Revisiting: Twenty Years After Abandoning and Escaping

If the Lord was the shepherd of some old Hebrew poet, then my navigator, at least for today, was this fella:

He leadeth me to the still (well, not quite) waters of places I haven't seen in a long time--  specifically, about twenty years:

I hadn't actually planned on riding there.  I passed it en route from my house to no place in particular.  Those of you who ride a lot know the kind of ride I'm talking about.

On the ride, I ended up here.... 

...among other places.  I guess, in some weird way, it makes sense that I went by the hospital in the second photo before I came to the house you see above.  Both places housed lives that are no longer there.  The difference is that, to my knowledge, I never knew anyone who lived in the abandoned house.  On the other hand, for two years of my life, I was involved, if in a peripheral way, in the lives of some patients, staff members and the director of surgery at that hospital.  To my knowledge, none of them are there any more. 


If any of you have grown up on military bases, you probably recall at least one house that looks something like this:

Although this house is not abandoned, it is not occupied, at least for now.  But I'm sure it will be soon.  After all, this is one of the  views from it:

And here's another:

It never ceases to amaze me how much prime real estate the military once had--and, in some parts of the country, still has.   


Both of those houses are in Fort Totten, on Long Island Sound in Bayside, NY. It was still an active military base when I was doing poetry workshops with the handicapped and chronically (and, in a couple of cases, terminally) ill kids at St. Mary's Hospital.  Now only a small part of the base is used for Army Reserve exercises; other parts are used to train specialists in the Fire Department.  The rest has become a park with some really lovely car-free places to ride and walk.  Plus--for those of you whose interests are anything like mine--the place is in Gatsby country.


Every week, I used to go to the hospital, which then had a school for the kids who were patients there.  The Board of Ed maintained and staffed it.  


Back then, I was living in Washington Heights,  in upper Manhattan.  Unless it was snowing or sleeting, I used to ride my bike--seventeen miles each way, on a Follis ten-speed from the 1960's that served as my commuter.  In some weird way, riding to the kids made me feel closer to them.  I guess it made me conscious of some of the things I could, and they couldn't, do.


Until today, I hadn't been to the hospital in nearly twenty years.  That means, of course, none of the kids I worked with are there.  Some may have gone on to lives much like other adults of their age; a few might be dead.  One girl died during the time I was there; even though she was only eleven, she lived longer than anyone expected.  


The director of surgery--who actually initiated the project and secured the grant for it--is probably retired.  So are the teachers who were there at the time, as well as many of the staff members: most of them weren't young.  


Even though I haven't seen any of those kids since then, I've thought about them often.  In fact, I thought about them a lot when I was starting my transition.  Many of the poems and stories they wrote--or dictated to me--were about running, flying, jumping, dancing and riding bikes:  the things they couldn't do.  Most people, including their teachers, said the kids had "vivid imaginations."  But one day, when I was talking with the director of surgery--Dr. Burton Grebin--I voiced something I realized at that moment: "They really are doing those things.  Their minds, their spirits, dance, jump and do all those things some of us can do with our bodies."


"That's exactly the reason why I have always supported the project," he said.  "It's the reason why things like poetry and art are, in their own ways, as important as the medicines and procedures we offer here."


That realization, and those kids always stuck in my mind.  And I finally realized why they mattered so much--which is to say, why I, who was pedalling over 300 miles a week, not counting my racing, identified so much with them:  We saw our true selves in our minds and spirits, and our bodies couldn't express who we are.


At the end of every day I worked with them, I used to pedal (actually, coast) down the hill toward Fort Totten.  Back then, it was still an active base and therefore not open to the public.  So, I used to go to a small park that stood just to the west of the fort's entrance, where one could see this:

The suspension bridge is the Bronx-Whitestone.   In the fall and winter, I used to sit there and read or write, or simply gaze, until dusk. Then I would start pedaling home along the nice little promenade that winds its way below the span and skirts the water.


As it was the first day of summer, I didn't wait that long today.  I was getting hungry and tired; I'd pedalled about 30 miles, which included a few hills, on Tosca, my fixed-gear.  What else could have I ridden to a current or former military base?  After all, multiple gears are for sissies.  (You know I couldn't resist that one!)

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?  

Reconstructing

I ordered some ball bearings from an eBay seller; they came today.  Soon I'll start putting the Schwinn back together.  


I'm trying to keep as many of the original parts on it as I can. However, I'm not at all interested in historical authenticity, as I plan to use the bike for errands and such, and it will spend a lot of time parked on streets.  Plus, the paint is in such rough shape that re-painting it would mean that it's not period-correct, anyway.


Of course, I'm replacing the things that should be replaced:  brake cables and pads, and tires.  And I'm changing the handlebars to the Milan bars I got from Velo Orange.


Probably my biggest indulgence on the bike will be the Velo Orange fenders.  Actually, they're not expensive--maybe five dollars or so more than plastic fenders.  But they look like a luxury.  At least I can justify them:  Metal fenders have always lasted longer than plastic ones for me.  


As I talk about rebuilding a bike, I am still thinking about what I noticed the other day:  the absence of female cyclists in some parts of this city. Even in neighborhoods like mine, or Park Slope or Williamsburg or any other neighborhood where one is likely to find women on bikes, there aren't many my age.  And,  I suspect, there are even fewer women of my age, or any age, who are tearing apart and rebuilding a bike, as I am.  


For that matter, there aren't very many women who've taken the sorts of bike tours that I've taken, or had the amount and breadth of cycling experience I have.  

I can't help but to wonder:  Had I been born with XX chromosomes and raised as a female, would I be reconstructing the Schwinn?  Would I have been able to specify how I wanted my Mercians to be built?  And, would I have--a week after getting my undergraduate degree--gotten on a plane to London with my bike, a couple of changes of clothes, my camera, a couple of notebooks and a few packs of condoms?  


If I hadn't taken that trip, would I have taken the others?  Would I be cycling today?

Where Are The Women?

I don't know whether it's possible to be an urban cyclist without having or developing some sort of interest in architecture. One of the wonderful things about New York and some other cities is that you can find a gem where you weren't expecting it.

This beauty is right across the street from the new Yankee Stadium:

I hadn't been in that part of town in a long time, so I don't know whether or how recently the building was renovated.  I suspect that it was fixed up as the new stadium was built, but I also suspect that it hadn't deteriorated very much, as so much of the neighborhood around the old stadium (which was next to where the current stadium stands) had for so long.


If people couldn't tell that I hadn't spent much time in the neighborhood just by looking at me, they had to have known once I started taking photos.  Then again, maybe some architecture lovers have trekked up that way.


Wouldn't you love to live in a building with this over the entrance?:

Or this by your window?

                          
For a moment, I wondered whether someone might get upset with me for pointing my camera at his or her window. But building residents may be used to that sort of thing.


So, how did I end up there?  Well, I just hopped on Tosca (my Mercian fixie) and pedalled across the Queensboro (a.k.a. 59th Street) Bridge.  After descending the ramp on the Manhattan side, I found myself riding past Sloan Kettering, Rockefeller University and lots of dimpled blonde toddlers escorted by nannies or au pairs who are much darker than they are.  As I rode further uptown, the kids got darker and didn't have au pairs or nannies.   None of it was new to me, but something would be after I passed the building in the photos.


In Manhattan, almost everything above Columbia University is commonly referred to as "Harlem," and in the Bronx, almost everything below Fordham Road is called "The South Bronx".  As it happened, I pedalled through the places that are, technically, Harlem and the South Bronx.  But I also passed through a number of other neighborhoods that consist almost entirely of people of color, most of whom are poor, and whose neighborhoods are lumped in with Harlem and the South Bronx.


I ride in those places because there are some interesting sights and good cycling.  But today I noticed something in those neighborhoods that, I now realize, makes them not only different neighborhoods, but different worlds, from Astoria, where I now live and Park Slope, where I lived before moving here--not to mention neighborhoods like the Upper East Side and Yorkville, which I also rode through today.


In neighborhoods like Harlem and the ones I saw in the Bronx, one generally doesn't see as many adults, especially young ones, cycling.  And, as one might expect, the bikes one sees are likely to have been cobbled together.  I'm not talking about the kinds of bikes one can buy used from any number of bike shops or the ones available from Recycle-a-Bicycle and other places like it. Rather, I'm talking about bikes that look like the riders themselves spliced them together from bits and pieces that were tossed into the trash or found lying abandoned somewhere or another.  


As often as not, the bikes and parts don't go together.  I'm not talking only about aesthetics:  Sometimes parts that aren't made to fit each other are jammed together and held together by little more than the rider's lack of knowledge about the issue. 


It was usually poor men of a certain age who were riding the kinds of bikes I've described.  Younger men might ride them, too, but they are more likely to be found on cheap mountain bikes, some of which came from department stores.  A few are the lower-end or, more rarely, mid-range models of brands that are sold in bicycle shops.  Those bikes were probably acquired in one degree or another of having been used; none of them looked as if they were purchased new.


But the most striking thing I noticed is this:  I did not see a single female of any age on a bike in those neighborhoods.  It make me think back to other times I've been in those parts of town and I realized --if my memory was serving me well--that I never saw a woman, or even a girl, on a bike.  


I started to have those realizations after I stopped at an intersection a few blocks north of the stadium.  A very thin black man was crossing the street.  He approached me and, in a tone of consternation, said, "You're riding a bike?"  For a split-second--until I realized why he was asking the question--I thought it was strange and ignored him.  But he persisted: "You ride a lot?"

I nodded.  


"Be safe.  I don't want a nice lady like you to get hurt."


"I will.  Thank you.  Have a nice day."


I realized that I may well have been the first woman he, or many other people in that neighborhood, had seen on a bike.     


How would his life be different if he saw more women on bikes? And, even more to the point, how might the lives of some of those women be different if they rode bikes?  And, finally, I wondered, how might those neighborhoods be different?

Your Grandmother's Skort

I stopped wearing lycra a couple of years ago.  For years, I wore skintight jerseys and shorts made from that fabric.  So did the guys I rode with.   However, none of us would have worn anything so thin and stretchy if we weren't on our bikes.  


The truth is that I never really liked the way lycra felt on my skin.  Yes, it is light and moves with you.  But it can also feel clammy when you're sweating.  


After getting to a certain age (and gaining weight), I just felt silly wearing it.   It was like hanging a sign on myself that said, "I am an overaged wannabe."  For me, cycling has always been, in some way, an expression of my individuality:  When other people cramped themselves into gas-guzzling smog-belchers, I could stretch my legs and spread my wings.  And I have always wanted to do so with style as well as dignity.


When I started to transition, I also was asserting my femaleness in any way that I could.  Perhaps I engaged in some of that exaggerated femininity of which our detractors accuse us.  But cycling to work in a skirt and heels wasn't just a matter of trying to be, or be perceived as, a girl on a bike:  It was, it turns out, something I needed to do in order to integrate cycling with my new life and my identities as a woman and a cyclist.  


It's certainly easier to ride for more than an hour or so--especially on a diamond frame--in pants, shorts or tights than it is in a skirt.  Still, on a mild day, I enjoy the sensation of the breeze lapping around the hem of my skirt and rippling a strand of my scarf as I pedal.  As I'm weaving through traffic and around potholes, I can still imagine myself pedalling to a marketplace in Provence or Tuscany.


But even the most restrictive clothing I've ever worn isn't as constraining as anything female cyclists were expected to wear a hundred years ago.  It's amazing to think that the garment shown in this illustration was actually an improvement in comfort and freedom of movement over what women had been wearing:

The skirt was divided and each part could be buckled around the ankles.  When the cyclist dismounted, she unbuckled them and was, by the standards of her time, attired like a proper lady.


It is one of those things I'd like to try just once.  

Flaneurs, And A Project Or A Patient

Here is what I am greeted with at the end of my rides:

OK, so that's what they're made to do:  taking it easy.  Can't fault their fashion sense, either.  The smug-looking guy on his side is Max; the one with the "You talkin' to me?" pose is Charlie.

Here are Arielle and Tosca resting for the night.


And here is my latest patient, I mean, project:

This is the Schwinn I bought from that charming young couple last week.  As I do whenever I buy a used bike, I'm taking everything apart.  I opened up the headset, which, I believe, has never been cleaned.  What I didn't realize is that it has loose bearings rather than ring-shaped retainers with bearings.  So the bearings scattered to the four corners of the floor.  (How is it that you can completely lose something inside a 12X 12 room?)  I'll find them some day.  But the ones I have look like Ignaz Schwinn installed them himself.  


The only problem is that I don't have any 5/32" bearings in the house.  My other bikes have sealed cartridge bearings, so I haven't used loose ball bearings in a while.  And the shop in which I stopped during my ride didn't have them, either.  


Like the truth in The X Files, they're out there.  I just have to find the right shop.  I'm sure Bicycle Habitat has them.  If I don't find them elsewhere, I'll go to Habitat next time I'm in Soho--which should be soon.


Speaking of which...They got word that my Miss Mercian frame has been built.  Now it has to be painted.  That actually is a fairly long process.  But, hopefully, I'll have it by the end of next month.