A Hot Morning Road Trip In The Bronx

 Early this morning I pedaled out to Randall’s Island. Even then, it was hot, brutally hot:  Even the breeze and blue sky felt like waves of heat searing into the pores of my skin.

On my way back, I stopped at Addeo’s to feed one of my addictions:  their pane de casa.  That, a ripe tomato, a slice of red onion and some cheese:  (more Macadam’s Munster) are a great no-cook meal for a day like today. 

Just after I left Addeo’s, a small car with a big loudspeaker rumbled by.  Normally, I expect rap or Hispanic music, being in the Bronx.  To my surprise, I heard, “Take The Money And Run” by The Steve Miller Band.

It made sense, in a way: It always seemed like a summer road-trip tune to me.  As much as it annoys me, whenever I see someone, usually a young man driving a loud car with even louder music, I can’t help but to think the driver wants to be out on the open road somewhere. Especially if his girlfriend or one of his buddies is riding “shotgun:” sort of like Billie Joe and Bobby Sue in the song.

While the lyrics tell a kind of “Bonnie and Clyde” story, the rhymes, some of the lamest I’ve heard, sometimes distract.  But the tune is so catchy, and feels like a hot, hot day like today and yesterday, and what’s forecast for tomorrow.

And it brings me back to 1976, the year it was released—and, of course, the US Bicentennial.  For some reason, I think of that summer as a hot one. Perhaps it had to do with also being the year I graduated high school.  For many of us, the summer that follows is the last time we see people we grew up with and, perhaps, the last time we live with our family. (At least it was then; I know that many young people who today remain with their families for even longer because it’s so expensive to rent even a basic room.) There is something about the “last summer”—whether of a stage in our own lives or of history—that is remembered in a haze like that of long, hot days.   

Of course, we don’t always know that it’s a “last summer” and just how different everything that follows will be. Perhaps that is what beclouds memories:  We reminisce as different people from what we were when we experienced whatever we’re recalling.  In my case, that difference is literal: My body has changed, not only from age, but also because I was living as a young man who was trying to fit into the world of young men, at least as I understood it, and other people’s expectations of me. As silly as that song is, when I first heard it, it echoed my wish: to run away, which I equated with freedom.

This morning, I wasn’t running away from anything: I started my day exactly as I wished, as the person I’ve become—and only faintly envisioned on those long-ago long hot summer days.

Do Their Beliefs Hold Water?

 This morning I pedaled to Fort Schuyler and Maritime College. There, I stopped to enjoy some of the bread I picked up at Addeo’s and a piece of Macadam Munster cheese.  As I sipped some Poland Spring, I thought about the controversy over “hydration breaks” in this year’s World Cup football games.

Some commentators, including several former players, have expressed their displeasure over them.  Some claimed, perhaps rightly, that they were instituted simply to allow time for commercials. In most of the world, the game stops only at halftime, and that break is shorter than the typical halftime of an American football game. (That is one reason why soccer games don’t have halftime shows.) There are no stoppages for “time outs,” “downs,” “innings” or any other reason.  That lack of pause for commercials is said to be one of the reasons why soccer (and bicycle races, which also aren’t divided into quarters, periods or innings and don’t have time-outs) doesn’t have as wide an audience as (American) football or baseball:  If potential sponsors can’t advertise, networks won’t broadcast.

Those who complain that hydration breaks allow commercials say that it “cheapens” or “Americanizes” the tournament and sport. Now, I understand not wanting to see commercials, but talking about  “Americanization” reeks of snobbishness.  If they are going to say football is “the world’s game,” they have to be willing to include all nations, even the ones they don’t like.

(Having said that, I am ashamed of how American officials treated the Iranian team.)

Another objection to hydration breaks is that they “interrupt the flow of the game.”  Some athletes may feel that when they are in a “groove,” any sort of stoppage can disrupt their rhythm. But I suspect that they also realize those pauses, whether for halftime or any other reason, can come at any moment in their cycle. I am sure it frustrates them, but they deal with it.

Then there is another group of objectors who wonder, in coded language, whether the need for hydration breaks means that today’s players aren’t as tough—“less manly”—than those of generations past. It’s essentially why Tour de France founder Henri Desgranges wouldn’t allow riders to use derailleurs, even though the race includes “hors de categorie” climbs.

I guess I had some of that macho streak when I was younger. I took pride in riding higher gears at a higher cadence than my riding buddies—and on finishing a “century” (in miles, not kilometers) without taking even a sip from my water bottle.

What did any of that prove? The same thing as running and kicking for 120 minutes in 40c heat with 90 percent humidity. Or making every pitch a 100 MPH fastball. Or, in James Wright’s words, “galloping terribly against each other’s bodies.”

The only thing they prove is that there are some things human bodies simply aren’t designed to do, yet some people will do them with the hope of gleaming whatever rewards, whether in money, adulation or simple ego gratification, may accrue.

Poland Sprins sure feels good on a hot morning ride, whatever my younger self might’ve thought.

We’re Not Bad For Business. Really!

 

In 1979, I rode in New York City’s Five Boro Bike Tour for the first time.  It was the third edition of what became an annual event and marked the first time the Triboro (now known as RFK Memorial) Bridge was closed to auto traffic.

I took the ride with two fellow students from Rutgers. We were among the few-thousand cyclists who participated; it had not yet become the sort of event that gets listed in TimeOut. It also didn’t have the $125 entry fee—a sum I never could have afforded as a university—of this year’s Tour.

I would participate in 19 more 5BBTs—two as a marshal—before deciding that it had become something people “did” rather than rode. (Plus, I had long since decided I would not pay to ride in my hometown.) But a recent news story reminded me of something I experienced on that 1979 ride.

In preparation for being one the World Cup host cities, Mexico City built a 24 kilometer (15 mile) protected bike lane from the city center to the main World Cup stadium. As expected, there were complaints and protests. Were city officials concerned about snow removal? Did business owners worry about parking? Are drivers irate over losing one of “their” lanes to cyclists?

I am sure that those common objections—save, perhaps, for snow removal—were voiced in regards to the Gran Ciclovía Tenochtittlán. But GCT upset another group of people who, as far as I know, have never before been involved in a bike lane controversy:  sex workers.

GCT’s route includes part of Avenida Tlalpan, where sex work has flourished for decades. (I don’t know this information firsthand: I have my sources!☺️)  Before the bike lane came (no pun intended—really!) in, pleasure providers would stand by the outermost traffic lanes. This allowed potential clients to slow down, stop and negotiate.

GCT has “taken” that outermost lane. So the World Cup—which, one assumes, would have been good for business—has instead all but destroyed not only a potential bonanza, but also their future prospects.

Before I make the connection with my 5BBT experience, I have to mention something else that occurs to me:  I have heard of one instance in which someone solicited from a bicycle.  When I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn during the 1990s, the area under the nearby Gowanus Expressway was known to be an active prostitution area at least since World War II. One raid—which took place around the time then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was “cleaning up” Times Square—resulted from a would-be “John” soliciting an undercover cop from his bicycle.  I heard that when he was arrested, his bike was impounded.

The route of the 1979 5BBT, like that of every edition since, included a long stretch along the Brooklyn waterfront. Not far from where that two-wheeled terror met his end years later, there was a checkpoint. Gentrification and hipsters were years into the future for Williamsburg and Red Hook; those then-largely-industrial areas were all but abandoned on weekends.

Note that I said “all but.” At the checkpoint, while we were getting our cards stamped, some of us were greeted, shall we say, by folks wanting to do business. Being a broke student was just one reason why I didn’t. (In case you were wondering:  I have never paid, at least monetarily or with goods or other services, for sex.) I wonder, though, whether any other 5BBT riders did—and, if so, whether it’s proof cyclists aren’t bad for business.