How Many Can Ride Your Bike?

 Now I am going to separate the guys from the girls.

Wait, why would I do that?

Actually, I am going to separate the generations. If you can remember what I am about to mention, you’re definitely not a Milennial and possibly not of Gen X.

Back before we got cell phones, if you needed to make a phone call away from home, you went to a phone booth.

I am told that for a time, there was a fad among college students: They crammed as many people into one of those booths as they could.  I don’t know whether I wish I’d seen it, but I am glad I never participated in such lunacy:  I’m pretty claustrophobic.

(So what, you ask, am I doing in New York, living in an apartment?)

Anyway, I got to thinking about all those bodies stuffed into glass boxes when I saw this:

आज दुनिया की आबादी 8 अरब हो गई, इस उपलब्धि को हासिल करने में ऐसे इंसानों को बहुत बड़ा योगदान रहा है👇 pic.twitter.com/Fiq62o0OiK

— Jaiky Yadav (@JaikyYadav16) November 15, 2022

How many people can ride a bicycle built for one? I don’t know whether the limit is nine.  Then again, I’m not sure I want to know!

Abandonment

 About three weeks ago, after a long day of work and errands, I was pedaling home when I flatted.

Rain and darkness were falling. I decided I’d rather fix my flat at home than on the street.  So I took the subway.

While waiting for the train, I saw this:

I’ve seen other shoes on the track bed. None were in as good condition, let alone as vibrantly colored.

Oh, and I’ve never seen another  shoe stand so prominently and conspicuously in its surroundings, in a trackbed or anywhere else.

It, of course, begs the question of how it got there, in such good shape and standing as proudly. Was it placed there deliberately?  If so, for what purpose?  So someone like me could babble about it on her blog?

Or was some street performer fleeing from law enforcement?  Perhaps he or she was playing Jean Valjean in a modern update of Les Miserables.  I mean, why not the New York City subways instead of the Paris sewers?

I haven’t been back to that station:  Cortlandt Street/World Trade Center on the R line.  So, of course, I don’t expect to see that shoe again. I hope, though don’t expect that it’s reunited with its mate—and, perhaps, the foot that dropped it!

She Survived Kyiv—But Not Bethesda

 In 2020, I crashed and was “doored” barely three months apart. A few people asked whether I’d give up cycling.  A couple said I should.  But, as I pointed out, I had been a dedicated cyclist for nearly half a century, with no mishaps that caused serious injuries, before those experiences.  Other people drove for less time and had more serious accidents but didn’t give up driving.

A cycling calamity cost Dan Langenkamp even more than both of my crashes cost me, because the price he paid is permanent.  

He was a press attaché and spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.  His wife, Sarah, was a diplomat. They cycled in and around the city with their son, to work and school and for pleasure. Cycling had been such a part of their lives that Sarah gave him a bicycle with the words “It’s been a great ride!” painted on it.

Along with other Americans, they were evacuated from Ukraine when Vladimir Putain’s, I mean Putin’s, forces invaded the country. They returned to Bethesda, Maryland and worked in nearby Washington, DC.  They continued their bicycle-centered lifestyle until August, when Dan and Sarah were riding home from an open house at their kids’ elementary school. 

A flatbed truck made à right turn. The driver “wasn’t looking,” Dan said.  He made it home but she didn’t.  That truck “crushed” Sarah. He used that word to convey the “violence “ of what happened.  “It was as if the war followed us,” he lamented.

He’s since left his State Department job to advocate for “road safety.”  He understands that agitating for “bike safety “ or “driver awareness” is not enough.  Better road and lane design is also necessary.  So are safety features on trucks, he notes.

He is beginning his campaign today, with a bike rally which includes a ride that will re-trace Sarah’s last.

People in his life have asked him whether he thinks about not riding anymore. Some have implored him to do so.  Of course, he won’t.  Giving up cycling because of bad, careless or malicious drivers, he insists, would be “like changing your life because of terrorists.”

Mary Louise Kelly did a sensitive interview with Dan that aired yesterday: