Rest And The Path Ahead

 I wanted to ride this afternoon, but I wasn’t feeling adventurous.  Perhaps it has to do with the year ending:  Starting new journeys seems more appropriate for a new year.

So I rode to the Flushing Bay Promenade, recently renamed the Malcolm X Promenade.  He lived in nearby East Elmhurst, along with other luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.

The ride is pleasant enough, sort of like comfort food for me and my bikes.  I rode up and down the promenade a few times, in part to get into a physical and mental “groove,” but also because of two men.

Short and squat but broad-shouldered and thick-fingered, they looked like the sort of Central American immigrants who wait at strategic but discreet intersections in residential neighborhoods where contractors, landscapers and other small business people hire people like them as day laborers.  

Such people work and sleep hard, wherever they can. So it’s unusual to see men like them dozing on park benches.  

But were they sleeping ?

Their faces, which probably would have been colored like terra cota or the earth from which they came, instead looked as if they’d been worn to reflect the gray sky and water. One man’s hand drooped in front of him, his fingers frozen in a grip of something no longer there.  

The other man’s head was cocked to his side, as if he stopped himself from resting it on the other man’s shoulders—or a pillow he realized wasn’t there.

A mobile phone propped between them played bouncy conga drum and stringed music.  But it could just as well have emitted “elevator music,” for all of the effect it had on them.

Finally, when I rode by them for the sixth time, I think, the man with the cocked head stirred. 

“¿Estás bien?” I shouted. He nodded.

“¿Necesitas algo?” He moved his head slowly from side to  side.

“¿Estás seguro?” Another nod.

“OK. Feliz año nuevo.” Even if they’re OK, I hope the path ahead is easier and clearer for them in the coming year.

At least the ride back was, for me.

Another Reason Your Favorite Shop Doesn't Have What You Want Or Need

During the 1980s and early 1990s, some bike shop owners and employees, it seemed, regarded robberies as a rite of passage.  I knew, and was known in, most Manhattan and Brooklyn shops and I don't think a single one escaped having expensive bikes, parts or money stolen.  Some even prepared themselves for what seemed an inevitability:  One employee was able to free herself, two fellow employees and the shop's owner after a perp tied them up and fled with cash and merchandise.

Later in the 1990s, as overall crime dropped, such events became less common.  Theft in bike shops, by that time, was more likely to be a matter of  some sticky-fingered opportunist absconding with a bike computer or expensive accessory or part--or low-paid employees taking "samples" of stuff they couldn't afford on their salaries.  

If you live long enough (as someone with a blog called "Midlife Cycling" has), you realize that almost no condition, good or bad, lasts forever--and that the good usually has at least one bad consequence,and vice versa.

Case in point:  the COVID 19-induced Bike Boom.  Anyone selling or repairing bikes, or anything related to them, was doing more business than they've done in years, or ever.  Then, lockdowns and workforce attrition throughout supply chains--from factories in the Far East to docks on the East and West coasts--led to scarcity that caused the prosperity that burned so brightly to consume the very shops that enjoyed it, however briefly.  

Those shortages--and the overall increase in crime--led to something that now seems all but inevitable:  an increase in theft, of bikes parked on streets, stored in warehouses or displayed on showroom floors, and of parts and accessories.  So, the number of bike shops incurring theft--whether of small items or bikes with five-figure price tags--has risen for the first time in decades.  

Worse, bike shop robberies and other crimes have been "taken to another level," in the words Gillian Forsyth.  She owns BFF Bikes in Chicago, which was hit when "people were going to work and cars about" on a weekday morning.  The robbers "crashed through one of my windows" and "targeted five very high-end bikes," she said.  "They just kind of rushed in, grabbed the bikes and left very quickly."

Although she has security footage of the incident, Forsyth says that identifying the perps will be difficult because they were masked--an ironic consequence of a measure taken to deal with the COVID pandemic.

In an ideal world, everyone will have a good bike and will ride it without worrying about their safety while riding or the bike's safety when parked.  In the meantime, we'll have to settle for part of the utopia, I guess:  More people are riding bikes.

Sobre Las Piedras

 During the past couple of weeks, I wrote a couple of posts that didn't have much to do with cycling.  But I felt I had good reason:  After all, they, like my rides, are part of my journey of Midlife Cycling.

Now I'll be completely self-indulgent and post something that has even less to do with cycling.  I hope you don't mind.

This is the coqui guajon, also known as the Puerto Rican Rock Frog.  It lives in the southern part of the island in, as the name indicates, caves and rocky streams. 

Say what you will:  I am not impervious to cuteness.  

Policing Of Cyclists is A Social And Economic Justice Issue

For a very brief time in my youth, I worked in sales.  As with jobs of that kind, numbers were everything:  I, and other salespeople, were rated on the number of sales and the dollar value of them.

Knowing that, I, of course, went for the easiest "closes." (A "close" is a completed sale.)  After I drained the pool of easy marks, I realized that I hated sales and quit soon after.

There are other lines of work in which people are similarly evaluated.  Management calls those numbers "metrics" and use them, not only to decide on promotions, but also whether to continue someone's employment.  Such a situation, I discovered, also prevails in the academic world:  Decisions on tenure, promotions and continued employment are based on, among other things (like the ever-so-concrete category called "collegiality") the number of a faculty member's publications, and how much grant money he or she brings to the institution.

If anyone asks you what a professor and a police officer have in common, now you know.  In many departments--including the one in the "City of Angels"--police are judged by, among other things, the number of tickets they write and arrests they make.  Here I have no truck with conspiracy theories:  Constables themselves have said as much.  They also admit that they go after cyclists because we're the proverbial low-hanging fruit.  I am learning that I am not the only cyclist who's been stopped by cops--and ticketed--for something I didn't do.

One way you can tell a true salesperson, without knowing his or her numbers, is that such a person is a "schmoozer" (which I can be, when I feel like it) and gets a rush out of engaging, and closing the deal with, a customer.  It always seemed to me that to a true salesperson, the deal or the sale is, to them, as the painting or sculpture is to an artist.

Many police officers, I suspect, get a similar thrill out of a "collar."  "Everybody loves a good bust," said J.P. Harris, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's lieutenant who now sits on the Sheriff's Civilian Oversight Board.  "The person who makes the right hooks, they are respected, they are admired."

A source for the Sheriff--who asked to remain anonymous because he's not authorized to speak in public--confirmed the suspicions I, and probably many of you have about why we're targeted:  "Like a lion looking for prey, what is she going to do?"  The source explained, "That's what cops do--they look for the easiest stop."

From the Good Word News

That also partially explains why non-white cyclists are disproportionately ticketed and arrested while riding their bicycles.  Another officer explained that when cyclists are stopped, it's not really about the missing reflector or bell, although that's might be the reason the officer gives when he or she approaches a cyclist.  Also, that officer explained, the goal isn't always to write a ticket, though that is often the result. 

Rather, stopping a cyclist--especially in a low-income neighborhood, and especially if the cyclist is not white--is really seen as a gateway to making an arrest for something more serious, like gun or drug possession.  Another officer explained that when was a new assistant in Compton, his training officer told him that in low-income areas like Compton, he should assume that any adult on a bicycle had most likely lost his (they're usually male) license because of some crime he'd committed.  

In other words, that law enforcement agent was trained to see any cyclist in a low-income neighborhood as a criminal. And he says he wasn't the only one inculcated with that notion.

That sort of training continued for years, even though it didn't produce the expected results.  According to a Los Angeles Times investigation, 44,000 cyclists were arrested in the county from 2017 until July of this year.  Of them, 85 percent were searched.  Only 8 percent of those searches revealed illegal items, and weapons were seized only 164 times, or in only 0.5  percent of all searches.

Perhaps the most galling aspect of those stops, arrests and seizures--and the training and mentality that produces them--is that they target the very cyclists who are least able to defend themselves against the charges.  It's hard not to think that makes poor black and brown cyclists such appealing targets for sheriff's assistants with itchy ticket-writing fingers:  Cops don't look good to their peers or superiors when their summonses are dismissed or charges dismissed. (That, by the way, is also the reason why the so-called War On Drugs so decimated black and brown communities:  Cops won't arrest a pot-smoking prep school kid whose parents can afford a good lawyer.)  In rare cases, large numbers of frivolous citations and arrests lead to disciplinary measures against and, even more uncommonly, dismissal of officers.

So, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the way cyclists are policed isn't just a first-world, white people's issue:  It's a matter of social and economic justice.

What I Need After The Past Two Years

Here is what I would have posted yesterday, had I not invoked the Howard Cosell rule for someone who deserves it as much as anyone:  Desmond Tutu.

On the day his illustrious life ended--Boxing Day--I rode out to Point Lookout.  I woke, and started my ride, late:  It was close to noon before I mounted the saddle of Zebbie, my red vintage Mercian Vincitore that looks like a Christmas decoration. (I don't say that to throw shade on her; I love the way she looks and rides.)  One consequence is starting late, and stopping for a late lunch at Point Lookout, is that it was dark by the time I got to Forest Park, about 8 kilometers from my apartment.  That also meant, however, that I saw something that made me feel a little less bad about not traveling this year, or last.

Because the Rockaway Boardwalk rims the South Shore of Queens, you can see something you don't normally associate with the East Coast of the US:  a sunset on the ocean.  From the Rockaway Peninsula, the Atlantic Ocean stretches toward New Jersey.

The next time I feel as if I have no influence on anybody, I'll remember yesterday's ride. As I stopped to take photos, people strolling along the boardwalk stopped and turned their heads.   One couple with a small child actually thanked me:  "Otherwise, we never would have looked:  It's perfect!," the man exclaimed.

It was about as close to a perfect sunset as I've seen in this part of the world, and I've seen some stunners--in Santorini (of course!), the Pre Rup temple (Cambodia) , Sirince (in Turkey), .Le Bassin d'Arcachon (near Bordeaux), Lands End Lookout (San Francisco) and from the window of an Amtrak Coast Starlight train.  

All right, I'll confess:  I'm a sucker for sunsets--and bike rides.  Either one is a form of "redemption," if you will, for a day that could have been lost from having beginning  too late.  And they make a difficult year, a difficult time, more bearable--especially in a moment when I don't have to feel, or think about, anything but my legs pumping away, the wind flickering my hair and colors flowing by my eyes--and, in spite of--or is it because of?--the cold and wind, a glow filling me:  what Salvador Quasimodo meant when he wrote,

 M'illumno 

d'immenso.

He probably never met Audre Lorde, but I think she would appreciate that, and he would understand what she meant when she wrote, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence.  It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."

Now, I don't claim to be the world-changer that she or Desmond Tutu were.  But on more than one occasion, I've been chided over my passions for cycling and cats.  I derive no end of pleasure from them, to be sure, but they also have kept me sane, more or less, as I navigated this world "undercover" and "out."

Why We Need Desmond Tutu

Two weeks ago, I invoked the Howard Cosell Rule to interrupt this blog with something not related to cycling, but too important to ignore.  I'm going to use it again.  

Desmond Tutu died yesterday.  I simply have to mention him because I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that he was the most important, and admirable, people to inhabit this planet during the past century. Martin Luther King Jr. has, rightly, a US holiday in his honor.  I think Tutu deserves that, not only in his home country of South Africa, but in the world.*

You see, he, like Nelson Mandela, was not only a leader in the struggle for equality in his own country, which alone would be a reason to name a world peace organization after him.  He not only fought, successfully, to end the country's apartheid system; he did something few countries do after the most traumatic and shameful parts of their history:  He, in essence, put apartheid, and the history of colonialism that led to it, under a magnifying glass.  He wasn't looking to punish or prosecute: something for which he was criticized. Rather, I believe he was looking to name the people and problems.  He seemed to understand that most of the world would forget, for example, that Adolf Eichmann was executed and that it's far more important to understand, not only what he did, but what motivated and enabled  him.

While the jury is out, if you will, about the results of those efforts, they are, I believe, more honest and realistic--and included people from a greater variety of experiences--than the halting and limited efforts the United States has made about its history of slavery and the unfair laws--and other forms of subservience and worse, not only for African Americans, but for other groups of people. I think the efforts of Tutu were also more intellectually honest than whatever examinations some European countries have made of their histories as colonizers and their roles in the Holocaust and other tragedies.  And the Truth and Reconciliation committee, I think, has done more to examine its country's power structures than many countries that are nominally democracies have done about their sometimes all-too-recent pasts of totalitarinism and repression.

If those things sound like intellectual exercises, I think that Tutu's efforts are the main reason why, with all of its problems (including corruption), South Africa has made progress toward becoming a democracy in the truest sense of the world as countries like the one of my birth, and where I've spent most of my life, are going in the opposite direction.  (To be fair, as much as I abhor Donald Trump, I will say that this country's slide toward authoritarianism, and even facism, didn't begin with him.)

If power corrupts and every government (and large institutional structure) has at least some degree of corruption, the only way to hold it in check, if only to some degree, is in every person having an equal stake, and voice.  One sign of corruption and authoritarianism (or a slide toward it) is a militarized police force that cites, arrests or brutalizes cyclists for spurious or non-existent charges or lets off drivers (and motor- bike and -scooter operators) scot-free when they endanger, maim or kill cyclists and pedestrians. 

*--So does Nelson Mandela.

 

Power Sources

In all of the Anglophone world, except for the United States, it's Boxing Day.

I can remember when the biggest disappointment, for some kids, was getting a toy they couldn't use on Christmas Day because it didn't have the required batteries. Because stores were closed, gratification had to be delayed until the following day, when those Eveready C and D cells could be bought.

Things are a bit different these days:

Kid, you plug your feet onto the pedals!

Can You Imagine These Powered By Pedals?

I had lights on my bike when I did my Christmas Eve ride. Perhaps I didn’t need them: 

 "

Laughing All The Way

 Tell me...Who wouldn't like getting a new bike for Christmas

or taking a ride dashing through the snow, laughing all the way

especially if he's going to meet a friend?

Merry Christmas!

Flights Of (Holiday) Fancy

 Christmas Eve.  The sun chased the morning rain, but not the cold. Still, the weather was good enough for a late afternoon ride to Fort Totten.

On the way out and back, I wended along the Flushing Bay promenade, past the World’s Fair Marina—and within arm’s length, or so it seemed, of the new LaGuardia Airport terminals.

Few things are driven more by technology, and less by aesthetics, or at least visual displays, for their own sake than the design of aviation facilities.  Still, for a moment, one could believe the new terminal was decorated for Christmas: