They Can Ride

 Tall, rawboned Felix is about my age but looks younger. We often pass each other when entering or leaving the building.  Today, as he often does, he asked where I planned to ride.

I told him I had no destination in mind; I simply wanted to get out. “I’m going to do that, too,” he declared, “when I get my bike, after the new year.” Sometimes he and Sam, my neighbor and sometime riding partner, hang out beside the building. “Perhaps me, you, Sam and a few other people.  We could have our own little cycling group.”

“Maybe…,” he intoned.

A couple of weeks ago, “Elena,” who lives two doors away from me, wheeled her machine—a mountain bike in white and Easter-egg hues—into the elevator next to Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear. “I would like to ride like you,” she sighed.

“You don’t have to ride like me.” I was about to suggest riding with me when the elevator stopped on another floor and someone, apparently a friend of hers (whom I don’t know) started chatting with her. I didn’t want to interrupt.

And then there is “Richard,” who lives on a lower floor. When he sees me with my bike, he has to tell me about the rides he took “all over the city, and even further away.” I believe him; he seems to know about riding and looks like a former athlete. But, he explains, his life took some “really bad turns” through illnesses, which led to homelessness and “losing everything, including my bike.”  Many years have passed since then. “I wish I could ride again, but it was so long ago,” he lamented.

Not so long ago, I would have been dismissive of them, at least in my mind. I was one of those young (even when I wasn’t so young) cyclists who thought anyone who didn’t spend a certain number of hours or miles (or kilometers) on the “right” kinds of bikes and clad in “proper” bike clothes wasn’t a “real” cyclist.

Though I had begun to change long before I met Felix, Elena or Richard, I feel another shift (pun not intended) has happened for me since my trip to Japan. There, I saw probably as many, if not more, people pedaling to work or for pleasure as I saw in France or other European countries. But there didn’t seem to be the kind of self-consciousness (and, at times, self-righteousness) about equipment and other things that “cycle culture” seems to engender in my hometown of New York and other cities.   Most people rode utilitarian bikes with wide tires, fenders, racks and generator lights. You can’t one-up anybody who is riding a bike like yours, or those of most other people, for the same reasons you and they are riding. 

Even the cyclists—mostly young and male—I saw on lighter racing bikes didn’t seem to define themselves by their bikes (or, more precisely, those bikes’ price tags) or what they were wearing. They, and the commuters and families I saw, reminded me of why I came to love cycling. And I wish Felix, Elena and Richard could see them and realize they don’t have to ride like them, me or anyone else. Oh, and I don’t care that Elena’s bike is a Kent:  She’s riding it.

All For Veterans

 Today is Veterans’ Day in the US. 

Some time in my current life, my midlife, I noticed that I was becoming more pro-veteran as I’ve become anti-war. Those positions seemed contradictory at first. Then I realized that the best way to honor veterans—and people still in uniform—is to do everything we can to avoid needless, pointless conflict.  Oh, and to ensure that all enlisted people remember that they took an oath to defend the Constitution, not an office-holder.

Four Veterans and a VA Menlo Park Recreational Therapist pose for a photo on the first day of a 7-day cycling ride from Santa Cruz to Carmel, CA, called the California Challenge.

The next-best thing we can do is to make sure that everyone who serves has whatever they need, whether for their physical or mental well-being, for the rest of their lives.* If I had my way, I would give a bicycle to every veteran who wants one.  After all, what better way—for those who can ride, of course—to deal with stress and trauma while staying in shape?

*—Recently, I heard a mental health professional argue that everyone who serves in the armed forces, whether or not they see combat, ends up with PTSD. That actually makes sense to me. After all, the military trains people to, on command, do things very few people would do, and would result in severe penalties if they did them, in civilian life. Also, most service members join or are conscripted at a very young age, when they are more vulnerable to moral injury. Moreover, they are encouraged to bear or mask their suffering and call their denial “toughness” or “resilience.”

Where Did I Go?

Since my previous post--a week and a day ago--I haven't done a lot of riding. But what little time I've spent in the saddle has been interesting.

First, the question of why I haven't been on my bikes.  Short answer:  Didn't feel well.  More precisely, I struggled to stay awake when I didn't work (I took a day off) and didn't do any non-commute riding until Saturday.  That is when I had one of my interesting experiences.

As I pedaled up the short by winding hill in Starlight Park, along the Bronx River, a boy--about eight years old, I guessed--trailed me on a Schwinn beach cruiser-type bike. (It was not an original.)  Just past the penultimate turn, the bike lane branches:  to the right, where I rode, you continue climbing until you reach the pedestrian bridge to 172nd Street and Bronx River Avenue; to the left, a narrower, unpaved path cuts across a terrace and leaves riders and walkers at the foot of that same bridge.  He took the flat route. When we arrived at the bridge, he boasted, "I didn't have to climb!"

Then we continued riding down to Westchester Avenue, where we crossed to the Concrete Plant Park.  There, he voiced what I suspected: "I'm following you!"  His sweet gap-toothed smile beamed innocence.  For some reason, my inner cynic was quiet:  I didn't hear, "He won't be that way for long!" or "He's up to no good."  I realized that he was nothing more, or less, than a kid who was enjoying the sunshine and wind on his bike, just like the adult in front of him.

He didn't have a phone.  I asked him whether he lived nearby and whether his mother would be OK with him riding with me.  Nod to both.  Part of me wanted to lecture him about trusting strangers.  But I realized that wouldn't have done him any good.  All I could do was be an adult he--and his parents--could trust, and have fun riding with him.

Although we were only a couple of kilometers or so, he had never before seen the Concrete Plant Park--or Crotona Park, to which we rode a few minutes later.  He also hadn't pedaled along the bike lane that parallels the Park Avenue railroad tracks or the one that winds underneath the Bruckner Expressway. He marveled that I knew of those places, where I ride often.  Perhaps more important, he learned that he could ride to them.

After about an hour and a half of riding, we stopped at Southern Boulevard and Hunts Point Avenue for one of his favorite snacks:  garlic knots from Domino's.  Then we crossed Southern, where his father and brother were selling Yankees caps and other items from a stall. I expected suspicion; instead they greeted me as a friend and his father thanked me for spending time with him.  

Perhaps I will see that boy--Zane--again, on his bike or off it.  I will not think about how many (or few miles) I rode or that I didn't go to anyplace I hadn't been before.  Then again, maybe I did, after all.