DIY Facial Surgery

I'm not going to name any names.

Could these be the faces of those older white guys* who would vote for a rich right-wing racist demagogue?

Could they be the ones who are in danger of losing their jobs--or have already lost them, or never had them in the first place--and vote for the very candidates who destroy their jobs or send them overseas?

Could they--children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants, all of them--vote for someone who wants to build a wall between this country and its neighbor, and wants to ban all adherents of the world's largest religion from entering the United Sates?

Could those folks--half of whom would have trouble coming up with $400 to meet an emergency expense--be the ones voting for someone who would make it easier for employers to get away with paying less than minimum wage to immigrants?

Could they--whose schools, hospitals and infrastructure are crumbling--vote for someone who'd slash funding for such things--just to make sure "freeloaders" from other countries can't have them?

Tell me:  Do they really, knowingly, go into the voting booth and cut off their noses to spite their faces?

*--Disclosure: Had it not been for my transition, I'd be an old (or old-ish) white guy!  

What Makes Her Think She Can't?

After eating a tasty, thoroughly unhealthy, Original Stromboli--one of those foods you live on when you're a twenty-year-old student precisely because it's so tasty and unhealthy, in addition to filling and cheap--I managed to ju-u-ust miss a train back to New York. 

It was nearly dark by that time, and riding back would have meant pedaling another 40 kilometers or so (I'd already done about 120).  I didn't mind the distance, but the last part of that route would have taken me through desolate industrial and post-industrial areas near Newark-Liberty Airport.  

I seriously wonder whether the lights on the streets in those areas are turned off after trucks make their last deliveries--or disappear into one of the potholes in those streets.  Seriously, those craters can make the Ho Chih Minh trail seem like a magic carpet.  I've cycled those streets in the dark.  If some of my Catholic school education had stuck, I might've been fingering a rosary strand (what we used to call "worry beads").

No, she's not me.  From San Diego Magazine

The time-table indicated that another train would arrive in bit more than half an hour.  I didn't want to wait that long, and I could've wandered around New Brunswick and discovered other old haunts that have been turned into sushi restaurants or ice cream parlors.  But I figured that doing so would cause me to miss another train.

So what to do?  Well, I knew that if I crossed the bridge over the Raritan and continued up Route 27--something I did many times in the old days--I probably could catch the next train a little further along the line.  

The next stop is Edison, a small station that the trains skip sometimes.  Besides, it wasn't very far:  I could make it in ten minutes without trying.  After that, there was Metuchen--"the Brainy Borough".  I knew I had plenty of time to get there and that, if I channeled the inner racer I never had, I could make it to Metro Park, the station after that.  Along the way, I'd burn off at least a little of the mozzerella cheese, cappicola, salami, peppers and onions stuffed into Italian bread dough (I told you it was unhealthy!)  I downed before missing the train in New Brunswick.

I played it safe, getting to Metuchen with about ten minutes to spare.  The train I boarded was nearly empty.  At the next station, a friendly black woman boarded and sat across from me.

She wanted to charge her smart phone.  I pointed to what looked like--turns out, what was--a port.  She admired my bike and asked where I'd been riding.

"You can actually ride a bike that far?" she wondered.

I assured her that it's not only possible, but that I've done even longer rides, and other people have done rides that were longer still.

"I couldn't make it around the block, let alone do what you did."

I explained that nobody rides that long on his or her first ride; you build yourself up to ever-increasing distances.  And, really, if you keep on riding, you don't even have to plan on building yourself up; it just happens as a matter of course.

She explained that she'd "have a hard time riding" because her legs were "shot" from years of playing racquetball.  I pointed out that if she has a bike with gears, she can shift to a lower gear and get as much exercise as she gets from racquetball or any other sport, without the stress on her knees.

"I don't know how you do it!" she marvelled.

I find it interesting that people who engage in all manner of athletic pursuits simply can't fathom the idea of riding a bike more than a few blocks.  Even long-distance runners I've talked to don't believe they can ride a bike as far, let alone further, than they run.

But the woman I met last night was even more astounding than any of them.  Not only was she a racquetball player, she is, from what she told me, an accomplished medical researcher.   I don't doubt it:  I mentioned that my sister-in-law is a microbiologist and she was familiar with, not only the kind of work she does, but the institute in which she conducts it.

I don't know about you, but I think that if I were involved in cutting-edge research and could play racquetball, I'd be pretty confident in my ability to do just about anything--including a bike ride!

We disembarked at Penn Station. ("Lead us not into Penn Station"?)  She was going to meet her boyfriend.  I wonder whether she told him about the crazy cyclist she met on the train, and whether he believed anyone would ride as much as I did. 

A Ride Along Another Canal: A Path To Memory

Today it was Vera's turn.

I took my green Miss Mercian mixte on a ride to, and along, the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath.  I used to pedal along that path when I was a Rutgers student; last year I rode it for the first time since those days.

Today I rode it just a week after pedaling and walking by the  Canal St. Martin through what has become a district of young artists and animators--and interesting, quirky restaurants and cafes--to the city's "little Africa".  Years ago, I also pedaled a section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath near Washington, DC.  Like the D&R towpath, its surface (at least on the section I rode) is dirt and clay, with pebbles in some areas. A section of the St. Martin has a path with a similar surface, while another part is cobblestoned.

Towpaths along canals were constructed so that horses or mules could tow barges from the shore. Even if their surfaces are not paved, they make nice bike lanes as well as hiking trails because they are usually table-flat, or close to it.  The engineering that went into building them--not to mention the canals themselves--has seldom been bettered.

It's interesting that one reason we like to ride along canals is that they seem peaceful.  Their still waters reflect and refract light in sometimes-painterly sorts of ways, whether the canal courses through Paris residences or old factories in New England--or winds through stands of trees and follows railroad tracks in central New Jersey.  One often sees couples riding or walking, or simply sitting, along canal banks:  Canals and their paths are often among the most romantic sites in their locales.  

I also find it interesting that some canal towpaths are seen as "natural" sites.  Along some parts of the Delaware and Raritan, as well as other canals, trees and other vegetation have reclaimed the land from the remains of abandoned factories and other structures.  Areas along canals have also been turned into, or become, sanctuaries for various animals and birds.  But as lovely as all of those animal habitats, and all of the flora and fauna, are, they are no more "natural" than the canal itself. 

In saying what I've just said, I do not mean to diminish the aesthetic or recreational value of such sites.  I just find it ironic that we now ride along canal towpaths like the Delaware and Raritan to get away from the sometimes-dreary, or even grim, industrial and post-industrial landscapes those canals helped to create, or were built to serve.  

In fact, the city of New Brunswick--the locale of Rutgers University, located at one end of the canal--is such a place.  I don't know whether the term "post-industrial" had been coined by the time I attended university there, but it certainly would have fit:  A number of large and small enterprises had gone out of business or simply left:  Johnson and Johnson was threatening to do the same.  In fact, even some Rutgers administrators, and New Jersey state officials, talked about abandoning the Old Queens campus and moving all of the university's facilities across the Raritan River to Piscataway, where Rutgers already had some of its research laboratories as well as a residential campus.

Instead, they decided to "revitalize" the city.  In essence, they made it just like the downtowns of so many other cities, with all of the same chain stores and restaurants. (I mean, what town worth its salt would do without Starbucks, right?)  So it doesn't look as run-down as much of the town did when I lived there, but it has all of the character of a Sunbelt suburb.

And, of course, my favorite places--except for one--are gone.  Those places include what remains, to this day, my favorite music store I have ever encountered:  Cheap Thrills, on George Street. The prices were indeed cheap, which allowed me and many other students to buy albums (vinyl!) of all of those esoteric bands and kinds of music we learned about from each other.  

(That shop, and a Pyramid Books, which I also loved, were part of the Hiram Market district, which was designated a historic district, then de-designated because, as one architect put it, the area didn't fit into Johnson and Johnson's "clean desk" mentality.)

The only "old favorite" of mine that remains is a restaurant called Stuff Yer Face.  Of course, the menu includes all sorts of things we couldn't have imagined in those days. It also has a bar with an enormous beer selection.  Back in my day, they didn't (couldn't?) sell alcohol, but we could bring it in.  Of course, most of us did!

I ordered an Original Stromboli, for old time's sake.  The young woman who took my order and the one who brought it to me were, no doubt, not even born the last or first time I ordered one.  It was every bit as good--and unhealthy--as the first one I ate in 1979 or thereabouts.  A bargain, frankly, at $6.75. 

At least there was that--and the canal towpath.  They made the ride more than worthwhile.