Go Thou And Do Likewise

One of a child's first milestones is when he or she can walk without help.  For many (and, I assume, for everyone reading this blog), a subsequent milestone is riding a bicycle without anyone or anything to aid with balance.

For even the most agile of kids, learning to ride a bike involves a fall or two, and some bumps and bruises.  Kids recover from such things quickly; indeed, most forget the pain of those experiences.

When you get to a certain age, shall we say, wounds don't heal as quickly as they did when you were young.  (That is one reason why I gave up mountain biking in my mid-40s.)  The good news is that your sense of balance is almost certainly better than it was when you were a toddler, and your muscles and reflexes are conditioned in ways they weren't when you were a babe.

Still, it's hard for me to imagine what it's like to learn how to ride a bike at age 53.  It's especially difficult for me to envision a novitiate of that age learning to ride in the sorts of clothing "proper" ladies were expected to wear in public in 1892, not to mention on the kinds of bikes that were ridden at that time.

However, there is one woman who managed to do just what I've described.  She says that it took her three months of practicing fifteen minutes a day, and during that time, she took only one fall.

If you think that the woman I'm describing had a very determined will, you'd be right.  Those of you who've done a bit of reading in women's history--or about one of the most infamous periods of American history--know who she is:  Frances Willard.

To say she's one of the most interesting and enigmatic figures in history would be an understatement.  She's sometimes credited as a founder of feminism--at least in its earliest iteration--in this country. In a sense, that's true:  She believed that it was not only a woman's right, but also her destiny, to have equal citizenship with her husband.

Notice that I wrote "her husband" and not "a man."  You see, she believed that a woman's duty was still mainly domestic and that her work should be focused on the education of her children and the emotional and spiritual support of her husband. 

Because she believed that women had to "temper" their men, at the same time she was crusading for women's suffrage and other rights, she was a leader in a movement that would lead to the greatest failure in American law and social policy (aside, perhaps, from the War on Drugs).  That, of course, was the Eighteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment thirteen years later.  It's more commonly known as Prohibition, and it was the culminating achievement of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, of which Willard was a leader.

Her almost-schizophrenic ideas about women's rights seems to have been an all-too-logical result of her own experience.  Growing up in rural Wisconsin, she raised livestock, chopped wood, broke horses and did all of the work men did in that environment--until she turned sixteen. 

The notion of Sweet Sixteen in the 1850's was to give a girl who just turned that age her first corset, hoopskirt and high heels.  In other words, she got the privileges of restricted breathing and hobbled walking.  She described the sadness she felt over being forced into the prescribed role for a Proper Young Victorian Lady, but somehow she managed to break off an engagement and never be married. 



One might think that anyone who could choose to live a life independent of the expectations of her place and time, and to help found two of America's most significant social movements (as misguided as one of them was), would have felt at least some degree of confidence about herself and her place in the world.  However, as she says in "Wheel of Fortune", her mother's death exacerbated the strains she was already feeling about her exhausting schedule of researching, writing, traveling, teaching and speaking--not to mention the conflict between her struggle for her own, and women's, independence and her struggle to live, to the degree she could, according to the expectations of her place and time.

It was while facing such a predicament that she realized the  "conquest" of the bicycle by someone like her, "who had so many comrades in the white-ribbon army" would be "influential."


She exhorted those "comrades" and other women: "Go thou and do likewise."

 

You, Too, Can Ride An Air Donkey

A week and a half ago, I gave some examples of oxymorons.  As I mentioned in that post, some people would argue that "carbon fiber Brooks saddle" is one.

How about "Air Donkey"?

No, it's not a no-frills airline.  (Please click the link:  the clip is precious!)  Nor is it a cheaper version of a sneaker teenaged boys of all ages (and genders!) wait hours on line and spend whole paychecks to get.  And it's not a game in which people deemed to unstable for military service or the police department work out their aggressions.

Rather, Air Donkey might be described if you created a bike rental service by crossing Uber with Airbnb.



An bicycle outfitted for Air Donkey

At least, that seems to be the vision of Erdem Ovacik, who recently co-founded the Copenhagen (where else?)-based startup which has just opened a Kickstarter appeal to fund their project. 

Essentially, Air Donkey would involve people renting out their bicycles by the day or week to tourists, commuters or whoever else is looking to get around the city on two wheels.  The firm behind Air Donkey--Donkey Republic--says the system has been tested around Copenhagen and is ready to go.



The Air Donkey starter kit.

Members will purchase a starter kit that includes a special rear-wheel lock that can be released with a phone app (and can go 500 days between charges), stickers to mark the bike and a listing on the company's website, which keeps track of available bikes via the locks. 


Users simply have to find a bike, pay the rental fee and use the app to unlock the bike.  Air Donkey recommends a rental fee of 10 Euros a day; it's estimated that the one-time cost of the starter kit will be 80 Euros.  Thus, it shouldn't take long for a member to recoup his or her outlay.



The Air Donkey lock

It all sounds good. However, being the cynical (!) New Yorker I am, I found a problem: the lock. It only allows the bike to be locked to itself or tethered to an immobile object with the attached cable.  The "leash" on the lock is flimsy, especially for a bike that's supposed to be parked on the street so that would-be renters can easily access it. Crooks who aren't particularly enterprising have broken much thicker and stronger cables, chains and locks. Also, I have to think that if thieves found ways to steal Citibikes from their ports, they wouldn't have much difficulty in stealing an Air Donkey bike without cutting the "leash" or even breaking the lock.

On the other hand, as Ovacik points out, the system is intended for everyday, utilitarian machines--the kind people typically have in their basements and storage rooms--not fancy racing bikes.  The bikes people would rent are more likely to have baskets or child seats than heart rate monitors.  Hence the "Donkey" in the name.

Even so, Air Donkey would make a greater variety of bikes available than any municipal bike-sharing system like Citibike could.  A bike shop could rent out, say, a Dutch-style city bike, a three-speed, a low-level mountain bike and other kinds of machines in the Air Donkey system.  And, many riders could find and return bikes in and to more convenient locations, particularly areas of cities where bike-share ports are difficult or impossible to find. 

Whatever its flaws or drawbacks, I hope that the program succeeds and, as Ovacik plans, it's expanded to other cities in Europe and beyond.  Anything that can get more bikes on, and more cars off, city streets is a good thing!




 

The Messenger Who Didn't Come Back

I'm sure I don't have to tell you what happened fourteen years ago today.

Here in New York, it seems that almost everyone knows someone who was touched by the events of that day.  If we don't know someone who's alive today because he didn't go to work-- or whose mother, father, brother, sister, lover or friend went to work and never came back-- we know someone who's somehow connected to such a person.

Before the Towers fell, they were magnets that pulled in and propelled hundreds of messengers every day.  For over a year, I was one of them.  I, and they, picked up letters, contracts, invoices, receipts, lease agreements, work orders, certifications, resumes and other testaments to the daily fugue of moments lived in anticipation of returning, again, to the sanctum of the familiar.

Most people go to work every day and expect to return home safely.  Among the exceptions are firefighters, police officers and other first responders:  All of them know, or know of, someone who went to work one day and never made it home.  Most lawyers or accountants cannot say that.  Nor, for that matter can most bike messengers:  Even with the crazy drivers hurtling through the maze of city streets, most who pedal through the urban jungle can expect to make it through the day intact.

One of the reasons, I believe, why the events of 11 September 2001 left so many people in various states of shock and grief is that it was one of those rare occassions on which so many people who expect--or are expected--to be home at the end of the day didn't make it.  In other words, it's one of the few times so many people could truly understand what it's like to live with, and love, a first responder who, on any given day or night, might not come home again.

The families and loved ones of those who didn't make it back have their own mementos and monuments: photos and the like.  And there are also those tactile but mute testimonies to those whose fates we may never know--like the messenger who was riding this bike when making a delivery to Cantor Fitzgerald or some other organization in the World Trade Center:

Photo by Anthony Catalano

This bike was still parked by St. Paul's Chapel a month after the Towers fell.  The rear of it faces Church Street, directly across from the east side of the World Trade Center site.   It seems that family and friends turned it into an impromptu memorial for the messenger, who was never seen or heard from after parking it.