Five Years— Or Five Minutes—Ago?i

 Time flies.  How often have you heard—or said—that?

The hours, the years seem to go by more quickly as we reach midlife.  Years ago, I came across a simple explanation: A day, a decade or any other amount of time seems to pass faster because it’s a smaller portion of our lives than it was when we were younger. When you’re four, next Christmas feels like a lifetime away; when you’re forty, last Christmas could have been yesterday—on Christmas Eve.

I’ve heard and read people saying that the pandemic further compressed the time that’s elapsed since. “I think something happened two weeks ago, then I realize it was in 2022,” one commenter related.  That remark particularly resonated with me when I returned from a late afternoon ride. I felt a sense of déjá vu, but it had nothing to do with my familiarity with the route I’d taken to Randall’s Island and back.  Rather, some part of my psyche was replaying an emotion I’d felt at the end of some other episode ride.  After dinner—Taco Tuesday from Webster Diner and Café—I remembered which ride etched the emotion that reflected in my mind’s eye this evening.

From the Astoria apartment where I lived, I pedaled briskly but aimlessly through Queens and Brooklyn  streets.  When I got home, I got the news everyone was hearing: A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, believing they could overturn the election that denied their guy four more years in the White House—for four years, anyway.

Photo by Ben Stirton

That was five years ago today.  But, to borrow a cliché, it feels like five days ago, if that, even if this country— and the world—and so many of our lives—seem to have five centuries of change. But I have no idea of when any of it, including my life will end. So I am still in the middle, in midlife, with more—of what?—to come, five minutes or five decades from now.

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas!

An Early White Christmas

 I haven’t owned a mountain bike since I gave my Cannondale M300 to someone who worked in an emergency room during the COVID lockdown.

Do I wish I still had it, now that we’ve just experienced our first real snowfall in a couple of years?

Well, I guess I could put knobby tires on one of my bikes.

Would Santa Claus Ride It?

 Are snowmobiles allowed on it? Dogsleds?

Are “Reindeer Crossing” signs posted?

Those questions came to mind when I heard there’s a bike lane to North Pole.

Now you know that I missed something:  One end of the path ends in North Pole, not the North Pole.

Even though I got 100 on a test of Alaska geography (at least, that’s how I remember it), I didn’t know that when you remove the definite article, you get the name of a city in The Last Frontier.

Anyway, there is a new bike lane connecting the city, known for its year-round Christmas displays, to Fairbanks.

If I ever get to Alaska, I’ll ride the lane—named for local cycling enthusiast Matt Glove, who lost his life sun a commute—just so I can boast that I cycled to the North Pole. Anyone who didn’t get 100 on Sister Virginia’s Alaska Geography test in 1969 (if I remember correctly) will be none the wiser!

The Latest Pandemics?

 During the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I and nearly everyone I knew had a relative, friend, co-worker, neighbor or other acquaintance who died from the illness. Something similar happened during the AIDS crisis, before effective treatments came along:  Between Memorial Day and Christmas of 1991, five people—including two good friends—were claimed by AIDS-related illnesses.

Lately, when I type “bicycle news” into a browser, I feel as if I’m getting a view of two other “pandemics,” if you will. The first one I’ll describe is, in its own way, as dire as—and, arguably, more preventable than—the COVID and AIDS epidemics. The other isn’t nearly so tragic, though it brings sadness and inconvenience to many.

Every day, it seems, there are more reports of cyclists killed or seriously injured when they are struck by— or more infrequently, strike—motor vehicles. Such incidents, which are often misnamed as “accidents,” are as often as not a result of poor road or bike infrastructure: For example, an intersection is configured, signals are timed (and dangerous laws enforced) so that cyclists cross directly into the path of turning vehicles.

(What I know about public health is on par with what I know about sub-atomic physics. So take what I am about to say for what it’s worth: If the Centers for Disease Control could declare—rightly, as they did—that gun violence in the US a public health crisis, the needless deaths of cyclists and pedestrians should also be so designated.)

The other, less catastrophic “epidemic” is part of the COVID pandemic’s fallout. As I and others noted, there was a “boom,” however brief, during the epidemic’s early days:  Many people took up, or returned to, cycling while already-active cyclists like me rode even more than we’d already been riding. 

Ironically, some shops (most notably Harris Cyclery, Sheldon Brown’s old home base) closed their doors because they ran out of bikes, parts, helmets and other related items just as nothing was coming through the supply chains. But even more shops—and manufacturers and suppliers of bicycles and related goods—fell victim during the past two years or so. In some cases, those companies ordered merchandise once supply chains opened up, but the ‘boom” went “bust.” 

There were also other challenges. People who might have bought traditional bicycles in the recent past are now buying electric bikes. And among buyers of non-assisted bikes, tastes—and the ways people buy bikes and related goods—change.

But another iconic company faced another challenge: where they make their products. I suspect that had something to do with Mercian’s near-death experience last year: Their frames are built and finished by hand in high-wage, high-cost UK. (A group of local cycling enthusiasts purchased the company a few weeks after it ceased trading and re-hired the frame builders who’d been working there.) And location, location, location was cited in CEO Daniel Emerson’s announcement that Light & Motion, a California manufacturer of lights for cycling (and diving and photography) is ceasing operations.

One passage from his open letter, in particular, could have been a jab at President Joe Biden or President-elect Donald Trump, both of whom have talked about bringing manufacturing back to the US, albeit by different means: “[T]he political winds, regardless of the talk, have been against US manufacturing, which continues its decline.”

I’m no economist, but my guess, however uneducated, is that his announcement should be heeded as a warning: It will take more than rhetoric, an “inflation reduction act” or punitive tariffs to bring manufacturing, of bicycle lights or anything else, “back” to the US. For one thing, once companies like Light & Motion shutter, their resources and expertise move elsewhere—or are simply lost. Factories become condos and cannot be re-opened as manufacturing facilities. Also, even if the product—whether it’s a bike light or an iPhone—were to be made in some low-wage, low-tax, non-union state, they probably will need components made in China or other countries. (If you bought, say, a US-made Cannondale or Trek, almost everything hung on the frame—and, perhaps the material for the frame itself —came from somewhere else.)

So, I would say that the two “epidemics” I’ve mentioned—bicycle fatalities and the demise of bicycle-related businesses—and the ways in which the COVID and AIDS epidemics unnecessarily claimed lives, are both due, at least in part, to wrongheadedness or mendacity on the part of politicians and policy-makers.

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas!

Do Clothes Make The Ride?

 You may have heard of the Rapha Festive 500. It begins today and runs through New Year’s Eve. The “500” refers to the number of kilometers (310 miles) participants challenge themselves to ride—outdoors (no, rides on trainers and rollers don’t count). 

Call me a cynic (or a grinch, since it’s Christmas), but I find it, shall we say, interesting that this challenge should be issued by Rapha, the overpriced lifestyle brand in bike-gear drag. (You didn’t think I’d pass up the opportunity for such a metaphor, did you?) At least, to my knowledge, there’s no rule that you have to wear one of their jerseys, tights or other vetements.

Dressed Up For The Holidays

 Three more days until Christmas.

‘Tis the season for—what else?—tacky sweaters.

I Didn’t Know It Well. I’ll Miss It Anyway.

Last week, an after-work ride zigzagged me through northern Bronx and Westchester County. Along the way I pedaled down a hill (I was on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bike) to McLean Avenue in Yonkers. I had ridden McLean a number of times before but, ironically, last week was the first time since I’ve moved to my current place: From here, it’s only about 7 kilometers but about 30 from Astoria, depending on which route I took.

Anyway, on McLean, I couldn’t help but to notice a store that looked like it was being stripped to the walls. I stopped; indeed it was. Then I noticed a few bicycles, some with tags, bunched together in the middle of the floor.

I asked a man whether any of the ones without tags—which included a Cannondale road bike from, I believe, the ‘90’s, an early Schwinn Traveler and a Giant hybrid with a Brooks B17 saddle—were available. “They’re all accounted for. Sorry.”

I glanced to my left and saw another racing bike leaning against the wall. “Then I suppose that Eddy Mercx is also going to somebody.” He nodded.

I asked him why the shop closed. The shop’s founder retired; his son took over and things went downhill.  There was a “sugar rush” early in the COVID-19 pandemic followed by a “crash”: when supply chains reopened and new merchandise was available, people who already bought bikes and accessories weren’t buying more, he explained.

Both parts of his story—the bike shop passing from one generation to the next and the pandemic boom-and-bust—are familiar narratives behind long-established bike shops that close. It later occurred to me, however, that there may be at least one other reason County Cycle Center has closed.

It was one of many family-owned businesses that have lined McLean, the main artery of a longtime Irish enclave that straddles that part of Yonkers and a slice of the Bronx next to Van Cortlandt Park. Like so much of my city and its surrounding areas, it’s changing as longtime residents die or retire to the Sun Belt and their kids and grandkids move away. County Cycle, which graced McLean for nearly six decades, seemed to be the sort of shop where parents bought their kids bikes for Christmas or their birthdays, and those kids would return to buy their kids bikes and, perhaps, “grown up” bikes for themselves. (It was an authorized Schwinn dealer and later took on Fuji, Trek, Cannondale and GT.) Such shops depend on relationships they develop with people in the community; when those people leave or die, those who move in—especially if they are young or from different cultural backgrounds—may not feel inclined to get to know members of the neighborhood’s “establishment.”

I inferred the story about the shop’s relationship to its community after I got home. I realized I had stopped in that shop on at least one earlier ride and remembered that the man I met—the founder?—was curious about my bike because it was something that didn’t normally pass through his shop. I think I bought a small tool or water bottle, and he was happy for my business.

He may not be able to get you a custom frame or a replica of whatever won the Tour or Giro or Vuelta this year. Folks who ride integrated carbon fiber cockpits may turn up their noses at him and his shop. But folks like him are interesting and thankful for small things.  I will miss him and them, and their shops.

Good-Bye, Papa Elf!

 The man in the rear was playing his favorite role. 

Bob Newhart was Papa Elf in “Elf,” the 2003 Christmas classic. 

Although he wasn’t “playing himself,” I think his portrayal of Papa Elf tapped into the dry curmudgeonly humor of the personae he created in “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart.”

Sadly, there will be no more from him: He passed away today, at 94 years old. Somehow, though, he will always seem to be, like his characters, in midlife: He was almost there when his career in comedy finally took off.

Who Would Take A Bike Away From A Kid?

What kind of person would steal a kid’s lunch money?

Probably the same kind of person who would take a bike from a kid who just got it—on the day before Christmas Eve, no less.

That is what happened to not just one child inside Fowler High School in Syracuse, New York.  There, the Central New York Bike Giveaway—one of the largest of its kind—put 1500 bikes into the hands of kids who wouldn’t have otherwise had them. But some people, apparently frustrated by waiting on a long line outside the school, snatched bikes away from the youngsters as they left.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_OyxKvugOyE&si=-_sNo7V6EVQrUTBX

“This is really a sad situation,” said Jan Maloff, who said “this has never happened before” during the 30 years he’s held the event. 

Still, he declared the event a success and sent his volunteers back to where he had “another 200 to 300 bikes prepped” when the bikes ran out.

He plans to continue the event for next Christmas but “will probably bring in á private security force” in addition to Syracuse police so that “something like this does not happen again.”

After all, who can be happier than a kid getting a bike for Christmas—or sadder than a kid who’s had it snatched away from them?

Leaving The Opposition In A Cloud Of Dust, Not Smoke

 Today’s post won’t relate directly to bicycles or cycling. I am, however, confident that many of you will find it relevant and interesting.

I can recall when a yellow fog filled coffee shops, department stores, subway station corridors and other public venues. Of course, almost none of us noticed it until it was gone.  

The first step in clearing shared air came exactly sixty years ago today.  Dr. Luther Terry made an announcement to a roomful of reporters: A longtime, wide-ranging study led him to conclude that smoking cigarettes causes cancer.

It may well have been the single most important announcement ever made by a U.S. Surgeon General. Smoking cigarettes was considered normal, even healthy, for adults. (Although I have never smoked, I gave cartons of Kools, Camels, Marlboros, Pall Malls and Viceroys as gifts for Christmas, birthdays and other occasions.) The tobacco industry was therefore much bigger than it is now, which is why Dr. Terry—himself a longtime smoker—made the announcement on a Saturday :  officials wanted to minimize the report’s effects on the stock market.

(On a related note, tobacco played a significant role in colonialism.)

Of course, Americans didn’t collectively drop their cigarettes once the report became public. But over a period of years, puffing, whether in a public or private, was pushed to the margins.  A year after the report came out, warnings were printed on cigarette packs; five years after that, television and radio ads for cigarettes were banned. During that time and afterward, entities from government agencies to real estate offices prohibited smoking on their premises.  Countless private citizens did so in their living spaces; cities forbade it in and around apartment buildings.

I’ve already mentioned one result—the disappearance of the yellow haze in public spaces—of the report and ensuing bans.  Another occurs to me now:  I rarely see an ashtray in anyone’s home, and never see them in public spaces. Also, it’s been a while since anyone asked me,”Mind if I smoke?”

For those of you who prefer empirical data to anecdotes, there’s this:  In 1965,  the year the Surgeon General’s warning began to appear on cigarette packs, nearly 42 percent of Americans aged 18 and older smoked; by 2018, that proportion had fallen by two-thirds, to just under 14 percent. (It climbed slightly during the pandemic.)

It’s estimated that the report and its effects have saved 8 million lives: nearly the population of my hometown of New York City.  Perhaps equally significant, that report precipitated a cultural change in which smoking is not as sociallly acceptable, let alone fashionable, as it once was.  And the anti-smoking campaign has spread throughout the industrialized world:  Even in France, where the image of a soigné sophisticate included a Gauloise or Gitane clasped with thumb and forefinger, cigarette packets bear the same stark warnings seen in other countries. And, during my most recent visit a year ago, I saw considerably less smoking—and clearer air in cafes and bistros—than I saw during earlier sojourns.

Oh, and I can’t recall the last time I saw a cyclist like an old riding buddy of mine who stopped at the bottom of any hill or ramp and lit up before starting his climb. And I don’t think a scene like this will ever be repeated during a race:

A New Year’s Eve Voyage

 The other day—New Year’s Eve—I took yet another ride to Point Lookout. I don’t know whether I was burning residual calories from Christmas week or waging a pre-emotive strike against the evening’s indulgences.

Whatever it was, I got what might have been the best treat of all, at least to my eyes. 

That softly glowing band between the sea and sky made the ship—and the few people I saw on the boardwalks of the Rockaways and Long Beach—seem solitary but not isolated, alone but not lonely. That, of course, is how I felt while riding Dee-Lilah, my Mercian Vincitore Special, under a sky that was muted gray but not gloomy .

Some of us need that light, and to move in or occupy it like that ship, because this season encourages, and sometimes forces, extroversion, camaraderie and bright lights. Some of  need times of solitude, and solo bike rides, to navigate, let alone enjoy, holiday gatherings of any size.

When I Could See Clearly

 Rain, interrupted by showers, fell pretty constantly from Wednesday until early yesterday morning. I ventured out for “quickies” along the waterfronts of Long Island City and Greenpoint. Late yesterday afternoon, I took a slightly longer, and definitely familiar, to Fort Totten.

I don’t mind riding in the rain as long as it isn’t cold. (I also don’t mind the cold as long as it’s not wet.) Since Christmas, the high temperatures have clustered around 10c (50F), which is mild for this time of year. 

But the best meteorological feature of yesterday afternoon, at least to my eyes, was the clouds. I love seeing such a heavy, thick and even dark mounds when I know they’re not going to drop any more rain. I especially like the way they move, but don’t move away, enough for the sun to poke through, and how those rays are refracted through clouds and onto rippling waves.

Two of my favorite songs are the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun” and Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now.” Who couldn’t feel good about hearing the best Fab Four song (aside, possibly, from “Something”) not written by John or Paul?  The point of that song isn’t the sun itself; rather, it’s that hope and clarity are on the way. And the most popular reggae tune that nobody thinks of as a reggae tune is about, I believe, the moment after.

Somehow I felt I could see more clearly in yesterday’s late-afternoon winter light by the water, than I could under a cloudless summer sky. That might be the best reason to ride at this time of year, at that time of year, after two days of rain punctuated by showers.

A Ride To Glaciers And Fog

 Golfes d’ombre: E, candeur des vapeurs et des tentes,

Lance des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frisson d’ombelles

So what did my Christmas Day ride have to do with Arthur Rimbaud’s poem about vowels—specifically, the lines about “E?”

Well, he likened the most-used vowel to the color white and used images of royalty and glaciers to convey the feeling of the sound and its character.

And, for a moment, I thought I was looking at a coastal glacier like the ones people see during cruises to Antarctica.

Of course, I was nowhere near the southern continent: I was on the South Shore of Long Island, and it wasn’t cold enough for even a white Christmas, let alone a glacier.

So I did another Point Lookout ride before spending Christmas evening with friends.  Then on the holiday we don’t celebrate in the US—Boxing Day—I took a late-afternoon ride to Fort Totten. It’s just past the Throgs* Neck Bridge, which spans the meeting-point of the East River and Long Island Sound. 

The convergence of those bodies of water, and the way Queens, Westchester and  Nassau counties, curve around it, probably made it a strategic point and the reason the Fort was built. (The Army Reserve still uses a small part of it; the rest was decommissioned and became the park it is today.) The differences between the currents of those two bodies of water and the terrain that surrounds them may account for the interesting light that illuminates —and fogs that shroud—the area.

So, my Christmas rides treated me to different kinds of lights, including the ones people strung along their trees and homes.

*-The Throgs Neck Bridge connects Fort Totten, in the Queens neighborhood of Bayside, with tbe Bronx enclave of Throggs Neck (the locale of the New York Maritime Academy) I don’t know why the name of the bridge is spelled with one “g” while the Bronx neighborhood gets two.  

The Light of This Holiday

 Merry Christmas!

Winter Dream

 Today is the second full day of winter—and the day before Christmas Eve. The temperature reached about 5C (40F) under clouds holding rain that could drop late tonight but will definitely fall tomorrow, according to the weather forecasts.

It seemed like the perfect day for a ride—to the ocean. The wind blew out of the southeast, so I was pedaling into it down the Beach Channel isthmus to Rockaway Beach and past sand and tides to Point Lookout.  

My reward was exactly what I’d hoped for: early winter light, gray yet intimate like one of those old friends with whom you don’t have to pretend—and couldn’t, even if you wanted to. Or, perhaps, it is a reflection the few people I saw walking—themselves, their dogs, their lovers or spouses. Maybe they—and I—are reflections of that light, which doesn’t force extroversion.

Perhaps the strangest and most wonderful thing about that light, and the winter seascape, is that it allows a glimpse of the sunset hundreds of kilometers away, in the middle of the afternoon—and renders that sunset as a brushstroke that accents ripples of gray mirroring each other in the sea and sky.

Oh, and on my way home, the wind blew at my back—after I munched on the slice of Kossar’s babka I’d brought with me. I made good time in every sense of the word!

A Short Ride On The Longest Night—And The Day After

Last night, I took my Winter Solstice ride.  Although I didn’t plan anything about it—except for one thing, which I’ll mention—I more or less knew I wouldn’t ride a lot of miles or climb. So I rode Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike.

The one planned part of my ride took me to a house about a kilometer from my apartment:

The residents of that house, on 23rd Street near the RFK Bridge, turn their porch into a kind of miniature Christmas village every year. The electric trains actually run on their tracks; the Ferris wheel turns and some of the figures walk, dance and even sing.

A few minutes later, I came upon another display that, while not as dynamic, filled the street with its lights and colors. 

I continued to ride. I’m not sure of which motivated me more: those lights and colors, the crisp cold air or the complete absence of traffic. 

About the latter: It was a proverbial “calm before the storm.” Not surprisingly, the holiday rush began this morning: A seemingly endless stream of cars crawled and honked down my street and, it seemed, everywhere: When I took a ride out to the Malcolm X Promenade today, it seemed like everyone in the world was entering or exiting LaGuardia Airport, the Grand Central Parkway or any street leading to them.

As I rode today, I couldn’t help but to think about last night’s ride—and a man who sold fruits and vegetables from a stand in Jackson Heights. I stopped and bought a bunch of red Swiss chard, a string of tomatoes and a small bag of cherries because they looked good—and out of respect to that man who, like me, was outside on the longest night of the year.

From The Bicycle Man and Bicycle Woman to the Bicycle Medea

 

People in Fayetteville, North Carolina still talk about “The Bicycle Man.”  For more than two decades, Moses Mathis repaired bicycles and gave them to kids in the community, many for Christmas. In its heyday, the charity he and his wife Ann—“The Bicycle Woman”—founded gave away 2500 bikes a year.

He passed away ten years ago. Ann took over and kept the program going with volunteers and donations.  She retired last year. 

Fears that the program would not continue were allayed when Bernie Bogertey-Harvey took the baton.  For years, she has been on the board of The Bicycle Man Foundation.  She has, however, another connection:  More than thirty years ago, her son received one of the first bikes Moses gave away.

Her grandkids have dubbed her “The Bicycle Medea.” While the program is smaller (It no longer has its warehouse.), she hopes to build it back up.  “This year, we’re targeting ages one to seven,” she said.

While it’s too late to register for a bike at this year’s 16 December giveaway, the project is still taking donations.

As one of her grandkids says,”The spirit of the Bicycle Man lives on” in Bernie Bogertey-Harvey.

The Cloud Over Black Friday

 

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day in the US.  Today is “Black Friday,” the unofficial  start of the Christmas shopping season. Online as well as brick-and-mortar retailers offer “sales” on popular items.  Too often, “sale” prices aren’t much, if at all, less than what people  can find without much trouble when they aren’t pumped up with  Black Friday hype. That’s why I don’t participate in the spectacles that, too often, seem like the running of the bulls when store doors open and throngs of shoppers charge through .

The concept seems to have spread beyond this country’s borders and shores—and to online retailers.  The bike business seems to have been pulled into it—by necessity, some industry insiders argue.  The COVID pandemic Bike Boom seems to have gone “bust:” After the shortages of bikes and anything related to them that caused some shops to close in 2020 and 2021, remaining distributors and dealers stocked up as soon as merchandise became available again. But the demand of the peak pandemic year’s didn’t continue: People who thought about cycling during the lockdowns abandoned such thoughts when gyms and other venues re-opened. Oh, and whatever economists (or TV personalities who play them on Fox News and CNBC) tell us about a “robust” economy, many cyclists (including yours truly) don’t have much spare cash or even credit.

That said, there are good deals to be had.  Even if I were swimming in green, however, I don’t think I’d be shopping: I have what I need (at least when it comes to cycling) and I don’t want more things. Most of all, I don’t want to follow the imperative to “buy until you die.”