Shifting Is For Sissies ;-)

Today I did a ride I haven't done in a while:  Point Lookout.  It's also the longest ride--at 105 km--I've done so far this year.

I felt better than I thought I would, considering how much riding I've missed due to the long winter full of days of ice-glazed streets.  The ride out there was harder, which is actually a good thing.  It meant that I felt better in the second half of my ride than I did in my first.  It also meant that I was riding into the wind during the stretch from Forest Park to Rockaway Beach, and I had the same wind at my back on the way home.

And what a wind it was!  The National Weather Service said it would blow at 30-40 KPH with gusts to 60.  It certainly felt that way, coming and going.

Those ripples are not the normal tides of Jamaica Bay:  The water is being ruffled, like a bird's feathers, from the wind.

Actually, riding into the wind wasn't the most difficult part of the ride.  On my way back, after crossing the bridge from Atlantic Beach to Far Rockaway, I pedaled up to the  boardwalk.  After a few blocks, I had to exit and cycle the middle of the Rockaway Peninsula:  the wind off the ocean blew so strongly that I was having trouble remaining upright.  And I wasn't sure of how far, or how long, I could ride in a "track lean":

And, yes, I rode on Tosca.  As I pedaled into the gusts, I told myself, "Shifting is for sissies..."  ;-)

A Message Like No Other

When you cycle in an urban area, you see more graffiti than the average person.  More important, you see it at closer range than someone riding a bus or cab, or driving by.

Even while seeing so closely, you don't remember a lot of it.  After all, so much of it, frankly, looks alike.  But every once in a while you see "tags" that stand out for their use of color, artistry or simply their overall size.  And, sometimes, you see a graffito that's a true work of art.  I am fortunate in having lived, for years, not very far from Five Pointz--whose days are. lamentably, numbered.

But this piece--on the side of a Barrow Street building, just west of Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, is like no other I've seen:

Mounted

On my way home today, I passed a mounted police officer.  That got me to wondering how many horseback riders are cyclists, and vice-versa.

Of course, you can't do both at the same time. But I'm sure some have tried.  This may be the closest anyone has come to combining both activities:

From Woot!

Myths About Women And Cycling

Given my life experiences, it would surprise few people to know that I think about some of the differences between female and male cyclists, and the experiences each of us has.

I have also become more aware of just how male-centered the cycling world--in everything from the social contexts of rides to equipment design to the attitudes of some bike shop employees.  Also, I am shocked at how much of that male-centeredness--as well as some out-and-out misogyny--I helped to perpetrate.

So I guess it's not surprising that some old myths about women and cycling still persist.  I was aware of some, and learned of a few others from this infographic that recently came my way:

From Biking Toronto

Two Writers And Their Bikes

I've assigned my students to read a group of poems from a diverse cross-section of poets classical and modern.  Those poems form a sort of cycle of the seasons.

Yesterday they read Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy.

I read somewhere that he was an enthusisastic cyclist until late in his long life.  Somehow that doesn't surprise me:

Now doesn't he look so completely English with that bike?



On the subject of writer/cyclists, here's a photo of Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife on an early tandem in 1892:

Both photos came from Flavorwire.