A Century After The Storm

I'd forgotten about Daylight Savings Time. So that, of course, meant I'd slept an hour later than I thought.

Then I realized I'd have another hour of daylight at the end of yesterday.  Plus, something about yesterday's noon light seemed very appealing.  What I didn't realize, then, was that it reflected some light I would see later in the day.

I also thought that going for a daylong ride (or, at least one of more than a couple of hours) would help to shake me out of the emotional funk and physical lethargy that enveloped me.  I was, as they say, sick and tired of being sick and tired.  

So--you guessed it--I got on my bike.  I think Max and Marley knew I was going to be gone for a while because I left extra servings of food and water for them.  

Anyway, I took out Tosca, figuring that if I rode for only two hours or so, I'd at least get a good workout.  That's one reason I recommend having a fixed-gear bike:  If you're pressed for time, you can still get in a pretty vigorous ride.

I started in the direction of Rockaway Beach.  I hadn't been there since the first Sunday of January.  It was a little more than two months since Superstorm Sandy; the streets still looked like sections of the Ho Chi Minh trail after the bombings and people still seemed shell-shocked.  I'd heard that there was still much devastation, but I was determined to ride out that way.

Well, as the day was breezy and chilly, but still quite pleasant, after crossing the bridge into the Rockaways, I wanted to keep on riding.  And so I did--alongside the sections of the boardwalk the storm tore away, past stores that still haven't opened and houses still vacant.  But some people, at least, seemed to be taking Sunday afternoon walks and otherwise taking back what they'd owned in their lives.  That may have been the reason why I just wanted to keep on riding.  

And I kept on riding, until I got to Point Lookout.

That meant I'd already done the second-longest ride I've done so far this year, and the third-longest since Sandy.  I felt invigorated, to say the least:  I pedaled into a breeze-bordering-on-a-wind most of the way out.

You'll notice that Tosca is standing aslant.  She's not "posing"; it was the only way I could stand her up.  As I expected, the tides had tossed rocks and slates into positions in which no one had seen them before.  And there was a lot of erosion:

That mushroom-shaped thing is an Army Corps of Engineers marker.  In the two decades or so in which I've been riding to Point Lookout, it was always level with the ground and usually dusted with sand.

The bay loooked as it usually does, if a bit more forlorn:

I know they're buoys, but a part of me wondered whether they weren't markers for something lost during the storm.

I also couldn't help but to wonder whether those trees were denuded by the season or the storm.  After all, it happened in late October, right about the time leaves attain, or start to pass, the peak of their autumnal color in these parts.

Even in the middle of such musings, I didn't feel sad.  After all, everything and everybody I'd seen during my ride was a survivor.  Plus, the light wind into which I'd pedaled would blow at my back as I started my return ride.  I felt stronger,and the ride seemed quicker.

And, by the time I got to Far Rockaway, the sea and sky refracted a layer of visual frost through the late-afternoon sun.

It was, I realized, a later-day image of what I'd seen when I left my apartment just after noon.

By the time I got home, I'd pedaled my first metric century (about 105 km, or 65 miles) this year, and my first since Superstorm Sandy.  

If Keith Bontrager Went Dutch

Keith Bontrager once said that everyone who builds or designs bikes, or parts and accessories, should spend a year in the Netherlands.

I can't help but to wonder what my Race-Lite would have been like had he followed his own advice.  I liked it a lot; I sold it only because I'd stopped mountain biking and wanted  it to have a good home, if you will.

In fact, I wonder what all of his parts--especially his wheels--would have been like.  To his credit, his designs were functional:  He had no concern for fads or trends, and he cared nothing for aesthetics (though some of his stuff is very attractive).  Also, he had no interest in, as he said, making "lifestyle" products and had no intention of releasing a line of leisure wear with his name on it.

In some weird way, I think the mountain bike maven from Santa Cruz, CA would have been right at home in this milieu:

Cyclists Cause Pollution

I hate to break this to all of you "tree-huggers":  We are polluting the air, after all, when we ride our bicycles.

Oh, but it gets worse:  the more and harder we ride, the more we fill the atmosphere with a toxin--namely, carbon dioxide.

From The Ottawa Citizen

Now, I'll admit that I haven't taken a science class since, well, before some of you were born.  But the notion that we are fouling the air when we pedal and puff is at least factually and etymologically true--at least in the same sense as another statement made by no less of an environmental scientist than Ronald Reagan.  Back in 1981, he said, "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do."

Would you expect any less from the man who appointed James G. Watt as his Secretary of the Interior?  

Apparently, Washington State Representative Ed Orcutt learned his science from Professor Ronnie.  Hey, if I had science professors like him, I'd be nominated for a Nobel Prize.  In what, I don't know.

But I digress.  The Hon. Rep. Orcutt revealed his epoch-making discovery about cyclists to a bike shop owner during a campaign for a proposal to charge a $25 fee on bicycles costing more than $500.  That fee would help to pay for transportation facilities.  

Orcutt has since apologized for his remarks.  However, the furor over his remarks remains.

For me, learning of this story has had at least one good outcome: I found it on the BicycleLaw.com webpage.  I'll be visiting it from now on.