Here Comes The Heat

 Apologies to George Harrison for the title of this post!

This morning I took an early ride. It was pleasant, if not challenging:  a bit more than an hour in a loop that took me down to Sunnyside and Woodside, then up past LaGuardia Airport and Citifield, along the World’s Fair Marina promenade—on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bike.

As I pedaled the promenade, I was really glad that I took an early ride.

The haze in the distance was a harbinger of the heat that would blast us later.

I have to admit that I’m following the news about the heatwave in the western part of the US and wondering whether it will reach us.  As hot (and humid) as it is here in New York, our weather is spring-like compared to theirs.

If that heat makes it here, I guess I’ll have to start my rides earlier.

More Signs

 When I’m on my bike, I can’t help but to notice signs.  As I mentioned in earlier posts, sometimes their meaning isn’t clear, or what their creators might have intended.

A case in point is what I saw the other day on Point Lookout.

I mean, it’s nice that the village now has a bocce court.  But what do they think the players are doing after games?

The day before, I pedaled to Connecticut, which involves crossing the RFK Memorial-Triborough Bridge.  Like most other crossings in this area, it has a sign for those who are thinking about going to the other side—and I’m not talking about Randall’s Island.

As someone who’s lost people to suicide, it’s not something in which I normally find humor.  I must admit, however, that I chuckled when I saw this.

“Don’t waste the trip.  Take Don Jr. with you.” I would prefer, though, that Darwin would find a way to deal with the son of El Cheeto Grande—and the big cheese himself.

Pour Boucler La Boucle

Demi Vollering

The women’s version of the Tour de France was called, for a time, la Grande Boucle.  Literally, it means “the big loop”and referred to the fact that, like the men’s Tour de France, the race took riders around the country.

The name now seems weirdly appropriate.  Yesterday, La Course was held.  It’s billed as the feminin  version of the Tour,  At one time, the Boucle could legitimately make such a claim, as it was a multi-stage race.  Now, however, it’s a one-day prelude to the men’s Tour—as it was during the early years of the Boucle.

You could say the race a boucle la boucle (has come full circle), though not in the way cyclists or women’s sports advocates might have hoped.  

After expanding to 15 stages in the 1990s, organizational and logistical problems led to its shrinkage and, for a few years, it’s cancellation.  The race and riders were always scrambling for sponsorships, and race organizers scheduled stages in whichever cities contributed money.  That led to long and awkward transfers between stages.

For the record, Dutch cyclist Demi Vollering won yesterday’s La Course, held in the northwestern French town of Mur-de-Bretagne, about 130 kilometers from Brest, where the Tour started yesterday.