The Trip And The Day After

Yesterday was a holiday most people don’t know about—unless, of course, they read this blog.😏

It’s interesting, and perhaps unique, in that it doesn’t commemorate the thing for which it’s named.

Believe it or not, yesterday was Bicycle Day.  I’m sure that some club or another had a ride marking the day.  And I’m sure at least one of the riders has dressed or made themself up to look like the man who, however unwittingly, made yesterday Bicycle Day.

On 19 April 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann rode his bike home after taking a mild dose (or so he thought) drug he synthesized several years earlier. “I was taken to another place, another time,” he recalled. “My body seemed to be without sensation. Lifeless. Strange.”

One thing we don’t know about his ride was its pace.  He may have been pedaling vigorously but I somehow doubt that he was riding like a Tour de France or Olympic racer in training.  So whatever he was experiencing—which, he said, lasted until the following day—probably wasn’t the result of endorphins. Thus, he can be said to have been on the world’s first LSD trip, literally and figuratively.

Ironically, the day after—today—would, decades later, become another “holiday” having to do with chemically-altered states of mind:  420 is a code name for marijuana and, at least in the US—where we write our dates in the exact opposite way from the rest of the world—the 20th of April is known as “Four-Twenty.”

The doctor at 87.  See what cycling can do?

By the way, Dr. Hofmann died fifteen years ago—at 102 years old. What was the key to his longevity? It must have been the cycling.

What Was This Driver Doing On The Road?

 Someone drives illegally. They* strike and kill a cyclist.

That driver has been sentenced to…

**

…five months in jail. Oh, and the badass judge tacked 40 hours of “community service” and “no more than five years” of probation.

Call me cynical, but I think the judge handed a sentence, light as it is yet still harsher than most for similar infractions because:

• the cyclist was a priest and
• as Paul Walsh, a reporter for the Minneapolis  Star-Tribune noted, Trejean D. Curry had “a penchant for driving without a license.”

A “penchant for driving without a license.” According to a court filing, Curry has never had a driver’s license in his home state of Minnesota. Yet, by the afternoon of 25 October 2021, when he plowed into Rev. Dennis Dempsey from behind, Curry had accumulated “10 convictions for operating a vehicle while his driving privileges were revoked, six for lack of insurance, two for speeding, two for instructional permit violations, one for expired tabs and one for passing another vehicle in a prohibited area.”

Rev. Dennis Dempsey R.I.P.

All of that when he didn’t have a license? To me, the most pertinent question is:  How and why was this guy even on the road on the afternoon of 25 October 2021?

Oh, and he had the gall to claim that Dempsey had swerved in front of him. Skid marks and other evidence pointed to the exact opposite:  Curry swerved, accidentally or not, into Dempsey’s path on the should of the road where the driver and cyclist were traveling in the same direction.

I will end with two more questions: Will the jail sentence, “community service” and probation—even if they are served in full—change Curry’s behavior.  And what sort of sentence will Judge Dannia Edwards mete out the next time she is faced with a scofflaw, or simply careless, driver who kills a cyclist?

*—I have used a gender-neutral pronoun to eliminate, as much as I can, any biases.

**—If you were expecting me to say something like “a $50 fine” or “two points on the driver’s license,” I understand.

Riding With The Flow

 Today I rode to, and along, a river.

It wasn’t the Hudson or East River—the latter of which isn’t a river.

And I didn’t leave the city.  In fact, I didn’t have to go far from my new neighborhood.

The Bronx River cuts through the New York Botanical Garden, my building’s next door neighbor. Cycling isn’t allowed in the Garden. There are, however, trails along other parts of the only freshwater river in New York City and near its source in Westchester County.

I remember seeing the river decades ago, probably during a trip to the Bronx Zoo. Then, the water was barely visible because of the cars, tires and other refuse that had been tossed into it. Ironically, the building that once housed Lorillard’s snuff factory—one of the river’s first polluters—sits in the Garden, one of the organizations that helped to spur the River’s cleanup about 20 years ago.

I doubt that the water is potable. At least, I wouldn’t drink it. But people enjoy picnics and, I hear, fishing along its banks. And it’s become popular for canoes and kayaks.

Still, there are reminders that it is, after all, in the Bronx.  

I continued to ride for another two hours through unfamiliar streets in somewhat familiar areas. Soon, I hope, I will feel more at home, if for no other reasons that places become a part of me when I pedal them.