The Money Cycling Saves

I'm no expert on public policy and budgets.  Of course, that's not going to stop me from saying what I'm about to say.

People are always saying "I can't afford X". Public officials and voters are always saying "We can't afford Y."  "X" and "Y" can be any number of things:  X might be a seemingly-expensive purchase (like a quality bicycle), "Y" might be an infrastructure expense such as public transportation or some other pubic expenditure such as a raise in teachers' salaries.

Yet money is spent on all sorts of other things that make me wonder what people are thinking.  Someone can't afford to buy vegetables and fruit yet can afford a two-pack-a day (here in NYC, about $30) cigarette habit.  A city might not be able to find the money in its budget to keep its streetlights on but can build a sports arena for some team owner who can easily afford to pay for it himself.

And, in study after study, it's shown that spending on things like transportation, education and even providing meals for needy families creates more jobs and other economic activity, per amount of money spent, than a stadium, megamall or weapons system.

I got to thinking about that after overhearing a conversation between two old-time Queens residents.  One is one of the few remaining US-born Caucasian taxi drivers left in this city; the other is the widow of a blue-collar worker.  They are both warm, generous people (I have been witness and recipient to their acts of kindness) who would never dream of voting for any Republican and who believe that we are all accountable to God (as they perceive him--and both perceive him as male) but will enter a church only under great duress.  Obviously, they are not part of the class of people who got theirs, or are trying to get theirs, and don't care about anybody else.

Their conversation took a bunch of twists and turns, as any really good conversation does.  Somehow they got onto the topic of bike lanes.  Both decried them, and both offered the same rationales--one of them being the cost of constructing them and of putting cops on the street to enforce safety.

Now, I didn't mention that I'm not in favor of creating separate bike lanes, especially given how poorly-conceived and constructed too many lanes I've seen are.  However, those two folks--one a good friend, the other a friendly acquaintance--talked about "priorites".  One of them complained, "How can they spend money on bike lanes when there are so many other pressing issues, like police and firefighters?"

Back in the Reagan years, people--perhaps not those two--would have wondered the same thing about "the arts" or, more specifically, the National Endowment for the Arts.  And I would give the same answer I gave to those two people who decried bike lanes:  They're such a small part of the budget.  If they were eliminated, it wouldn't save enough money to keep even one branch of the library open for longer hours. (In the NEA argument, I'd say something like "one Air Force bomber" or something like that.) Besides, all kinds of other money is wasted on truly useless projects or lost to graft and corruption.   

What I didn't mention is that just as spending on the arts generates economic activity in other areas, so does bicycling.  In fact, the "return" in both cases is much greater than the expenditure, whether at the household or national level.

I couldn't have cited any figures off the top of my head.  But I would've loved to have the following graphic on hand.  Even though the numbers were compiled for Atlanta, I think they could be scaled to New York and other cities.

From The Atlanta Bicycle Coalitiom

I Thought I'd Caught Her Flip-Flopping

Today was an absolutely glorious day, weather-wise, and I didn't have to worry about spectacles of animal exploitation clogging area roadways.  In fact, given that it was Sunday, there was scarcely a cloud in the sky and little humidity, and the temperature reached 24C (75F), I was surprised to see as little traffic as I did anywhere I rode.

Even the beach areas were pretty quiet.  I rode down to the Rockaways, flipped a quarter and continued to Point Lookout. Some people were walking about on the beach and the boardwalks in the Rockaways and Atlantic Beach.  But they didn't seem to linger, surprisingly enough. The water is still a bit cooler than some people like for swimming.  That might be a reason why there weren't as many people as I expected.  Also, there didn't seem to be many events as there were last weekend or the weekend before, which included Memorial Day.

Of course I didn't mind.  I just rode and took a couple of self-indulgent shots of Tosca, my fixed-gear Mercian:

Actually, I took the photos because in the light of that beach, and the angle from which I was looking when I sat down, I could see the "flip-flop" quality of the finish:  It actually looked purple and green at the same time.  I don't think it came through in these photos.  Oh well.

I had a great ride with Tosca.  That's what matters.

What I Did To Avoid A Race Today

Yesterday I said I love sports.  Let me qualify that:  I love most sports.  Among the exceptions is horse racing.  Fortunately, I never had to write about it. 

I also have never been keen on dog racing.  In fact, I don't care much for anything that involves training animals to put themselves at risk to entertain humans.  Making animals fight each other simply disgusts me:  I fail to see what is entertaining or even thrilling about bullfighting, cockfighting, dog fighting or camel wrestling. 

Believe it or not, that last abomination exists:  I saw a match when I was in Turkey.  During camel mating season, males are tied up and left in a dark room.  Then, just before they're walked out into the ring, they're adorned with embroidered capes and such.  By the time they get into the ring, at least one of them is foaming at the mouth.  If I were an animal-rights activist rather than the mere animal-lover that I am, I probably would have been foaming at the mouth, too.

Seeing that camel wrestling match was the only thing I hated in Turkey.  I don't get quite that worked up over horse racing; I simply don't care for it.  And, if you are here in the US, you probably know that the Belmont Stakes was run today.  There was a lot of buzz about it because of American Pharaoh, who had the opportunity to become the first horse in thirty-seven years to win the Triple Crown.  He did not disappoint those who bet on him.

What that means is crowds and lots of traffic on the roads leading to the Belmont Park race track, which is 25 to 30 kilometers from my apartment, depending on which route I were to take.  Once I rode in the direction of the track on the day of the Belmont Stakes, and even the side roads and some residential streets were clogged with SUVs piloted by testy, impatient drivers.

So, of course, I made it a point of avoiding all of that today.  Instead of a horse race, I saw another kind of sport:

No, it's not baseball.  It's one of its forerunners:  cricket.  I wish I could have gotten a bit closer, or that I had my camera with me.  I was relegated to taking that photo with my cell phone.  I also had to push my limited skills to the limit to capture this image:

OK.  So now you're thinking, "She went all the way to England to get away from a horse race?"  If only...

Actually, I rode in the opposite direction of the race track and found myself riding through the Bronx and Westchester County.  Believe it or not, both of those photos were taken in the Bronx.

Van Cortlandt Park is the second-largest park in the Bronx and the fourth-largest in New York City.  Its northern boundary is the city line with Westchester County.  To its south and east are longtime Irish enclaves  Norwood and Bedford Park.  That is where the players in the photo live, or have lived.

On a nearby field, there was another game of cricket in progress:

Adjoining Norwood and Bedford Park is one of the city's largest enclaves of immigrants from the Anglophone West Indies, centered along Gun Hill Road.  The players in this photo probably live there, or possibly in one of the West Indian neighborhoods of Brooklyn.  Although there is no Jim Crow policy in place in Van Cortlandt (or anyplace else in New York) and, from what I understand, the players were not segregating themselves by race (they were merely playing with friends and family), it was still a bit jarring to see white players on one field and blacks on another.

The house in the photo is in a nearby neighborhood almost no one would associate with the Bronx.  The street on which I found the house is private, as are the streets surrounding it.  A couple of blocks away is the Fieldston School, where the tuition is higher than the salary I earned in any of the first twenty or so years I worked. 

Anyway...I saw the cricket games on my way up to Westchester County and the house on my way back.  In Westchester, I rode as close as I could to the Hudson River and was treated to a vista of the Palisades:

What most people don't realize about the Hudson is that south of the Tappan Zee, it's not really a river:  It's actually a tidal basin.  And I could tell, by the way the water was churning, that the tide was coming in. It turns brownish-green then and looks more like a river when the tide is out.

I pedaled against the wind going upriver, so the wind blew me back into the Bronx and to my place.  And I avoided the throngs of gas-guzzlers people drove to watch little men drive horses in the service of bettors.