Cycling Professor Didn't Ride Today

It pains me to admit this:  On a lovely, if rather chilly, fall day, I didn't cycle to work.


I took the train instead.  It bought me time, of which I haven't had nearly enough, to look at some students' papers and to review a lesson.


Yes, the colleges were open, even though it's Veteran's Day. 


Here's a video of a cycling professor:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5251769227304946424 

Autumn Light In The Darkness

Tonight, during my ride home from work, I cut through Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.  It's most famous as the site of two Worlds' Fairs (The Unisphere was built for the second), the US Open stadium and the setting for parts of Men In Black.  Even on a night as chilly and windy as tonight has been, people walk, run, cycle or otherwise transverse the park, and it's heavily patrolled.  


Anyway, Marianela, my LeTour, wanted to stop under this tree:

She knows a photo op when she sees one.  "Do I look autumnal, or what?" she intones.  Yes, she does, even in her battered condition.

I'm Not A Purist, But...

I've seen trust-fund kids wearing Mao and Che T-shirts--which, when you think about them, are a bit oxymoronic.  Perhaps that's not as much a contradiction as having or pursuing tenure while professing Marxism.  (I guess my ex's family, who escaped from Castro, still influences me after all!)  And some genius thought that a song about the apocalypse was just the thing to sell cars.  I love the song (and most others by the artist who wrote and sang it); I just thought it was odd to hear in a VW commercial.


So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see a porteur-style rack on the front of a "hipster fixie."  I wish I could've taken a photo of it.  But almost as soon as I saw it, the bike's owner unlocked it and bolted down Broadway.  Even if I'd had enough time to take a photo, I wouldn't have been able to take a very good photo, as I didn't have my camera with me.  


But it was quite the sight:  all neon colors, except for the flat black rack on the front.


I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.  Some "hipster fixies" are actually used for transportation, and even to haul stuff, although they're not the best bikes for the purpose.  And, within a certain segment of the population, it's hip to have a porteur rack.  Still, the combination doesn't seem right.


Mind you, I am  not a purist, at least not about most things.  When I realized how silly and futile it is to preserve racial purity, which is a fiction anyway, I lost whatever desire I had to uphold homogeneity.  


All right, I'll admit to being a purist about a few things.  I still don't think that pineapple belongs on pizza or chocolate chips in bagels.  (Actually, that's the New Yorker in me.)  And, all other things being equal, I'd rather mount merrie olde English Brooks saddles and hang equally merrie-olde Carradice bags on my even-more-merrie-olde-English Mercian frames.  But if you looked at my bikes, you'd see that, even though they have lugged steel frames, they're not entirely "retro," which is something I've never tried to make my bikes.


Still, I'm trying to wrap my mind around the idea of a hipster fixie with a porteur rack.