Rain, rain and more rain.
That's been the story of this week. The only variable has been the temperature: Up to midday yesterday, the air felt tropically humid and dense.
Since then, the raindrops have been needles of the chilly wind. I don't mind the sensation; it is a sign that autumn has begun.
Being an educator has meant giving up something I used to enjoy: the fall cycling vacation. Since I've begun to teach, I've taken weekend trips in the fall. One of my more memorable ones was a Columbus Day weekend in Vermont. The foliage was just slightly past its peak, and save for some rain on the second afternoon and a sudden drop from 54 to 15 degrees F that evening, the weather was great.
In some odd way, cycling in Vermont reminded me of cycling in Europe. Perhaps it had to do with being in the countryside, but within an hour or two (by bike) from a town where I could, if I wanted to, stop in a friendly cafe and enjoy a cup of coffee or some other beverage with local people. Plus, I found that even when the drivers left cyclists little more than elbow room when they passed, they were never really a threat or danger because they seemed to understand bikes and cyclists on the road. Some of those drivers, I'm sure, rode bikes at least sometimes.
I don't plan on doing a trip like that this year, mainly because I'm still nowhere near the kind of shape I used to be in. Some of the steepest climbs I ever pedalled were in the Green Moumtains. It seems that the roads there are older than, say, the ones in the Alps or the Rocky Mountains. The older roads aren't as well-graded as the newer ones and so can be even more difficult than the more modern thoroughfares.
Perhaps I'll take a trip to Vermont, or some other place, next fall. Meantime, I hope to take a miltiday trip this coming summer. And, I'd like to take the kind of trip I took for three weeks one September, from Italy into France, when I was working for American Youth Hostels. If I had taken the same trip in the summer, some of the roads would have been all but impassible with traffic and everything would have cost a good bit more. To be more precise, they would have cost then what they cost now.
Perhaps I'll do a trip lke that next year, or even sooner. Meantime, I'll enjoy some fall cycling here.
I've been having computer troubles. At least they're more tractable than man (or boy-toy) troubles, I think. Welll, now you know why you haven't seen my posts for a couple of days. Today, if you can stand it, I'll talk more about changing saddles.
Would Mel Brooks have made a movie called "Changing Saddles" if he'd had a slightly different outlook on life? Hey, can you get any more ironic than a man named Brooks making a movie with "saddles" in its name?
Before I decided to switch saddles, I had a B17 narrow saddle that I saved from a bike I sold about three years ago. I didn't ride it long enough to break it in, but I recall liking the shape and width of it. So I planned to use it on either Arielle or Tosca, and I bought another saddle like it.
Then I saw that Wallingford Bicycle had another saddle like it listed on eBay. Someone had exchanged it under Wallingford's six-month return policy--and, apparently, ridden it a bit.
The listing contained a photo and description that depicted the saddle's condition honestly. So I bid on it, figuring that it would take less time to break in. I won the auction and paid about twenty-five or thirty dollars less (including shipping) than the saddle would have otherwise cost me. Today it arrived.
I think I'm going to install it on Arielle, my geared Mercian Audax Special. And Tosca, my fixed-gear bike, will probably get the saddle I saved from the bike I sold. I figure that the saddle that since the saddle that arrived today will take less time to break in, it makes sense to put it on Arielle, as I usually ride fixed-gear more than derailleur-equipped bikes during the winter. So, even if I don't ride Arielle much after, say, the middle of December, at least the saddle will be broken in for next spring. And since my winter fixed-gear rides are usually shorter than my geared rides during the rest of the year, it won't hurt as much if the saddle hasn't broken in yet.
So I have a spare B17 Narrow, in case I wreck one or decide to build another bike (!) that calls for one. I'm not going to give it to Helene; instead, she's getting a standard-width B17. I have one that was treated with a little bit of Proofhide but was never ridden. I'll use it, unless I get lucky and find a partially broken-in B17 at a reasonable price.
One thing I discovered about the B17 Narrow is that, unlike the standard-width model, it's not made in a "special" model. Still, I think the saddle will look good on both bikes. And, in one of those "only-with-Brooks" quirks, the "special" model of the Professional, which has the big hammered copper rivets, is available with chrome or copper-plated rails, while the B17 special has somewhat smaller copper rivets and is available only with copper-plated rails. To tell you the truth, I'm not so crazy about the copper rails, in part because the plating comes off fairly quickly. (At least it did on the copper-railed Professional I rode.)
It's funny how I was able to prepare in all sorts of other ways for my surgery and my life after it. But there are some things nobody tells you about. Hmm...Are there other cyclists who are about to have Genital Reconstruction Surgery? Just remember: All you have to lose is your old saddle. Well, maybe.
The other day, I stopped in a bike shop I used to visit, and buy from, quite frequently. That was when I was the "before" photo, and I was riding off-road with a few other guys. The shop was the nearest one to Forest Park, which is to Queens what Central Park is to Manhattan and Prospect to Brooklyn. The difference is that there's more wooded area that is, if not virgin or wild, at least less sculpted. And more remote. What that meant was that, as often as not, we'd encounter spots that looked as if a Santeria ritual held been conducted--or that a baby had been conceived--on it.
But I digress. We often stopped at the shop in question because, as often or not, one of us needed an inner tube or chain, or even a pedal or derailleur. And I would sometimes go there when I was riding solo, particularly if I was riding to or from Rockaway Beach. They had a good selection of components, and the proprietor, now retired, was a Frenchman. That gave me the opportunity to talk about my experiences in his home country as I practiced his native language.
But I wondered how long the place would endure. Of course, I was thinking of how long the shop as I knew it would last. I guess I feel about bike shops the way I feel about favorite cafes or bookstores: I don't want them to change, but I know that they must.
And so it is with the bike shop in question. The former proprietor's son, who was in junior high school the first time I visited that shop, has taken over. He is married and has a kid. One of his riding buddies has become a business partner as well as a husband and father. And a couple of young men who weren't yet born the first time I went to the shop are working there now.
So far, that sounds like normal progress. But other changes may be more ominous, at least to me. There are no road bikes, and only a few mountain or comfort bikes. Those bikes are at least a couple of years old. And much of the cycling equipment is even older. In a way, I don't mind, for I've often been able to find a discontinued or "obsolete" part there. And I still get good deals on them.
The few new bikes are those small-wheeled wonders meant for BMX. So are the new components and accessories. Again, that may just be a consequence of time marching on. The same may be said for the new clientèle, all of whom seem to be kids in their early teens. Again, that may just be progress, in the literal sense of the word.
I have to admit to some amusement I got from the kids. They peppered their speech with profanity, as boys that age are wont to do when they're amongst themselves. (That hasn't changed, believe me!) What I found ironic was that the riding buddy-turned-business-partner admonished the kids, "Watch your language!" and glanced in my direction. One of the kids turned toward me sheepishly and whispered, "Sorry, lady!"
Their banter continued, and the profanity returned. I intoned, "Could you please clean up your language." They apologized in unison. And, a couple of minutes later, one of them yelled, "Shut the..." before glancing in my direction.
As I said, they are not such unusual pubescent boys. But, as I am growing old and conservative (!), I couldn't help but to wonder where their parents were. All along the street where the shop is located, and the streets of that neighborhood, no-one who looked the right age to be their parents was to be found. There were only other kids like them, who seemed to have even less structure in their lives than those kids had, and older people, who were living those kids' futures.
It occurred to me then that it was a wonder the shop has survived as long as it has. The neighborhood around it has been a blue-collar enclave for the better part of a century; relatives of mine grew up and raised their kids there. So it never has been a neighborhood with high incomes or people who rode bicycles after they started to work. It's always been a place where the men take the train that rumbles overhead to their jobs until they can afford a car, and the women stayed home to raise their kids and cook for large gatherings that included other people's kids. They rarely, if ever, emerge from the shadow of that train, and the neighborhood grows dirtier and sadder.
And now "nobody has any money; everybody's out of work," according to the now-proprietor. He is happy to be "making it," although, he confided to me, he never could provide his kid the standard of living his father provided for him if his wife didn't have her job. He also intimated that he hardly rides anymore and that he spends more of what free time he has on his skateboard.
As the shop is along a couple of routes I ride, and requires only a slight detour when I ride to or from work, I am sure I will stop there again. I just wonder what will be there.
