoo studio of Ankara, Turkey, depicts the late, great Miles Davis as the denizens of then-Bohemian Greenwich Village remember him:  astride his bicycle, peering through his huge spectacles.  Even if he didn't wear such distinctive outfits (never the same one more than once, according to people who recall him), he would have been a memorable sight on his bike.

Still, it's hard to imagine that the sight of him was more memorable than his music!

Riding Again At Sunset

I'm so happy to be back on my bike again.  Late the other day, I took a ride that wasn't a commute for the first time in weeks.  I was going to meet some people for dinner in the Village, which meant I would have to lock my bike on the street.  And I knew that there was still a lot of ice and sand on the streets. So I took my LeTour, as its tires are the closest things to snow and ice treads I have.

It wasn't a long ride, but enough to stimulate my senses.  I got this glimpse of dusk on the Hudson River near Christopher Street in Manhattan.

And this--with the relatively rare sight of ice on the Hudson--just north of 14th Street:

I did what I could with my primitive cell phone. But I think I captured something of what the light, if not the cold air, felt like!  If nothing else, they're whetting my appetite for more riding.

The Streets Are Their Stage

My mother is wonderful.  She has to be--after all, she raised me! ;-)  Anyone with the patience and fortitude to do that deserves nothing but affection and respect.

Still, if I were to become a mom--which, of course, is impossible unless I adopt or some major advancement in medicine comes along--I want to be like her:

Being a mom like her would mean having a kid like this one:

Both of them have such style:

 Their rear tire needs air. But we can forgive them that, right?

Of course, they are Keri Russell and her son River.  In these photos, they were coursing through Greenwich Village last October.
 

A Spring Night On Grove Street

Is it true that in the Spring, a young bike's fancies turn to romance?  How does that saying go?

As the young would say...whatever!  I don't give advice about love and romance, but I'm willing to make recommendations for floral gifts:

A Message Like No Other

When you cycle in an urban area, you see more graffiti than the average person.  More important, you see it at closer range than someone riding a bus or cab, or driving by.

Even while seeing so closely, you don't remember a lot of it.  After all, so much of it, frankly, looks alike.  But every once in a while you see "tags" that stand out for their use of color, artistry or simply their overall size.  And, sometimes, you see a graffito that's a true work of art.  I am fortunate in having lived, for years, not very far from Five Pointz--whose days are. lamentably, numbered.

But this piece--on the side of a Barrow Street building, just west of Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, is like no other I've seen:

What Is He Or She Doing Now?

Like most people, I got up late today.  Good way to start a New Year, huh?

Still, I managed to do a brief ride down to the Village.  Somehow I got diverted to my favorite Donut shop in the world:  Donut Pub on West 14th Street.  

While parking my bike, this caught my eye:

What's this person doing now?  One can hope he or she is riding a bike.  If nothing else, an ex-skater would have some good bike-handling skills.  I could see him or her on a track bike:  After all, skaters don't have brakes.   

Happy New Year?

Serendipities

I got up late today because last night, after riding, I stayed out until the wee hours of the morning. Then I couldn't sleep when I got home.

After showering and having a sort-of-vegetarian supper, I went to Columbus Circle  to meet Joe.  He lives in New Jersey and advertised a bike on Craig's List.  Last week, I sold my three-speed because it was small for me.  I liked the ride and look of it, but even with a long seatpost and stem, it never felt quite right.  Plus, I would have had to change saddles, as I did with my Mercians.  And that Raleigh three-speed, which was painted a bronze-greeen colour, simply would not have looked right with a new saddle.  (I had a brown Brooks--a very traditional leather saddle--on it.)

Anyway, Joe had some car troubles but finally made it to Columbus Circle.   His fiance, Deanna, accompanied him.  When they had just entered Manhattan, she called me.  "It's been a day from hell," she sighed.  I thought she said "date." 

"This is his idea of a date?," I wondered. 

She defended him; I laughed.   It wouldn't be the first time any of us laughed.

At any rate, the bike is what I'd anticipated:  It's a larger ladies' Scwhwinn Le Tour III, from around 1978.  The finish, once a rather nice pearlescent orange, is chipped, cracked and marred in all sorts of ways. But everything worked, and the price was right. 

I'm going to work on it.  I'll probably change the handlebars and seat, and I'm going to add  a rear rack and  fenders.  So it'll be a commuter/beater bike.

After I bought the bike, Joe and Deanna said they were heading downtown and invited me to accompany them to the Cafe Esperanto.  When we got there, we found that it had closed for good.  Instead, we went to Cafe Reggio, which I hadn't gone to in years.  It's not that I dislike the place:  They always have my respect for looking and acting like, rather than merely caricaturing, a funky bohemian cafe from back in the day.  Reggio served esperesso and cappucino before most Americans knew what they are; today Reggio's versions are still among the best.


But the best part was staying up half the night and talking about theatre (Joe is a sound engineer), art, politics and thinking generally.  He asked what I thought of Obama; after I explained why I've never been crazy about him, we got into a long conversation about foreign relations, conspiracy theories and such.  


It made me think of what my youth ight have been like if a few things had been different. It  was exhilarating to be on Macdougal Street, one of my old haunts, even if it was almost wall-to-wall people.  And there I was--the clean, sober woman I carried within me during those days of drunken bitterness.  Best of all--though it makes me a little sad now that it's the day after--is the way the conversation and their company stimulated me.  I almost never feel that way after spending time on campus, among some of my so-called educated coworkers and acquaintances.  That's one of the reasons why being at the college has been so dreadful lately:  In addition to all the pettiness, there is a severe lack of intellectual stimulation.


Ironic, isn't it, that I find mental stimulation on a Saturday night from a guy  who got a two-year degree and a woman who got her certification in cosmetology?  Also strange, n'est-ce pas, that in middle age, I'm finding the sorts of excitement I wanted in my youth, and that I found it when buying a used bike?


I guess that even when I find order in my life when I ride my bike, cycling also makes it--some way or another--unpredictable and serendipitous.