Agoraphobia Opening, or Opening Agoraphobia

Marianela's ready for another commute:

She might be showing her age.  But, like girls of any age, she likes new accessories--especially a new bag:

And she especially likes it if the bag is retro:  real retro, like the OYB bag I described in an earlier post.


Down my street to start another day:

You can tell there's not much left of autumn.  Every day, the wind sweeps more leaves off the branches.  It leaves the trees more barren, and sometimes even a bit forlorn-looking.  And it exposes them to the expanse of sky:  a gray sky:

It's a bit like my morning commute:  the road and the world open before me, if only for moments. But some days what unfolds is a Mercator Projection of concrete lines and angles puncuated by windows filled with the ashen sky.  


At least, at the end of the days like that, I can ride away from it.  That was always the second attraction of cycling for me.  The first is to pedal into the open waves, whether they are in front of or within me.

For Two

The other day, I saw a tandem propped against someone's hedges

It's a Motobecane tandem from, as best as I can tell, some time in the late 1970's or early 1980's.  I am always surprised to see a tandem, much less anyone riding one.  But it was even more unusual to see one after the cycling season has passed its peak.

Anyone who drives in New York will tell you that parking is one of the most difficult things about life in this city.  I think it's just as true for tandems as it is for cars.  Actually, parking a bicycle built for two may actually be even more difficult than parking a car built for four.  After all, tandems don't fit very well in spaces where people park regular bikes.  And the spaces in which most New Yorkers live don't leave much room for a tandem.

I've ridden a tandem twice in my life.  The first time was, in fact, around this time of year.  I rode with a group that took rides to various ethnic neighborhoods in this city to sample foods and restaurants.  A young blind woman wanted to ride with them, but she needed someone to ride the front of a tandem the Light House supplied.  Enter me.

The bike was a single speed Schwinn:  heavy, but not a bad bike.  As I recall, it's what the bike rental places in Central Park offered.  So, while it wasn't the most responsive thing in the world, at least it didn't "fishtail" in the rear, as some tandems are prone to do.

I think my story-telling skills were more important than my bike-riding prowess for that woman.  I gave her a running narrative of the neighborhoods through which we rode and explained why we were riding them.  

After a while, I found myself sad and frustrated because I had to explain all sorts of things most of us take for granted.  For example, when we rode by the brownstones of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, I realized she had no idea of what they looked like.  She didn't even know about red, brown or any other color.  

Unfortunately for that young woman, I didn't do quite as well as the narrator did at the end of Raymond Carver's Cathedral.

Then again, that narrator wasn't pedaling and balancing the front of a tandem! 

Commuting on the Fifteenth of November

If you looked at my other blog around this time two years ago (Now why would you have done that?) , you'd know that one of my favorite descriptions one person has ever given of another was what Gertrude Stein said about T.S.Eliot:  "He looked like the fifteenth of November."

Today looked, well, like the fifteenth of November:

As gray and overcast as that sky was, it posed absolutely no threat of precipitation.  And it won't until late tomorrow afternoon.  The weather was cool-to-chilly, also typical of this date. I don't mind riding in these conditions at all.   To me, a day like this one is as much a reason to commute by bike as a sun-drenched morning in late spring is.

The street on which I live dead-ends onto the one from which I took the photo.  I was a mile or so from my apartment and had about an hour of daylight remaining.  That gave me enough time to notice the particular (and sometimes peculiar) geometry of that area of Long Island City, Queens:

The funny thing is that I don't like either of those buildings.  The one on the left is owned by Citicorp; it's across the street from the company's main tower, which is the tallest building in Queens:

"Citicorp" as in "Citibank":  When I had an account with the latter, I used to refer to them as "Shittybank."  And I wasn't the only one who did!

Anyway, I re-shot the second photo from another angle.  Did I unwittingly create a commentary on the government bailout?

It makes the fifteenth of November seem downright balmy.