In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
Today is the 15th of November--the middle of the month. It means, among other things, that Thanksgiving (in the US) is not far off.
When I first saw an announcement for a "Cranskgiving" ride, I thought it would be just a post-prandial pedal trip around local streets, perhaps beyond.
Turns out, the ride--at least the version scheduled in Miami--is a bit different. For one thing, it will run on the 21st, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. But even more important, it's something I could not have imagined before I heard about it, but made perfect sense once I did: a combination alley-cat race and scavenger hunt/food drive.
Actually, in one way it resembles a brevet: There are check points and riders have to stop at every one of them. But those checkpoints aren't just tables where ride cards are stamped. Rather, they are stores, and every rider has a list of items to buy. The first participant to the finish line with all of the items on his or list, and having visited each checkpoint, wins the race.
Of course, one doesn't have to race in order to be part of the ride. Simply doing it for the sake of the cause--all of the food purchased will go to Camillus House, a one-stop place for those who are homeless, addicted to substances or otherwise in need or other difficulties.
Versions of "Cranksgiving" are scheduled in other cities on the 21st, including my home town of New York. Had I known about it earlier, I wouldn't have made the commitments I had already made for that day. Oh well. Maybe I'll do my own version on another day.
Allo.? Isabelle. Je suis Justine. Tu vas bien? Oui. Comment ca-va? Bien. J'ai vous vous reveillez? Ah...oui. Pardon. No problem. (She likes to use that phrase.)
J'ai entendu les nouvelles de Paris. Yes, it is terrible. But we were not there. Je suis tres hereuse pour ca. Would you like to talk to Jay? Il dort? Oui, mais se reveillera. I didn't want her to wake him. At least I knew he was at home, in his bed. But she brought him to the phone.
Desole de te reveiller. Don't worry. Mais, besoin de redormir. That's OK. J'ai voule etre sur que vous etes OK. He thanked me for calling. I assured him that all I wanted was to know that he and Isabelle were not casualties of the bombings, the shootings, that rocked Paris and its environs yesterday. I knew that, chances were, they weren't there when those terrible events went down, but I just wanted to be sure.
Then I called Michele. No answer. Asleep, I hoped. I left a message. Just before I started writing this post, I found an e-mail from her. All right. I can breathe a little easier. Can they?
None of us had gone to the Bataclan together. But we'd walked those streets, ate in restaurants and sipped espressos in the cafes near it. When I heard that death struck at Le Carillon, I stopped cold.
It's just a block away from the Quai des Jemmapes, on the eastern bank of the Canal St. Martin. Back in August, after a lovely morning ride, I enjoyed a picnic lunch of fresh foods and Badoit water I bought along the way. As the sun softened the green tint of the canal and leaves that flickered in the breeze, it was hard to imagine anything terrible, let alone the blaze of guns or an explosion.
After my canal-side reverie, I retreated to Le Carillon for a cappuccino to cap off my lunch. By that time, most locals had finished their lunch and were back at work or passing the rest of the day along the old, narrow streets. I went to Le Carillon because it was the nearest café, but it was a place I would have chosen otherwise: It seemed like a real old cozy neighborhood watering hole Parisians themselves would habituate, not some place trying to look the part for hipsters who wanted an "authentic" experience.
I sat at a wooden table on the sidewalk. So did a few other people. It's hard to imagine that sidewalk with bodies sprawled over it--even more difficult than it was, the first time I saw the Place de la Concorde, to visualize the blood of French monarchy and nobility spilled all over it. But certainly not as difficult as it is for those who witnessed the darkness that descended upon the City of Light.
I typed "Friday the 13th bicycle" into a Google search bar. This is what came up:
"Montxgear" posted it on Pinterest with the caption "Friday 13th, 1922. Jacques may not have won the Yellow Jersey today, but he did receive the Pink Cravat for the most expressive moustache." When I was a kid, it seemed that every "evil villain" (Is there any other kind?) had a sinisterly baroque moustache. I think of such characters as Dishonest John (who had the best laugh of any cartoon villain), Snidely Whiplash, Boris Badenov and Dick Dastardly. Turns out, some of the biggest villains in real life had similarly imposing moustaches--among them Joseph Stalin, Gengis Khan and Saddam Hussein. (So that's where he hid the WMDs!) Friday the 13th and bad guys with moustaches: They go together like bike racing and...
For those of us who are dedicated cyclists, nothing hurts worse than having our beloved rides stolen. It's happened to me a few times. I lost bikes that, frankly, were meant for the purpose: "beaters" that were meant to be locked in urban combat zones. However, I also lost a relatively nice bike and my first custom build to thieves.
For a time, I thought that having had more than one bike stolen was a sign that one was a true New York cyclist. Just about everyone with whom I've ridden in the Big Apple has had at least one bike to theft. In fact, one fellow with whom I sometimes rode in Prospect Park actually sat shiva after losing his classic Ron Cooper.
(I am now recalling how, when drafting him, I would see the tzitzitdangling from the tallit katanhe wore under his jersey! Only in pre-hipster Brooklyn, right?)
For about 99 percent of us, having a bike stolen means never seeing it again. That's because bikes are pretty easy to transport, take apart and repaint. Also, law enforcement agencies--at least here in the US--don't seem to make bike theft a high priority. That's at least somewhat understandable in areas with lots of violent crime but less so, I feel, in relatively tranquil places like suburban or rural college campuses.
Still, when we lose our bikes, we try not to lose hope of being part of the 1 percent whose machines are recovered. As with just about any other kind of theft, the more time that elapses from the moment the bike is filched, the less likely that bike is to be reunited with its owner. And, of course, if you lose your wheels far away from home, there's even less chance that you'll ever see them again.
Such a realization left a fellow named Thomas "bummed/heartbroken" the day he left Japan in 1992. For the previous two years, he'd been stationed in the northern part the country as a US Navy Pilot. The riding was "beautiful" there, he says, and the Mercian Strada he'd purchased as a college student a decade earlier got him around.
He'd raced on that bike against folks like Davis Phinney, Alexi Grewal and Andy Hampsten before even most cyclists had heard of them. It also made an appearance in the movie American Flyers. As he explains it, he rode as an extra with the Cinelli team. The bike the team issued him broke three weeks into the filming, so his Mercian took over.
Well, one cold day a year into his tenure in the Land of the Rising Sun, he stopped at a ramen house to warm his bones with a bowl of noodles. He parked his Mercian outside the eatery and--you guessed it--his bike wasn't there when he came back out.
He filed a report with the local Japanese police as well as with base security. No luck--at least not for a while.
In 2009, he was stationed with a squadron in San Diego. As he tells the story, one "glorious" day (Aren't they all in San Diego?), a box appeared on his front porch.
You guessed it: his Mercian was inside the box. At least, the frame was, anyway: the Campagnolo and Cinelli parts, and even the fork, were stripped off. Somehow or another, the frame was recovered in Japan. Because he was in the military, Thomas was much easier to track down than his bike.
He spent the next few years tracking down replacement components. Once he found them, he sent the frame back to Mercian for restoration. "I'm sure that my next ride on the bike will give me just as much and more joy than that first ride in 1981."
Even though I read and watch all sorts of dark and moody books and films, I like a happy ending now and again. This one is even better than the one in Breaking Away, don't you think?
If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed a seeming contradiction: although I am anti-war, I have written a number of posts about how bicycles have been used in the military. The real irony is that I have become more interested in such things as my opposition to armed conflict (in 99.9 percent of cases) increases.
As I have said before, studying military history in its truest sense (not what is commonly derided as "drum and bugle history") offers all sorts of lessons into other areas of history--and life. It shows us, very clearly, the sorts of mistakes leaders can make through their own egotism or arrogance, or through pure-and-simple misjudgment or miscalculation. It also shows us, I believe, human nature in its most naked forms.
Now I'm going to present you with another seeming contradiction about myself: the more I adopt an anti-war stance, the more pro-veteran I become.
Actually, my explanation for that will probably make sense (I think): It is because I am opposed to war that I believe anyone who is sent to fight should never want for anything. It's a disgrace that someone who has put on a uniform and faced danger should be sleeping under a bridge or railroad overpass. I have seen a few on my way to and from work.
Thus, I am willing to put in a good word for any organization that might help improve the lives of veterans. Today, I learned about one such organization.
VetBikes.org is a veteran-run non-profit (501c3) that provides adaptive bicycles to recovering veterans. VetBikes began in Seattle, but has recently opened a second location in Denver.
Some of the machines VetBikes has provided were tailored to obvious physical disabilities such as the loss of limbs, but most look like bikes most of us would ride, with small modifications. According to VetBikes' website, its mission is to use bicycles, and cycling (mainly of the sport variety), to help veterans cope with their new lives.
To that end, VetBikes takes referrals from social workers, medical doctors and other profssionals for veterans suffering from combat wounds, substance abuse problems, homelessness and even blindness. However, by far the largest number of referrals is for veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
With those realities in mind, VetBikes does not merely lend bikes or have them available for the vets to take out: It gives each vet a machine. But VB's program doesn't stop there: It also offers mentors, placement in local cycle clubs (to help with community integration), professional mechanical instruction and, according to its mission statement, "an introductory path to a career in the cycling industry".
The site doesn't mention anything about expanding beyond Washington State and Colorado, but it would not surprise me if someone in the organization has that in mind: The need certainly doesn't stop at the borders of the Evergreen and Centennial States. It does, however, say that it can use help, whether as a volunteer, or through donations of cash, bike parts or bikes.
In one of your English or art classes, you might have seen--or created--examples of "concrete poems". They're the ones shaped like their subjects:
Il Pleut, by Guillaume Apollinaire, is one of the most famous of its type. The text of it goes like this:
Il pleut des voix de femmes comme si elles étaient mortes même dans le souvenir c'est vous aussi qu'il pleut merveilleuses rencontres de ma vie ô gouttelettes et ces nuages cabrés se prennent à hennir tout un univers de villes auriculaires écoute s'il pleut tandis que le regret et le dédain pleurent une ancienne musique écoute tomber les liens qui te retiennent en haut et en bas
Here's a rough translation:
It's raining the voices of women as if they'd died even in memory and it's raining you as well, the marvelous encounters of my life, O little drops those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities listen if it rains while disdain and regret weep to an ancient music listen to the fall of chains that hold you above and below Another one of Apollinaire's famous concrete poems is Coeur Couronne Miroir:
Here's the text:
Mon Coeur pareil a une flamme renversee Les rois qui meurent tour a tour Reanaissent au couer des poets Dans ce miroir je suis enclos vivant et vrai Comme on imagine les anges Et non comme sont les reflets which, in English becomes Heart, Crown and Mirror:
My heart is like an inverted flame
The kings who have died one by one Are reborn in poets' hearts
In this mirror I am captured alive and true The way you imagine angels And not only as a reflection.
I couldn't find anything that would hint at whether or not Apollinaire was a cyclist. Given the time and places in which he lived, however, I imagine he rode a bike for at least some time in his life.
If you bought a Raleigh bicycle before the 1970s, it might have come with this:
Even if you have never owned a Raleigh, there's a good chance that you've come across the Raleigh spanner (or what Yanks call "wrench"). You might even have one. I did, for a long time. I don't know whether I loaned it and never got it back, or simply lost it.
Anyway, Raleigh wasn't the only British bike maker to offer a spanner. Check out this, from Claud Butler:
Like Raleigh's tool, the Claud Butler spanner has a hooked end for a bottom bracket lock ring. I am guessing that the hex side of the wrench fit the bottom bracket cup--or, possibly, the headset. In the 1960s--when, it seems, the tool in the photo was made--if a customer bought a frame, it was as often as not supplied with those components.
Claud Butler is long gone, and bikes under his name, and Holdsworth, have been made by other British bicycle manufacturers for some time. CB also offers a line of tools similar to those of other bike manufacturers, but when Claud was still alive, they had their own discrete line, which were probably made by Cyclo or some other Birmingham bike parts company.
I have just taken an easy ride through the heart of Queens, to the far end of the borough and the near end of Nassau County. It's Sunday, and the blaze autumn colors will soon turn into the ashes of fall, the foreshadowings of winter. I think I took the ride more for the opportunity to reflect on a few things than I did to exert myself physically. I do that sometimes, especially at this time of year. For me, there is something paradoxically clear and benevolent at the same time about the nip in the air and the light of days growing shorter. There have been seasons that ended with my wishing that I had ridden more, harder or to different places. I feel no such yearnings now. Of course, having the opportunity to cycle in Florida, Paris and Montreal, as well as taking rides from my place to Connecticut and various points in New Jersey and Long Island has given me kaleidoscope of images to take with me through the winter. I don't plan to stop cycling: I never do that except, perhaps, for physical injuries or ailments (which, thankfully, I don't experience often) or when there's a lot of ice on the streets, as there was through much of last winter. But, realistically, I know that I won't cycle as much between, say, Thanksgiving and March or whenever the weather breaks. Today I was satisfied, no, I was happy with the riding I did this year. Perhaps I could have ridden even more, but I don't wish that I did. I also don't wish that I had the strength and stamina I did when I was younger. Well, all right, I'd like to have those things, but I know I don't need them to keep on riding, to continue my journey.
As I rode today, I was thinking about a particular ride I took many, many years ago. I had taken the day off from working as a messenger, hopped onto my Peugeot PX-10E and pedaled across the bridge, up and down ridges, and back up some old mining roads in the Watchung Mountains. The cloud cover was not a shawl that kept the ridges and cliffs warm and forgetful; rather, it seemed to keep the chill and ashen tones of the coming winter all around, and within, me. I had, in not much more than a year, experienced the deaths of two of my closest (emotionally and spiritually) relatives and the suicide of a friend. There was nothing to do but pedal up that steep mining road; it could have been the last thing I did; I wanted it to be; there would be no wishes, no regrets left. But no matter how hard I pedaled or how fast I ascended that hill, the young man I was could not have met up with the woman I am now. If he could have, I would have told him that he would be OK, he is riding, he is on his journey, it was all that mattered. In short, I could not have understood what it would be like to have taken the ride I have taken to where I am now.
In an earlier post, I wrote about one of the great paradoxes of sports: Some countries, particularly in Europe, that are cycling hotbeds are also powerhouses in what they call "football" or Americans call "soccer". Yet one never sees anyone who competes--at least at a high level--in both sports. That is all the more perplexing when one realizes that the skills and training for both sports are, in some many ways, similar.
In that post from a year and half ago, I posited that some of the reasons why the twain rarely, if ever, meet between the worlds of cycling and football because their seasons are more or less concurrent, both sports require intensive training to the exclusion of almost everything else (at least, if one wants to compete at an elite level) and that cyclists, even when they ride for teams, are competing mainly for individual honors while football is all about the team.
Peter Sagan of Slovakia is one of cycling's great young talents: Just a few weeks ago, the 25-year-old won the men's road race of the UCI championships. He has also won the points classification of the Tour de France and other races, and has a number of stage victories. Not many people would be surprised, I think, if he wins the Tour--or the Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a Espana or other major multi-stage races over the next few years.
More surprising might be a switch to a professional football career. Or would it?
Today was a very strange day, weather-wise. When I got out of bed at 7:30 am, it was already 20C (68F). The normal afternoon high temperature at this time of year is around 15C (60F). By mid-afternoon, we had a high of 25C (77F). What made it all even stranger is that in the morning, the rain that had fallen in the wee hours dripped and slicked all over everything. Most of the day remained overcast, although there was no real threat of rain. The sun peeked out briefly about three and a half hours into my ride, but it pulled the blanket of clouds across its face almost as soon as I saw it. I have often ridden, happily, in such conditions in coastal areas in the US and Europe. The sun peeked out briefly about three and a half hours into my ride, but it pulled the blanket of clouds across its face almost as soon as I saw it. The combination of warmth--more typical of early or mid September--and cloud cover could have made for very sticky conditions. However, even on a 125 km (75 mile), about a third of which consisted of sequences of climbs with very little flat or straight stretches between them, I wasn't sweating--or drinking water--very much. And I didn't feel tired, in the middle, late in the ride, or in the end.
Perhaps I was energized by the light I saw: the trees and bushes radiated their autumnal colors, just past their peak in upper Westchester County, against a gray sky particular to November, I feel: aging, like the earth beneath it, and rather melancholy, but not oppressive.
Now that I think of it, that might have been the reason why I sweated so little, in spite of the climbing and heat: When the late summer sky is shrouded with thick cumulus clouds on a late summer day, you can still feel the intensity of the sun, and of the heat that almost everything seems to absorb after several weeks of summer. But, even if the sun had shown itself more today, I don't think it would have drained me, and my waterbottle: It would have been less intense, and it would not have been aided by the the ground, streets and other things that absorb its heat in the "dog days".
Of course, I might have just felt really, really good to be on Arielle, my Mercian Audax, again after riding to and from work all week on my LeTour.
