For all of his foibles and questionable behavior, I always thought Michael Jackson was one of the greatest entertainers of his generation. True, he made all of his worthwhile music before he turned thirty. (In fact, I think that was one of the things that caused or exacerbated many of his problems: The only way he could "outdo" himself after those great albums and videos was through outrageous behavior.) But you had to admit: He could always put on a show.
Somehow, though, I doubt he did much cycling, ever. I don't think much he ever did was conducive to pedaling two wheels. And his fashion sense, as interesting as it could be, simply doesn't work when you're in the saddle.
One example of what I mean was his practice of wearing one white glove. For one thing, about the only white articles of clothing I ever wore on a bike were the socks I raced in: Back then, the USCF and the UCI didn't allow racers to wear anything else under their Detto Pietros. Wearing white while cycling simply never made any sense to me; for that matter, I rarely wear much of anything in white because, when I do, I ruin it. Also, when I haven't had much sun, I look sickly in white.
But back to Michael Jackson: Wearing one glove isn't very practical on a bike. Sometimes I ride gloveless, but not when the weather is anything like it's been the past couple of days.
Sometime during my workday yesterday, I managed to lose one of my gloves. By the time I was ready to leave, the temperature had dropped to 18F and a brisk wind blew out of the northwest. The college in which I work is about half a mile from a strip of stores, all of which were closed.
Another few blocks away, there's another strip. By the time I passed it, only a Rite-Aid Drugstore and a Mandee's were open. RA didn't have any gloves, though they had things like electric socks and blankets. That left Mandee's, which had only those too-cute fingerless gloves that has a "hood" you can slip over the fingers--but not the thumb. They weren't much, but I figured they were better than nothing.
So I bought a pair and, every few minutes, brought each hand to my lips and blew hot air (Some people tell me I'm full of it.) over each thumb. Still, by the time I got home, my hands were tingling and my thumbs were numb. I was only too happy that Charlie and Max wanted me to stroke them!
There are lots of good ways to commemorate MJ. Emulating his sartorial style when you get on a bike isn't one of them!
Vera is once again up and running. She got me to work today. I definitely count my blessings that I lost only a seat and post, not the whole bike.
I am making a couple of other modifications to her and, when they're done, I'll show her in her new glory.
Speaking of theft: Yes, I have had bicycles stolen. Four, in fact. Two were "beaters" and I actually got one of them back after the owner of one of the shops in which I worked spotted it when he was riding home. However, another bike that was stolen from me was a high-quality, nearly new, road bike: a 1994 Bridgestone RB-2.
I bought it as a "leftover" at a substantial discount the following year. Most Bridgestones--at least the higher-end models--sold out in most years; I considered myself lucky to get one that was more or less the right size for me. I didn't "need" another bike, as I had high-quality road and mountain bikes, but I got a deal that was simply too good to pass up.
It came in a blue-green (I thought it was more blue) metallic finish that I liked, although I would have liked the plum metallic, the other color choice offered that year, even better. However, for the price I paid, I wasn't about to be picky.
I put a pair of Michelin 700 X28C cyclo-cross tires and rack on it with the intention of making the bike my commuter and winter road ride. That plan worked for about three months, if I remember correctly. At the time, I was teaching at the New York City Technical College (now the New York City College of Technology). The good news was that it was less than five minutes, by bike, from the Park Slope apartment in which I was living. However, the bad news was that it was in what was still a high-crime area of downtown Brooklyn.
The college consisted of a couple of fairly grimy concrete and steel buildings that sucked up all of the soot from nearby factories and the cars and trucks entering the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Bicycles weren't allowed inside any of the buildings. But nearly every day, I bought coffee and something to eat from a truck that stood just outside the main entrance. The owner told me to park my bike at the parking meter nearest his truck, plainly within his sight. I did that for a couple of months.
Well, one day, he was sick and someone else--a nephew, I think--manned the truck. And, after teaching eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds where to put commas in their sentences, I walked over to the truck, only to find my bike gone.
The young man in the truck claimed to see nothing.
I'd been using the best lock Kryptonite made at the time. They paid the full retail cost of the bike, minus the deductible. After another paycheck or two, I could have bought another RB-2, even at the regular price. The only problem was that they weren't available any more. It was made in Japan and the dollar lost a lot of value against the yen, making the bike, and others built in Japan, much more expensive in the US than they had been. So Bridgestone and other Japanese bike makers (like Miyata and Panasonic) simply stopped exporting to the US. (Other Japanese makers, like Fuji, outsourced their manufacturing to Taiwan and China.)
Because I already had a high-end road bike, a nice track bike and a pretty good mountain bike, I simply used the latter bike for commutes and saved up for a nicer mountain bike, as I was becoming a fairly serious off-road rider. But I missed the RB-2: It was a sweet ride and the time I had it marked the first time in my life I had more than one good road bike.
Has anybody out there ridden a high-wheeler (or, as they were called in England, "penny-farthing")? Every once in a while, I think I'd like to ride one.
Of course, there's one logistical problem: finding such a bike. And then I'd have to get a pair of bloomers. I suppose I could ride in a short skirt, but somehow that wouldn't be in the spirit of riding a bike like the one in the photo.
There are cyclists who ride on New Year's Day and don't mount their bikes again until the Spring. I once rode with some of them. We began at six in the morning and were done by noon or thereabouts.
I guess I don't have to mention that I was unattached and didn't drink the previous night. However, I did stay up to watch the ball drop on Times Square. I don't know when I went to bed, but I know I didn't get more than a couple of hours of sleep. Still, somehow I managed to do a century (in miles, not a metric century), which included a few short but fairly steep climbs, to Bear Mountain and back.
The funny thing is that all of us who did that ride were in really good condition, and most of us were young and male, yet it didn't have quite the same competitive spirit one finds on rides like it. n fact, it had less egotism among the riders than almost any ride I did with male riders before my transition. I guess we gave each other "props" simply for being there, even though we knew that some of us wouldn't see each other again for at least another two months.
My ride today was nothing like that. For one thing, I woke up later and ate something like a real breakfast. And I made and received a few "Happy New Year" phone calls, which I avoided on the morning of my long-ago ride. And, well, I'm not in the kind of shape I was in back then. However, it was a clear, mild day, and there was--unsurprisingly--little traffic anywhere.
Plus, I stopped to check out a few things along the way.
This house is about a mile from my apartment. I saw two a man, a couple and a woman walk by with their kids. None wanted to leave. I didn't, either: How often does one see a miniature village, Santa's workshop and a toy store all in one. I can't hope to portray the attention the owners of this house paid to detail, but I will show you some of the more enchanting parts of their display:
This is the part right above where I propped Tosca. She couldn't take her eyes off this place, for reasons visible in the next photo:
While there was no haze in this part of the display, another part had its own misty marvel:
Now, if your idea of a great view doesn't run to castles, you might like what I saw when I left and crossed the RFK Bridge:
The blue domes adorn a Greek Orthodox temple. Seeing them in that landscape of residential houses reminds me, somewhat, of a particular view from the hill of le Sacre Coeur de Montmartre in Paris. Looking down from that hill, you see block after block of fin de siecle and Beaux Arts townhouses and apartment houses, nearly all of which stand three to six stories high. That vista is interrupted by the glass and steel planes and chutes of le Centre Pompidou.
After crossing the bridge, I came face-to-face with a very inquisitive mind:
I heard him meow as I rode by. His eyes pleaded with me to stop. As soon as I got off my bike, he darted to my ankles and rubbed himself around my legs. I hope that he belongs to someone in one of the nearby houses; he simply does not belong on the street. I actually picked him up and he curled around my shoulder for a moment before deciding he wanted to follow the laws of gravity.
Isn't it interesting that dogs sometimes chase cyclists, but cats can be fascinated with bicycles? In a perfect world, they could accompany us on our rides--whether to begin the new year, or to continue a journey.
Steve of DFW Point-to-Point has a point: Salt air really is rough on bicycle parts. I should have taken a photo of the bike I rode when I was in Florida. Every time I see it, the spokes and other parts are more corroded than they were the previous time I rode. It seems the spokes get the worst corrosion. At least, that seems to be the case for the non-plated, non-stainless spokes found on cheap bikes like the one I rode.
Whenever I'm in Florida, I see lots of bikes that have so much rust that it's a wonder they still run. Even the more inland areas are affected by salt air, and there are many bikes that spend years or even decades in garages or on porches after their owners stop riding them.
I must say that just about everyone who looked like he or she was riding long miles or doing any kind of training was astride an aluminum or carbon bike. Those riders are young and tend to be more swayed by trends, but I suspect their choice of ride might be influnced by the salt air and humid conditions. A mechanic with whom I worked spent a few years in Florida, where he worked in two bike shops. He told me that he often saw parts rusted clear through, and hubs that rotted on the inside because of the humidity and salt air.
Well, this year is old, too, although it's not rusty. So, as this will probably be my last post of 2011, I want to wish you a Happy New Year and lots of safe, enjoyable and fulfilling rides!
Many years ago (before many of you were born!), I dated an astrologer. Apparently, I am a Cancerian--or, as some politically-correct types would say, a "Moon Child. However, Astrologer was not politically correct, at least not in matters of pigeonholing, I mean pegging, people's personalities and destinies. So, she told me that I was "such a Cancerian."
Later on, she would remove the "ian" suffix and continue the sentence. But that's another story.
According to her--and everything I've heard or read (admittedly, not much) about the subject since, Cancer is a "water" sign. In fact, Astrologer claimed that Cancer is the "ultimate" water sign and, according to her charts, I was about as Cancerian as one could be.
If nothing else, it was a pretty good rationale, at least for her, for ending our relationship. But that's yet another story.
Anyway, I will concede that there is at least some truth to what she said. I am certainly drawn to water. Not to beaches, necessarily, but to water--wide expanses and endless vistas of it. I am so drawn, in fact, that sometimes everything along the way can seem like the desert.
Now, I've never actually ridden through a desert and, truth be told, never had any desire to do any such thing. This is probably as close as I'll come to it. I can hardly imagine anything that contrasts more with the ocean.
Sometimes, at the end of a bike ride, the ocean greets me: "Where have you been?"
Sometimes I cannot explain; when I can, the answer never makes any sense to someone who's gone to the beach. I know I am a different person when I go to the beach from what I am when I pedal to the ocean.
Another day, I will join them again. After that, I will continue the ride I took today, on my bike, to the ocean.
Do you see what I see?
This is what, among other things, I saw for my Christmas Day ride. It ain't Rockaway Beach; that's for sure.
I saw these sights while pedaling along the Atlantic Ocean on Route A-1A from Matanzas Bay to Ormond Beach in Florida. When I got to Ormond, which is about ten miles from Daytona, I encountered something you'll never find in the Rockaways:
This guy thinks it's about time we've been slowed down. And he means business:
Seriously, though, he wishes us all a good holiday!
I solved the problem of my lost saddle by taking a trip to IKEA:
This stool was actually created for the home-furnishings chain that, it's said, made and sold the beds on which one in every ten living Europeans was conceived. Hmm...If some couple wanted to get it off on a stool like this, would they have to add the saddle's break-in time to the nine months of pregancy if they want to figure out when their little one would be born?
Thanks to all of you who expressed concern and outrage. May the bike gods and goddesses whisper in Santa's ear on your behalf! And to anyone else reading this: Happy Holidays!
I can't believe it happened again.
I take that back...I can. Things are becoming more difficult, which means that people are becoming more desperate, or simply opportunistic.
Whatever the explanation, I experienced something I thought I knew better than to allow to happen.
I took Vera to take care of some business in Midtown Manhattan: 34th Street, a block from the Empire State Building, to be exact. I locked up the frame and wheels and took off anything that someone could abscond with...or so I thought.
When I came out, after about an hour and a half, my saddle and seatpost were gone. Perhaps the thief wanted the bike and, upon realizing he (All right, I'm sexist.) wouldn't get it, took what he could.
So now I'm out a Brooks B-17 saddle in honey. Yes, I'm glad the thief didn't get the whole bike or, say, the wheels. Still...
Some bikes look right only when they've got half of their paint missing and look beat right down to their inner tubes.
Well, all right, I didn't see the inner tubes on this one. But I imagine that they have, if nothing else, the feel and scent of a pair of flip-flops swished and slogged through curbside puddles during a summer rainstorm.
But, really, can you imagine this bike--from Worksman Cycles--new? The paint job may have been rather attractive, if in a utilitarian sort of way. Somehow, though, it wouldn't have looked right.
I must say that in my more than three decades of cycling, I've seen only one "virgin" Worksman. One shop in which I worked was an official Worksman dealer. Highland Park Cyclery did a brisk business inside a ramshackle building (which was torn down after HPC moved to fancier digs) at the foot of a commercial strip across the river from the college (Rutgers) I attended as an undergraduate. Some of the stores and restaurants offered deliveries, some of which they made on bikes. Those shops and restaurants already had their delivery bikes--Worksmans, mostly--before I started working at HPC.
So it was something of a surprise--to me, anyway--when I found myself assembling a brand-new Worksman. I didn't mind that: Although it wasn't a bike I'd've bought for myself, it was easy to work on. Plus, one could not deny that it was suited about as well as any product could be to its purpose.
What surprised me, though, was that it wasn't a business that bought one. Rather, he was--as I recall--a married middle-aged man who ran a "consulting business" from his home. He never consulted me about what his business consulted on, but he seemed prosperous and his family harmonious.
He said he'd wanted his Worksman to use as his "human powered station wagon." Later, I saw him hauling groceries, building supplies, books, and even furniture on it. Another thing I find interesting, in retrospect, was that he was looking to become less dependent on his car (which he sold not long after buying the Worksman) at a time when gasoline prices were falling, at least relative to what they were in the days around the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Although I saw that man on his Worksman nearly every day, it didn't seem to wear much. Granted, Highland Park wasn't as harsh an environment as New York or other urban zones for a bike. Plus, I'm sure he didn't subject it to the same kind of abuse as most delivery people did to theirs.
Apparently, in spite of the fact that the bikes never seem to die, there's enough of a market for new ones that the company is thriving, and did even during the leanest of times in the American bike market, and before the current vogue for "cruisers". I guess that disproves the notion that if a product is so well-made that it never needs replacement, the company making it will lose sales and stop making it, or even go out of business. (Some old-timers claim that was the story of Weinmann concave rims and Sun Tour V-GT derailleurs.) In any event, the bikes are being made in the Ozone Park area of Queens, NY, about seven miles from my apartment and just off the route of a few of my regular rides.
Afterword: I was looking up Highland Park Cyclery. Apparently, they've moved up the road into neighboring Edison and have renamed themselves Joyful Cycles, in a reference to 1 Thessolonians 5:16-18. Ironically, Frank, who owned HPC while I worked there, and his wife Wendy were about as antithetical to religious fundamentalism as any two people could be!
