Why You Need To Read About The Paris Sewer System

So why am I beginning this post with a photo of a house in France most Americans have never seen?

Well, if you've been reading this blog long enough, you know that I'm a bit of a Francophile.  Yes, just a little bit.  One way you know that I'm American is that I am also something of an Anglophile and see no contradiction!

Anyway, the house is in a French city most foreigners (except, perhaps, from neighboring countries) never visit.  That's a shame, really, because it reveals so much about France that people don't experience during the three or four das they spend in Paris as part of their European trips.

You can probably guess one reason I included the photo:  I have cycled to that house.  And to this one:

Now, that's one tourists are more likely to see.  It's in Paris, on one of the city's most elegant squares, the Place des Vosges.  There's a nice little park in the middle of the square where Parisians take lunch breaks or walk their dogs or kids, or just loll around on the grass.  And folks like me ride or walk there, baguette and hunk of cheese in hand.  

One great thing about the Place des Vosges is that it's next to one of the most historic parts of Paris--le Marais--and literally steps from all sorts of interesting museums, galleries and shops.

Anyway, the house in Besancon and the one in Paris share something:  specifically, someone who lived in them.

I'll give you a hint:  He wrote the novel more people know about without actually having read.  In the English-speaking world that has much to do with a musical--a musical!--made out of that novel.  You may have seen it.

That novel is, of course, Les Miserables, written by none other than Victor Hugo.

Just as more people know about Les Miserables than any other novel without having read it, more people lie about having read Moby Dick than any other novel.  Now I'm going to tell you a secret:  If you're ever at a dinner party with a bunch of snotty pseudo-intellectuals, you can more or less bluff your way through a discussion of MD if you've read Old Man and the Sea! 

But I digress.  No, it's not really a digression:  It's part of what I'm going to say, just like all of those hundred-page long asides about the Paris sewer system or whaling in New England are integral to LM and MD, respectively.

You see, such seeming digressions are part of some of the best bike rides.  You might start with a destination in mind or that you are simply going to ride a certain distance or amount of time.  Unless you're riding strictly for training purposes, the parts of the ride you'll remember are the things you encountered along the way.


In the case of Besancon, I found myself there because of a challenge.  In the summer of 1997, I bought a round-trip ticket to Paris--with a return date of a month after my departure--and brought my bicycle, among other things.  I had no particular plan except to visit my friends in Paris and get on my bike. In those days, I used to take trips like that, staying in hostels or pensiones--or simply rolling out my sleeping bag--wherever I found myself when I stopped riding for the day.

I was talking to Jay and Isabelle, whom I've mentioned in other posts, when Isabelle asked, "Ou n'avais pas visite en France?"  As I tried to think of some place in France where I hadn't been, Jay blurted "Alpes"!

"Les Alpes?" Even though I understood perfectly well, I just had to make sure.

They both nodded. So did I.

And so I pedaled south and east from Paris.  That is how I found myself, five days later (spending days in Troyes and Chaumont) in Besancon, on the edge of the Jura mountains, which are a kind of sub-range of the Alps.  A few days after that I was in Chamonix and hiked up part of Mont Blanc.

Anyway, Victor Hugo was born in the house in Besancon.  That house, amazingly enough, is in a square that also contains the houses in which painter Gustave Courbet, writer Charles Nodier and the Lumiere brothers--considered the "fathers" of cinema--were born!

And, of course, I've cycled (and walked) to the Hugo house on Place des Vosges any number of times during my stays in Paris.

So why am I thinking about Victor Hugo now?  Turns out, on this date in 1862, he completed Les Miserables.  It was published soon after and became popular with soldiers on both sides of the US Civil War.  "I've been reading Hugo's account of Waterloo in Les Miserables and preparing my mind for something of the same sort," wrote Wilky James of the Massachusetts Free Black Regiment in 1863.  "God grant the battle may do as much harm to the rebels as Waterloo did to the French."

The funny thing is that the sections about Waterloo--and the Paris sewer system--are what got the novel both praised and lambasted.  But Les Miserables could no more exist without them than Moby Dick could without al the stuff about New England whaling practices--or our favorite ride without whatever you encountered along the way.

Into The Hole--On A Sugar Rush And Killer Bread!

After the torrential downpours (I could barely see past my window!) on Monday, we've had two days of glorious, sunny weather.  It was warm, but not overly humid, with little wind--except in one part of today's ride:

I saw this same puddle/pond/wetland back in February:

Now, it wasn't my destination.  I just hopped on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, and zigzagged through some side streets between my apartment and Howard Beach.  One of them dead-ended on top of a hill or mound, from which I had a view of the turbid body of water:

It looks to be the same size, shape and depth I saw four months ago.  A group of people--I assumed them to be a family because they were a man, a woman and two young children--were breaking up some concrete and dirt in front of a battered house.  They surprised me with their "hello's"; soon after, a man driving an old BMW eyed me suspiciously.  

But another man, seemed to study me from the trailer colony across the pond, decided (correctly) that I'm not any sort of official and gave me a smile.

The last time I saw this place, I could've sworn a wind blew that I didn't feel before I arrived or after I left.  Today, I had the same sensation.  In fact, I was even more sure of that wind, as it flickered my hair and braced against my bare arms and legs.  The last time I rode down that way, my arms and legs were covered.

Hmm...Could it be that The Hole has its own microclimate?

If what I saw in The Hole was an incongruity or a riddle, something else I saw along the way was a joke:

I looked for the driver of this truck.  I really wanted to ask whether Dave's Killer Organic Bread--which I had never heard of until I saw that truck--was actually being delivered in the same vehicle as Tastykakes.

Perhaps one day I'll try Dave's Killer Bread and, if I survive the experience, tell you about it!  It's organic, so I suppose I'll live through it.  On the other hand, KandyKakes--especially a version they made with chocolate cake and peanut butter--was one of my favorite sugar rushes when I was a little kid.  I liked those butterscotch crimpets, too. 

 Later, when I was riding with a bunch of guys who pedaled hard and treated themselves with, um, non-prescription painkillers, I became an aficionado of Tastykake fruit pies.  I loved their cherry and blueberry pies; I probably would like them today, too, as those are my favorite pies (along with strawberry rhubarb--but, as far as I know, Tastykake has never made that!).  But my favorite--again, for its sugar rush, was their Glazed French Apple.

Of course, Tastykake Glazed French Apple pie is about as French as that bottled bright orange salad dressing sold in big-box stores.  The French aren't shy about sweet flavors, but I don't think they could come up with a sugarbomb like Tastykake Glazed French Apple Pie even if they wanted to.

Although I haven't eaten it in years, I'm still getting a sugar rush from thinking about it.  The apple filling, sugary to begin with, was further sweetened by raisins and I-don't-know-what-else.  And it was topped by a thick strip of that white icing that makes Twinkie fillings seem like grapefruit.

It looks like Tastykake's current French Apple Pie isn't glazed.  Still, I'm sure it would provide quite the sugar rush--maybe almost as intense as a glazed Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tart!

Maybe those Pop Tarts are delivered in the same trucks as Laughing Giraffe Cherry Ginger Granola. (With a name like that, I simply must try it!)

Review Of A New Bridge

No one will ever confuse Review Avenue in Long Island City with Route Departmentale 618 or the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon.  

I had only one opportunity to do RD 618 and one other for the iconic California ride because, well, each of them is about 6000 kilometers away (in opposite directions) from my apartment.  Review Avenue, on the other hand, is only about five kilometers away (at least via the routes I take), which is one of the reasons I find myself riding there at least a few times a year.

Although it's gritty, to be polite, it is visually interesting.  There aren't any really tall buildings there, which allows the sky to serve as a kind of diorama backdrop for the street that separates the First Calvary Cemetery Wall from the sooty brick and stone industrial structures.  That same street also looks as if it's going to sneak in under the Kosciuszko Bridge, but it makes a sharp left and leaves that job to the railroad tracks and Newtown Creek instead.

Until a few days ago, the Kosciuszko Bridge was the steel-girdered span that looks like an Erector Set project left out in the rain and soot.  It still is, but it's also that other bridge that looks like it's hanging by red and white shoestrings from a couple of concrete tombstones.  

Talk about "build it and they will come":  The new Kosciuszko is already congested with traffic--and the old bridge hasn't been closed!  A second stringed structure is supposed to be constructed parallel to the current one in two years.  I think cars are already lined up to get across it.

Actually, I rather like the look of the new bridge.  And it's probably easier to drive, especially a truck, across as it doesn't have the old bridge's steep inclines and terrible sight lines.  At the dedication ceremony, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he heard his father--three-term Governor Mario Cuomo--use expletives for the first time when he drove the family across the bridge.

Neither bicycles nor pedestrians were allowed on the old "Kos".  As far as I know, they won't be allowed on the new ones, either.  Then again, the bridges are part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where you wouldn't want to ride even if it were allowed!

The old bridge is falling apart.  But some things endure:

I wonder what Joe was thinking when he painted his name on the wall of the cemetery all of those years ago. (Maybe he's inside it now!) I'd love to know what kind of paint he used:  Anything that could withstand all of the fumes from the factories and trucks, along with the weather, must be pretty durable!

Un Coq Citroen Repair Station

When I was living in France, I did a few things--some of them entirely laughable, in retrospect--to make myself feel as if I had "gone native", if you will.

I didn't wear a beret: I soon discovered that, even then (more than three decades ago) only very old men and clochards wore them--or, at least, the kind they sell to tourists. Some farmers, particularly in the central and southwestern parts of the country, still wore the Basque-style beret, which has a larger diameter "crown" than the berets artists and wannabes perched on their crania when they smoked and sipped away their nights in cafes and bars.

Ironically, I wore berets after I returned to the US.  And I continued a few other habits as a way of asserting my Frenchness, or at least my French influences, in the face of the yahoo-ism of the Reagan and Bush I administrations.

While in France, I purchased and wore a few things that were all but unknown in the US at the time.  One was a wool French (Breton) fisherman's sweater.  It was the genuine article, knit from heavy dark navy wool with cream-colored horizontal stripes and buttons on the left shoulder.  Other Gallic accoutrements I acquired and wore included a sweatsuit, bike jersey and shoes from a company called Le Coq Sportif.

Now you can see the tricolore rooster everywhere.  But in those days, you pretty much had to be in France, or perhaps a neighboring country, (Remember:  There was no Amazon or eBay!)  in order to see, let alone wear, that quintessentially French emblem.

Another thing that could mark you as a French person was driving a Citroen.  Renault was still selling cars in the US; so was Peugeot, but their motorized vehicles weren't nearly as ubiquitous as their bicycles.  For a long time, I resolved that if I were to buy a car or van, it would be a Citroen because, well, you couldn't get anything more French than a vehicle with a chevron badge.

Well, Le Coq Sportif and Chevron have joined forces. The occasion is the 70th anniversary of the Type H van.  If you watch old French films, you've seen those boxy mini-trucks driven by farmers and urban delivery couriers.  You still see them in France.

Since both companies have long associations with bicycle racing in France and other countries, it makes sense that their collaboration would produce this:

It's something else I saw for the first time in France:  a mobile bicycle workshop.  

Vive la France!  I just hope they don't elect their own version of Trump.

How Many Bananas?

Last week, while out for a ride, I stopped at a Halal cart for a falafel.  It got me to thinking about how much the definition of "street food" has changed here in New York.  

In addition to falafel, hummus and those tasty chicken-and rice or lamb-and-rice dishes the Middle Eastern street cooks/vendors offer, it's possible to buy tacos, pizza, curries, waffles, sushi, various kinds of sandwiches, fried chicken, lobster rolls, crepes, salads, meat-on-a-stick and cupcakes as well as familiar fare like ice cream and almost anything based on coffee or tea from various trucks and carts all over the city.

It wasn't so long ago that "street food" in the Big Apple meant "dirty water" hot dogs (with mustard and barbecued onions), knishes and pretzels that were baked dry, then burnt on the hot plates the vendors used to warm them up.

Ruminating about such urban delicacies (as if I don't have better uses for my brain cells!) led me to recall the days when "energy bars" hadn't been invented.  Back then, we carried "trail mix" or other combinations of dried fruits, nuts (and, for some of us, chocolate) as well as other fruits--especially bananas.

In fact, when I was co-editing a club newsletter, we had a five-banana rating system for rides.  The most difficult rides, of course, got five while the easiest rides were marked with only one.

That system would have been entirely useless had someone shown up to ride in this:

From Extreme Mobility

The Price Of Riding Off Into The Sunset

Although I haven't dated anyone in a few years, I have been in more intimate relationships than the Roman Catholic Church (in which I was raised) says a person should have in his or her life.

Of those affairs and partnerships (which include one brief marriage), in only one was I able to share my passion for cycling.  

It was the relationship that ended with my gender transition.  Ironically, she and I had a Domestic Partnership Agreement which, in those days before legal same-sex marriage, was the tightest knot two people of the same gender could tie.  I used to joke that, as a male, I was living the dream of every lesbian of the time:  I shared a nice apartment in Park Slope with an attractive woman.

Even though my transition was what I wanted and need to do, I missed her for a long time.  Some of the best conversations and meals I've ever shared were with her. And, of course, there was the cycling, which included bike tours of the Loire Valley, a week of exploring the Paris region by bike, and day and weekend rides in Vermont, Massachusetts, upstate New York--and the environs of our fair city.

One of the best things, though, was that I didn't have to lie to her when I bought bikes or bike-related equipment.  Part of the reason was that I bought a bike for her and she bought one for me.  So, she knew what bikes, parts and the kit I wore cost.

Had we stayed together, I would not have shared this fear of so many other cyclists:

Tomorrow I will start writing about "serious" cycling topics again.  Really!

Out Front? Or A Fashion Accessory? Or A Human Shield?

If you live any place long enough, you notice changes.  Even if you find yourself with more choices in stores, restaurants or whatever--or if the buildings and parks get fixed up--you'll probably become one of those bitter or cantankerous people who grumbles, "I remember when..."

I'm starting to become one of those people in my current neighborhood of Astoria, Queens.   Before I moved here, I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn for eleven years.  That was long enough for me to see it turn from "Dyke Slope" (The Lesbian Herstory Archives are still located in the neighborhood.) to a colony of affluent young couples who divided their work thusly:  one worked worked on Wall Street or was running a tech startup, the other pushed the kid in a stroller from pre-school to soccer practice or dance lessons while toting a yoga mat (and wearing $100 yoga pants).  

By that time, the joke was that the kids were the fashion accessories.  If you saw the way those parents (yes, some of them were men) pushed their carts, with the kid (or, more precisely, the kid's outfit) prominently displayed, you might think it wasn't a joke.

When some of those parents crossed the street, I really thought some of them might be using the kids as human shields!

I was thinking of them when I came across this bike:

It would be perfect for them, don't you think?

Easy Like Your Sunday Best

Some things never end.

Like the mails and e-mails I get from the alumni associations and foundations of the schools I attended.  I've moved to different states and countries, changed my name and even had mail delivery stopped during a time when I was feeling depressed and hermetic.  About the only thing those schools didn't seem to know is my financial situation:  They hit me up for money, whether or not I have it!

Then there are those mails and e-mails you get from retailers.  You might have bought an inner tube or a beanie ten years ago, but they send you announcements of the sales they always seem to be running.  Some of them spend more trying to sell more to you than you spent in their establishments in the first place!

One such e-mail I received today is trying to get me to buy "discounted" bike jerseys that were way overpriced to begin with.  I had to chuckle at one of those offers, though:  for a Castelli jersey called "Sunday Best".

Growing up in blue-collar Italian-American Brooklyn and New Jersey, I never heard the term.  It still sounds vaguely WASP-y to me.  So, perhaps, it's no surprise that the jersey looks like this:

If that jersey has anything to do with Sunday, the design makes me think of the Episcopal Church--which, according to Robin Williams (who grew up in it), offers all of the ceremony of the Roman Catholic Church (in which I grew up) with half of the guilt.

When I attended Catholic school, we wore our school uniforms to church.  After my family moved to New Jersey, dress codes relaxed and most of us didn't have a "best" outfit for church:  We just cleaned ourselves up and made ourselves more or less presentable.  For most of my adult life, I haven't attended church and when I go to any sort of social function, it's usually with people who don't care about what I look like.  If I wear a skirt or a tailored pair of pants, most people I know would say I'm "dressed up", though my attire might not be most people's idea of "Sunday Best."

Ironically, through all of those years I was racing or just riding with racers (or "wannabes"), my "Sunday Best" included bike kit.  Most of us took long or "fun" rides on the Lord's Day.  Or we might join organized rides, such as the one a bunch of us used to take from Brooklyn to New Hope, PA and back.  On such rides, I used to wear my "best" (or, at least, favorite) jersey or outfit.  

These days, I don't wear cycle-specific clothing, except for gloves.  So my "Sunday Best" is whatever I happen to be wearing when I'm riding on the second day of the weekend.

Now, if I'd lived another life, my "Sunday Best" might look like this:

Although I Couldn't See All Of The Statues, The Ride Wasn't A Bust

Today I cycled to a place where I shed tears whenever I visit.  Yes, on purpose.





 

 

For those of you who have never met me in person, I'm going to share a little secret:  I cry, sometimes in embarrassing, if not inappropriate, situations.  More than once, tears have rolled down my cheeks when I've shared a particularly beautiful piece of writing--like Caliban's "The Isle Is Full of Noises" soliloquy in The Tempest--or when some sense-memory overtakes me.  I can also cry with and for another person, as well as for myself. 

 

So where, you may ask, is this place in Paris that opens up my lacrimal duct?





 

He's at the "gate", so to speak.



That bust, and the statue before it, are studies that became part of Porte d'Enfer by Auguste Rodin.  I went to the museum that houses most of his work.

 The only problem was, the main collection was closed.  So was most  of the rest of the museum.  To be fair, the Hotel Biron, at 77 rue Varenne, has been in need of repairs.  And, as with any museum, ventilation systems and other infrastructure need to be repaired and replaced in order to keep the artist's works from deterioration and other damage.

 

 C'est une injustice! I exclaimed to the guide when she explained the situation.  "J'ai venue d'amerique", I told her, to see Le Baiser, Le Penseur and--my favorite objet d' art--Je suis belle. 

 

 

Thinking about....?

From the day I first encountered photos of those works in an art history class I took as an undergraduate, Rodin has spoken to me, moved me, in ways that only three or four other artists, in any medium, ever have.  For me, seeing the ways he could draw out despair, courage, empathy, isolation, inspiration and so much more--sometimes all in the same work--in such static materials as stone and metal has been a sort of guidebook to the soul.  He doesn't merely  render, express or depict emotions; he makes his materials a conduit for la force vitale.  To me, the only other Western sculptor who did anything like that is Michelangelo.

Sometimes, in museums, I see.  Or I might think, or feel, or simply enjoy.  When I am in the presence of Rodin's works, in his milieu, I live.  You might say it's like  at least for me.

Anyway, the museum is apparently building a new wing as they renovate the old space, and are going to exhibit the works in new ways.  I hope that the newly-restored museum doesn't sacrifice too much of the intimacy of the old one and become another big building full of glass boxes that hermetically seal the artist's works away from the people, from the world, as too many other museums do.

 As the renovations proceed, there is an exhibit of some of the castings Rodin made as studies for his masterworks as photographs taken of them, and him as he made them.  Most of the figures you see in his completed works are clothed, but he made nude studies for all of them to get, not only the proportions, but the ways in which they moved and interacted with their environments, before he created the "final product", so to speak.

 And the gardens are still open.  Even if you aren't a fan of his work, or art generally, it's a great place to unwind--after or before a bike ride in Paris.

 After I left the Rodin and had a picnic lunch by the Seine, I rode some more, spent some time in the Musee d'Orsay and rode some more.  I'll talk about those later.

A Path Of Learning

 No, it’s not rust:

and it’s not a “fade” paint job

(although, if I do say so myself, it goes rather nicely with the toestraps, saddle and straps and trim on the bags)

and it’s not an attempt to out-hipster the hipsters 

That reddish-brown “mist” you see is dirt.  Not sooty, dirty city dirt.  No, it comes from soil:

Specifically, it’s the residue of a trail—one I hadn’t ridden in more than thirty years.

When I was a Rutgers student, I used to pedal along the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath.  Connecting the two rivers in its name, it opened in 1834.

The trail wasn’t, of course, wasn’t used for cycling, running or hiking in those days.  If someone had the leisure time for such things, he or she wasn’t doing them:  Aerobic fitness wasn’t, shall we say, terribly fashionable among the gentry.  And anyone who worked along the canal, or in the industries that sent barges down its waters, didn’t have the time or energy for such things at the end of the day.

In fact, people didn’t use the path.  Rather, horses and mules trod it when they pulled the barges and boats that carried coal from Pennsylvania to New York City.

Believe it or not, there were actually industries, including manufacturing and bottling, along the canal’s shores.  They have long ceased operations, as the canal itself did in 1932, forty years after it last turned a profit.

Today the only watercraft one sees are canoes and kayaks, which can be rented at several points along the way.  On the path itself, people walk dogs and themselves—and pedal bicycles.

Before yesterday, I hadn’t ridden the towpath in more than thirty years.  When I was riding it fairly regularly, I barreled along on ten-speeds that are now considered “retro” or “classic”.  Sometimes I’d ride my racing bike on the road—one lane in each direction, no shoulder-- that skirted the canal’s shore.

The towpath and its surroundings don’t seem to have changed much since then.  The only difference I could see between yesterday and those long-ago rides (when I was a Rutgers student) were the canoes and kayaks, and the stations that rented them.  Back in the day, most people in the area hadn’t heard of kayaks and anyone who paddled a canoe was plying his (just about all were male) craft elsewhere.

All right, I noticed a couple of differences.  Somehow it seemed more even more relaxing—in a Zen sort of way—than I remembered it.  Perhaps that has as much to do with me, if I do say so myself, as it does with the path. 

Also, I think I saw more cyclists on the towpath than I saw in all of the rides I did along it back in the day.  They were all riding mountain bikes:  a genre of velocipedes unknown outside of northern California, northern New England and parts of Colorado when I was living and studying “on the banks of the ol’ Raritan”. 

I had to get off my bike and tiptoe over this part, just like I did back in the day.  Everyone else—even those who rode extra-wide tire as well as full-suspension—did the same.  They also hopped and skipped across a couple of other stretches, where stone slopes were constructed to conduct water between the canal and the river. 

Riding the towpath wasn’t part of my original plan, if I had any.  I rode to Liberty Tower, took the PATH train to Newark and started pedaling as soon as I emerged from that city’s Penn Station.  I headed south and west, more or less on the route I took to Somerville on past rides.  I wasn’t thinking about Somerville, but in Cranford (about twenty kilometers from Newark), the sun opened its face and the breeze whispered as thin clouds stuttered across the sky:

How can anyone not ride in such conditions?  So I kept going and I found myself floating on the bow of a ship from which I heard a the call to ride and ride some more:

As I pedaled up the inclines and down the slopes, I though of boats raised and lowered in locks.  Maybe that’s the reason I rode toward the canal.

Whatever I exerted in pedaling along the towpath and  on it, It was more effortless, I’m sure, than any voyage taken by those barges and boats that plied the canal—or the steps taken by the animals that towed them, or the men who raised and lowered the barges and boats. 

One reason is that Vera—my twenty one-year-old Miss Mercian—seemed to just glide over everything.  I mentioned the part where everyone had to dismount.  Well, on two other stretches, cyclists on mountain bikes dismounted—and I didn’t.  Vera—shod with 700X32 Continental Gator Skin tires—stood her ground, skipped or glided, as necessary, over red dirt, gravel and cobblestones.  In fact, she seemed even more comfortable—even happy—on this trail than in or on any other place or surface on which I’d ridden her. Perhaps I’ve found her true niche.

As for me:  I was able to experience a ride from my youth without any of the anger, frustration or sorrow (much of it for myself) I carried in my youth.  Even with two bags—and, lets say, the weight and hormones my body didn’t have in my youth, the ride seemed even more effortless than it did when I was in better physical condition.

On my way back, a dog crossed into my path.  Back in the days, I would have cursed the dog—and the woman who walked her.  But I stopped and stroked the dog, who licked my hand.  The woman apologized.  “It’s OK,” I demurred. 

 

A man—her husband, I presume--followed with another dog. He echoed her apology;  I repeated my deflection of it.  He stretched out his hand.  “Can I offer these as penance?”

He had just picked the blackberries.  I don’t remember anything that tasted so good.