High Wheels, High Heels And Snow

"I have great respect for you, ma'am.  Anyone who rides today deserves 'props'!"

A security guard said that as I was locking up my bike at work.  The flurries that fluttered onto my helmet about five minutes into my commute had turned into harder, though not driving, snow.  Some of it was starting to accumulate, but I wasn't worried because the forecasts called for no more than an inch.  Plus, I knew that even if there were more on my way home, some of the streets would be plowed by that time.

It's funny that our first snowfall of the season came just days after I put a pair of Panaracer Tour tires, with thick but not knobby treads, on the LeTour.  In case you were wondering:  Yes, I rode to work in a skirt. But I was wearing fairly thick black tights under it.  On my feet, I wore my black LL Bean duck boots and carried my heels in a bag.

It wasn't an exceptional winter ride or commute, really, although I enjoyed it.  Still, whatever "props" that security guard gave me, I have nothing on these guys:

Now there's something I probably will  never do:  ride a penny-farthing in the snow.  But I guess the guys in that photo didn't have a choice, as the "safety" bicycle hadn't been invented yet.  And they were in Montreal.  If you're can't or won't ride in the snow, it essentially means that you're not going to ride in The City Of A Hundred Steeples (as Mark Twain called it) during the winter.

Going Dutch

Yesterday, I mentioned that some people hate Citibike because they perceive it and programs like it to be "vaguely French."

Well, they've got it all wrong.  You see, as wonderful as le beau pays is, and even though it is (or, at least was, until recently) more bike-friendly than most other places, probably no place on earth is more bike-friendly than Amsterdam.

At least that's what the folks at Copenhagenize would tell us.  Based on my admittedly limited experience with Amsterdam, I wouldn't argue.  According to their index, the city from which Colorado and Washington have taken their leads (in one area, anyway, if you know what I mean) edges out the Danish capital.  

For all that's happened in places like New York, Boston and Portland, no US city made the top fifteen.  In fact, Montreal--which tied Munich for #11--is the only North American city in that group.

This infographic provides some interesting and relevant facts about cycling in Amsterdam:

From Easyjet

Croix de....?

Just a couple of pedal strokes away from my apartment, I chanced upon this:

I don't know whether the two crossed posts were intended to prop up the wires or the light fixture.  Perhaps they were intended as a monument to something.  Whatever their purpose, they looked ominious against a sky ready to drop its wrath.

For a moment, I recalled a cross I reached (but didn't bear) on bicycle:

Photo by Mute*

Yes, that is the Croix de Fer on top of Mount Royal in Montreal.  It's visible from just about anywhere in the city. (At least, it seemed to be when I last rode there, about a dozen years ago.)  The 1974 World Championships were held in Montreal; a Belgian racer said the climb up Mount Royal was one of the most difficult climbs he encountered in his career.

Said Belgian won the race.  Three guesses as to who he was...

(Yes, Eddy Mercx.)

Now, I wonder what the "cross" in my neighborhood was made from.  I don't think it's fer.

A New Neighbor

I pedaled into wind that felt more like a boomerang of January than the first wave of summer.  Only a block from my apartment, I felt as if a season, an age, had passed. In the corner of my eye, I glimpsed this:

Even at this distance, something told me this wasn't a typical bike parked on a street in my neighborhood.  I made a U-turn so I could take a look.  

What else could have set off my radar?  I hastily snapped this photo, the one above it and another

when the bikes owner showed up.  I internally braced myself; he smiled warmly and said "hello."

Noah is from Montreal but now lives a couple of neighborhoods away from me.  He bought his 1981 King of Mercia from a woman on the Upper West said who, he said, was offered more money than he paid for the bike.  The would-be buyer was a collector; the woman, who'd stopped riding, still appreciated the bike enough that she preferred to sell it to someone who would ride it.  

Shortly after buying it, he converted it to a single speed but kept the old components. He set up the original crankset with a single ring but, of course, installed a new pair of wheels and pedals.  However, he rides the bike with the really nice Sun Tour Superbe brakes that came with it.  And he replaced the original saddle with one that really belongs on that bike:  a Brooks B-17.

In the course of our conversation, I might have talked him out of repainting his bike, even to "restore" it to its original look.  Actually, I was talking myself out of doing the same to Vera. Truth is, I can't justify spending the money, given my current finances.  But Noah said he was "glad to hear" that I'd considered refinishing  but thought better of it.  "It's really a beautiful bike."

So is his.  Refinishing it would only make it look new, or newer.  That, I think, is the real beauty of bikes like his.

If We Want Bike Share To Work In New York

The buzz in New York City cycling (and other) circles is about the Bike Share program, which is scheduled to begin by the end of this month.

About 300 kiosks have been set up; the number is expected to double over the next few years.  Perhaps in response to complaints about them, the kiosks are movable.  In Paris and London, where two of the earliest bike-share programs began, the kiosks were trenched into the ground, making them difficult to maneuver or remove.  The Big Apple instead took its construction cues from Montreal, where the kiosks are anchored by nothing more than their own weight. Thus, spaces can be moved or removed for construction or emergencies.

Commuter at Capital Bikeshare kiosk in Washington, DC. From Velojoy

Some people questioned the wisdom of adding so many more bikes to the city's streets.  I, for one, think questions should have been directed at the idea of trying to shoehorn as many motorized vehicles as possible into the city's streets--which seemed to be the Department of Transportation's guiding policy for decades.  It's not the number of bikes on the street that increases the risk of injury or death, as some allege.

Such critics point to the three cyclists who were killed during Velib's first year of operation in the City of Light.  Rather than to blame a bike-share program--for, essentially, getting people to abandon their pre-Velib modes of transportation--more attention needs to be paid to the conditions in which urban cyclists ride.

Just as Parisian cyclists learned about the dangers of turning trucks, truck drivers learned to pay more attention to cyclists--and to warn them about "blind spots."  After three years of cycling in Paris and three decades in New York, as well as riding elsewhere, I honestly believe that most truck drivers are courteous and do their best to drive as safely as possible.  At least, that has been my experience with them.  (I'll admit that my view might be colored by the fact that relatives of mine have driven for a living.)  However, it doesn't hurt to remind them that they share the streets with cyclists and that sometimes they are steering their big rigs across the paths of bike lanes.  

The Department of Transportation--and, sadly, local bike-advocacy organizations like Transportation Alternatives--have never done that.  Rather, they have focused their efforts to cautioning cyclists about the dangers trucks pose to them. While such warnings are justified and useful, I think the other side of the story must be presented.

Also, having cycled in London, Boston and Montreal (all of which now have bike-share programs), as well as Paris, New York and other cities, I can say that my hometown has some of the worst street conditions in the developed world.  One of the running jokes is that some potholes have their own ZIP Codes; some in the tonier neighborhoods have elevators and concierge service.  Seriously, I have seen cyclists lose their balance and even fall because they were rattled and bounced on road surfaces that are more lunar than terrestrial. In one instance, a woman's front wheel was caught in a pothole when she dodged an opening car door. Fortunately, she suffered nothing worse than a few scrapes and a couple of bruises.

So, while I applaud the Bike Share program, I still think that the Department of Transportation need to look at what else other cities did--whether in education, infrastructure repairs or other areas--as they implemented their bike share programs.  Otherwise, the program will have a similar effect to the construction of bike lanes:  It might get more people to ride, but it won't make for a safer, let alone more bike-friendly,environment.

CycloFemme In Ottawa

Here's something I wish I'd known about sooner:

Today, a new ride is taking place in Ottawa to honor Global Women's Cycling Day, or CycloFemme.

Rides and other events to honor this day--which also happens to be Mother's Day in the US. (Yes, I called my mother!)  Today's ride is the first such event for the Canadian capital.

According to the announcement, women of all ages and cycling abilities are welcome.  And there's no entrance fee. What's not to like?

I've never cycled in Ottawa, but I hear that an active cycling community has developed there.  Given what I experienced when cycling in another Canadian bilingual city--Montreal--I wouldn't be surprised.

A Devil Of A Commute In The City Of Saints

Those of us who commute by bicycle during the winter take (justifiable, I believe) pride in pedaling through cold, wind and, in some cases, snow.

I respect any year-round cyclist in any climate with variable seasons.  However, I'll admit to feeling a bit more hardcore than someone who rides year-round in, say, Portland or Los Angeles.  At the same time, I give "props" to year-round riders in Boston and points north, and in most European countries.

On the other hand, most of us have nothing on winter commuters in Montreal.  On one of my visits there, I read or heard that the 'burg Mark Twain dubbed "the city of a hundred bell towers" spends more on snow removal than any other city except Moscow.

Whether or not there's snow on the ground, it gets plenty cold in The City Of Saints.  One young man used a helmet cam to record his commute on a day when the mercury stood at -25C (-13F).  Here is the video he produced:

Allez Eddie!

If you were following bike racing in 1974, when this photo was taken, you'd know that the racer in front is none other than Eddy Mercx.  I mean, who else had muscles like that in his legs?


Now, the question:  Was this photo taken in le Tour de France, which he won that year?


Well, from what I'm told, the fans were shouting "Allez! Allez!" to Eddy.  That would probably rule out le Tour, as French cycling fans actually weren't very fond of him.  


So let's see...Where else would people have been shouting 'Allez!  Allez!" ?  Specifically, where would they be directing it at Eddy?


Hmm...His home country of Belgium, possibly?  Of course, it would mean the race was in Wallonia, or possibly around Brussels, which is a bilingual city.  Either one is a possiblity:  He seems to have been popular in those areas, though not as well-loved in his home region of Flanders.


Switzerland is a possiblity.  After all, there's a mountain in the background.  And, he seems to have been more popular in the Francophone Helvetian provinces than he was in France.  


We could rule out the French-speaking African countries, as Eddy never raced them.  Ditto for French Guiana and the departements in the Caribbean.  


Saint Pierre and Miquelon?  We're getting closer:  At least we're on the right continent (more or less).  If we go a few hundred miles west, we come to a city whose flag is a white field with a clover, thistle, rose and fleur-de-lys.


You guessed it :  Montreal.  A few weeks after his fifth (and final) Tour de France victory, Eddy won the first World Professional Championship held in North America.  In the photo, he's ascending Mount Royal (for which the city is named), a climb he described as one of the most difficult of his career.

Now that we've placed it geographically, there are a few clues that tell us that the photo was indeed taken in 1974.  One, of course, is that Eddy is still young.  Also, the bike he's riding is a give-away.  But most important of all, in my opinion, are the clothes of a fan near him.  I mean, he wouldn't have gotten away with wearing them--especially those pants!--a year or two earlier or later.  

A Long And Restful Sleep

I didn't post last night because I got home dead-tired and fell asleep not long after walking through the door.


Thursday is my longest day of the week, work-wise.  And I did it on about half as much sleep as I'd planned.  Plus, it seemed, everyone--and I'm not talking only about my students--had some pressing issue, question or need.   Sometimes there are just days like that.


Riding from home to my main job, to my second job and home again, I felt surprisingly fluid.  Yes, I felt as if my legs were just flowing through each pedal stroke.  And I felt even more surprisingly strong, considering how little riding I've done since Christmas.  So what made me feel so tired when I got home?


Perhaps it had to do, at least in part, that I rode a bit more than I'd planned.  On my way home, I decided to ride a bike/pedestrian path along the southern edge of Kissena Park.  Close as it is to my commute, and other rides I do, I hadn't ridden there in a very long time.    So my memory of it was faulty, to say the least.  As I result, I made a wrong turn coming out of it.  Then I made another wrong turn. And another. 


My errance (Is that the noun form of "errant?") took me, among other places, around the perimeter of a cemetery.  And it was dark.  That, of course, is not an aid to someone who is a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus and inherited his navigational skills.  Well, OK, I may not be the great-great-great-great-whatever of CC.  But you get the idea.


One thing I wasn't going to do was to sleep in that cemetery.    For starters, it was very cold and windy.  More to the point, nobody ever plans to do such a thing.  At least, I didn't the one time I did it.


It happened back in the days before my first ATM card.  I didn't have any credit cards then, either.  I didn't buy traveler's checks, as I had done for my first European tour a couple of years earlier.  So all I had was cash.  And I was almost out of it the night I rested under the stars in a graveyard.


I knew that I was in New York State, somewhere near the point where its borders with Massachusetts and Connecticut meet.  I knew that because I crossed, during the course of that day's ride, from Massachusetts into Connecticut before seeing a sign that read "Welcome to the Empire State," or something like that.  


It was, as I recall, the fourth day of a ride I took from Montreal to New Jersey.  I'd carried a sleeping bag with me, which I didn't use until that night.  The day was hot, though not humid, which is unusual in most of the Eastern United States. I was tired: As young as I was, riding more than 80 miles with a load (small as it was) through a hilly area was a lot for one day.  


Most people's navigational skills decrease as they grow weary.  When your skills are like mine, they shrink into non-existence at times like that night.  If someone had told me there was a hostel or some other place fifteen feet in a straight line in front of me, I probably wouldn't have found it. 


Tired, broke (almost, anyway) and lost.  What did I do?  I rolled out my sleeping bag.  At least the night was clear and full of stars, with absolutely no threat of rain.  And it was quiet.  Very quiet.  But I was too tired to be disconcerted by anything, so I fell asleep almost as soon as I got into my bag.


I had a very long and restful sleep, as I had last night.

Crossing Another State Line From Memory

Is Arielle inspiring wanderlust in me?  Or does she have it all on her own, and does she merely take me along for the ride?

Today we crossed another state line.  So that makes two-- Pennsylvania two weeks ago, when I rode to the Delaware Water Gap, and Connecticut today—since my surgery.

Going to New Jersey doesn’t count.  Not really.  Or does it?  We New Yorkers sometimes say that Jersey is a foreign country.  I wonder whether the Brits say that about the eponymous island in the English Channel.  Although it’s a semi-independent part of Great Britain, it’s actually much closer to France and has a language--Jerriais-- that bears more resemblance to French than it does to English.

Then again, lots of people would like to think of anyplace where Snooki would live as a country different from their own. Otherwise, they’d start campaigns to deport her.

Anyway, I started my ride by crossing the RFK Memorial (nee Triboro) Bridge to Randall’s Island and the Bronx, through neighborhoods where women don’t ride bikes.  I made a wrong turn somewhere north of Fordham Road and ended up on a highway and riding a square around the perimeter of the Botanical Gardens.  From there, I managed to find my way to Westchester County.

For someone who lives in New York, I really don’t spend much time in Westchester County.  Occasionally a ride will take me to Yonkers or Mount Vernon, both of which are just over the city line from the Bronx.  But I never have felt much inclination to explore the rest of the county.

Part of the reason might be that my first experience of cycling in Westchester County came the year after I came back from living in France.  That in itself can make Westchester, and lots of places, seem like a comedown.  (I think now of the time I ate a particularly bad take-out dinner the day after returning from a cycling trip through the Pyrenees and the Loire Valley!) But I first entered Westchester County on a bike near the end of a cycling trip from Montreal to New Jersey, where I was living at the time.  I had cycled through some nice Quebec countryside, the Vermont shore of Lake Champlain and the Berkshires before entering New York State near the point where it borders on Massachusetts and Connecticut. 

That night, I slept in a cemetery that was in or near the town of Austerlitz, NY.  It was a clear, moonlit and pleasantly cool evening.  I had no idea (and wouldn’t find out until the next day) where I was, and I had almost no money left.  So I simply rolled out my sleeping bag.   I slept fine:  There was absolutely nothing to disturb me.  And I guess I was a good neighbor.

After all that, Westchester County seemed like just a place with lots of big houses and lawns and a bunch of golf courses.  It wasn’t bad; it was just a bit of a letdown, I guess.

Later, Westchester would become the place where friends of Eva, Elizabeth and Tammy lived.  And all of those friends didn’t like me, or so it seemed.  Going to their homes felt a bit like going to the in-laws’ or to a relative of one of your parents—and that relative didn’t like your other parent, and saw you as his/her child.

Fortunately, I didn’t think about any of those things today.  I didn’t see as many houses that seemed like ostentatious versions of houses the owners saw on their European trips as I recall seeing in previous treks through the county.  And, when I stopped in a gas station/convenience store for a bottle of iced tea, I saw the friendliest and most polite attendant I have seen in a long time.  He’s from Liberia.

I hadn’t started out with the intention of going to Connecticut.  But after stopping at the gas station/convenience store, I realized that I wasn’t far from the Mamaroneck harbor.  So I rode there, along a fairly meandering road where two drivers pulled over to ask me whether I knew how to get to the Westchester Mall.  It’s funny:  People assume that because you’re on a bike, you live nearby and are familiar with the area.

From Mamaroneck, I took another road that zigged and zagged toward and away from the shore of Long Island Sound to Rye.  There, I knew that I wasn’t far from Connecticut, so I continued along the road to Port Chester, the last town before the border.

I only took a few photos, and none of them came out well.  But that part of the ride was pleasant, even charming at times.  Then, after crossing the state line, I ventured up the road into downtown Greenwich.  I’d have gone further, but I started later than I intended to and didn’t particularly want to ride the last few miles of my trip in the dark.  I’m not adverse to night riding; I just didn’t feel like doing it tonight.

In Greenwich, about half a mile from the state line, there’s an Acura dealer.  Just up the road from it is an Aston Martin/Bentley dealer, and a bit further up the road are a BMW, then a Mercedes, dealership.  So, I’m guessing that the annual per-capita income of that town is probably not much less than I’ve made in my entire life.

On my way back, I rode down Huguenot Avenue.  It’s in Little Rock.  Actually, it’s in  New Rochelle, a town founded by the people for whom the avenue is named. (The town is named for La Rochelle, the French port from which most of them sailed.  “Rochelle” means “little rock.”)  If any of you recall The Dick Van Dyke show, which featured a young Mary Tyler Moore, you’re old.  Seriously, you might remember that the show took place in New Rochelle.  The town has changed a bit since then, as you can see from new structures like this:

It connects the local Trump Tower (How many of those things are there?) with another building on the other side of the Avenue.  I wonder whether cyclists are allowed to ride in it.