Girl On Bike Rides To Rainbow In Prague

Summer...In the US, it's a time when frazzled parents with squalling kids go to amusement parks, professional couples go and fry themselves on beaches that, they believe, only they know about.  And guys go to the movies to see pikshas of girls with guns.  Said girls, of course, are usually not wearing much more than their ammo belts.


So, for all of you guys, I'm going to offer the next best thing--a girl in Prague, on a bike:

OK, so I'm not wearing a bikini and my accessories don't run to bandoliers.  And maybe I'm more of a babushka than a girl.  (All of the tacky souvenir shops are full of row after row of Russian dolls.  I thought Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek ended such things!)  So, just for having to endure the indignity of seeing an overweight middle-aged American woman on a rented bike, I'll offer you this:

Really, I didn't intentionally make her blurrier.  I mean, just because she's younger and more attractive than I'll ever be, and is wearing an outfit I can only hope to pull of in my next life,  it doesn't mean I sub- (or not-so-sub-) consciously took a bad photo.  My real purpose...ahem...was to show the wonderful shop from which I rented the bike I rode. It's the same one from which I took a guided tour the other day:  City Bike, on Namesti Republiky (Republic Square).  It's a tiny place, entered thorough one of those wonderful covered passageways one often sees between public buildings in this city.  

City Bike is literally steps from this architectural marvel.  Municipal Hall out-Art Nouveaus any Art Nouveau building you've ever seen.  

Just how you envisioned your next renovation, right?  Just go down to your local Home Depot and pick up all of those materials.

The building and City Bike are also within two kilometers of many of this city's attractions:  the Old Town Square (with the Astronomical Clock), among other things, the Old Jewish Quarter (where I went into the Starenovo, a.k.a. Old-New, Synagogue, the supposed home of the Golem), Wenceslas Square, the Charles Bridge and, of course, the Castle.

Today, on my first solo ride, I went by all of those places.  Then, from the Castle, I took a left (I'm not talking about my politics) and went straight (No comment on that.) through some parts of the city I hadn't seen.  

This building, in the Smichov shopping center, seems to be an inverse mirror reflection of Frank Gehry's "Dancing Building" on the other side of the Vlata River.  (You can't see one building from the other, so I don't think this symmetry was intentional.)  Smichov has been described as Prague's most "schizophrenic" neighborhood: the area around the shopping center and Andel station contain some of the city's swankiest villas.  Yet, less than two kilometers down the road I cycled, near the Schmikovske Nadrazi rail station, is one of the most impoverished areas of the city.  From that station, I found myself riding through an old industrial area, some of which seemed to be abandoned, until I came to an old residential area and, finally, a trestle that was just wide enough for the trams that passed over it.

Although I seemed to be cycling in even tighter spaces than I do in New York or have in Paris, riding these streets didn't seem quite as frentic.  To be sure, I didn't have to be any place in particular at any given time.   But, even when I rode down ancient cobblestoned streets not much wider than my (I'll let you choose the part of my body.  Ha, ha.) and drivers approached from behind, they didn't honk their horns or pull as close as they could to my rear wheel.  Admittedly, those streets aren't very long, so they didn't have to spend very much time waiting.  But I could not imagine a New York or Parisian driver being so patient.


After I got back to my hotel and walked in search of a meal, this sight greeted me:

That, after this:

That was one of two rainbows I've seen since I've been here. A sign, perhaps?  I hope!

First Ride In Prague

All right, I admit it.  I didn't end up with a guy named Vaclav. Instead, I spent  part of yesterday afternoon with a cute Czech cyclist named Michael:

He's a law student at Charles University in this town.  He speaks beautiful English and, surprisingly, pretty good Spanish.  And, as you may have guessed by now, yesterday he guided me on my very first bike ride in Prague.  


So, here's the answer to a question you may (or may not) have asked:

Yes, it's the bike I rode.  The alternatives were a single-speed cruiser and a mountain bike of a brand I didn't recognize.  I didn't mind the lack of a name brand nearly as much as the poor fit the mountain bike was for me.  


I don't know who made the bike I rode.  I doubt it was made in the Czech Republic; I'm not sure that any bicycles are still being made here.  For the kind of bike it is, it felt pretty good.  

The traffic didn't scare me too much. But the trolley tracks did.  It's so easy to get a tire, even a wide one, caught in the grooves or to scrape the sides of the knobs against the tracks, and to tumble over.  

Nothing like that happened on our ride through the central part of the city.   At least I know now about the tracks, and other hazards.  But more important, I started to see this beautiful city from one of the best possible angles.

A Prague Leg-acy

Well, I'm back...on this blog, I mean.  I am in Prague and so far this place is delightful.  I can see why people told me I'd love it here.  I mean, I got into the car that took me from the airport to my hotel, and the first thing I heard on the radio was a Dvorak symphony.  I mean, how can you beat that for an entrance into a city.  

As I listened, I "conducted" with my hands, as I often do.  The driver, a man about ten years my senior who spoke about five words of English, just gave me a smile.  "You like Dvorak," he said.  I nodded and smiled.

The hotel is in a quiet residential neighborhood a few minutes from the center of the city.  I compare the neighborhood to the 20th Arrondisment of Paris, where I once stayed, or what the 14th used to be like, except that this neighborhood is even closer to the action than either the 14th or the 20th of Paris.  The similarity lies in its apartment complexes and small houses full of working- and middle-class people, and the fact that it's so quiet in spite of the number of pubs and bars around here.

I also marvel at how clean and litter-free the streets are, even in comparison to other European towns I've seen. Plus, the mode of dress, among Prague natives as well as tourists, seems to be neat-casual with some style,  but not the self-consciousness one sees in Paris.  

Plus, I've been surprised at how easy it's been to find people who speak at least some English.  I tried giving myself a crash-course in some basic Czech phrases, but I haven't gotten much past "Prosim" and " Ano."  At least those words have vowels in them!  

Some of the older people speak German, of which I don't know much more than I know of Czech.  I know they had to learn Russian in school back in the days of Communist rule, but either they've forgotten it or don't want to speak it.  I can understand, and I can't speak Russian, anyway.

All right...enough of a travelogue.  Since this is a bike blog, I  am coming back to that subject.  More precisely, I'm going to show you a bike that was parked down the hill from my hotel:

It's a Favorit bicycle, which looks to be from the '70's or the late '60's.  The first shop in which I worked actually sold a few of these bikes; not many came into that shop, or the United States.  Their basic models, like this one, were actually pretty good bikes that compared favorably with, and cost less than, bikes like the Raleigh Grand Prix and Peugeot UO-8.  The paint jobs were not very inspiring, but the lug work was clean, if not fancy.  And Favorit made some higher-end bikes with some truly nice lugwork and elegant seat clusters.  It was rumored that their higher-end bikes were made of Reynolds 531 tubing; I would not have a hard time believing it because I rode one of those bikes and it had a very similar feel to some other bikes I've ridden that were made from the same tubing.  Also, Favorit were using Campagnolo Record (and, later, Nuovo Record and Super Record) components on their top racing model, and offered a  model that was equipped with Stronglight cranks and other mid-to-upper-range French components.  The components on the company's mid- and lower-level were their own brand but mimicked Campagnolo, Stronglight, Mafac and other western makers' equipment of the time.

They even made (or had made for them) their own brand of saddles which, like others of the time, mimicked Brooks and Ideale design and actually had leather that was a bit thicker.  

I must say, though, it's been a long time since I've seen a saddle mounted so far forward on a bike!

Enough about the bike for now.  And now to the legacy of racing in this country: