Another Song At Sunset

Every year, there are two or three days that I would love to continue for about eight or ten weeks.  In other words, I'd like to turn days like those into seasons.  Today was one of those days.  


The day started rather brisk, but still nice for cycling.  So, by the time I got to my regular job, I was in a good, almost giddy, mood.  Along the way, I passed and was passed by all different kinds of cyclists, and they were all friendly.  Even the drivers seemed patient.  The same thing happened as I cycled from my main to my part-time job.

And, at sunset, everything just seemed positively radiant.  I couldn't help but to think of these lines from Whitman's Song At Sunset:

Splendor of ended day, floating and filling me! 
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past! 
Inflating my throat—you, divine average! 
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. 

Bicycles And The Rain

The other day, I got home just in time from my seashore ride.  Just after I walked in the door, it began to rain.  It's rather ironic, isn't it, that I spent a couple of hours riding next to an ocean but I was happy to stay dry?


Anyway, it's been raining almost nonstop ever since.  And, I got to thinking about how bikes look when they're out in the rain.

I found this photo on a Flickr page.  It was taken by Andre Wine in the Hardebrucke Station in Zurich, Switzerland.  The next time someone tells you the Swiss are boring or don't have a sense of style, show him or her this photo.  


Plus, I must say, I haven't done a lot of cycling in Switzerland.  But what cycling I did was certainly memorable!  


Anyway, the rain also brings me into the mood of this poem by Guillaume Apollinaire:

The poem, "Il pleut," or "It's Raining," can be translated thus:


It's raining women's voices as if they had died even in memory
It's also raining you,  marvelous encounters in my life, o little drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds falling off that bind you above and below.


Those last two lines are such an apt description of what I've experienced over the last couple of years--and the way I often feel when cycling.  Especially the last line.


Still, I'd prefer that it stop raining, at least for a couple of days--and even if one of my bikes has fenders!

Autumn Littoral

It seems that every year, on the first weekend of October, I take a bike ride to the ocean. Last year was an exception, as I was still recuperating from my surgery. But this year, without any plan to do so, I continued my "tradition." In fact, I never plan to do my autumn littoral ride; I just seem to take it just about every year.

I could attribute the seeming inevitability of this ride, and versions of it I've taken in other years, to the fact that this date is the anniversary of my grandmother's death, and the other day was her birthday. Now, as to what a ride to the ocean has to do with my grandmother: on the surface, nothing, as I never knew her to cycle and she seemed to have no particular affinity for the sea. I guess this ride is appropriate because I am utterly myself when I pedal along the shore, and my grandmother had as much to do with my development as anyone had.

Plus, about this time of year, the people you see at the beaches-- or along any stretch of seashore-- are a bit more individualistic than the summer crowds. That is especially true on a day like today, which featured what isn't most people's idea of "beach weather."

It's hard not to contemplate along this stretch of beach.  Maybe that's why it's called Point Lookout. 


The name of that place could also serve as a description of my annual early October rides by the sea:  They get me into a contemplative mood.  Or do I take them because I'm in a contemplative mood?

There was the one I took during my senior year in high school. On that bright, cool and breezy first Sunday in October, the sea and sand of Long Branch, New Jersey spread as far ahead and around me as my future. 

Even though the same metallic rays reflected on the Atlantic waves as far as I could see, I knew there was something I could only imagine at the end of it; just as I had only heard, read and seen images of Portugal, Spain, France, England and Italy by that time in my life, I had a vision of my future that no one else had--or, for that matter, could or would imagine.

And, on either side of me, windswept outlines of footprints had turned into swirls that extended as far as I could see.  If I could follow them, where would they take me?, I wondered.  Then I realized there was no way I could have followed them; even at such a young age, I realized that I could not follow any example or path I had seen before me. 


Still,  I tried. I really tried, for a long time. 

But on that day, after I had my revelation, the only thing that I could rely on--at least at that moment--was my newly-acqired Nishiki International, painted almost in the exact shade of the water I saw that day.  

And the only certainty was that I would pedal it home--about 20 miles away--to the big meal my mother made every Sunday afternoon.

Fall Cycling Vacation

Rain, rain and more rain. 

That's been the story of this week.  The only variable has been the temperature:  Up to midday yesterday, the air felt tropically humid and dense.  

Since then, the raindrops have been needles of the chilly wind.  I don't mind the sensation; it is a sign that autumn has begun. 


Being an educator has meant giving up something I used to enjoy: the fall cycling vacation.  Since I've begun to teach, I've taken weekend trips in the fall.  One of my more memorable ones was a Columbus Day weekend in Vermont.  The foliage was just slightly past its peak, and save for some rain on the second afternoon and a sudden drop from 54 to 15 degrees F that evening, the weather was great.  

In some odd way, cycling in Vermont reminded me of cycling in Europe.  Perhaps it had to do with being in the countryside, but within an hour or two (by bike) from a town where I could, if I wanted to, stop in a friendly cafe and enjoy a cup of coffee or some other beverage with local people.  Plus, I found that even when the drivers left cyclists little more than elbow room when they passed, they  were never really a threat or danger because they seemed to understand bikes and cyclists on the road.   Some of those drivers, I'm sure, rode bikes at least sometimes.


I don't plan on doing a trip like that this year, mainly because I'm still nowhere near the kind of shape I used to be in.  Some of the steepest climbs I ever pedalled were in the Green Moumtains.  It seems that the roads there are older than, say, the ones in the Alps or the Rocky Mountains.  The older roads aren't as well-graded as the newer ones and so can be even more difficult than the more modern thoroughfares.   


Perhaps I'll take a trip to Vermont, or some other place, next fall.  Meantime, I hope to take a miltiday trip this coming summer.   And, I'd like to take the kind of trip I took for three weeks one September, from Italy into France,  when I was working for American Youth Hostels.  If I had taken the same trip in the summer, some of the roads would have been all but impassible with traffic and everything would have cost a good bit more.  To be more precise, they would have cost then what they cost now.


Perhaps I'll do a trip lke that next year, or even sooner.  Meantime, I'll enjoy some fall cycling here.

New Saddle, Used Saddle

I've  been having computer troubles.  At least they're more tractable than man (or boy-toy) troubles, I think.  Welll, now you know why you haven't seen my posts for a couple of days.  Today, if  you can stand it, I'll talk more about changing saddles. 


Would Mel Brooks have made a movie called "Changing Saddles"  if he'd had a slightly different outlook on life?  Hey, can you get any more ironic than a man named Brooks making a movie with "saddles" in its name?


Before I decided to switch saddles, I had a B17 narrow saddle that I saved from a bike I sold about three years ago.  I didn't ride it long enough to break it in, but I recall liking the shape and width of it.  So I planned to use it on either Arielle or Tosca, and I bought another saddle like it.


Then I saw that Wallingford Bicycle had another saddle like it listed on eBay.  Someone had exchanged it under Wallingford's six-month return policy--and, apparently, ridden it a bit.

The listing contained a photo and description that depicted the saddle's condition honestly.  So I bid on it, figuring that it would take less time to break in.  I won the auction and paid about twenty-five or thirty dollars less (including shipping) than the saddle would have otherwise cost me.   Today it arrived.


I think I'm going to install it on Arielle, my geared Mercian Audax Special.   And Tosca, my fixed-gear bike, will probably get the saddle I saved from the bike I sold.  I figure that the saddle that since the saddle that arrived today will take less time to break in, it makes sense to put it on Arielle, as I usually ride fixed-gear more than derailleur-equipped bikes during the winter.  So, even if I don't ride Arielle much after, say, the middle of December, at least the saddle will be broken in for next spring. And since my winter fixed-gear rides are usually shorter than my geared rides during the rest of the year, it won't hurt as much if the saddle hasn't broken in yet.


So I have a spare B17 Narrow, in case I wreck one  or decide to build another bike (!) that calls for one.  I'm not going to give it to Helene; instead, she's getting a standard-width B17.  I have one that was treated with a little bit of Proofhide but was never ridden.  I'll use it, unless I get lucky and find a partially broken-in B17 at a reasonable price.


One thing I discovered about the B17 Narrow is that, unlike the standard-width model, it's not made in a "special" model.  Still, I think the saddle will look good on both bikes.  And, in one of those "only-with-Brooks"  quirks, the "special" model of the Professional, which has the big hammered copper rivets, is available with chrome or copper-plated rails, while the B17 special has somewhat smaller copper rivets and is available only with copper-plated rails.  To tell you the truth, I'm not so crazy about the copper rails, in part because the plating comes off fairly quickly.  (At least it did on the copper-railed Professional I rode.)


It's funny how I was able to prepare in all sorts of other ways for my surgery and my life after it.  But there are some things nobody tells you about.  Hmm...Are there other cyclists who are about to have Genital Reconstruction Surgery? Just remember:  All you have to lose is your old saddle.  Well, maybe.