All He--Or, Rather, The Kids--Need Are The Bikes

June has just ended.  So, for most students, has the school year.

I recall how, in the old days,  some kids tossed notebooks, pencils and rulers into the air as they dashed away from their school building.  Do kids still do that?  Somehow I have a hard time imagine them tossing laptops or tablets--or their phones--into the air.  

One thing that probably hasn't changed is this:  Kids leave school with visions of long days with friends, at the playground or the beach--or riding bikes.  Maybe they'll ride their bikes to those places.

That is, if they have bikes.

David Yandell has long known that many kids don't have bikes because their families can't afford them.  Over the past twenty years, he's distributed about 2000 bikes in Portland.  In the beginning, he did his own fundraising, but some years back a local developer-turned- philanthropist named Homer Williams got wind of what Yandell was doing and became a partner in the program.

But, this year, Yandell and Williams discovered that, as the saying goes, there are some things money can't buy.  In this case, it was the bikes themselves.  Wal-Mart, normally one of their major sources, said it didn't have any bikes available for them.  The reason is one we've heard since the early days of the pandemic: supply chain disruptions.

More than likely, there are now hundreds of similar bike-distribution programs across the US.  While some may have been suspended, but most folks who undertake such work are dedicated.  And, in Yandell's and William's case, savvy:  Few, if any, such programs have operated for longer than theirs.  

So far, they've acquired half of the 200 bikes they'd promised to kids.  They worked their contacts, not only to find other sources, but to put pressure on Wal-Mart to come up with some bikes.

Turns out, their powers of persuasion are working.  A Wal-Mart representative, citing the value of good community relations, said the company wants to help Yandell get what he needs and believes the bikes are available somewhere in the company's network.

Say what you will (and I would say a lot) about the Wal-Mart's policies and practices.  I think they, or, at least, the representative, know that you don't let down folks like David Yandell because he knows  there are some things money can't buy--like the feeling of being a kid (or a grown-up) riding a bike on a summer day.

In Place

Yesterday I was torn between taking a familiar or a new ride.  So I did a bit of both:  I pedaled through areas of Westchester County I hadn’t seen in a while, on roads I’d never ridden.

While riding, I couldn’t help but to think about how two affluent towns, so close, could feel so different. Scarsdale, New York, like Greenwich, Connecticut, is one of the most affluent towns in the United States.  Both have quaint downtowns full of shops that offer goods and services you don’t find in big-box stores.  But while some Greenwich establishments have the intimacy of places where generations of people have congregated, others are like the ones in Scarsdale and other wealthy parts of Westchester County:  more self-conscious—you can see it in the names, some of which show merely that whoever came up with the name took French or Italian—and more trendy while trying not to seem trendy.  

Also, the mansions of Greenwich are set further from the roadway than those in Scarsdale.  I suspect that has to do with the differences between the towns’ zoning codes—which has to do with the philosophies of the people who made them.  Also, part of Greenwich includes farms where horses are bred and herbs are grown.

In other words, they reflect the difference between New England and suburban New York wealth (though Greenwich is certainly part of the New York Metro area). 

While both towns have public art and sculpture, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this in Greenwich:

Simone Kestelman, the creator of “Pearls of Wisdom,” says she was inspired by what pearls mean: something to wear for special occasions, purity, spiritual transformation, dignity, charity honesty, integrity—and, of course, wisdom acquired over time.

One might expect to see something like this in Greenwich:

Indeed, the town has public horlogues like that one,  But I encountered it in the Bronx, across the street from Montefiore Hospital!

Simple Arithmetic?

 Only a mathematician could ever come up with that!

I've forgotten what the "that" was.  But I remember that an engineer said it.  Now, my knowledge of mathematics can be summed up, generously, by the divisor of an equation that yields a quotient of infinity. But I understood, I think, that engineer's exclamation:  Almost nothing is as abstract--and, therefore, divorced from reality, at least in the minds of many--as mathematics.

If there are things only a mathematician can come up with, then I imagine there are things an engineer would never try or, probably, even think about.  To wit:

To be fair, Sergii Gordieiev's project was inspired by a real-life situation:  He crushed his front wheel on a curb.  That left him, in essence, with half of a wheel.  So that got him to wondering how to ride with half of a wheel.  The solution came from a mathematical equation so simple even I could understand it:  half plus half equals one.  Thus, he realized, he could make a bike run on two half-wheels--on the rear, anyway.

Your local bike mechanic probably can perform all sorts of miracles.  I know:  I've resurrected a bike or two in my time.  (If you're inculcated with the language of Catholicism, it never leaves you!)  But, my old engineer acquaintance said, there are some things only a mathematician could come up with.