I Couldn't Bring Her Florida. I Brought The Next-Best Thing.

During the past week, my bikes were envious.  They knew about my long weekend with near-perfect weather in Florida.  I couldn't replicate those conditions here in New York, at this time of year.  But the past weekend was quite lovely, with sunlight turning the falling and fallen red, yellow and orange leaves into jewels in necklaces that rimmed streets and curbs.

They wanted that, and a seascape like the ones I saw while riding along Route A1A.  A view  just like that one isn't available along the South Shores of Queens or Long Island because the water is more of a steely blue-gray and the light more diffuse, but the vistas are there. 

La-Vande, my Mercian King of Mercia, was ready for one of those views of the ocean.  But when we arrived at Point Lookout, after pushing against the wind most of the way, we were greeted with this:

I could sense her disappointment, though she didn't show it on the ride back.  Of course, we had the wind with us but, more important, she was the nimble, stable ride she's been since she entered my fleet last year.

And when I stopped at the Gateway reception center on Beach Channel Boulevard, a woman exulted, "I just love that color!"

So do I--and the hues of autumn, and the sea.

A Different Origin Story?

As a transgender woman, I often ask, "What if?"

What if I had been assigned, at birth, the gender and name under which I live?

What kind of cyclist might I have been?

Would I ever need to look back?

He Should Have Been Careful!

When I go for a ride, people--usually non-cyclists--implore me to "be careful."  Sometimes I think they've been inculcated, if unwittingly, with the notion that the car reigns supreme and if a driver harms a cyclist, the cyclist was careless.  

That said, there are indeed dangers in cycling, as there are in almost any other activity.  But there is one that almost no one ever thinks of.

An Italian fellow was riding his bike away from house on the Costa del Sol, the Spanish region that's become Europe's Florida:  a warm-weather magnet for vacationers and pensioners.

But he didn't retire from the Carbineri. In fact, the Carbineri and their counterparts in a few other countries were looking for him.

Turns out, he was part of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta mafia gang and had been on the run from his country's authorities for seven years.  In addition to committing the common grifter offenses of money laundering, forging documents and tax evasion, according to said authorities,  he was a point man for shipping cocaine from Colombia to Europe.

Someone should have told him to "be careful" when he went out for his ride.