I suppose we should be grateful any time a town installs a bicycle parking rack. And we should thank whoever donated the funds for it.
Still, this one left me wondering, "What were they thinking?"
A special bike parking rack was unveiled the other day, for Valentine's Day. It's red, which is appropriate enough. And I can understand the wish to use the unveiling to celebrate some aspect of the town's history.
But I think there's something a bit incongruous, to say the least, about putting an image of an oil rig on the bike.
Maybe I shouldn't complain too loudly. After all, cycling, like the arts, have been used to glorify or sell all sorts of things that haven't been good for the planet, or the spirit. The Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone?
He was a young guy, in really good shape. She was the attractive young woman who dated him...though, not for very long.
So what, exactly, was the "deal breaker"? No, one didn't find out the other had a spouse and family in another country--or was an axe-murderer. And no other "dim, dark" secret--like the one that led to my other blog--was revealed.
By now, you've probably guessed that I was telling one of my stories, in third (rather than first) person. So...do you want to know why I broke up with her?
All right...I'll tell you anyway. She wouldn't go bike riding with me. In fact, she wouldn't ride a bike, period.
OK. This is nothing new. I'm sure some of you are, or have been, in relationships with people who don't want to get on the saddle and pedal. Perhaps you, too, ended a relationship with a person for that reason. Or, maybe, you've found a way to accomodate your differences: You go for your rides while your beloved does something else. Afterward, you wine and dine together and, to burn up those calories, engage in another kind of physical activity--one that generates more wattage than a dynohub and LED headlamp! ;-)
Now, being as young as I was, I had almost no concept of compromise and no skills in mediation. (I still don't have much of either, I'm afraid.) So there was simply no way I could come up with a solution--even to keep such an attractive young woman at my side and keep up the appearance of being a macho heterosexual male.
But even if I were more adept at the art of negotiation, I wouldn't have wanted to come up with a way to keep us together. You see, what really bothered me was the reason she wouldn't ride: She was afraid that it would mess up her hair.
I kid you not. (When was the last time you heard that?) She always kept herself perfectly coiffed. (Later, another partner would keep me perfectly cuffed.;-)) Of course, when I met her, that was one of the first things I noticed: her nearly perfect chestnut mane. Still, I told myself, it was entirely frivoulous and pointless (I actually used to say things like that to myself!) to devote so much of one's attention to such a thing--and to deny one's self other pleasures and experiences in the service of such devotion.
Now, many years (decades, actually) later, I can say this: I wanted her hair. And I wanted permission to be so fussy about it! Yes, I was jealous.
Anyway, I hadn't thought about her, or the story I've recounted in a long time--until I saw this:
If you don't live in or around Roanoke, Virginia, you might not know that such a rack was actually built. Its creators--the design team of the Knowhow Shop--say it was inspired by this question: "What would I lock my bike to if I were really small?"
I wonder whether any of them had a girlfriend who wouldn't ride because she was afraid that it would mess her hair.
Last week, when I encountered the full bike racks at my part-time gig, I didn't have a camera. Well, today I brought my camera with me on my ride to work and...the racks were full again. Many of the same bikes I saw last week were there. But there were a couple of interesting ones that weren't there before, like this Pinarello cyclo-cross bike:
I certainly can do without that color: It just screams "1980's." (It just screams, period.) But it is otherwise a nice old-school European lugged steel bike.
Notice the low-rider pannier carrier on the front. I believe that for touring, the best thing besides a full touring or randonneur/audax bike might be a cyclo-cross bike. They usually have enough clearance for wider-than-normal road tires and fenders. Plus, they often have cantilever brakes, as this bike has.
That Pinarello is a far cry from my LeTour.
I was able to park it only by doing what I did last week: I emptied and folded my rear baskets in, which allowed me to fit the bike inside the inverted "U" shaped rack.
Campus security wants cyclists to park only in the designated bike areas. I asked someone why there aren't more racks. "Most days, it's not like this," he said. "The weather's nice today," he explained.
The good news, other than the fact that there are so many racks, is that they're close to the campus security station.
At the end of the day, I took a spin over to Fort Totten, which has become one of my favorite parks and bike-pedestrian trails in the city. As it was a warm, clear day, a lot of people were there. So it wasn't hard to find someone to take a photo of me.
So...a full day of teaching and about 30 miles of cycling, in total. When I got home, I indulged myself with a platter from the King of Felafel and Shawarma. Yum!
And now Charlie and Max are calling. At the end of a full day that included a full bike rack.
