The next time someone makes fun of you because your bike has a basket, show him or her this:
The bike is an English three-speed. So you know that once it's freed from the snow, it'll work just like it did before the storm. What that means is that, for one thing, the brakes won't work worth a damn if the rims are the least bit wet!
Still, I'd take that bike over some of the others I saw in and around the piles of snow around the Bel Aire Diner:
Some would see that photo as a good case for a mountain bike. Chacun a son gout. Or is it de gustos no hay escritos?
But not all fourteen of the bikes parked around the diner were so isolated:
There are normally at least a dozen or so bikes parked around the diner. Sometimes some of them serve as "donor" bikes for the others.
The US Postal Service claims that they deliver through snow, sleet, hail and the dark of night. With all due respect to them, I can safely say they have nothing on the delivery guys at Bel Aire diner. And, of course, the Postal Service doesn't serve French toast any time of the day you want it!
I can say with near-certainty that on this date at around this time, ten years ago, I was riding on rollers. Back in those days, that's what I did during the winter. Even after I stopped racing, I still was trying to prove something to myself. Or, more precisely, to disprove something.
What was it? Well, before I try to describe, let alone name, it, I have to say that what led me to ride rollers even after my racing days ended was the same thing that kept me training for soccer after I stopped playing it. I knew full well that I would probably never play again and, even though I enjoyed playing, I wasn't mourning my acknowledgment that my playing days were over. In fact, I felt surprisingly little. But I still had the impulse to train as if I were still playing.
Something similar happened after I stopped racing. Although I'm glad I raced, I wasn't upset when I knew that part of my life was about to end. And once I "retired," I really had no urge to go back. However, I wanted to know that I could.
Why? Well, I always want to feel as if I start or leave stages and challenges in my life on my own terms. It's never a good feeling not to do something because you're not capable of it. The worst of it is that you can't even kick yourself, in hindsight, for lack of effort if you simply didn't have whatever it took to do something that you wanted to do.
Perhaps I never got past or over being the ungraceful, unathletic pubescent child I was. Until I started training and playing, I was taunted by other kids--and sometimes adults--not only for my seeming lack of athletic ability, but also for my perceived lack of manliness, or even the capacity for becoming a man, whatever that meant.
Those taunts were echoing in some recess of my brain. That's the reason why, ironically, I spent more time on rollers and trainers in my early post-racing years than I did when I was actually racing. In an irony within that irony, I was pushing my body--my male body--so hard because I was trying to poound it, or something about it, out of existence altogether, or at least into submission.
I've been on my bike once in the past two weeks. I'm feeling antsy and hoping that I'm not gaining weight. (At least I'm not eating any junk.) But, at the same time, I'm not as ornery as I would've been back in the day. When I couldn't ride--or after a few weeks of riding rollers or trainers--I used to feel resentful and angry that I couldn't do what I wanted to do but, it seemed, everybody else could.
I think that being off my bike for a few months after my surgery last year made me aware, for the first time in my life, that the times when you recuperate, or simply stop for whatever reasons, are also part of the journey. In fact, those times might be almost as important as the times when we're riding and training. For some people, it's the only opportunity to reflect on the question of why they are doing whatever they do.
For a time in my life, my favorite poem was Wallace Steven's Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird. It's still a favorite of mine.
Now, as far as I know, there aren't any blackbirds anywhere near where I live or work. In fact, there weren't very many living beings outside today. Nineteen inches of snow fell on Central Park from last night into this morning. Cold gusts whipped the snow around, and thunder echoed the flashes of lightning that pierced the heavy clouds. Why any living being would choose to be outdoors in such conditions is beyond me.
So, being indoors on a day that Charlie and Max slept through, I started to see the toes of glaciers creeping along my walls where the paint ran. (No,I'm not taking intoxicants of any sort. ) And rows of tiles become an Andy Warhol painting of kaleidoscopes.
Which leads me to wonder: How many worlds can be seen from the back of a cassette?
