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.
Bicycling is commonly seen as an environmentally-friendly form of transportation, recreation and exercise. Some people ride their bikes for exactly that reason. And, for the most part, bicycles are less damaging to the planet than many other things, including motorized vehicles. But there are two bike parts that, too often, end up in landfills.
I am talking about bicycle tires and tubes. Some of us re-use tubes that have been patched one too many times: as tie-downs, for example, or underneath clamps to prevent them from slipping and marring a finish. And, for a time, Pedro's made "Blowout bags" partially from re-cycled inner tubes. Those bags strapped underneath a rider's saddle and were used to--you guessed it--carry a spare inner tube, patch kit, tire levers and maybe a small multi-tool.
The problem with old tires and tubes is that although they crack from drying out (which is how many Blowout bags, including two I used, met their endings), they don't decompose quickly in the way of some other materials.
Since 2002, England and Wales have had a law forbidding the disposal of automotive and agricultural tires in landfills. But, interestingly, bicycle tires and tubes were exempt from the law although, according to chemical engineers, they are nearly identical in composition to car tires.
Five years ago, Russ Taylor founded Velorim to bridge this inequity. He comes from Staffordshire, known for its bull terriers, so it is perhaps not a surprise that he is forward-thinking and ambitious. He realized that all of those tires and tubes that were being sent to landfills--or overseas--for disposal could be put to better use, not only for consumer products, but in public works.
As an example, Velorim has developed a process that is now being used to turn pellets from reclaimed rubber goods into a porous material that can be used to lay cycle paths in urban or rural landscapes. This not only re-uses those old tires and tubes, but also lessens the need to make new asphalt or concrete, both of which involve processes that are harmful to the environment--to say nothing of the fact that asphalt is made from petrochemicals.
So, the tires you now ride could be rolling over...the tires you used to ride. Somehow that's fitting in more ways than one.
I have no connection with Dartmouth College, much less with its (American) football team. But reading about what happened to the squad's coach, Buddy Teevens, sent a chill up my spine--not only because of his potential spinal injury, but also because of another he suffered and, more specifically, how and where he incurred those injuries.
Buddy Teevens and his wife, Kristen
A month ago, he and his wife were enjoying an early-spring evening ride in Saint Augustine, Florida. They own a home nearby, and I have ridden there a number of times during visits with my parents.
Route A-1A, the road that zigs and zags along Florida's Atlantic Coast, cuts through the "mainland" part of the city, crosses the bridge into the area beloved by tourists. Perhaps not surprisingly, the road is heavily trafficked, as it offers everyone's idealized image of a "road trip" with ocean views--and, for much of its length, has only two lanes.
Also, because it's in Florida--specifically, Northern Florida, which is about as Southern, culturally, as Alabama or Georgia--that traffic includes more than its share of pickup trucks. Now, I don't mean to pick on pickup truck drivers in particular, but I can understand how they, because of their vehicles' size and potential for speed, feel--especially with those wide marine vistas--that the road is theirs. And, like SUVs, pickup trucks offer their drivers poor sight lines and even more "blind spots" than smaller vehicles.
So, whether or not 40-year-old Jennifer Blong was drinking--police declined her offer to take a blood-alcohol test--she struck Mr. Teevens with the Ford F-150 she was driving at 50 MPH in a 35MPH zone. The constables' report of the crash noted that he wasn't wearing a helmet and didn't have lights on his bike. It also cited him for "failure to yield the right of way" as he crossed A1A.
Blong claimed there was "nothing I could do" as Teevens "just kind of appeared in front of me" as he crossed, as the police allege, outside of a desginated crossing area.
While I, as a longtime dedicated cyclist, can find fault with both Blong and Teevens, I am struck by the Florida Highway Patrol's inclination to place the blame on the Teevens, the cyclist, for the crash.
That said, I am sad for him and his family because, as of yesterday, the incident had another terrible consequence: Teeven's right leg was amputated. And he has a long rehabilitation ahead of him, as a result of his spinal injury.
As a cyclist, I have an interesting relationship with tunnels. (A Freudian would have a field day with that statement!) I've ridden, probably, my share and some long underpasses that could just as well have been tunnels. (I think of one in particular that dips as it goes under the Long Island Railroad trestle at 130th Street in Queens.) I can't say I seek out those long, enclosed passages, but when I enter them, I experience a mild adrenaline rush: Even if I know what's on either end of it, I like to imagine that I'm going to emerge in a different world from the one where I entered.
That said, one of the most gratifying experiences I've had as a cyclist took me through a tunnel. I detoured from one Alpine road--closed, probably, by an avalanche--to another, only to come to a tunnel in which an electrical outage extinguished the lights.
A driver in a Citroen waved to me. He told me to ride ahead of him, in the wake of his headlights, and the drivers behind him would follow. And they did!
While that, in itself, may not seem so unusual--after all, the Norwegians, French, Italians, Japanese and other people who live in or by mountains have been building them for centuries---the purpose of the tunnel makes it a record-breaker.
Photo by Ronny Turoy
The Norwegian under-pasage is the longest such structure built specifically for cyclists and pedestrians. There are separate lanes for each, and motorized vehicles are verboten. (OK, I know that's a German word. I don't know Norwegian!)
Perhaps the most unique and gratifying part of the tunnel, though, is that its designers seemed to do everything they could to make it seem less like a tunnel. The walls are lined with art and other visual delights, and the cave is illuminated with different colors of light in different parts of the tunnel, which helps to give people who pedal, walk and run an idea of how far they've progressed through it. And, in the middle of the tunnel there's a "sundial" in a place where the sun will never shine. It's intended, in part, to further break up the monotony of the tunnel, which is completely straight (which is something I never could claim) except for slight bends at the entrance and exit.
In the Hollywood version of the immigrant's story, a poor young person emerges--his coat, but not his spirit, tattered--from the dark, dank steerage section of a ship to a deck, just as the sun breaks through clouds over the Statue of Liberty.
I can't help but to wonder how many actually had snow swirling around them, or were soaked in a downpour or struck by sleet, as they gazed out onto the harbor. Or, perhaps, their first glimpse of Lady Liberty was shrouded in mist.
For a couple of days, we had an early taste of summer: the temperature reached 33C (91F) in Central Park on Friday. Then the clouds rolled in and and fog enveloped the city--especially the waterfront--late on Saturday and Sunday, interrupted by rain on Sunday morning.
I pedaled through a bunch of Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, from my western Queens abode to East New York, and zig-zagged along the waterfront. I stopped for a mini-picnic (some pistachios and Lindt's 85 percent dark chocolate) in Red Hook.
I have ridden to the Hook a number of times and still can't get over the irony of my riding--or people from all over the city, and from outside it--to it for pleasure. I mean, what would the relatives of mine who worked on the docks or the nearby factories have thought of people whose "Sunday best" are airbrushed, more expensive versions of the clothes my relatives wore to work. Or of the three young men munching on matching artisan chocolate-coated Key Lime ice cream pops as they sauntered along the pier. Or, for that matter, of the fancy wedding taking place inside a warehouse turned into an "event space."
My relatives walked and took streetcars to those piers and never went anywhere near them after they clocked out, let alone on Sunday. And, of course, the folks who arrived from further away--as my relatives or, at least, their parents--came by boat. What would they have thought of someone like me arriving by bike--Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, to be exact--on her day off, just because she could?
Or, for that matter, that I am a she? What could they have seen through the mist?
That question invariably comes from non-cyclists. They don’t want to know when I’ve kept pace with, or passed, vehicles or outrun storms. Rather, they want the answer expressed as a number. For them, I offer this:
In the 1980s, two celebrities--Muhammad Ali and Michael J. Fox--used their own struggles with Parkinson's Disease to raise awareness of the affliction. Moreover, they helped people to realize that Parkinson's wasn't an "old people's disease"--Ali's diagnosis came in his early 40s and Fox's before he turned 30--and that people can live more or less normal lives after a diagnosis and treatment.
Somehow I don't think Brue Closser's life is more or less normal--or less of anything.
The 78-year-old resident of Marquette County, on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, has been cycling since the 1970s. There has been one ride on his "bucket list," he says, and it will commence on 5 May. On that day, he plans to get on his bike in Yorktown, Virginia and pedal to Astoria, Oregon--in other words, across the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.
I give "props" to anyone who undertakes such a ride. But the journey Closser has planned is especially notable for two other reasons. One is that he is riding from east to west: the opposite direction from that taken by most transcontinental cyclists. The reason for that is that while there are local and daily variations, the prevailing wind is from west to east. (That's why a flight from New York to Paris is about an hour shorter than one in the other direction.) But, perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of his trip will be that when he completes it, he will be, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest cyclist to complete such a trip.
But the record isn't the reason he's taking the trip, he says. "I learned a long time ago, don't put off your dreams, because I think I can do it this year, but who knows what next year will bring."
Whatever it brings, I doubt Parkinson's Disease will stop him.
Two and a half years ago, I was "doored" into a potentially-fatal spill. The reason I survived with a gash that required thirty stitches and torn muscles and ligaments is that traffic stopped just behind me, and a bystander took it upon himself to get water and bandages and to call the police and ambulance.
The driver, to her credit, checked to see whether I was OK and offered help. (Between her driver's and my health insurance, thankfully, it cost me very little.) And, a few months later, I was nearly doored again on a Sunday afternoon as I pedaled along Metropolitan Avenue in Middle Village--while wearing a high-visibility jacket. I turned back to yell at the driver, who stated the obvious: "I wasn't paying attention."
Other drivers, though, aren't so willing to own up to what they've done. Even if they open the door as you're next to it, they somehow think it's your responsibility to keep them from dooring you.
Richard Silvester falls somewhere between these two categories of drivers. Last July, the UK resident had been eating a sausage roll in his car when he opened his door to shake off crumbs. (I have been the recipient of such morsels, and of showers from motorist dumping their half-finished cups of coffee and bottles of soda.) Unfortunately for Benjamin Dearman-Baker, Silvester's effort at tidiness sent him tumbling from his bike--which he'd been riding at 20MPH--to the pavement.
Although endangering or injuring someone by opening a car door is a misdemeanor offense in the UK, it's still a more serious charge than in most US jurisdictions. Rarer still is the motorist, like Silvester, actually prosecuted for it.
Silvester claimed to have "looked" before opening his door, but admitted he didn't check the blind spots. He might have seen Dearman-Baker in one of them had he used the "Dutch Reach," which is now mandatory in the UK and other countries--and versions of it may soon be mandated in New York and other places in America.
The "Dutch Reach," invented in a country that has about the same ratio of bicycles to people as the US has guns to people, is simple: The driver uses their "far hand" to open the door. In the UK, where drivers travel on the right side of the road, it is their left hand. In most other countries, a driver would open their portals right-handed. Bending in such a way forces drivers to look in those spots immediately behind them, which is where they, more often than not, "don't see" cyclists.
During the past few years, Massachusetts and Illinois have made the "Dutch Reach" part of their drivers' curriculum. In New York City, where I live, the Department of Transportation is trying to promote it among taxi and service-vehicle drivers as the "New York Twist."
It sounds like a dance. Let's hope it catches on and it isn't just a temporary "craze," like an earlier "twist."
It’s easy to keep #BikeNYC safe! Do the New York Twist: before exiting a vehicle, twist your opposite arm to open the door, then turn your head behind you to watch for oncoming bikers. You twist one way to put on your seat belt, now twist another to save lives. #VisionZeropic.twitter.com/8tqllsp9P9
Oh, and for his part, Richard Silvester has been ordered to pay the costs that result from hitting Benjamin Dearman-Baker when he opened his door to shake off the crumbs from his sausage roll.
My younger self was not only, well, younger, but also stronger, skinnier and perhaps sillier: Even after I’d given up on racing, I prided myself on riding like a racer. Some of that may have had to do with living as male and riding, if not solo, then mostly in the company of male riders who were racers, ex-racers or wannabes.
Now I’m going to make a confession: While I sometimes rode just as hard and fast during my solo rides, on other solo rides—and only on solo rides, I’d stop to look at buildings, trees or flowers.
Which is what I’ve been doing lately. In this part of the world, we are entering the peak of cherry blossom season and I’m becoming a blossom rider—or a cherry chaser?
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that few things make me happier, if for a moment, than those pink blooms. (Lilacs, which should be showing up soon, are another.)
It’s not just their prettiness that moves me. I must say that I never understood haiku or Japanese art (or why it so inspired Monet and other Impressionist artists) until I paid attention to cherry blossoms.
You see, haiku isn’t just about the syllable count and Japanese painting isn’t only a style. Both are about experiencing the beauty and intensity of something in a moment but appreciating that moment’s ephemerality. And that, I believe, is the reason why there’s so much respect for elders and ancestors in Japanese culture.
So…while my recent rides have been sensual and aesthetic experiences—which my younger self would have secretly embraced—they have also been lessons which, possibly, my younger self could not’ve understood.
When I was young and thought myself invincible, I would depart for a ride with a full water bottle (or CamelBack, in my mountain biking days) and return home with--a full water bottle. And, no, I hadn't refilled it along the way. Sometimes people, including "tough guy" riding partners, either wondered how I didn't, or implored me to, take at least a few sips. In those days, I just didn't get thirsty very often and didn't realize that even when I wasn't, my body still needed water.
Once, on a ride in Pennsylvania, one of those riding buddies quipped, "This road could be blocked by a fountain and you wouldn't take a drink!"
Perhaps that was true. But what if the bike lane were blocked by a cafe--or a pub?
A few months into the pandemic, New York City allowed restaurant and bar owners to construct kiosks outside their establishments in order to limit crowding inside. Some of those kiosks block bike lanes which, ironically, were built not long before the kiosks. Sometimes I wonder whether those places are trying to drum up business with folks like me--or whether their owners and patrons simply hate us.
The bike lanes in question were all carved out of city streets. There are a few off-road lanes in the city's parks and other areas. A few offer snack, drink and lunch stands along the way but none, to my knowledge, feature a full-on restaurant, cafe, bar--or pub. On the other hand, in at least one part of England, the off-road bike lanes aren't immune to encroachment by eating and drinking establishments.
Roadcc reader "IanMK" encountered this during his Easter Sunday ride in Buckinghamshire. He grumbled but, in the end, he stopped for a pint. I mean, what else could he do, right?
I ask this question only somewhat rhetorically: How often have you been praised for riding your bike?
If you live in the United States, your answer probably is "not often" or "never." I suspect that is true in other places where cycling is seen as something you do only because, for whatever reasons, you can't drive a car.
But a twelve-year-old boy in Mumbai, India has become something of a Twitter celebrity for traveling with his bicycle on the city's Metro system. In the photo accompanying the now-viral Tweet, he is seen seated with his bicycle next to him on his way to school.
I have never been to Mumbai but, from what I'm reading and hearing, it has a pretty extensive mass transit system. However, as in most cities public transportation, the longest and most difficult part of a Mumbai commute starts when a passenger disembarks from the train or bus and ends when that passenger arrives at the door of their school, workplace or home. Such scenarios are a major reason why people in outlying neighborhoods of New York, my hometown, drive.
Certainly, I believe the boy should be commended and other kids should be encouraged to do the same. But for some, and many adults, there are other obstacles to overcome if people are going to ride bikes to and from the subway or bus. For one, the trains, station and transit personnel have to be more accomodating to bicycles. For another, there has to be a reasonable assurance that their bikes--whether locked to an outdoor rack or in an indoor facitility--will be there at the end of their day of work, study, shopping or whatever. And, finally, for many, there need to be facilities where people can change clothes--or, in some situations, dress codes could be relaxed.
I am, ahem, a Midlife Cyclist. Still, I hope I live long enough that kids like the one in the photo are praised for riding their bikes to school and that getting to the store, office or other workplace by bike is the norm.
Ask newspaper writers what annoys or frustrates them most, and the answers will include headlines. My newspaper articles certainly weren't masterpieces of literature, but it drove me crazy when it was led off with something illiterate, clumsy or simply inaccurate.
So I felt for Nicole Rosenthal, a staff writer for Patch. Her otherwise-good article began with a title that, while it caught my eye--for a reason I'll mention in a moment--it set a very different tone than, I believe, Ms. Rosenthal intended.
"Aberdeen, Matawan Kids Are Violating Bicycle Laws, Police Say." Matawan is a village in the northern Monmouth County, New Jersey township of Aberdeen. Until 1977, the whole township was known as Matawan. Just one township--which, like Matawan, includes a few villages--stands between Aberdeen and Middletown Township, where I spent my high-school years and first became a dedicated cyclist. In fact, some of my early two-wheel treks outside Middletown took me through Matawan and Aberdeen.
(Snark alert) Li'l Lawbreakers! (Photo by Rachel Sokol)
Then, as now, the township's and village's streets, aside from Routes 34, 35 and 79, are lined with neat homes of people who commute to New York (the railroad station is one of the busiest in New Jersey) and their kids who are like suburban kids in other places--which is to say that if you take away their electronic devices, they're probably not so different from the kids I knew in Middletown.
According to the article, police have received "numerous" complaints about children "disregarding" the state's bicycle safety laws. Well, since most young people don't think very much about the laws are--if, indeed, they even have a vague idea of what they are--I don't think they "disregard" them. Perhaps "violate" is a better word: After all, people violate all sorts of laws and rules they don't realize they're violating.
So what sorts of laws do the youngsters of Matawan-Aberdeen violate? Well, from what the article says, some weren't wearing helmets, which the Garden State requires for riders under 17 years of age. (No such law existed when I was that age; in fact, people would look at you askance if you wore a helmet.) But the majority of complaints were about kids riding in the "middle" of roadways.
Indeed, the law in New Jersey, like its counterparts in most jurisdictions of the United States, says that cyclists have to right as far to the right as possible. (If that's an attempt to influence our politics, it didn't work with me! ;-)) So, I guess some people would define any other part of the road as "the middle." If that's the case, were the kids endangering themselves or holding up traffic--or popping wheelies, as kids have been doing for about as long as they've been riding bicycles?
(If they were riding in the "middle" of the road on Routes 34, 35 or 79, people wouldn't have been filing complaints; they would have been filling out hospital forms or making funeral arrangements!)
Anyway, I saw the headline and wondered whether that town where I rode past other kids like the one I was in Middletown--white, suburban and, if they were anything like me, rather docile even if they were capable of being smart-asses--was suddenly turning out menaces to society.
Sometimes I think the '90's were the end of an era: when you could care about aesthetics and still buy a high-end road racing bicycle.
Today, you can get a beautiful frame from a builder like Mercian or any number of other custom makers. But even though it can be sleek and relatively light, it's likely to be heavier and less aerodynamic than a new racing bike. Those gorgeous frames with their beautiful lugs or filet-brazed joints and lustrous paint jobs are most likely to be steel, whether from Reynolds, Columbus or some other maker, but most racers are now astride frames made of carbon fiber. Although I can appreciate the lightness and stiffness of carbon fiber frames, I know that their lifespan is nowhere near that of most good steel, titanium or aluminum frames. Also, their Darth Vader shapes and surfaces are too often plastered with cartoony or just plain creepy graphics.
But during that last "golden era" for road bikes, two seemingly-disparate groups of cyclists seemed to abandon any sense of velocepedic voluptuousness. According to Eben Weiss' latest article in Outside magazine, those riders were mountain bikers--especially of the downhill variety--and triathlon competitors. As he notes, mountain biking and triathlon racing came into their own as disciplines at roughly the same time, more or less independent of the prevailing cycling cultures (racing, touring, track, club riding). Although many mountain riders came from road riding, they tended to be younger and not as bound to the prevailing traditions and conventions of riding. Then there were those mountain riders who, like most triathloners, had little or no previous experience with cycling and were therefore even less wed to ideas about what bikes should look or ride like.
One result of that disdain for bicycle tradition was modern suspension systems. One irony is that those who developed it for mountain bikes thought they were doing something new and revolutionary when, in fact, bicycle suspension has been around for almost as long as bicycles themselves. The chief question seemed to be whether to suspend the rider or the bike itself: The former would offer more comfort and would, therefore, keep the rider in better control of the bike. The latter, on the other hand, would make the bike itself more stable at high speeds and in rough conditions: what would encounter in a downhill or on technical singletrack.
One of the earliest--and, perhaps, still most widely-used--forms of suspension is the sprung saddle, which would fall into the category of suspending the rider. Later, balloon-tired bikes from Schwinn, Columbia and other American manufacturers came with large bars and springs connected to the handlebars and front forks. How much shock they actually absorbed, I don't know. I get the feeling they were added, like the ones on the "Krate" and "Chopper" bikes of the '60's and '70's, so that kids could pretend that their bikes were scaled-down motorcycles.
Around the same time as those wannabe Harleys were made, Dan Henry's(of the Arrows fame) rigged up a Reynolds 531 fork with springs which, he said, allowed him to ride the lightest rims and tubular tires even in the roughest conditions. But the '70's and '80's saw little, if any, experimentation with, let alone manufacture of, suspended bikes or parts.
That all changed when the first Rock Shox forks and Girvin Flex Stems were introduced in 1989. The latter defied all notions of the graceful "gooseneck" in mirror-polished or milky silver, and Rock Shox looked nothing like those curved or tapered blades seen on classic road bikes. Then, it seemed, all sense of aesthetics went out the window--unless your idea of art is a sex toy or something that would render a man incapable of bringing any new cyclists into this world--with the Softride.
I must admit I never tried Softride: Even though I was leaner and lighter than I am now, I was leery of mounting anything that didn't have support from below. (Read that as you will.) Weiss rode one recently, three decades after its introduction, and found it to be "more subtle" than he expected though, he pointed out, he could have been just as, and more elegantly, cushioned from road and trail shock with a leather saddle or wide tires. Subtract the "diving board" and Girvin Flex stem, he notes, and one is left with a rigid mountain bike like the ones riders had been riding before.
If I had a couple of barns or garages, I'd probably acquire a Soft Ride to complete the collection I'd have. But even if I liked its suspension qualities, I'm not sure how much I'd ride it: I'm still too wedded to my vision of a beautiful bicycle. There are some things I just don't want to be caught dead on.
This Spring, so far, has been strange in all sorts of ways. For one, people are, in some ways, acting as if the COVID-19 pandemic is over: They're not wearing masks; they're going to restaurants and movies and taking trips. On another, sometimes I encounter people I haven't seen since the disease struck, or have seen only in passing, and I don't feel as if I am looking at, or talking to, the same person I knew. Perhaps I, too, am no longer the person people once knew. And strangers are even more anonymous, and even automotonic than they were before: They seem even more walled-off from their surroundings, and other people, than they were three and a half years ago..
The weather has been strange, too. Temperatures haven't been unusually warm--except for yesterday, when it reached 21C (70F)--but there have been combinations of wind and rain, rain and hail, wind and sun and even sun and rain we don't normally see. There were even tornadoes in Delaware and South Jersey.
But one part of the weirdness of this season appeared to me the other day, during a late-afternoon ride. That I saw cherry blossoms budding, or beginning to bloom--which always gladdens my heart--along Woodside Avenue wasn't, in itself, out of the ordinary for this part of the world in the first week of April. But seeing them in that same act of their show as I saw in trees just a few miles away (and, I assume, at more or less the same latitude) three weeks ago made me wonder what's going on.
Not that I'm complaining about seeing what I saw the other day. Of course, few trees are more beautiful in full bloom than the cherry blossoms. But something about seeing those early blooms against the sky, in all of their fragility and ephemerality, gives me the strength of my vulnerability.
Motorists' umbrage over bike lanes or other bicycle infrastructure, is expressed as a matter of losing "their" traffic and parking lanes, and other facilities, to us.
Notice the last word in the previous sentence. While the anger might be articulated about things, in the end, I think it's really a resentment against us--or, at least the way they perceive us. That is to say, when I've been screamed at simply for being on a bike--all the while following traffic rules and regulations--the person yelling at me doesn't see me because, to them, a cyclist is not a person like me. The stereotype of a cyclist, at least in New York and other US cities, is that of a "privileged" Milennial who washes down chia seed-garnished slices of avocado toast with IPAs brewed in small batches--who, as often as not, comes from privilege and some place far away. In other words, they don't see a woman of, ahem, a certain age who grew up in a working-class enclave of their city.
In that image of cyclists, we are also painted as "lone wolves" or as people who ride and hang out with other people like ourselves. What doesn't occur to them, it seems, is that one reason bike lanes and other facilities have been built is to encourage families to cycle together, whether for fitness, recreation or transportation. And, in some places--including, not infrequently, here in New York--one does see adults and children riding together in the lanes.
So folks who break bottles, scatter screws and tacks and leave all sorts of other large and sharp objects in bike lanes are endangering, not only those whom they resent, but people who are more like themselves and, perhaps, people who matter to them--namely, their children.
That truth has become all too evident on a bike lane along Australia's Gold Coast. Not only did the debris cause flat tires that caused people, including children, to push their bikes several miles; the shards of glass, metal and other substances also caused more serious damage to bikes and the bodies of people--including children who were riding with parents or other adults.
In the photo on the right is a box full of objects swept off an Australian bike lane on a recent day. Photos from the Tweed-Byron Police District, on Facebook.
Whenever I see broken beer bottles or other trash strewn along a bike lane, or anyplace we might ride, I see not only an attempt to damage our bikes or injure us physically. I also see an attack on a stereotype of what we are. In other words, I see another kind of bigotry.
No, that's not an April Fool's joke. A local assembly member who wants a seat in the assembly is visiting his constituents in his small district. Its narrow streets and alleyways are more navigable on two wheels than four.
By now, you may have realized that the politician is not running for office in the United States. In Japan, it's not unusual to solicit votes, at least in local elections, on a bicycle. In fact, it's not unusual, from what I understand, to go anywhere by bicycle in the Land of the Rising Sun. But, until recently, wearing helmets isn't the norm that it is in much of North America.
The headgear situation is about to change, however, in the Pacific nation. Today a new rule saying that cyclists should try to wear a helmet goes into effect.
Note the way I described the new rule. It's been said that Italians treat laws as suggestions, but Japanese people don't need laws because they feel such a sense of duty to authority. So, while the rule doesn't prescribe penalties for not wearing helmets, it's expected that people--especially public figures--will comply.
So, the fellow campaigning for a campaign seat knows that if he shows up bareheaded on a bicycle, he will not be setting a good example. On the other hand, if he wears a helmet and other candidates don't, his will arrive with his hair a mess while other candidates are well-coiffed.
Oh, and when he put on his helmet, his kids laughed at him. But, in such a duty-bound country with such strong family ties, I imagine they would vote for him anyway.
Yesterday afternoon, I hopped onto Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bicycle, and pedaled with no particular destination in mind. I simply wanted to spend an hour or two riding before the rain came and I had to get back to work.
After zigging, zagging and looping through "Hipster Hook" and eastward to the closest thing this city has to a stetl--the Hasidic enclave in Williamsburg--I found myself riding down the unprotected bike lane on the left side of Tompkins Avenue, a one-way southbound street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Although the lane is nothing more than lines painted on pavement, I'd had no issues during previous rides along its length. In fact, I rather enjoyed it because it passes a park and some of the most colorfully-decorated stores and cafes you'll see in this city.
Note my use of the past tense. It doesn't mean I'll never go back; it means only that the string of pleasurable rides was broken.
Between Madison Street and Putnam Avenue, a USPS truck parked in the lane, on the left side of Tompkins, probably to make a delivery. Those trucks often take up more than the width of a lane so, perhaps not surprisingly, there was a traffic "bottleneck." In that queue was another USPS truck, just a couple of vehicles behind me to my right. The driver seemed to lean on her horn as she shouted out the window--at me, it turned out, even though I waited behind the parked truck so she could pass.
Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. She veered her truck toward me and yelled racist, "Fuckin' white tranny bitch!" (Hey, she scored a trifecta: racism, sexism and transphobia, all in one!) At the next intersection--Jefferson Avenue--she pulled over to retrieve mail from a box. I stopped and yelled, "What was that all about?"
"Mind your own fuckin' business."
"I am. When someone tries to kill me, it's my business."
"Fuck you, white tranny bitch!".
Since USPS trucks don't have license plates, I snapped this photo of the truck number. Then I took a photo of her, from the side, as she came out of the truck. Proud of herself, she posed for me.
I have filed complaints with the USPS and the local NYPD Precinct.
For two days, we experienced three months’ worth of weather at the same time: February cold, March wind and April rain.
Yesterday, two of those elements let up. So, clad in a windbreaker over a base layer, I rode under clear skies in one shade of blue to water in another.
This month, however lived up to its reputation as I pedaled into a brisk wind on my way back from Point Lookout. And, at the Point, there was another reminder that whatever the calendar tells us about the season, winter does not give up its grip on the ocean so readily.
At this time of year, the water is at its coldest—about 4 to 5C (38 to 40F). Its hue seemed to reflect its chill, especially against the azure sky and sand and trees in shades of brown.
This is also an interesting time of year because, while I saw more people strolling and cycling the Rockaway and Long Beach boardwalks than I would have seen a month or two ago, they are not the same folks I’ll see in another month or two. Some of the people I saw today love the Sunday sun at any time of year; they were taking it in, perhaps, after going to church or before a weekend brunch or afternoon dinner with extended family. Others are the same hardy or lonely souls one sees a couple of weeks after the holiday season ends and the coldest, darkest part winter descends.
So, while the gatherings of people along the boardwalks and the azure skies signal the passing of a season, the waters in a darker shade of blue, the wind and the woman sauntering along the dunes showed me that winter isn’t dead, not yet.
I took an Art History course that included a final exam with this essay question: "Explain the Mona Lisa smile."
I don't remember what I wrote. I am sure, however, that it wasn't profound, brilliant or original in spite of my belief that it, like everything I wrote in those days, embodied all of those qualities. So it wouldn't surprise you to know that the grade I got--a B, if I remember correctly-- aroused my indignation. (It didn't take much, did it?)
So, being older and wiser, I won't venture an opinion about why the young woman has her hands over her eyes:
I simply thought the image is light and funny--just right for a Sunday morning.
Today even the New York Post--you know, the paper famous for its "Headless Body In Topless Bar" headline--claimed that Donald Trump has gone too far:
Just when I thought light and poetry and flowers were about to return to this land--OK, we're getting some of the flora--Faux, I mean, Fox News is becoming even more, in the Post's eloquence, deranged in its demonization of transgender people.
I mean, when you treat yourself to the kernels of wisdom Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfield offer up at dinnertime, you might come away thinking that we are an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-type force taking over women's sports. Oh, if I were scooping up medals and trophies in the Tour de France Femme or the Virginia Slims tournament the way the folks at Fox would have you believe, I would--I dunno--be writing this post from a duplex near the Luxembourg Gardens and hiring artists to design this blog.
Anyway, if you look at the podium photo for the Randall's Island Criterium--a race held practically outside my window--you'll see that winner Tiffany Thomas doesn't look markedly bigger or more muscular than the other two female cyclists, who finished second and third, on either side of her. And, apparently, her hormone levels qualify her to compete in women's events according to all of the governing bodies.
In short, she has no "unfair" advantage, any more than I now have over any other woman within a decade of my age who is a regular cyclist or engages in any other kind of sport or physical regimen. I am not merely making a claim; I am reiterating what scientific and medical researchers have found and reported.
OK, now I'll reveal Tiffany Thomas' "secret sauce." She got it from me. You see, Randall's Island is practically outside my window: After pedaling over the Queens spur of the RFK Bridge, I ride through the Island on my way to the Bronx, Westchester County and Connecticut. So I twitched my nose and sent her those special rays--kinda like the ones from the Jewish Space Lasers—that only we, trans people, can send each other!
