A Long And Restful Sleep

I didn't post last night because I got home dead-tired and fell asleep not long after walking through the door.


Thursday is my longest day of the week, work-wise.  And I did it on about half as much sleep as I'd planned.  Plus, it seemed, everyone--and I'm not talking only about my students--had some pressing issue, question or need.   Sometimes there are just days like that.


Riding from home to my main job, to my second job and home again, I felt surprisingly fluid.  Yes, I felt as if my legs were just flowing through each pedal stroke.  And I felt even more surprisingly strong, considering how little riding I've done since Christmas.  So what made me feel so tired when I got home?


Perhaps it had to do, at least in part, that I rode a bit more than I'd planned.  On my way home, I decided to ride a bike/pedestrian path along the southern edge of Kissena Park.  Close as it is to my commute, and other rides I do, I hadn't ridden there in a very long time.    So my memory of it was faulty, to say the least.  As I result, I made a wrong turn coming out of it.  Then I made another wrong turn. And another. 


My errance (Is that the noun form of "errant?") took me, among other places, around the perimeter of a cemetery.  And it was dark.  That, of course, is not an aid to someone who is a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus and inherited his navigational skills.  Well, OK, I may not be the great-great-great-great-whatever of CC.  But you get the idea.


One thing I wasn't going to do was to sleep in that cemetery.    For starters, it was very cold and windy.  More to the point, nobody ever plans to do such a thing.  At least, I didn't the one time I did it.


It happened back in the days before my first ATM card.  I didn't have any credit cards then, either.  I didn't buy traveler's checks, as I had done for my first European tour a couple of years earlier.  So all I had was cash.  And I was almost out of it the night I rested under the stars in a graveyard.


I knew that I was in New York State, somewhere near the point where its borders with Massachusetts and Connecticut meet.  I knew that because I crossed, during the course of that day's ride, from Massachusetts into Connecticut before seeing a sign that read "Welcome to the Empire State," or something like that.  


It was, as I recall, the fourth day of a ride I took from Montreal to New Jersey.  I'd carried a sleeping bag with me, which I didn't use until that night.  The day was hot, though not humid, which is unusual in most of the Eastern United States. I was tired: As young as I was, riding more than 80 miles with a load (small as it was) through a hilly area was a lot for one day.  


Most people's navigational skills decrease as they grow weary.  When your skills are like mine, they shrink into non-existence at times like that night.  If someone had told me there was a hostel or some other place fifteen feet in a straight line in front of me, I probably wouldn't have found it. 


Tired, broke (almost, anyway) and lost.  What did I do?  I rolled out my sleeping bag.  At least the night was clear and full of stars, with absolutely no threat of rain.  And it was quiet.  Very quiet.  But I was too tired to be disconcerted by anything, so I fell asleep almost as soon as I got into my bag.


I had a very long and restful sleep, as I had last night.

Nailing Down The Perception

Sometimes I wonder whether my life would have been free of irony had I not undergone the changes I've experienced.  But then I realize that if you've lived any kind of a life at all, a certain amount of irony comes simply with aging.

However, today I felt that I experienced a particular aspect of karma, or whatever you want to call it, that would not have been possible in any life but mine.  Or so it seemed.

To wit:  Today, before riding into work, I rode (admittedly, only two and a half blocks) to Hannah and Her Sisters. That's where I get my nails done.  


If you can't stand to look at the hands of a middle aged woman, then skip over the following photo.  In fact, you might want to skip over the rest of this post.

So I got to ride to work in freshly-painted nails. And Hannah herself recorded the occasion:

The irony in this is that I stopped reading Bicycling! magazine thirty years ago because a model on the cover of one issue had much longer and more heavily lacquered nails and a ring with a much larger stone than I had ever seen on any cyclist.  I decided that nobody could possibly ride with such nails or a ring.  And I couched my indignation--over the fact that the model on that cover wasn't me--in some pseudo-feminist rant about how the magazine was reinforcing gender stereotypes.


The fact is that I was ready to stop reading Bicycling! because most of its content was, by that time, "old hat" for me.  Plus, I saw that it was turning into more of a lifestyle magazine than a publication about cycling.  Most likely, it had already reached that point and I had just noticed.


I looked for the cover of that issue of Bicycling!, to no avail.  Now I wonder whether anyone was as appalled as I pretended to be over a woman cycling with long painted nails.

Getting It All Back

Today I saw something I haven't seen since before Christmas:

Yes, this is the same bike rack that just two weeks ago looked like this:

I didn't see the Pinarello or my colleague's bike (or said colleague, for that matter).  However, I saw something that I wouldn't have noticed had I not parked next to it:

It's a 1970's Campagnolo Nuovo Record crankset, set up with a single chainring.  It was arguably the nicest crankset in its day.  What struck me, though, is that it was on a bike with this: 

Yes, it's a basket attached with two improvised clamps and a toe strap.  The basket looked like one of the nice  ones that might be used on a Porteur-type rack.  


Underneath that stem is a Chris King headset.

But the bike on which I saw that basket, King headset and the Campy crankset was utterly nondescript:  A hipster-fixie frame with welded joints and black paint flaked and pockmarked like an old smokestack.  


There are all sorts of possible stories as to how great parts end up on not-so-great bikes.  Whoever put it together might've simply using what was at hand. Or, the rider might be one of those mashers who actually bends and breaks cranksets.   Or he or she may have just liked the look of those parts.  I guess they stand out all the more on such an unremarkable bike.


Anyway, the wind was starting to bring in the night's chill and the evening colors as I left the campus:

And I cut through Kissena Park for this:

I'm starting to get it all back now.