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.
The great artist Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucentes) inscribed "Yo lo vi" ("I saw this") on the plate bearing his etching "Los Desastres de la Guerra" ("The Horrors of War"). I probably will never do anything as great as any of his work. I do, however, tell my students stories (in the context of whatever we're doing in class)--from my own or other people's lives--and end them with, "Yes, that happened during my lifetime." One example is that of the Lovings. Richard, who was white, and Mildred, who was black, married in Washington, DC. One week after I was born, cops in Virginia burst into their home and arrested them. Their case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided for them and struck down all remaining miscegenation laws in the United States--less than a month before I turned nine years old. Another story comes from a woman I knew. She went to a Seven Sisters college back when women's institutions of higher learning were still called, usually dismissively, "girls' schools. (Even when I was an undergraduate in the late 1970s, the women's sports teams were often called "girls'" teams.) She applied for a job in a corporation and, after passing the typing test--which all female applicants took, even if they had advanced degrees--got a job as a secretary. There, she met the man she would marry and later divorce. He had just spent time in the Army, which is probably the reason why he was hired. He didn't (and never would) attend college; in fact, he had only a General Equivalency Diploma (which, despite its name, is not "equivalent" to a regular diploma when you're applying to colleges or for a job) that he completed while in uniform. He did his job "well enough" and got several promotions. She, on the other hand, was never promoted in spite of excellent performance reviews. In those days, their company--like many others of the time (early to mid 1960s) had this policy: If both members of a married couple were working in the company, the woman could not hold a higher position than the man. I found myself thinking about those stories after a piece I heard on National Public Radio this morning. According to that report, a women's bicycle race in Belgium was delayed because one of the riders caught up to the men's race, which started ten minutes earlier. Yes, you read that right: A women's race was delayed because they caught up to the men. The Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is the first "spring classic" of the Belgian racing season. Held annually, the 74th edition ran yesterday. The first edition of the female event commenced in 2006. Now, when I say that the women caught up to the men, I'm exercising a bit of, um, poetic license. Actually, one rider--Nicole Hanselmann, the former Swiss national champion--found herself riding right behind the ambulances and other support vehicles for the men's race. Race organizers claim that they delayed the women's race out of fears that the riders of "the fairer sex" would get "entangled" with the support vehicles. And they didn't call their action a "stoppage" or even a "delay; instead, they said they "neutralised" the race until the other women caught up, and the men moved ahead. Whatever they call it, it threw off Hanselmann: She finished 74th. I can't help but to think, though, that at least one of the men's race organizers was a religious fundamentalist--or just a plain-and-simple male chauvinist--who wanted to penalize Ms. Hanselmann for being a fast woman. And to think: This happened during my lifetime!
On a couple of occasions, my seat was stolen when I parked my bike. I've since learned a trick that, I think, will prevent most such thefts most of the time. When you lose your saddle, you have one of two choices: a.) Walk the bike or, b.) Ride it standing up. The latter option is more viable if you haven't far to go. I don't think I'd want to ride for a few hours and, when I'm tired, bend down to sit on a missing seat! Or you could try this:
The other day I wrote about someone from El Paso on a bicycle. Today, I am going to write about another such cyclist, though she's not nearly as well-known. The other day, I wrote about Beto O'Rourke--who, outside of his home state, wasn't much better-known than the woman I'm going to mention today. While O'Rourke might be thinking about surviving a primary challenge next year, Sylvia Alvara is surviving something far more formidable: cancer.
And, if you will, she, like O'Rourke is hoping to ride to victory on a bicycle. Actually, the fact that she is riding a bicycle is a victory, though she probably doesn't see it that way. That might be the reason she's taking on a greater challenge: the Mighty Mujer triathlon. To help make that possible, the members of "Pay It Forward" at KFOX-14 in El Paso gave her a new bike from Trek El Paso. At the West El Paso shop, she will have $500 to spend on other gear, courtesy of City Lights Limousine. And a trainer is being provided to help her get ready for race day. I hope that she and O'Rourke both win their races!
In New York City, my hometown, 460,000 daily trips were made by bicycle. That is up from 270,000 trips in 2011--a 70 percent increase. Some of that, of course, has to do with the Citibike share program, which launched in 2013. The operative word here is "some": Many more cyclists are riding to work on their own bicycles. During the past four fiscal years, the city has set up an average of 1633 new racks. Now, what do you think the average was during the previous four years? 2808. In other words, 42 percent fewer racks have been installed during the past four years, which have fallen squarely in Bill de Blasio's administration, than in the previous four, which were mainly under Mike Bloomberg's administration. What that means is that the city lacks "essential infrastructure" needed if bicycling is truly to become a transportation option, according to Bike New York spokesman Jon Orcutt. "Everybody's talking about Citibikes and scooters, but it's the humble rack that needs more attention," added Orcutt, who served as the city's Department of Transportation policy director under Bloomberg. Citibikes are fine for commuting if there's a bike port near your home and another near your workplace--that is, if there are available bikes when you leave for work and if there's an available space in the dock when you get to your job. You can ride your own bike, but there might not be a dedicated bike rack or other safe facility at your destination. Or, if there is such a facility, there might not be any space available when you arrive--or it might simply be unusable for whatever reason.
So, you look for a signpost, lamppost or other seemingly immovable object--which aren't as impervious to bike thieves as they seem. And they might be full, too. Then, you lock to fencing, scaffolding or even a waste basket. I've even seen a bike locked to the chain that holds the cap to a fire hydrant. Those things, of course, are easy work for a thief who has the time you spend in your workplace or classroom. Rose Uscianowski, an organizer for Transportation Alternatives, learned that the hard way when she locked her bike to scaffolding in front of a building on John Street, in the city's financial district. "I came out of my office and found a bar of scaffolding on the floor and my bike missing," she lamented. "The only reason I locked up to scaffolding is that there are only a few racks on John Street, and they're always taken up." Even scarcer are racks by subway stations or other public transportation facilities. For people who live in areas that are a mile or more from the nearest subway or bus station--which is the case for people in the outlying areas of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and for nearly everybody in Staten Island--truly having the option of riding to transit and feeling more or less certain that your bike will be there when you return might do as much, or more than, congestion pricing or other proposed methods to reduce traffic. Plus, I think that making bike-parking facilities available at public transportation stations will help the public to see that cycling is a transportation alternative for people from all walks (pardon the pun) of life rather than the plaything of the young and privileged, and tourists.
Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power. Michael Cohen echoed something I've thought for some time. But even if he hadn't made that the remark at the end of his testimony yesterday, the talking heads and political bloggers would have been talking about who might run against the incumbent, and whether Cohen's testimony makes it more likely that Trump will indeed lose to one of them. So many people have already "tossed their hats into the ring" for the Democratic nomination that it's no surprise when anyone else--including someone almost no one outside of his home towns has heard of--does the same. Until last fall, Beto O'Rourke fit that category. Then the three-term Congressman narrowly lost an election for one of Texas' two US Senate seats to Ted Cruz, who himself came in second to Trump for the Republican Presidential nomination two years earlier. I'm still learning about O'Rourke. He sounds pretty good to me. I must say, though, that even though I like most of his views, there is something else about him that appeals to me:
Lest you think he is trying to appeal to the hipsters on his Surly Steamroller fixed-gear bike, here he is on an '80s Bridgestone:
Three years ago, the Canal St. Martin was drained. The City of Paris does that about every ten or fifteen years. In dredgings past (sounds like a series of old therapy sessions!), the "treasures" at the bottom of the Canal included home furnishings, street signs, gold coins(!), World War I shells and even a car. But the most recent drainage served as a sort of geological record of changes in the neighborhood around the canal--mostly the 10th Arrondissement--and in the City of Light itself. The streets around the waterway have become the sites of bars, restaurants and clubs. (The Bataclan, site of a mass shooting during a November 2015 concert, stands literally steps from the canal.) The area is home to "Bobos"--a term combining "bohemian" and "bourgeois". They are probably the Parisian equivalent of hipsters. At any rate, they share many of the same tastes with their Brooklyn counterparts. They include a thirst for craft beers (French as well as American) and wines. Empty bottles and cans bearing those labels littered the bottom of the canal when it was dredged. So did another passion of that evanescent group: bicycles--specifically, those from Velib, the city's bike-share service. As far as I know, neither of the city's two canals--the Harlem River Ship Canal and the Gowanus Canal--has ever been drained. Interestingly, the Gowanus--one of the most toxic waterways in the United States--flows, like the St. Martin, through a hipsterizing (Think of it as the hipster equivalent of gentrifying.) neighborhood. According to an urban legend, the Mafia used to dump their "hits" in the Gowanus because the bodies would dissolve. Which brings me to this question: Could a Citibike survive a dive into a city canal?
Somehow I doubt it would be even as intact as the bike in the photo. That Citibike, missing since September 2017, showed up in the bike-share service's port at 73rd Street and Riverside Drive, where filmmaker Ted Geoghegan found it. Its coating of barnacles and mud indicates that it spent time in the Hudson River--which, at that point, is actually an estuary. No one, it seems, can explain how it got from the river (or wherever it was) to the bike dock? Did a thief take it, dump it, feel guilty and dive into the water to fetch it? That seems unlikely because, well, that's not what thieves usually do, but also because if the thief did indeed dump the bike in the river, he or she wouldn't have found it in the same spot, or anywhere nearby. The more likely scenario is that some boater or fisher found it and, not knowing what else to do, quietly brought it to the bike port.
That bike is more than likely beyond repair. Spending almost any amount of time in the water would have destroyed the bike's electronics, and the growth on the rest of the bike indicates that the brackish water has corroded the rest of the bike so that it's structurally unsound, and its moving parts are probably irreparable.
(Interesting aside: The Gowanus and Harlem Ship are the only two canals in New York City today. In the 17th Century, however, lower Manhattan was laced with canals. That's not surprising when you realize the area was then called Nieuw Amsterdam, and the Dutch settlers were following a model of urban planning for which their capital is famous.)
I wear a helmet when I ride. Well, most of the time, I do. Whatever the naysayers might say, I have had two occasions when wearing my helmet probably, if not saved my life, then at least prevented serious injury. In the second of those incidents, my helmet actually broke in two but I escaped with only a few scratches. I admit, though, that I've ridden bareheaded, even after those incidents. When I ride in Florida, I don't wear a helmet: Even on cool days, most riders, it seems, aren't wearing them. And on my recent trips to Paris, Rome, Cambodia and Laos, I went sans casque, except on the Grasshopper tour in Siem Reap. I think the only reason we had those is that Grasshopper tours is run by Westerners and was probably covered (pun intended) by insurance regulations in the US or someplace else. Otherwise, in Southeast Asian countries, I'm not sure I could have even found a helmet: I didn't see any in the bike shops I peeked into, let alone the bike stalls of the market places. In the Italian capital, I followed the age-old advice: Do as the Romans do. I did the same in Paris, which meant that in both cities I didn't wear helmets. It wouldn't have been hard to find a hardhat in either city: In fact, some rental services offer them. But it seemed that no one else was wearing them, so I didn't. So, even though I have had occasions in which wearing a helmet might have saved me, I am still hesitant to support laws requiring every cyclist to wear one. We don't have such a law here in New York, though every once in a while some police officer tickets an unsuspecting rider who isn't wearing one. In some places, like New Jersey, helmets are mandatory for kids; a few other places require them for adults. But even though helmet-wearing has become more or less the norm in much of the US, there are still relatively few places that require it. I am more ready, however, to support another ban: one on headphones, at least ones that cover the ear. Right now, the city of Washington, DC forbids cycling with headphones. So do a few other jurisdictions; more, however, do not allow motorists to drive with mini-speakers covering their ears.
Now some startup company, Conduit Sports, has come out with a headphone that doesn't cover the ear and block the ear canal. Its creators say their device allows for "situational awareness". By that, I assume they mean that you can hear horns and other traffic sounds while you listen to Cardi B or Brockhampton.
Riding with such headphones may well be safe. Still, I'll stick to riding without them, or without any other audio stimulation other than what's provided by my surroundings when I ride. Even if I'm doing a ride I can do in my sleep, I prefer to hear what's around me, in part because it helps me to think, meditate or simply relax while riding. Also, I reckon it's safer than riding even with those new headphones. But I'll still wear my helmet. Most of the time, anyway.
If you've been reading this blog, you know that I take, on average, a trip to Florida every year. Really, I go to visit my parents! But you know that I enjoy the cycling and, if I'm lucky, good weather. If you've read any of my posts about my time in Florida, or have spent any time in the Sunshine State, you also know that it's car-centric. People travel greater distances to shop or do just about anything than we do in New York, mainly because development is more sprawled (at least in the parts of Florida I visit). I don't even need to ride my bike to buy groceries when I'm home. I know that no one in my parents' part of Florida enjoys that level of convenience; I doubt that very many people anywhere in the state have it. Still, I see a fair number of people on bikes whenever I visit Florida, even when the weather is unusually cold, as it was last year. (The temperature actually dropped to 23F one night!) Some, like me, are visiting; others are "snowbirds" who spend part of the year in the state and the rest in some point north or west. There are, however, cyclists for whom their two wheels and pedals are their sole means of transportation. These day-to-day riders include a whole range of people, from homeless veterans to latter-day hippies and those who can't drive because they're too poor or for other reasons. Among those reasons is age. While Florida's regulations on senior-citizen drivers are, not surprisingly, less restrictive than those of most other states, they still mandate shorter license renewals and vision tests for older drivers. Moreover, the state's Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which issues licenses, also conducts unsafe driver investigations upon requests from family members and others. As a result of such investigations, as well as vision and driving tests, the state can also impose restrictions on elderly drivers, such as a ban on nighttime driving or a requirement that the driver has to wear a hearing aid or glasses. In a few cases, senior citizens are banned from driving if they are believed to pose a safety hazard to themselves or others. So, I suspect that at least a few of the seniors I've seen on bikes--and a fair number of those I've seen on three-wheelers--are pedaling because they can't drive anymore. And, I suspect, at least a few are riding their bikes because they can't afford to drive anymore, or just enjoy cycling.
Whatever his reasons, Bob Wingate's bicycle was his only means of transportation. The Cape Coral resident parked it at the Winn Dixie supermarket in his town. A thief cut the cable he'd used to secure his bike. Field Training Officer Ken Cody and Officer Trainee Guang Song of the Cape Coral Police Department were called to the scene. After taking the report, Cody and Song decided they couldn't let Wingate be without a bicycle. So they went to a nearby Walmart and bought a new one, which they brought to Wingate's house. Before they left, they even adjusted the seat and handlebars for him. Those officers not only gave him back his means of transportation and his independence; they may have ensured that he'll live well beyond his current 80 years. I suspect that other senior citizens I've seen on bikes in Florida, and elsewhere, realize that when they are on the road (or trail), there is more road ahead of them.
Some of the early Terry bicycles for women had a smaller wheel in the front than in the rear. You still see them from time to time. But I don't think Terry ever designed anything like the bike on the left
If you ship your bike, what are the odds that it will be damaged? Last year, according to Dutch manufacturer Van Moof, some 25 percent of their bikes were damaged before they reached their destination. The problem was particularly bad when the bikes were shipped to the US. So what did the folks at VanMoof do? They made their bikes go stealth. Well, sort of. They thought about what Americans "really love," according to VanMoof co-founder Taco Carlier. "What would prompt couriers to be delicate with a parcel?"
The answer: a television. Turns out, a big flat-screen TV in its box is about the same size and weight as a high-end commuter bike in its box. So, the company started imprinting their boxes with images of televisions. The boxes still have logos identifying them as bicycles, but at first glance, they look like they're bearing TV's. So far, it's worked--even after a Wall Street reporter "outed" the contents of the boxes.
