From Men In Black To The World In Pink

For me, Flushing Meadow-Corona Park brings back memories of the World's Fair, which I visited with my family when I was about six years old.

For you, it might be associated with one of the most popular movies of all time:  Men In Black.  I saw and enjoyed it, too, but those early memories and associations never leave us, or so it seems.

Nonetheless, I will grant that I think of MIB, especially with the 25th anniversary of its release imminent. In the movie,  the mothership crashes through the Unisphere, the large globe sculpture that has become an emblem of Queens, "the world's borough."  (It's said to be the most linguistically and culturally diverse county in the U.S.)  

I would bet that the Men In Black never envisioned a World In Pink.

I stopped by the park the other day, during a ride out to Nassau County, down to the South Shore and up to the North.  A couple of years ago, on that very same piece of land, I saw a bloom of cherry blossoms that rivals any other I've seen.  If I recall correctly, it was around the third week, or possibly near the end of, this month.  Still, when I saw the trees the other day, their buds had bloomed enough to color the world in a way that, I believe, even the Men In Black would appreciate.

A Detour From The Worlds' Fairs

Just recently, the Big Apple (a.k.a. my hometown) celebrated the 75th and 50th Anniversaries of its most recent Worlds' Fairs.  (It also hosted one of the earliest Fairs, in 1853.)  As I have mentioned in one of my earliest posts, I attended the 1964 Fair with my family when I was--well, let's say I was very young.  Very, very young.


 

I'd love to say that my family and I rode there together.  Well, my parents were like about 99.99 percent of American adults of the time in that they didn't ride bikes.  And of the Valinotti children, I was the only one who had graduated from tricycles.  I think my youngest brother was only a few months old when we went to the Fair.

But someone named Jay Kenney rode there. In fact, he pedaled about 1300 miles to get there:  He started in Richfield, Minnesota, with a group of cyclists about his age (16 at the time) on an American Youth Hostels tour.

I stumbled over his photo album when I was researching something else about the Worlds' Fairs.  But it made my day.  This photo--of the Ludington Light in Michigan--was worth the "detour".



Now, what was I researching again?

A World of Bike Dreams

You've probably heard this joke:   

There are two kinds of people in this world:  Those who categorize people and those who don't.

Well, I haven't met very many people who don't fall into the second category, at least some of the time.  And I am as guilty as anyone of dividing people into categories.  I often do that when I teach, especially when I tell my students that there are basically two kinds of people in the world:  dreamers and schemers.  Very few of us are purely one or the other, but most of us tend toward one or the other.  And, of course, it's very important to know what you tend to, and to find someone else with the opposite tendency.  As if I know how to make a relationship work!

So what are cyclists?  I guess the ones who ride because it's cheaper than driving or using mass transit are schemers, or at least pragmatic people.  And those who do it as a release or escape are most likely dreamers of some kind.

Well, I know which one I am.  Perhaps my condition is genetic.  But I think it also has to do with having seen this very early in my life:

The Unisphere was the centerpiece of the 1964-65 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows Park, which is about six miles from where I live.  My family and I went to the Fair when I was about seven years old.  My youngest brother was born only a few months earlier.

Years later, when I was an undergraduate at Rutgers, I rode in one of the early Five Boro Bike Tours.  At the end of the ride,  a man whom I never saw again invited me to join a couple of other guys and a woman I never saw again for some post-Tour beer.  From Manhattan, where the tour started and ended, we rode across the Queensboro (a.k.a. 59th Street) Bridge to Woodside, a neighborhood that probably had, at the time, the greatest concentration of Irish people--and Irish bars--outside Dublin.  

Back then, my hair was redder than it is now and I think that I'd first grown a beard around that time.  Also, if I recall correctly, I wore a stovepipe hat.  Back in those days, few cyclists wore helmets (which were the useless "leather hairnet" variety), so unless the weather was very hot,  I wore my stovepipe hat or my beret when I rode.  I don't recall why I chose the stovepipe hat on the day of the Tour.

Anyway, a couple of the bar patrons adopted me for the day and, after staying somewhere I can't recall,  we spent much of the following day riding in circles around the Unisphere when we weren't emptying bottles of beer that were much better than any other I'd drunk up to that time in my life.

That, I must say, is a long way--in spirit if not in distance--from my ride today:

Yes, I was test-riding the Le Tour III.  If you saw my previous photos of it, you'll notice one difference:  the Wald fold-up baskets in the rear.  I haven't used them yet, but they look like a good design--and that they would be bombproof.  

Naturally, I had to do a test-ride in a dress or skirt, as I plan to use the bike for commuting.  As it was hot today, I opted for a sun dress.  And I wasn't wearing high heels:  Instead, I wore wedge sandals.  Still, I felt I was close to "real life" commuting conditions, at least for me.  

The bike is "almost there."  I've adjusted the seat and bars to comfortable positons.  I'm still not sure of whether I'll add a front basket.  I like to keep my purse in it when I ride.  But I really don't like to put much more in them, as weight on handlebars affects steering.  (Of course, I didn't say that to the dancer I once escorted on my Cinelli Giro d'Italias through the streets of Soho!)  Plus, I haven't had the best of luck with baskets:  I've broken a couple of wicker ones and a "quick release" version did exactly that as my wheels bounced along a street in an industrial area of Maspeth.  Maybe I'll get a small basket that attaches with a brace to the front dropout.

OK, so I'm being practical--a schemer.  But can one be called a schemer if her real purpose is to enable a dreamer?