Not The Way To Deal With A Flat Tire

 

In Ladri di Biciclette—known in the English-speaking world as “Bicycle Thieves” or “The Bicycle Thief”—protagonist Antonio Ricci’s bicycle, which he needs in order to do his job, is stolen.  After a futile search, he sees an unattended bicycle and jumps on it. 

Of course, there is even more to the story. But if there is a “point,” it may be that conventional morality breaks down when people are desperate, as Antonio and so many other people were in war-ravaged Rome. That is a reason why I and many other viewers have felt some sympathy for him that we wouldn’t feel for other bike thieves.

Then again, most bike thieves don’t have a motive nearly as laudable, or at least socially acceptable, as that of Antonio, who is simply trying to feed his family. Most thieves’ goal is to sell the bike or its parts, locally or abroad, whether for themselves or a ring or gang in which they work.

Then there is the fellow in New Zealand who saw an unlocked bike in front of a supermarket and took off on it.

Why?  Because his own bike got a flat tire.

Matthew Gallatly has since pleaded guilty and been sentenced to community service and to pay for the insurance excess. The judge lauded him for owning up to his misdeed but said there is “no excuse” for it.

Will She Ride Home?

Today I read a news story that made me think of someone about whom I wrote two years ago.

Then I opened my page for this blog and found that someone had left a new comment on that post.

The subject of that post was Mary Jane "Miji" Reoch, arguably the first of a generation of American female cyclists that would dominate their field during the 1970s and 1980s--and put the US on the world's racing map for the first time since the era of the six-day races.

So what brought her to mind?  Well, it was something a political figure in New Zealand did four decades after "Miji."

Well, they've both won races. Except that the ones Julie Anne Genter weren't in the peloton, or on the track or singletrack.  Rather, the races she won were decided in voting booths and ballot boxes.

Now, when I say "won", I don't mean it in the way one wins a head-to-head election in the US.  Instead, as I understand, in New Zealand's system, members of parliament are elected from lists of candidates and the ones with the most votes gain parliamentary seats.  Some of them, anyway:  Some seats are awarded proportionally by parties (New Zealanders get two votes, one for a candidate and one for a party.) and a few seats are reserved for Maori residents.

So, you can say that she won the right to become a member of Parliament, a post she holds along with those of Minister for Women as well as Associate Minister for Health and Associate Minister for Transport. All of that, one imagines, wouldn't leave her much time to train. But, still, she cycles---which brings me to what she has in common with Miji.

Well, they both continued to ride during their pregnancies.  In Miji's time, doctors were still counseling pregnant women to forego all physical activity, so continuing her training regimen was still fairly radical in the 1970s.  Today, of course, doctors are more likely to encourage pregnant women to exercise as much as they can, even if they have to modify whatever regiments they followed before.

Which brings me to something that was considered really "far-out" (to use a '70's expression) in Miji's time, and is still seen as fairly unusual today: Both women rode their bikes to the hospital where they would deliver their newborns. Yesterday, Julie Anne, who is 42 weeks pregnant, arrived at the Auckland hospital where she will be induced.  Once her child arrives, she will become the second New Zealand government official to give birth this year, following Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in June.

Oh, I can offer one other cycling-related connection between Miji and Julie Anne:  They were both modest about cycling to their deliveries.  The New Zealander demurred that her route was "mostly downhill."  Donald Huschle, who left the comment on my post about Miji, recalled that, whenever anyone mentioned her ride to the delivery room, she would point out, "Well, I didn't ride home."

Now, if Julie Anne Genter--who was born and raised in the USA--can ride home, she'll've done something neither Miji nor Jacinda did.  As if she hasn't already done enough things that most people don't do!

A New Zealander Gets It

I found it interesting to read this New Zealander's take on cycling in New York City.

Author Stephen Lacey came before the launch of the Bike Share program, but he identifies some of the things that will be necessary to its success--and to make New York a more generally bike-friendly city.

The greatest hazard, he says, are pedestrians.  The problem is that they sometimes wander into bikelanes or try to cross them at mid-block. Also, runners as well as skateboarders and rollerbladers often use bike lanes as their tracks, where they indiscriminately step, turn or flip in front of cyclists who have no room to maneuver.

He attributes this state of affairs to something I've mentioned on other posts in this blog: the lack of what I like to call "the human infrastructure" of cycling.  We can build all of the lanes we want and expand bike share programs, but they won't make this or any other city more hospitable for cyclists if pedestrians, drivers and others who share public spaces aren't aware of, or choose to disregard, cyclists.  That awareness and courtesy is the real difference, I believe, between the more bike-friendly capitals of Europe and cities like New York. 

Finally, Lacey noticed another difference that I have also seen as a result of having traveled:  New York cyclists, he says, don't have the "cafe culture" that cyclists in his home country (and, I've noticed, much of Europe) enjoy.  "We didn't see any road riders meeting in groovy espresso shops in Manhattan or Brooklyn for an apres-ride caffeine fix, " he says.  

While there are a few bike shops that include coffee and snack bars, and some "groovy" cafes that try to attract and accommodate cyclists, I think he's right in noticing that there isn't a culture around such things, just as people don't grow up with an awareness of how to interact with bicycles.  

Hmm...Could having more cycle cafes--or more cyclists congregating in cafes--be the thing we need to create a human infrastructure of cycling?