Riding Through Forms Of Light

Ah, Helene really is a romantic after all:

What started out as a late-afternoon/early-evening ride turned into a moonlight cruise by Sheepshead Bay.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Brooklyn (no, Park Slope and North Williamsburg don't count), Sheepshead Bay is an inlet of the sea at the southern end of the borough.  On one side of it are the eponymous neighborhood, a part of which ended up in the above photo.  On the side from which I took the photo is a neighborhood called Manhattan Beach.  The Bay itself is named after a fish that, if I recall correctly, was native only to the bay.


Anyway...the ride down there was one of the more interesting local rides I've done.   Actually, it wasn't so much a ride as it was a light show.

I took this photo looking down a side street from Lee Avenue in one of the non-hipster areas of Williamsburg.  Lee Avenue is probably about as close to a stetl as one can find in this country in 2010.

Many of the stores, like this one, don't have signs in English.  And, I happened to be pedaling down this street on the first full day of Rosh Hashanna,  just as when Hasidic families were leaving shul and walking to their homes, or those of extended family members.  


Although the sky was overcast, the light seemed, well, light.  Perhaps it had to do with the colors of those clouds:  more blue than gray.  That made them seem more like waves in the sea than bearers of storms.  


Somehow, in my imagination, I always imagine preternaturally clear Prussian blue skies of la belle epoque giving way to graying inter-war skies and, finally, to those ominous iron gray curtains of clouds that preceded the long night that settled over the old stetls.


Now, before I start to sound like a really bad cross between Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (Only in Russia after the Berlin Wall fell could he have been chosen to host a talk show!)  and Elie Weisel (whom I both like and respect as a writer and person), I'm going to get back to the topic at hand:  riding, and what and where the ride brings me.

I feel as if riding these last couple of days has been about following light (if not The Light, whatever that is) as it radiates from some unexpected sources.  As thick as the clouds have been, they did not seem heavy and have never threatened rain.  And they have allowed at least a reflection of the hour's light

Or, more precisely, where the light has led me:

Gender Studies

OK, now I’m going to offend Floyd “I have a naturally high testosterone level”  Landis  and get myself barred from every gender studies program in the world.  But it will be a lot of fun.  Here goes:

All cyclists are, or should have been born, women because

• We absolutely must have the right shoes.
• We absolutely must have the right bag.
• Not having the right outfit can ruin our day.
• We accessorize, accessorize, accessorize!
• We know that titanium is sooo 1996.
• We spend more to get less.
• We justify maxing out credit cards and raiding 401 K’s by saying, “I bought it on sale!”
• We can never be rich or thin enough. (Don’t I know about this one!)
• No matter what we do, we end up with “helmet hair.” 
• Our spouses/partners/loved ones simply cannot understand.

Trust me: I know!

A Full Bike Rack, Again

Last week, when I encountered the full bike racks at my part-time gig, I didn't have a camera.  Well, today I brought my camera with me on my ride to work and...the racks were full again.  Many of the same bikes I saw last week were there.  But there were a couple of interesting ones that weren't there before, like this Pinarello cyclo-cross bike:

I certainly can do without that color:  It just screams "1980's."  (It just screams, period.)  But it is otherwise a nice old-school European lugged steel bike.  


Notice the low-rider pannier carrier on the front.  I believe that for touring, the best thing besides a full touring  or randonneur/audax bike might be a cyclo-cross bike.  They usually have enough clearance for wider-than-normal road tires and fenders.  Plus, they often have cantilever brakes, as this bike has.  


That Pinarello is a far cry from my LeTour.

I was able to park it only by doing what I did last week:  I emptied and folded my rear baskets in, which allowed me to fit the bike inside the inverted "U" shaped rack.

Campus security wants cyclists to park only in the designated bike areas.  I asked someone why there aren't more racks.  "Most days, it's not like this," he said.  "The weather's nice today," he explained.


The good news, other than the fact that there are so many racks, is that they're close to the campus security station.  


At the end of the day, I took a spin over to Fort Totten, which has become one of my favorite parks and bike-pedestrian trails in the city.  As it was a warm, clear day, a lot of people were there.  So it wasn't hard to find someone to take a photo of me.

So...a full day of teaching and about 30 miles of cycling, in total.  When I got home, I indulged myself with a platter from the King of Felafel and Shawarma.  Yum!


And now Charlie  and Max are calling.  At the end of a full day that included a full bike rack.