A Ride With A Real Cyclist

 So…What’s it like to ride with the guy next door?

I found out, sort of this past Sunday: I took a spin with a man who lives a few floors below my “penthouse.”

That I have been riding nearly every day hasn’t gone unnoticed by other residents of my senior (don’t tell anybody!) residence. One, whom I’ll call Sam* asked whether we could “just go out and ride, to no place in particular.” Not knowing him, I wasn’t sure of what to make of his proposal. Not knowing any other cyclists—or anyone else—very well, I thought “Why not?”

So, our journey—me, on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike and him, on a Roadmaster ATB he bought on Amazon, began around 9 am. I took him up to Mosholu Parkway, where a bike-pedestrian lane splits the shoestring park that splits the north from the south side of the road. Riding west takes you to Van Cortlandt Park. We went east—not very far—to Southern Boulevard and the Botanical Garden gate. It allowed us to bypass two very busy intersections where traffic enters and exits a highway, and enter the Bronx Park path to Pelham Parkway. 

I took him along what has become one of my early morning rides to City Island. He’d been there before, he said, but not on a bike.

From there, we pedaled back over  the bridge to Pelham Bay Park,which is three times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park. From there, I took him through neighborhoods that line the Hutchinson and Bronx Rivers and Long Island Sound. (One of those neighborhoods is, believe it or not, called “Country Club.”) 

The day grew hotter and the sun bore down on us. He seemed to take the weather better than I did, but he said he was impressed with my riding “on a bike you can’t coast.” 

I must say that I had all the more reason to be impressed:  He simply wanted to keep on riding. Whatever his bike or strength, that told me he is certainly a cyclist at heart.

When we reached SUNY Maritime College, he confessed that he, a lifelong Bronx resident, had never seen it—or, more important, the rather scenic waterfront—before. He also had never been in Country Club, with its huge houses, some of which wouldn’t look out of place in “The Great Gatsby.” After our ride, I realized that while he is a Bronx “lifer,” he rarely, if ever, had seen anything east of the Bruckner Expressway. That made me think of my experience of living in Brooklyn until I was 13: I really didn’t know anything beyond my immediate neighborhood until I returned as an adult. As I once told somebody, I’d crossed the ocean before I’d crossed Ocean Parkway.

A journey takes you to some place where you’ve never been, where it’s on the other side of the world or a part of your home—or yourself—you’ve never seen before. For me, that—and not the number of miles or kilometers or how much time —is cycling. And, I feel that is what I experienced on a ride with a new neighbor.

*—I have given him a pseudonym because I’m not sure of how much he would want me to reveal about him.

Real Winners In Paris

Imagine this:  After bringing glory to your country, you can’t go home.

That is the dilemma Yulduz and Fariba Hashimi could face.

Actually, the two sisters haven’t been home in three years. They’ve been training in Switzerland for this year’s Paris Olympics. How they got there is exactly the reason why they can’t return their native land.

Yulduz (l) and Fariba Hashimi

In 2021, they fled the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on an Italian evacuation flight. They were joined by, among others, three young people who would become their Olympic teammates. 

In Italy, they received proper coaching for the first time. “Back in Afghanistan, we didn’t have professional training,” says Yulduz. “All we used to do was take our bikes and ride.”

That isn’t nearly as idyllic as it sounds. Their bikes were borrowed and they trained and raced—and won—in disguise and under false names. When stories about them appeared in the local media, their parents begged them to stop. People drove rickshaws and cars, and threw stones, at them.

They were not only in one of the most restrictive countries for women and girls, they were in one of its most remote and conservative areas: Faryab province. As if that, and the lack of coaching. weren’t formidable obstacles, they were working from yet another disadvantage. Yulduz, now 24 years old and Fariba, 21 didn’t even mount a bicycle for the first time until they were 17 and 14, respectively. When they arrived in Italy, they were training with, and competing against cyclists who started pedaling not long after they learned how to walk.

Although few believe they will win a medal, I—and,

I suspect, more than a few other people—wouldn’t be too surprised if they did, given what they’ve overcome and sacrificed.

Whatever the results of their races, they will vindicate the International Olympic Committee’s maneuvering. According to IOC rules, a country must choose its team members without political interference. That, of course, wasn’t going to happen with the Taliban in power: Women aren’t allowed to do much besides bear children and keep a household, never mind compete in sports. 

The IOC talked, behind the scenes, with Afghan sports officials—some of whom live in exile—about putting together a special team to represent Afghanistan in Paris.

 For once, I applaud the wheeling and dealing of the IOC, an organization whose level of corruption rivals the UCI and FIFA. Their work work means two Yulduz and Fariba Hashimi’s presence in Paris is a victory, whatever the results of their races.

Good-Bye, Papa Elf!

 The man in the rear was playing his favorite role. 

Bob Newhart was Papa Elf in “Elf,” the 2003 Christmas classic. 

Although he wasn’t “playing himself,” I think his portrayal of Papa Elf tapped into the dry curmudgeonly humor of the personae he created in “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart.”

Sadly, there will be no more from him: He passed away today, at 94 years old. Somehow, though, he will always seem to be, like his characters, in midlife: He was almost there when his career in comedy finally took off.