The Navy Yard Bike Lane

If you've been reading this blog, you know how ambivalent I feel about bike lanes, especially ones that are next to parking lanes.  Now I've seen something that makes me feel more ambivalence on top of what I already felt about bike lanes:

This lane, which runs alongside the westbound lanes of Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn, has a  three-foot high concrete wall separating it from the rest of the street. It parallels the southern boundary of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard.  


Most of the Yard is fenced off, but it's possible to catch a few glimpses of some of the old buildings.  Yes, they do have a sense of history to them, as do many buildings that were used for the purpose of war.  On one hand, I feel about them the way I do whenever I'm on the any site where death reigned:  A combination of anger and grief over the sheer futility and waste of lives.  On another hand, I find it interesting in the way old industrial areas are:  Such places represent ways of life that have come, or are coming to an end and skills and knowledge that are, or are becoming obsolete but that were once indispensable to large numbers of people.  In other words, they're a bit like the nearby docks of Red Hook and Bush Terminal, where male relatives of mine worked in jobs and trades that, for all intents and purposes, no longer exist.  For that matter, neither do the jobs my mother and grandmother worked in the factories that once operated very near the Navy Yard. 


I sometimes think that the only real advance the human race could make is to realize that war is obsolete, or at least ultimately useless.  But, of course, that would also mean the end of large parts of the economy as Americans and many other people in this world know it.  


All right...I'll get off my soapbox.  Standing on them is risky when you're wearing high heels, or bike shoes with Speedplay cleats.  (Look cleats are somewhat less risky.) Besides, what I've just said about the military-industrial-financial complex is not the only reason why I'm ambivalent about the bike lane I just found.


I decided to ride the lane on my way home from DUMBO.  It's narrow, but as long as you're looking ahead of you, the oncoming cyclists won't be a problem.  The problem I found is the lack of a connection between the point where the lane meets the exit ramp of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the bike lane that parallels Kent Avenue along the Williamsburg waterfront, just north of the Navy Yard.  The gap between those two sections of bike lane isn't more than a hundred meters, I'd guess.  But cars are exiting the highway, and I'd bet that most drivers don't know about the lane.  And any cyclist who is riding the lane for the first time probably won't know that there's a point where the lane meets, but doesn't cross, the highway exit ramp.


Perhaps, in another post, I'll tell you about something that happened to me along that stretch of Flushing Avenue before the lane was built.  Don't worry:  It wasn't terrible, just ironic.

Beware of Indian Three-Speed Bikes

I should've known something wasn't good when I saw this:

Even though I haven't worked in a bike shop in at least fifteen  years, I still have nightmares about this bike. 


It's a made-in-India replica of the traditional English roadster--specifically, the Raleigh DL-1.  Like the erstwhile velocipedic pride of Albion, this made-in-India machine has three speeds, rod brakes and one of those rear kickstands that lifts the rear wheel of the ground.


Someone once said that the Yugo took the worst features of the Fiat 128 and made them even worse.  I would say something similar about the relationship between this bike and the DL-1.  It's well-known that rod brakes don't do a very good job of stopping, and that steel rims give poor-to-nonexistent stopping in the rain.  Well, the bike in the photo has inferior versions of those parts.  


And while the DL-1s weren't much fun to work on, the Indian bikes were downright scary.  Pieces broke and threads stripped under a normal amount of torque from riders' bodies as well as from bike shop tools.  Seeing as much rust as you see on the bike in the photo wasn't unusual; what was scary was that brand-new bikes were already rusting from the inside when they were brought into the shop.


Plus, as much as I like pink, the shade of the bike in the photo looked a little too much like Pepto Bismol for my tastes.


The bike was parked in front of a pizzeria where I hadn't gone in some time.  I used to stop there when riding along the Long Island City and Greenpoint waterfronts; sometimes I'd buy a slice or two of pizza and pedal over to the Long Island City piers, which are directly across the East River from the United Nations and directly in line for a nearly perfect view of the Empire State Building. 


The pizza slices from that place were always pretty good.  So was the one I had today.  And the dour middle-aged proprietor who made the pizzas the first time I went there, at least a decade ago, is still plying his trade though, I suspect, he may be a senior citizen by now.  That wouldn't be so bad if he didn't seem so worn, and the place sadder, shabbier-looking and not as clean as I recall from earlier visits.  


Maybe the now-old man senses the end is near.  Several storefronts around his are vacant, with "For Rent" signs in their windows.  I'm not sure of whether they're the result of the economy, which has claimed a lot of restaurants, bars and stores, or of the changing neighborhood.  The places that closed looked like their best days were past when I first saw them, around the first time I went to the pizzeria.  I wouldn't be surprised if I learned that the now-closed bar specialized in Boilermakers.


I wonder whether that Pepto Bismol-colored Indian bike parked in front of that bar, or any of those other places that have closed, will be unearthed by some future archaeologist--from another planet, perhaps.  What would that person/being make of them?

A Japanese Moulton from Bianchi?

Paint your bikes green, call them "whites" and they'll sell like hotcakes all over the world.


Believe it or not, a company has actually been doing what I've just described. 


I'm talking, of course, about Bianchi.  Time was when a Bianchi was a Bianchi, and you couldn't buy them everywhere.  They were available in a few countries outside Italy and in the US, a relatively small number of shops sold them.  The Bianchis available outside Italy were almost all mid- to high-range road bikes, and they were all made in Italy.


Things started to change during the 1980's when Bianchi had some of their bicycles manufactured for them in Japan.  As far as I know, those bikes were sold only in North America, and were--intentionally--much like the better Japanese bikes of that time from makers like Miyata, Panasonic and Bridgestone.  Bianchi's finest racing machines were still made in Italy, but they apparently realized that in the less-expensive road bikes (I'm talking about the real ones, not the ones that mimicked their paint schemes), Japanese frames were offering arguably better workmanship and clearly better components, particularly in the drivetrains, than the Europeans were, or could.


That was the beginning of a major shift for Bianchi.  Up to that time, you sought out a Bianchi if you were a racer or other high-mileage cyclist who cared at least somewhat about speed.  And you knew that getting a Bianchi meant getting a particular kind of Italian road bike.  If you weren't the type of cyclist I've just described, you had probably never heard about Bianchi at that time.  But, from the 1980's onward, Bianchi became, in essence, a number of different bike-makers in a number of different countries.  As an example, they marketed one of the first hybrid bikes in the US, where that type of bike first appeared.  They also offered mass-market versions of high-performance mountain bikes made by the pioneer mountain bike builders in the US. Later, they would make and sell one of the first mass-market fixed-gear bikes--and helped to spawn, if unintentionally, the "hipster fixie."  And they have sold various types of utility and recreational bicycles in other countries.  Those bikes are tailored to the needs and tastes of the local markets.


I've never been to Japan.  So, in all honesty, I couldn't tell you what cyclists ride there.  All I know about the Japanese cycling community and markets, I've read in bike magazines or heard from people familiar with Japanese cycling.  And, oh, yes, from seeing what the Japanese buy on e-Bay.


I never would have guessed that their tastes ran to bikes like these:

Martin, the owner of this bike, brought it and himself from Japan.  He says it's a kind of bike the Japanese call the "mini-sprinter":  a machine with a relatively tight wheelbase, straight fork and small wheels (on this bike,  20 X 1 1/8).  He tells me that when people see it, they ask him how to fold it.  I remarked that in some ways, the bike--which is called the Mini Velo 9 Drop--reminds me of the original Moultons.  


According to Martin, Moultons are sought by collectors in Japan, where they fetch even higher prices than they do here in the US.  And, he said, a lot of Japanese believe that it's possible to go faster with the smaller wheels.


I've always wanted to ride a Moulton just to experience it.  If I had money to burn, I might buy one even though I'm not a collector.  I'm sure that the ride of Martin's bike is different, however subtly.  If I had more time, I might want to try both a Moulton and Martin's bike.  I wonder which one I'd like better.  In any event, I'm sure that the shifting and braking are better on the Bianchi than they were on the Moulton.  My love of vintage (and vintage-style) bikes, bags and other accessories doesn't extend to components. 


However, Martin does have two things on his bike that, if they weren't standard equipment on Moultons, were almost certainly installed on many of them.  He has a nice brass Japanese bell like the ones Velo Orange sells.  More important, he has a nice brown Brooks B-17 on his Bianchi.
  

In-Your-Face Gray

It's been a gray, rainy day.  You know the kind of day I mean: one in which you just can't escape the gray. It's not about my mood; I've actually been feeling good these past few days.


Here's another example of gray that you can't escape--or, more precisely, something gray that somehow manages to be in-your-face:

Now, of course, the bike seems even more in-your-face with an orange bike behind it.  Of course.

Just having the name "Giant" on a bike is pretty audacious.  Now, I've never owned one and have only test-ridden two.  I don't mean to disparage the bikes:  One of the Giants I tried was actually a nice ride.  I don't remember which model it was; I recall only that it was a mountain bike.


Anyway...I never realized a gray bike with black trim could be such an eclat to the senses!

The Last Bike Standing Follows The Moon On Friday Night

Until recently, there was a TV show called Friday Light Nights.  I never watched it (I watch little to no TV) but the title is apropos of tonight, at least for me.


I was the last one--well, the last cyclist, anyway--to leave the college tonight. 

After getting something like a real night's sleep last night, the ride today felt really good.  It was a few degrees cooler than it was yesterday, so the ride in was brisk, as was the ride home.  I was almost underdressed for the latter:  At times, I wish I'd worn a light jacket over my sweater and blouse.   I did, however, wear pantyhose under my skirt, which felt right--at least temperature-wise.


Today was the last day before Spring Recess.  At least it was for my classes:  Tomorrow, Saturday classes have their last meeting before getting a week of for the holidays.  The students in today's class are normally an interesting and stimulating group; today, they didn't seem as eager to leave as I would expect students to be the day before a recess.  I showed them the filmed version of Shakespeare's  Othello in which Lawrence Fishburne plays the title role.  Othello is one of my three favorite Shakespeare plays (The Tempest and Macbeth are the others) , and I'd say it's probably the one which I've had the most success teaching.  


Now, you may ask, what do teaching Othello and cycling to and from work have to do with each other?  Well, I think that, if nothing else, my experience today led me to a circle of questions:  Do my rides feel good because I feel good?  Or is it the other way around?  And was the confidence I felt on my bike and in my class a result of both going well?  Or did things go well because I was feeling confident and happy?


And when is my enjoyment of cycling enhanced by my enjoyment of other things?  Or does my enjoyment of other things enhance my enjoyment of cycling?

I guess that's a bit like asking whether cycling leads us to follow the moon or following the moon leads us to cycle.

Bike and Bed, or Bed and Bike

So why didn't I post yesterday?  Let's see...Should I be creative?  Or tell it straight?  Ha!  Me, doing anything straight.  What a concept!


Anyway...After my first longish ride of the year--which I did on my fixed gear--instead of taking a bubble bath or doing something sensible like that, I did some work.  And got about three hours of sleep.  No, I take that back:  That's how much time I was in bed.  And then I went to work.


So, when I got home last night, late, I went almost immediately to bed...and to sleep, even after having eaten a takeout dinner with way too much sodium and having drunk some tea.

I couldn't have slept any better-- not in my grandmother's arms, not in the plushest bed in Buckingham Palace, nor even in the Bed and Bike Inn--than I did last night.  I slept so deeply that the fog didn't have to come in on little cat's feet (This is probably the only time I will ever quote Carl Sandburg; Do you forgive me?).  It could have echoed in one of the horns of the boats in the harbor and I would have dreamt through it--and not remembered what I dreamt.


Nights like last night make me believe that nothing's better than cycling-induced sleep. 

When The Best-Laid Plans Lead To A Lane To Reverend Ike

Hopefully, you have all had an experience of not "getting the guy (or girl)" but ending up with The One.  


I'm not going to describe anything quite as momentous as that.  But I am going to relate a tale of things not going according to plan and turning out better than I'd planned.


I didn't work on any of my bikes yesterday.  The rain didn't materialize.  However, I did other things that took more time than I expected.  So I got to spend only half an hour on my bike.


On the other hand, today I didn't have classes due to a scheduling quirk.  And the afternoon turned into the nicest one we've had in months.  The morning fog and clouds burned away in the afternoon sun; within a couple of hours, the temperature rose from the mid-50's to near 80.  After sending off my state tax return and a birthday card for my father, I gulped down some green tea and yogurt with almonds and raisins and took Tosca out for a spin.

The route I followed today was the same as the one I took last year, when I did my first post-surgery ride of more than an hour.  It's also the route that I took for one of my last rides before surgery.  From my place, I took the RFK Bridge to Randall's Island and Manhattan, where I pedaled through upper Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge.  On the New Jersey side of the bridge, I rode atop the Palisades, along the Hudson River, to the edge of Jersey City, where I descended to the Exchange Place waterfront.   Then it was a matter of following, glancing away from, then following again, the waterfront through Jersey City and Bayonne (the hometown of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons) to the bridge bearing the latter city's name to Staten Island, where I took the Ferry.


It's an interesting combination of urban neighborhoods, cookie-cutter suburbs, blue-collar and yuppie havens, and views of the river, skyline, bridges that reflect the color of the morning mist and trestles that put the rust in Rust Belt.


Just before the GW Bridge, there's an interesting or hideous (depending on your point of view) theatre that was probably built during the 1920's.  It now serves as a pulpit for the ex of a famous singer/performer who has done some of her best-known work since splitting up with him.

Said preacher is Reverend Ike.  Yes, that Rev. Ike:  the one who was Mr. Tina Turner.  Of course, he never saw the relationship that way, though sometimes I think that, deep down, he must have known it would come to that.  Quite possibly the worst thing for the long-term prospects of a marriage is a wife who is obviously more talented than the husband.  (Somehow marriages stay together when the man is more talented.  That's a story for another post, or more precisely, another blog, or some sort of study by the NIH.)  At least Sonny Bono admitted as much about Cher; from what I understand, Rev. Ike was very abusive toward Tina.  


Hmm...Are politics and preaching the last refuges of husbands who can't make it on their own and whose wives get sick of them riding on their coattails?


I digress, again.  About half a mile south (downtown, to New Yorkers) of Rev. Ike's temple, I saw something I hadn't seen since I last rode up that way:

It's the shortest bike lane in New York.  Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit.  But it does serve a purpose:  It guides cyclists through one of the trickiest intersections in upper Manhattan, if not all of the city.  When St. Nicholas Avenue (on which the lane is located) crosses West 163rd Street, it also intersects with Audubon Avenue which, like St. Nicholas, is one of the main thoroughfares of that part of town.  


If the intersection were a clock and you were riding on St. Nicholas from the six o'clock position, the traffic from Audubon would be coming at you from the two and eight o'clock position, while the 163rd Street traffic would be coming from somewhere between the two and three o'clock position, and somewhere between the eight and nine o'clock positions. So, from St. Nick, you would cross 163rd and Audubon as if they were an eight-lane highway.  


The new path leads to a couple of concrete islands where there are signs, and from which the path continues to 165th Street.

After that and Rev. Ike, the rest of the ride was a piece of cake!

Rainy Day Projects

It's supposed to rain on and off today.  I suppose I could play chicken with the rain again.  However, I somehow feel that I wouldn't be so lucky in daring the weather as I was in chancing it.  Actually, I wasn't even chancing it:  I just had enough dumb luck to be able to ride between rainfalls.

If it does rain, I'll probably do some bike work I'd been planning.  Maybe I'll even build the wheels I had planned for Marianela.  I'm not using any fancy components on it, save for the DT spokes.  (They're going to connect Sun CR-18 rims to IRO hubs which look like they're made by Formula.) But I think that, and the care I'll take in building it, will make it a better wheel than some of the stuff they sell on e-Bay.  

What else?  When I swap the wheels, I'm going to put street tires on it rather than the cyclo-cross tires I've been riding.  They still look good, so I'll save them for next winter.

I also just got a pair of shifter pods from Velo Orange.  Those aren't for Marianela, though; they're for Helene.  I was going to get a pair of Paul Thumbies.  But I found out that the road version works only on the part of the bar that bulges near the clamp.  And the mountain version would be too narrow to fit on the grip area of the Velo Orange Porteurs that Helene has.  The VO pods are made to fit either road or mountain bars, and they'll work with the Dia Compe Silver shift levers that are on the bike.  And I just happen to have a pair of cable guides I saved from the last set of Ergo levers I used.

Now...Which do I do first?  Of course Helene is more fun to work with (not to mention ride); Marianela is my "beast."  But Marianela's rear wheel popped a spoke a couple of weeks ago.  That's usually a sign that a wheel needs to be rebuilt or replaced.  Then again, no spokes have broken since.  I find that on dying wheels, spokes tend to break pretty frequently.

Plus, it's been quite a while since I built a pair of wheels.  I used to do it in one of the shops in which I worked, and I've built a few wheels for myself.  But since I haven't done it in a while, I wonder whether my skills have deteriorated?  I know how to do it; I just wonder whether i've lost the "touch" I might have (or merely imagined) I had.

Oh well.  This is probably one of those decisions I should make after I've made (and eaten!) a crepe or two.

Into A Cherry Blossom Sunset

Somehow I get the feeling I might've better appreciated today's weather had I been English.  Then again, upon realizing how much of the Empire consisted of warm climes, one could just as easily conclude that some English people weren't so crazy about their own meteorological conditions after all.


The day remained overcast.  I thought I felt a few drops on my way home.  I kept my fingers crossed:  I received a very important document in the mail at my second job.  And I was bringing it home in a tote bag with an open top that I carried in one of my bike baskets.  Perhaps if the rain had gotten heavier, I could have stopped in some store and asked for a plastic bag.


But the sprinkle seemed to end not much after it started.  While the sky didn't clear, I was treated to an interesting "sunset" as I pedaled through Flushing Meadow Park.

Now, even if you absolutely detest pink, how can you not love a cherry blossom "sunset?"

Playing Chicken With The Rain

The past few days could teach anyone the meaning, if not the precise etymology (Oh, shit, did I just sound like a linguistics professor?) of the phrase "April showers."


Yesterday rain began to fall when I was a couple of blocks from my class.  Today I woke up to tires hissing on slick pavement that was nearly dry by the time I rode to my first class.  But, when I stepped outside between classes, a glaze of rain clung to the concrete and pavement like a honey drizzle on a baking ham.  And, by the time I left for my other job, the streets were once again dry.


However, I could tell that the rain had gone in that direction and left just before I got to my other school by the fresh, dewy scent in the air, which was still pretty chilly.  I haven't seen new flowers on either campus.  But on my second job, I saw this sign of rain that passes over several times a day:

That's The Pinarello, which I saw for the first time since December.  And the cycling colleague in my department also had a "shower cap" on her bike:

And, yes, I saw everything glistening with raindrops when I went outside after class.  But, once again, I had just missed riding in the rain--or it missed me.