Bike Berry

If I were teaching English to native French speakers, I might tell them that the best equivalent we have to "c'est la vie" is "that's life in the big city."  In other words, it's a way of acknowledging that one sometimes has to live with minor annoyances, disturbances or inconveniences. 

On 7 June, a boy showed that his life really is not that of the big city.  And some gendarmes showed they are not working in a major, or even mid-sized, urban area.

Ironically, the name of the municipality where the boy resides, and those police officers work, is called Vienna.  Of course, it's not the city such luminaries as Mozart, Freud and Einstein--and Arnold Schwarznegger--called home. (Contrary to popular belief, none of those folks was born there.)  Rather, I am referring to a town in Virginia.

I'd heard of it before, but I didn't realize that it's a suburb of Washington, DC.  (I've been to the US capital a few times, but never ventured outside of the city itself.)  Given the crime the boy in question reported to his town's law enforcement officers, it's hard to believe that such a place is less than an hour from DC--by bicycle, no less.

So what was the young man's complaint?  Here goes:  Another boy smeared berries on his bicycle.

Can you imagine someone reporting that to the police in New York or Boston or San Francisco?  Hey, if I were answering that kid's call, I'd probably tell him to lace it with whipped cream, drizzle it with chocolate sauce and top it with the reddest cherry he could find.  Then I'd photograph it and call it an art installation.  The kid could thank me later, years later, when it pays for his college tuition.

Berry on bicycle (Halle, of course!)

Now that would really be "life in the big city"!

Where Did You Leave Your Bike?

When I go to work, I park my bike on the rack in the college's parking lot.  There, a Peugeot mixte from around 1985 has been parked for at least a couple of years.  I can so date the bike because it's the same model I gave my mother:  a basic carbon-steel frame painted burgundy with yellow and orange graphics, equipped with European components except for the Shimano derailleurs and shifters.

At least one security guard has asked me whether I know who owns that bike.  I don't:  It was just there one day, and has been there ever since.  In the meantime, the chain has turned nearly as orange as the graphics, and other parts are tarnishing or rusting.  The paint still looks pretty good, though, which means that the bike probably wasn't ridden much before it was parked on that rack.

Campus security personnel want to clip the lock and give the bike to a charity or someone in need.  But, as one officer said, "The day after we get rid of it, its owner will show up."

So the owner of that bike remains a mystery. Perhaps she (or he) rode in one day, had some sort of emergency and never returned.  Or perhaps s/he decided that one ride was enough and simply abandoned the bike.

We've all seen bikes like that chained to trees, signposts or other objects for what seem like geological ages.  Once, I went with my parents to the Post Exchange (PX) at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, when my father was a reservist.  I saw a nice Fuji--an S10S, I think--chained to a pole seemingly since that base opened.  A soldier noticed that I was eyeing the bike. He said "the guy", meaning the bike's owner, probably "shipped out."  In the military, they can tell you to go to the other end of the world literally on a moment's notice, he said.

How many "orphan" bikes are there?  What are the stories of the people who left them behind?

Those questions have been asked for years about a bicycle on Vashon Island, Washington, about 15 minutes from Seattle.  This bicycle, though, isn't locked to a tree:  It's in the tree.

Not surprisingly, a few legends have grown about, and claims have been made for, it.  In the latter category is the claim made by Don Puz, who grew up on the island.  When he was a child, his family's house burned down.  Donations to the family included a bicycle, which was too small for Don and had hard rubber tires.  He says that one day in 1954, he rode his bike into the woods where he met some friends.  They weren't riding bikes, so he walked home with them, leaving the bike in the woods.  He simply "forgot" about it, he says, until it showed up on Facebook.

Which brings us to the legends--one of them, anyway.  According to the Facebook posting, "A boy went to war in 1914 and left his bike chained to a tree.  He never came home."

That myth isn't hard to refute:  It's very unlikely that a  boy small enough to ride that bike would have gone to war. Also, if he was American, he probably wouldn't have gone to war in 1914, as the US didn't enter World War I until 1917. 

As for Don Puz's claim, it's plausible if one question can be answered:  How did the bike end up as part of that tree?  Hmm..Dear readers, are any of you dendrologists?   

The World's Fastest Man: A Century Before Usain Bolt

I haven't owned a television in about six years.  I do, however, listen to a fair amount of radio, mainly the local public and independent stations.

One program to which I listen pretty regularly is "Fresh Air," which is something like a radio version of 60 Minutes dedicated to the arts or contemporary issues.  A couple of nights ago, "Fresh Air" featured Dave Davies (no, not the Kinks' guitarist) interviewing journalist Michael Kranish, whose latest book just came out.

The World's Fastest Man:  The Extraordinary Life of Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero documents, not only Major Taylor's athletic exploits, but his contributions to the cause of civil rights.  He was, arguably, as dominant in cycling of his era as Eddy Mercx or Bernard Hinault were in theirs, and towered over his sport the way Michael Jordan, Martina Navratilova and Wayne Gretzky did in their primes.  But, perhaps even more important, he was as unflinching in the face of discrimination as Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali were more than half a century later.



I haven't yet read the book, but I plan to. One reason is that, from what I gather in the interview, Kranish's book shows how bicycle racing was the most popular sport in America and much of Europe and Australia during Taylor's time.  Also, he seems to cover in greater detail the discrimination he faced, not only from restaurants and hotels that refused him service, but also from other racers who sometimes even tried to injure him before or during races.  Finally, during the interview, Kranish mentions business ventured that failed--including one from which a white competitor stole his idea after no bank would finance him.

You can listen to the interview here: