Stopped In My Tire Tracks

 Has something ever stopped you in your tire tracks?

While commuting, touring, day-tripping or doing just about every other kind of riding except racing, I have stopped when I’ve seen something unusual or interesting. I more or less expect to make such stops when I’m somewhere I’ve never been before:  Whether I was seeing the chateau at Amboise or an elephant in the wild for the first time, I knew that such sights—or a marketplace that only the locals know—is as much a reason for my ride as, well, pedaling on unfamiliar terrain.

Perhaps nothing is quite as surprising, however, as pedaling through a part of my neighborhood I hadn’t seen in months and encountering something that not only differs from its immediate surroundings, but would stand out almost anywhere.

While spinning the pedals on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bike, along 36th Avenue, I couldn’t have missed a house with such a paint job.  I know it had to have been built recently because, while the stoop and other fittings seemed to match those of adjacent houses—at least at first glance—they didn’t have the nooks and crannies (like Thomas’s English Muffins) of bricks that have weathered seasons and been painted over.

I saw a name plate by the front door.  Looking it up, however, was fruitless because it’s a name common to the Indian-Bengali community in that part of the neighborhood. My guess is that it’s the name of the person or family who built it. Whoever they are, they’re probably rich and eccentric.

At first glance, it reminded me of a Buddhist temple. Perhaps the nearby spice shop and Punjab restaurant and bakery had something to do with that. (I know: Punjabi people are as likely to be Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims or even Christians. My Eurocentricity is showing!) Then, for a moment, I thought of San Francisco about 35 years ago, before tech money remade it: Victorian houses were painted in colors you never would see on similarly-styled houses in Brooklyn, Boston or Montréal.

I believe that if I’d seen that house anywhere, it would have stopped me in my tire tracks.

The Lesser Offense?

 A few years ago, one of my students disappeared a couple of weeks into the semester.  She re-appeared near the end of semester, begging me to allow her to make up the work she missed.  I relented.  She submitted the essays and research paper a week before the final exam. 

I didn’t have to read much to confirm my suspicion:  She hadn’t written those essays or the paper. On the day of the final exam, I returned her work with red “F”s scrawled across them, along with the web addresses where I found “her” work.

“I didn’t plagiarize.”

“So why did I find these papers on the web?”

“I didn’t plagiarize them.  My friend did it for me!”

This week’s “Sunday funny” reminded me of that episode. Just as my former student thought she was not violating the college’s academic integrity policy because she hadn’t done the plagiarism herself, a public official tried to save face by claiming that he was behaving more responsibly by riding his bicycle rather than driving after a night of drinking.

Ty Ross, a Fernandina Beach (Florida) City Manager, had been in his post for only two weeks when police found him lying beside his bike on a roadside. 

Whether or not getting on two wheels instead of four is more responsible behavior after drinking, the officers decided he hadn’t committed a citeable offense and offered him a ride home, which he accepted.

If I recall correctly, my former student failed my class but the college didn’t expel her. That didn’t upset me. But I wonder whether she refined her sense of what is right or wrong—or whether Ross will.

Had he caused or suffered any harm, he would’ve been a candidate for a Darwin Award.

From The Bicycle Man and Bicycle Woman to the Bicycle Medea

 

People in Fayetteville, North Carolina still talk about “The Bicycle Man.”  For more than two decades, Moses Mathis repaired bicycles and gave them to kids in the community, many for Christmas. In its heyday, the charity he and his wife Ann—“The Bicycle Woman”—founded gave away 2500 bikes a year.

He passed away ten years ago. Ann took over and kept the program going with volunteers and donations.  She retired last year. 

Fears that the program would not continue were allayed when Bernie Bogertey-Harvey took the baton.  For years, she has been on the board of The Bicycle Man Foundation.  She has, however, another connection:  More than thirty years ago, her son received one of the first bikes Moses gave away.

Her grandkids have dubbed her “The Bicycle Medea.” While the program is smaller (It no longer has its warehouse.), she hopes to build it back up.  “This year, we’re targeting ages one to seven,” she said.

While it’s too late to register for a bike at this year’s 16 December giveaway, the project is still taking donations.

As one of her grandkids says,”The spirit of the Bicycle Man lives on” in Bernie Bogertey-Harvey.