Hello Helene!

Today I took my third and, so far, longest ride on my Miss Mercian.  

I took a route I've pedalled a number of times before on my other two Mercians and on at least a couple of other bicycles.  But this is the first time I did that ride, which is about 45 miles, on a women's/mixte frame.


From my apartment, I rode over the Queensborough/59th Street Bridge to Manhattan.  Then, I rode up the East Side to East Harlem, where I cut across to West Harlem and continued up to Washington Heights and the George Wahsington Bridge.  Then, I rode along the top of the Palisades from Fort Lee to just north of Jersey City, where I pedalled down to the waterfront.  The docks where a young Marlon Brando pouted and glowered are long gone; now tall condominium towers mute the gazes of children in the park at the base of those buildings.  

Still, there is something I rather like about the light there.  Perhaps it is its consistency:  Whether I am playing chicken with the rain or tag with the sun, everything there always seems tinged with shades of metal, in particular the kind of titanium gray that refracts into gunmetal blues that can turn almost anything from lilac to aqua.  I find it oddly comforting, even soothing.

From there, I rode some less picturesque parts of town to Bayonne, where I rode across the bridge that bears the town's name to Staten Island and the Ferry named after it.


I must say, I was surprised at both the comfort and responsiveness of the bike.  I expected both, though more of the former, as Miss Mercian's geometry is slightly less agressive than that of my other two Mercians.  However, the bike doesn't accelerate quite as quickly as either Arielle or Tosca.  Again, that was something I expected, and even wanted. 




Before today's ride, I switched the tires.  I had a pair of Paselas that, I think, were mis-labelled:  They are marked 700 X 32 C, but they seemed slightly narrower than the 700 X 28C Continental Grand Prix Four-Season tires on my other two Mercians.  The rims could not have accounted for the difference:  I have Mavic Open Pros on all three bikes.  Still, I like the response of the Paselas, so I might try them on either of the other two Mercians when the Contis wear out.


Today  I rode another Panaracer tire:  the RiBMo (I hate the acronym!)  700x35.  It weighs about one and a half times as much as the Paselas, which are about 20 grams heavier than the Contis.  I'm sure they added to the stability of the bike if they took away a bit of its responsiveness.  Since the Miss Mercian is not going to be my "speed machine", I don't mind that. Plus, I think they look more appropriate than the skinnier tires on MM.  So, I think I'm going to keep them on the bike, at least for now.


Speaking of looks:  Check out the way the top tube is joined to the seat tube.

This bike is going to be a lot of fun and will look very  stylish doing it.   And, with her fenders, porteur bars and other accessories, she has a bit of a French accent even if she's English. I've decided to name her Helene.   

How I Ended Up Here

I wasn’t the best kid in the world.  But my parents know that, sooner or later, one way or another, I do whatever they say I should do.  It might take me 35 years, but better late than never, right?

So what does that have to do with today’s ride or anything else related to this blog?  Well, during my ride, I went someplace my father wanted me to go upon graduating high school. I didn’t go in quite the way he’d hoped, but I went nonetheless.

I’m talking about the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, on the North Shore of Long Island.  He didn’t want me to go there specifically; he wanted me to go to one of the Federal academies dedicated to training officers for the armed forces.  I actually did get Congressional nominations to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and the Military Academy at West Point.

Every member of Congress is allowed to appoint one person to each academy (the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs is included) and to nominate other candidate.  Being nominated is like being placed on a waiting list:  If, for whatever reasons, the appointee can’t or chooses not to go, the member of Congress can appoint one of his or her nominees.  That did not happen to me.

As you can probably imagine, I have no regrets now.  I certainly wasn’t sorry then.  Then again, anyone who’s been reading this or my other blog knows that.

However, it was a lot of fun to go there today.  It’s actually a lovely place:  It’s, as one might expect, on the water and has a couple of ships and a bunch of boats.  And some of the buildings are exquisite.  Although they are of different styles, as different parts of the campus were built at different times (and a couple of buildings predate the founding of the Academy), they actually work well together.  Perhaps it has to do that they are all in shades of beige, tan, yellow and white.  They suggested, at least for me, sand, which makes sense for a maritime campus.

Unfortunately, as you might expect in the post-9/11 world, I couldn’t photograph them.  The guard at the entry gate was very friendly, as was everyone else I encountered.  But he said—almost apologetically—that, due to “security,” photography wasn’t allowed.

Oddly enough, although I was the only person riding a bicycle, I didn’t feel out of place.   The fact that I’m old enough to be the cadets’ grandmother also didn’t make me feel strange.  And, no, that other way in which I’m different from (at least to my knowledge!) any of them didn’t make me feel distant.

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that today was one of those wonderfully beautiful and clear days that can make even someone as old and cynical as me feel as if those barriers people erect between each other don’t exist.  It reminded me of what has always drawn me to cycling, and in particular rides like the one I took today:  I feel that on my bike, the whole world is available to me.  If you don’t feel that way before you embark on a long ride, you’ll feel that way sometime during the ride.  Otherwise, you’ll quit.

That, I believe, is the reason why today, three decades after I took my first trip, I cannot imagine having experienced France or any other part of Europe in any other way.  I didn’t see as many places as my peers who had Eurail passes, and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to.  Even then, I knew that I would do better to experience a few places intimately than to get as many stamps on my passport as I could.  (Back in those pre-EU days, one had to go through customs each time one crossed from one country to another.) 

Anyway…How did I get from Long Island to Languedoc without getting on a plane?  I don’t know.  To be completely honest, I don’t know how I got to some of the places I saw today.  I got on Arielle and decided I had no destination in particular.  I did, however, decide that as much as I love the ocean, I didn’t want to ride through or to any of the beach areas today.  I knew that people would be going to them in droves.

Had I gone to Kings Point or one of the other academies when I graduated high school, my entire curriculum and career would have been spelled out for me.  Now, I know I like and need some structure in my life.  But I also know that the things I’ve enjoyed most—including my favorite bike rides—just sort of happened when I set out without a specific itinerary.

That’s what happened thirty years ago—and today—on my bike.

Cycling To Work In A "Hippie" Skirt

Yesterday the new semester started.  Had it been a movie, it would have been the beginning of best time in mine, or someone else’s life:  The rain of the previous three days had passed and the sky was even clearer and bluer than the bodies of water one sees on postcards.

Naturally, I rode my bike to work.  As I was not looking forward to going to my regular job, I needed something to pump up my Happy Hormones (or endorphins, or whatever you want to call them).  I also knew that wearing a favorite outfit—one in which I feel both confident and comfortable—would help.

But I needed a way to wear it—specifically, the skirt—while riding my bike.  Even though clearing the top bar on the LeTour wasn’t a problem, the skirt—which drapes nearly to my ankles when I stand up—could get caught in the chain or between the brake pad and rim.  I haven’t yet installed the dress guard “Velouria” gave me. 

So what’s a lady prof to do?  

Turns out, there’s a really simple solution.  All you need is an extra-large paper clamp.  All you have to do is to gather the skirt so that you can clip it, but not so tightly that you can’t move your legs freely.

It’s best to gather and clamp your skirt when you’re seated, in a position in which you typically ride, on the bike.  The first time I tried it, I had trouble mounting the seat because I’d effectively made a strait jacket around my thighs.  And of course you don’t want to wrap or clamp the skirt around your knees. 

I wonder whether anyone else has tried my skirt-clamping method. 

Now I’m thinking about how I used heavy rubber bands whenever I rode in trousers.  As with the skirt on the clamp, I found that I liked to pull on the rubber bands when I was seated on the bike, maninly because I didn’t want the trouser leg or the rubber band to rub and chafe the bottom of my calf or other sensitive areas.  Also, I found that if I wore the band too low, it would slide off the pants and onto my ankle.  (That’s what the reflective bands with Velcro, which were popular a while back, seemed to always do.)

After work, I took a ride to one of my favorite spots in Queens:  Fort Totten.  It’s at the western end of Long Island Sound and within sight of the Whitestone Bridge.  Just across the cove, it’s Gatsby country, where white sails skitter in the wind like white crests that cap the ripples on the water.

You may have noticed that I said “my regular job.”  That’s because in addition to it, I am teaching a course in another college:  the one I visited last week.  The chair offered me a class that started yesterday.  And it’s at the perfect time:  After my regular college job, I have enough time to pedal there.

And, because I had to take care of business at my new gig, I stayed a bit later than I anticipated.  But when I rode to Fort Totten, I didn’t mind, because from there, the majority of my ride home would skirt the bay.  The sun began to set as I neared the World’s Fair Marina.

Oh, I should mention this:  I rode 11 miles to my regular job, another six and a half to my part-time gig and about eighteen home in my clamped skirt, all after getting up at five a.m.—after going to bed at two a.m.  Although I felt good when I got home, I didn’t want to cook or otherwise prepare my supper.  So I stopped at the the King of Felafel and Shawarma for one of their wonderful chicken and rice plates.  Not long after bringing it back to my place and eating it, I fell asleep.