A Spring Afternoon With Tosca And Jenny

 It was a perfect Spring afternoon: The breeze made me feel even lighter than the air around the sun-flecked leaves and flowers.

On such an afternoon, I feel as if I could ride forever. This afternoon, I felt as if I would ride forever, that I would continue yesterday’s ride—to Connecticut—and the ones I’ve taken along boulevards, through forests and among chateaux.

I didn’t wind my way along the Loire to Amboise. But I did ride to a castle, of sorts.

Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, was begging for me to take her picture. Of course:  Who or what wouldn’t look good in the light of our ride? I think she—and I—were both feeling good after I finally gave her a long-needed Spring tuneup.

We stopped at the garden in front of St. Raymond’s Church where, I’m told, a certain family with a daughter named Jennifer attended mass every Sunday.

She also attended a nearby Catholic school, since closed, before anyone outside the neighborhood knew about her.

Yes, I’m talking about J-Lo. I hear she and Ben are breaking up again. Still, things must be easier for her than they are for someone else who grew up a neighborhood over (to which  I also rode today). I mean, imagine being Sonia Sotomayor and having to look at Sam, Clarence after they destroyed the very thing that made her and other women’s lives possible, even if they never had to avail themselves to what it allows.  I’m no legal scholar, but I can’t help but to think that the “juice” for Title IX, passed in 1972, was supplied a few months later when a very different Supreme Court decided on Roe v. Wade.

Anyway, I wasn’t thinking about that as I rode. If anything, I was simply reveling in having a couple of hours to ride in what are probably the best conditions we experience in this part of the world—and exploring what is, for now, my part of it.

The Face That Rode A Thousand Miles

 Rosalind Yalow’s Orthodox Jewish parents tried to stop her from majoring in physics. Why? “No man will want to marry you.”

Well, she not only majored in physics, she used it to advance the state of health-care technology. That she did by co-developing radio-immunossay, which uses radioactive isotopes to quickly and precisely measure concentrations of hormones, vitamins and other substances that are part of, or end up in, human bodies.

For that, in 1977 she became the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in medicine.  Oh, and she married, had children—and kept a kosher home.

I mention that because throughout the history of bicycling, various actual and self-proclaimed authorities have tried to discourage women from cycling on the grounds that it will make us unattractive and less desirable to men and, therefore, unable to have children.

As an example, serious medical professionals and scientists in the 1890s—during the peak of the first Bike Boom— warned of the “dangers” of women and girls developing “bicycle face.”

I wonder whether I ever developed it. Hmm…Maybe that’s why I don’t have a man—never mind that I haven’t been looking for one!

The Mainstream Media Is Catching Up—To Me

 You don’t have to follow the news on NPR, CNN, CSNBC, PBS or Faux.  Or, for that matter, in the online versions of Time, the Atlantic, the New York or L.A. Times, the Wall Street Journal or, for that matter, any other publication.

You see, I am ahead of the mainstream media.  I have posted about a phenomenon that, today, about half of this nation’s newspapers are reporting.  Actually, they’ve not reporting it:  They’re running a syndicated Associated Press column.

And what is that big story on which they’ve finally caught up to my reporting?  It’s the post-pandemic bike bust.

To be fair, that story mentions something that I don’t think I said much about: The bust is hurting (or destroying) small, family- or enthusiast-owned shops, often in rural or inner-city areas, to a much greater degree than the bigger shops in suburban and affluent urban centers.  And it has led to another trend that disturbs me.

I will call it the “Starbucks-ization” of the retail bike industry. Increasing numbers of bike shops are, in effect, franchises or branches of chains, just like that coffee shop you love to hate (but where you sit with a laptop and a latté). According to the article, around 1000 bike shops in the US are owned by either Specialized or Trek.

In theory, that trend should benefit customers because it eliminates the middle-person. But has it? While prices for bikes, parts and accessories have come down from their Pandemic-boom and -shortage highs, they’re still well above pre-pandemic levels, even when adjusted for inflation.

Maybe this is the New Yorker in me talking, but I don’t believe that those companies (or Giant or Cannondale) have the cyclist in mind when they take over, or drive out, smaller shops.  If anything, I think they’re doing what Schwinn tried to do during the ‘70’s North American Bike Boom and the two decades leading up to it: They tried to control inventories and markets, just as McDonald’s and Walmart do in their individual restaurants and stores.

When my conspiracy theory, I mean prediction, comes to fruition I won’t say, “I told you so!” I promise! But just remember that you read it here first.😏