An Orange Bike

I've got the LeTour in rideable condition.  I'm still going to tweak it a bit.  But it's close to what I want it to be.


Early this evening, after the weather had cooled a bit, I took it on a test ride through the back streets of Astoria and Long Island City.  I ended up in Astoria Park, which is separated from Manhattan, Randall's Island and the Bronx by a strait known as Hell Gate.


This bridge is named for the passage it spans. Do you think it looks like a gate to Hell?:

If you've taken the Amtrak/Acela between Boston and New York, you've gone over this bridge.  The span behind it is the Queens-to-Randalls Island spur of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, which was known as the Triboro Bridge until a couple of years ago.


The waters are deceptively calm.  The strong undercurrent wrecked ships and drowned sailors, which is how the passage got its name.


But you didn't come to this blog to read about that, right?  You want to read about a middle-aged woman riding a bike she just fixed, don't you?


Well, the bike is actually a smooth, almost cushy ride.  Yet it feels very solid.  That last part didn't surprise me:  Schwinn had a reputation for building sturdy bikes, and this one was made in Japan by Panasonic.  The second shop in which I worked sold Panasonics, and I assembled a couple hundred of them.  Even their cheapest models were easier to assemble, and required less tweaking, than most other bikes.  


It won't be as responsive as my Mercians.  It wasn't designed that way.  But I have the feeling it will be very satisfactory for errands and commutes.


When I got to Astoria Park, I made another interesting discovery about the bike.  It's an aesthetic consideration.  


If you've been reading this or my other blog, you have some idea about my tastes in colors.  I like purple, especially lavender, lilac and violet, best.  I also favor most shades of blue, green and pink.  But I can see why  orange is a popular bike color.  I actually think this bike looks better in orange than in the other colors in which Schwinn offered the Le Tour series.  Even more interesting, though, is a quality revealed in this photo:

As ratty as the paint job is, it still has a nice glow to it in the dusk light.  In a way, it made me think of all of those weatherbeaten and even somewhat grimy brick buildings that mirror the sun setting at the end of the day.

OK, so this one came out a bit darker than I hoped it would.  But here's another shot, taken in the same light, of the bike:

And here's one taken a bit earlier:

As I mentioned, the bike is almost complete.  I'm going to add a bell to the handlebar (the Velo Orange Milan Bar which, so far, I really like on this bike) and a pair of Wald folding baskets to the rear rack. I have a feeling those might be the best solution for commuting as well as shopping:  I can simply put grocery bags or my bookbag into one or the other.


Until next time....I'll spare you the cliches about riding into the sunset or crossing that bridge when I get to it!

Rider to the Sea

Today I went for a ride by the sea:

Yes, that's a photo of me...in another life!  

Actually, I got the photo from the blog Bike by the Sea.  It's already become one of my favorite photos, or images of any kind.  In fact, I've made it the wallpaper on my laptop.  What do I have in my computer on my desk at the college?  A photo of Rodin's Je Suis Belle, which is actually part of his La Porte d'Enfer:

It is my favorite piece of sculpture.  And the image of the woman on her bike by the sea may well become my favorite photo.

Anyway...I actually did take a ride to the sea today.  I started late, but I felt motivated when I saw this after about a dozen miles of riding:

Although I had seen it many times before, a tear came to my eye when I saw the sea horizon from the apex of the Cross Bay Bridge, which connects an isthmus that's about four miles long and three blocks wide (Broad Channel, in Queens) with the Rockaway Peninsula, which is also about three blocks wide but about twelve miles long.  

On the peninsula is Rockaway Beach--yes, the one the Ramones sing about!

As much as I have always loved the Ramones, though, that's not the reason why a tear came to my eye.  What happened, at the moment I saw the sea meeting the sky, was that I was having a very intense memory.  The first time--that I can recall, anyway--I ascended the arc of a bridge on my bicycle and saw the horizon of the ocean, I was about thirteen or fourteen.  My family had moved to New Jersey a year or two before that, and on that day I crossed the Highlands Bridge from the eponymous borough to Sandy Hook and Sea Bright.

That day, I had taken the longest ride I had taken up to that time in my life:  25 miles.  It was, believe it or not, the first ride I took for my bicycling merit badge.  (Believe it or not, the Boy Scouts actually had one.)  But that's not the reason why that ride was so important to me.

You see, back then, I knew that I was alone--or, at least, that not many, if any at all, people would ever know me.  Other kids picked on me for all sorts of reasons,  So, I wasn't going to make any effort to get to know them better, and I certainly wasn't going to make any effort to get closer to them.   

But in that horizon of the sea, where light and water become each other, everything is as fluid and seems as graceful as the waves of mist that rise from the sea or fall like a curtain from the sky, depending on how you look at it.  

I could immerse myself in that vision and, for a moment, transcend my ill-fitting, ungainly body and see myself as a nimble mind and blithe spirit swimming through the world with the wisdom of the ages.  

In other words, I could dare to see myself, if only for a moment, as the person I was within myself:  a female, with both the lightness of those waves and the weight of rays refracted through the mist.

That day was the first time in my life I felt tired but somehow fulfilled, filled with an understanding of how difficult things would be but with the knowledge of who and what I was and would need to be in order to live through it all.  It's almost as if the woman I would finally begin to live as was telling this boy who was just entering his teen years that, yes, things are going to be difficult, but that he would be all right.  

And somehow it was all connected to riding my bicycle.

So what happened today?  I ended up here:  

I took that photo from Point Lookout.  Behind those birds and to their left is Jones Beach; even further to their left is Fire Island.


Those birds probably flew further than I rode my bike up to that point:  33 miles.  When I got there, a woman named Catherine, whose husband was sailing in the bay, started a conversation with "Nice bike!"  She was impressed that I'd ridden from Astoria, even if it's the first time I've done it in more than a year. She asked how I felt.  "Tired, a bit sore," I said.  She wondered how I'd get back.  


"I'm going to ride back," I said.


"Will you be OK?"


"Well, there are a couple of places where I could bail out.  I could get on the LIRR in Long Beach or on the A train in the Rockaways."


"Sounds like a plan.  They don't charge you extra."


"No.  You're supposed to have a bike permit on the LIRR, but the conductors never enforce it.  At least, I have one, but they've never asked to see it."


Even though I may never meet Catherine again, I wanted to be able to say "I did it!"  And I did.  So I did a total of sixty-six miles--a bit more than a metric century.  So far, that's my longest ride since my surgery.


Surprisingly, the first twenty-five miles or so back were easier than the ride out to Point Lookout.  Part of it had to do with the direction of the wind.  But I think I also just knew that I was going to finish that ride.  I have done it many times before; why not today?, I asked myself.


By the way, this is--believe it or not--the A train:

It may not be what Duke Ellington had in mind.  But passengers can stay on that train and, in about another hour and a half, end up in Harlem.  


After seeing this along the way,

I got back to Astoria.  It's next to Hell Gate, where the East River (which is really an inlet of the ocean) meets Long Island Sound.  


I guess I am still, and will always be, a rider to the sea.  Really, I didn't want to change that.

Keeping Your Balance: It's In The Shoes

"Life is like riding a bicycle.  To keep your balance, you have to keep on moving."


Who said that?  This guy:

Anyone who can, or even tried, to explain the universe is entitled to a theory or two about life, doncha think?


But you can't keep moving unless you start.  And you can't start if you can't get on the machine:

Emma, I don't mean to be condescending, but you can do it.  If I can ride my diamond-frame fixed-gear bike in a short, snug skirt and boots, and a long jacket, you can do it, too.    If you need some guidance, take a look here:  http://www.sfbike.org/?diva.


On the other hand, you can do things the easy way:

Then again, Audrey Hepburn made everything look easy, or at least effortless.  Isn't that the definition of grace?


Lance said it's not about the bicycle.  He knew a thing or two about moving forward.  One thing he didn't mention--because he couldn't have known--is that a lady needs the proper shoes for cycling:

A big "thank you" to the editor of "Girls and Bicycles" for setting me straight--to the extent that anybody can do that! ;-)


Doncha know?  Bike shoes are for cycling, not walking.  At least, that's what I used to tell customers when I was trying to convince them to spend $200 on a pair of shoes to go with their $200 pedals and $30 cleats.  I actually believed that.  I also believed that one could not move forward--and therefore keep one's balance--without the proper shoes.


Today I know that for a fact.  The difference is in my definition of the proper shoes.  But sometimes it's hard to find them in size 11 wide. 

Still, I will keep moving forward.  And keep my balance.  After all, isn't that what being a woman on a bicycle is all about?