A Memorial On The Labor Day Tour

Every year from 1940 until 1942 and 1947 until 2019, the Tour of Sommerville--"the Kentucky Derby of cycling"--was held on Memorial Day.  That day, on the fourth Monday of May, is called "the unofficial beginning of Summer in the United States.

For many, today--Labor Day--is the unofficial end of the season.  The following day, most people have returned to work. (Grim but interesting fact:  Mohammed Atta, the "mastermind" of 9/11, chose that date because it fell on the Tuesday following Labor Day, when he figured almost everybody would be on their jobs--and thus provide more potential victims.)  So, I suppose it's appropriate that the Tour of Somerville, after being cancelled altogether last year, was re-scheduled to this date.  

Near the race course stands a monument to Furman Kugler, who won the event's first two editions.  Encased in Plexiglas is a photo of him next to the bike he rode--a Shelby Classic.  Interestingly, it bears more semblance to a track than a criterium bike of its time, with its wooden rims and fixed gear.  According to Tom Avenia, it was de rigeur at the time.  I'd take his word on that:  He rode in several editions of the Tour--on a fixed gear, during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Perhaps more to the point, neither Kugler nor Carl Anderson, who won in 1942, would return when the Tour resumed:  Both lost their lives while fighting in World War II.

Perhaps the monument to Kugler would be more fitting on Memorial Day.  But at least it's there, and the Tour is running again this year.

I Don't Think Elton John Had Him In Mind

This video reminded me of something I might've seen on a Saturday morning cartoon:

A man identified only as Wang--a common surname in his native Taiwan--purchased a small  jet engine designed for a radio-controlled airplane.  Then a university professor helped him in mounting it on his bicycle.

He took it for a ride in the city of Tainan, where he reportedly achieved a top speed of 133 KPH (82 MPH). Attached to his bike was a small bottle to hold rocket fuel.  But there was only enough to run the engine for 30 seconds.

I don't know what Wang was trying to achieve, but if it was a contract from a racing team or a commercial endorsement, he must have been disappointed when he answered the knock at his door:  Local police informed him that his ride violated multiple road and traffic regulations. The cost of his ride, therefore, won't be limited to the 330,000 yuan (11,900 USD) he spent to build his contraption.  

Images And Icons

 Yesterday afternoon I meandered through back streets of central Brooklyn and Queens.  It still amazes me that even after riding those byways so many times over so many years, I still find things I hadn't noticed before.

In a still-ungentrified part of Bedford-Stuyvesant, when I chanced upon one of the best names for a house of worship.

I can't help but to wonder what services--and the music-- are like in a place called "Rugged Cross."  I also wonder who came up with that name.  Could that person have been thinking about the kinds of lives so many people in the neighborhood have lived, and still live?

Or could that person have anticipated what someone would paint directly across the street from it?

You can't paint something like that if you've grown up on Park Avenue and 72nd Street or Fisher Island--even if you watched every single Pink Panther cartoon!

A couple of miles away, in Bushwick, I had to search for the name of this church.

Even if I hadn't found it--Saint Barbara, by the way--I would've remembered the wonderful carvings and towers on it.  

The building next to it seems to have been a rectory or convent, or to have served some other church-related purpose.  Now it's the Bushwick center for El Puente, an organization that, for nearly four decades, has worked to keep young people from becoming tragic statistics.  Its founder, Luis Garden Acosta, understood something that, I believe, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were coming to understand just before they were assassinated:  Social justice comes with educational and economic equity.  

I am not religious, but I understand that for many people who live in neighborhoods like the ones surrounding Rugged Cross and Saint Barbara, their churches were places where they could find refuge from the hardships they faced.  Knowing that, it's not so surprising to find a very urban murals across the street from one church, and next to another, in the heart of Brooklyn--and to have the privilege of seeing them on an afternoon bike ride.