Happy Mother's Day

I'll admit:  I wasn't always the best kid in the world.  I certainly wasn't the most obedient.  (Confession:  I still take some pride in that!)  Then again, as a rabbi pointed out to me, "The Fifth Commandment says, 'Honor thy mother and father.'  It doesn't say 'obey'."

Of course, that rabbi wasn't saying that I, or anyone else, should be a defiant child.  But he emphasized honor.  And, well, I can say I've tried to do that.  Really, I have.

The thing is, my mother knows that.  She knows now that even when I've done things she wished I hadn't, I wasn't trying to hurt or dishonor, let alone disrespect, her.  She knows there are some things I could only but do.  And she has supported me in what I needed to do.

Does she realize that I see cycling as one of those things I need to do?  Possibly:  She has encouraged me to do it, whether or not I needed encouraging. (She has never been a cyclist herself.) And, in the other things in which I needed encouragement--especially the biggest change I ever made--she has stood with me when others wouldn't.

My mother doesn't do computers, and probably never will.  However, my father might be reading this.  If he is, he will probably show it to her.  So, Mom:  Happy Mother's Day. And thank you.

(Both images are from Eleanor's NYC.)

She Didn't Need A Miracle. Neither Did I.

I've been to Lourdes.

No, I wasn't looking for a miracle cure--not even for the conflicts that raged within me.  In fact, I never planned to go there:  I just happened to pass through.

Back in 2000, I took a ride from France into Spain and back, through the Pyrenees.  Yes, I pedaled up Tourmalet, Hautaucam, Aspin, Portillon and Peyresourde, all of which have been part of the Tour de France at one time or another.  But I also pedaled through some cities and towns full of history and culture, including Toulouse (where I started) and Foix.  And, of course, Lourdes.

Now, I didn't think that a visit to the shrine would do anything that a good masseuse couldn't.  Still, I figured it would be interesting to stop there.  Even with all of the hawkers selling the tackiest souvenirs imaginable, it's lovely and charming--and offers some rather stunning vistas of the mountains and river valleys, not to mention great cycling.

The latter is known to many, including Rachel Atherton.  However, the ride she did is, let's say, just a little different from what I did:

 

Sometimes A Longer Crank Arm Is Only A Longer Crank Arm...

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

Truer words were never uttered.  (All right, very few truer words were ever uttered.)  Who said them?

The same person who said,

Everywhere I go,  I find that a poet has been there before me.

Hey, I can get with that, too.  Or:

Dreams are most profound when they are the most crazy.

Such a pronouncement is ironic, coming from a man who hated radios and telephones--he would use the latter, but only when absolutely necessary--because of the noise they made.  He even hated music!  He also hated motorcycles, which came out in the middle of his life, for the same reason.

He also hated bicycles, which no one--not even his closest family members and associates--could explain.  He never explained it himself.  However, I think it may have had something to do with his being a control freak, a label attached to him by everybody who knew him.  Or it may have been about his relationship with his son, who was an avid cyclist.

Ahh, father-son conflicts.  Did I hear "Oedipal"?  All right...now, perhaps, you have a clue to whom I'm referring.

Yes, I am talking about none other than Sigmund Freud-- who, if he were alive, would be 160 years old today.

What would he make of the fact that so many cyclists, particularly males, are riding longer cranks these days?  What would he have to say about wheels, and what our choices about spoke patterns--or discs--say about us?

About his hatreds:  Here's one that, perhaps, overshadows the others:

Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake.

What would he make of the current Presidential race?
 

What I Will And Won't Do On Cinco De Mayo

I have it on good authority (i.e., some Mexicans of my acquaintance) that one sure-fire way to give yourself away as a gringo is to eat Tex-Mex or Cal-Mex or Nuyo-Mex food and drink Corona beer on this day, Cinco de Mayo.

From what they tell me, outside of Puebla, the holiday is not widely celebrated in Mexico.  It's not seen as "Mexican Independence Day" any more than 24 December, the day the War of 1812 ended, is seen as American Independence Day.

From Pinterest

In fact, according to my authorities/acquaintances, Mexicans have actually taken to calling this day "Drinko de Mayo" and "Gringo de Mayo".  Somehow I'm not surprised:  The vast majority of folks who get drunk on St. Patrick's Day aren't Irish, or even partly of Celtic heritage of any sort.

And, in another parallel to Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day is celebrated more robustly in the US, Canada and Australia than it is in Ireland itself.  The day celebrating an Anglo-Roman who converted Ireland to Christianity has become, more than anything, an ostensible celebration of Irish heritage, just as Cinco has become a celebration of Mexican pride.

(Likewise, Italian-Americans see Columbus Day as an occasion to celebrate their roots and culture.  But why, of all people, do we choose someone who got lost?)

Photo by Can Turkyilmaz, from Oak Cliff Advocate

Anyway...I promise I won't wear a sombrero or fake moustache.  (Having had a real moustache--and beard--for long periods of my previous life, I get no thrill out of sporting facsimiles.)  I won't even wear a sarape or any of those brightly-colored dresses or shoes.   I might eat something Mexican because, well, I like Mexican food, even in all of its bastardizations.

"Working Relationship"  by Nick Mc Coy, from the Oak Cliff Advocate

But I'll probably go for a ride after work.  That's one thing that translates into almost any culture, and therefore isn't culturally insensitive!

From the Downtown Mobile Alliance

(That bike shop certainly looks OK to me!)

 

Happy 100th Birthday, Jane Jacobs!

In general, what is good for pedestrians is good for cyclists--in urban areas, anyway.

Or, to put it another way, cities that are good for cycling are also usually good for walking.  Such cities usually have stores, services and other amenities that most people can reach without having to drive:  food stores, theatres, doctors' offices, floral shops, schools and book stores are accessible by bike, foot or mass transportation. 

While said retail establishments might include large supermarkets or department stores, they aren't the only options.  Stores in the kind of neighborhood I have just described often specialize in some thing or another, whether it's fruits and vegetables (possibly organic), hardware or housewares, biographies or practical bicycles:  the sorts of things that still often aren't available from big-box stores or online retailers.

Such communities also foster diversity, whether in gender identity and expression, race, ethnicity, income levels, cultural practices or education--in theory, anyway.


By "in theory", I mean in the world Jane Jacobs described in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  When it was published in 1961, New York's Penn Station was about to fall to the wrecking ball, only to be replaced with a grim, cramped public space that shares only the name and ostensible function of its predecessor.  And, at that time, American metropolises, as well as some cities in other parts of the world, were doing everything they could to follow the vision of planner Robert Moses-- who envisioned cities that were vehicles, if you will, for the automobile (If he'd had his way, downtown neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Soho and Little Italy would have been bulldozed for an expressway that would have torn through lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges in the east to the Holland Tunnel in the west)--and of Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French architect who called for bulldozing downtowns to build skyscrapers interspersed with parks.




Both Moses and Le Corbusier saw traditional neighborhoods as vestiges of the past that impeded progress.  A street, in the words of Corbusier, was  a "relic of the centuries, a dislocated organ that can no longer function".  While people-watching could be fun, it could not compare, he said, with "the joy that architecture provokes".

Now, I like architecture as much as anybody does, if I say so myself.  But a necropolis of towers directs the eye away from the street, and a monochromatic cityscape can only deaden the senses.  I can't help but to think that adding more drivers to such a scenario wouldn't make a city safer, let alone more pleasant, for pedestrians--or cyclists.

While Ms. Jacobs' work has had unintended consequences--She saved the Village and Soho, but who can afford to live in them anymore?--there is little doubt that she has made life better for those of us who ride in large cities.  For that, we owe her a debt of gratitude.

She, who would have been 100 years old today, died in 2006.  Needless to say, her legacy lives.

I should mention that she was a cyclist:  She was often seen pedaling the streets of the Village and, later, Toronto.  Are you surprised?