The Future In A Milk Crate?

Perhaps it has to do with having gone from living as a guy named Nick to a woman named Justine. Or maybe it's just a result of aging.

Although I still like long rides--and, sometimes, to pedal as long, fast and hard as I can--my attitudes about cycling have been changing.  Now I can see how arrogant and, frankly, elitist--at least when it came to cycling--I was not so long ago.  Sometimes I still find remnants of those old notions within me: I still get annoyed with riders (these days, many of them on Citibikes) who twiddle along and take up just enough of the lane or road to keep me from passing.  Those dilettantes!  But now I understand how such snobbishness--whether against riders who aren't kitted out in the latest lycra uniforms or bikes that aren't what riders in the Tour would ride--has kept bicycles from becoming the vehicles for change (pardon the pun) they can be.

To be more precise:  Such attitudes have kept people (like yours truly) from allowing the bicycle to transform our cities and our lives in, well, ways that would make our cycling more pleasant as well as practical.  Too many planners see planning only in terms of painting lines on a streets and calling them "bike lanes"; in turn, too many people see those lanes--as well as bike share programs as entitlements for privileged young people.  

As much as I love my nice bikes and rides, I know that if cycling has a future, it lies with the unemployed and minimum-wage workers who ride so they don't have to spend large portions of their incomes (or savings) to buy, maintain, fuel, park and repair cars.   It lies with people pedaling to their schools, offices and shops, and those who go for a spin with their kids or parents or neighbors at the end of the day--as well as those who want to have schools, offices and shops to ride to, and people to ride with.

Last year, I wrote about how city planners and non-profit groups came to recognize these facts, and re-thought what makes a city "bike friendly". They came to see that in Reading, Pennsylvania, where they were working, it meant creating a network of bike lanes that actually allowed people to pedal quickly and safely all over to the city.  They also realized that, in a poor post-indstrial city that has little mass transportation, they had to make bicycling more affordable and convenient for residents.  So, bike racks were installed on city buses, and when Reading's first bike shop opened, it concentrated on selling used bikes and affordable parts, conducting safety and repair workshops--and loaning tools.

Now, I don't know whether planners in Stockton, California have been paying attention to what the folks in Reading have done.  It seems as if they have been:  The city's latest plan calls for a series of bike lanes that will allow cyclists to pedal out of their neighborhoods and ride all over town.  But these lanes won't be just lines on the street:  They will be separated from motor vehicle traffic by barriers or raised medians.  In some areas, traffic lanes will be removed in order to make room for cyclists.

Whether or not the planners in Stockton followed the work of their peers in Reading, they at least seemed to be listening to the concerns of everyday cyclists like Alfonso Macias.  He is a 56-year-old farm worker who doesn't own a car.  Bungee cords hold a grocery crate to the rear rack of a bike he pedals to the store, where he buys the food he carts to his house.  Along the way, he has to share streets that don't have bike lanes, or even shoulders, with drivers who weave around him, or around whom he has to weave.  "Thank god I've never been hit," he says.

Now, he is cycling out of necessity.  Others, who could choose to leave their cars home and ride for errands and such, are deterred from doing so because of the hazards Macias faces.  Here in New York, people have expressed similar concerns, and even wondered how I could ride in this city's traffic. "Aren't you scared?," they wonder.

Even if people perceive cycling as more dangerous than it actually is, their fears need to be heard.  So must the concerns of folks who tie grocery crates to their bikes so they can go shopping.  They, not the wannabe racers encased in lycra, are the future of cycling.

This Ride Was Good

All rides are good.

At least, I can't think of any bike ride I wish I hadn't taken.   And I've been riding for a lot of years!

Some would say that some rides are "better" than others.  Of course, "better", when it comes to rides is subjective:  Some want to climb as many steep hills as possible; others prefer land flatter than their dinner tables.  Some of us love riding by an ocean or a lake; another cyclist's idea of a "dream ride" takes him or her through deserts or prairies.

You might to ride in the hottest weather with the brightest sunshine; I like it cooler with a mix of sun and clouds.  Your friend might not go anywhere near a bike if there's a single cloud, let alone if a single drop falls from the sky; his or her club-mate believes that if you don't get wet, it's not a "real" ride.

I'll admit there are a few conditions I'll avoid if possible. For example, I don't mind the cold or even rain, but I prefer not to have both together when I'm riding.  (Snow, on the other hand, can be fun.)  And, while traffic doesn't scare me, I prefer not to cross entrances to, and exits from, highways:  When I ride to the Rockaways or Point Lookout, I take a detour through the side-streets of Howard Beach so I can avoid having to traverse the on- and off- ramps of the Long Island Expressway and Belt Parkway that feed into, or lead away from, Woodhaven and Cross-Bay Boulevards.

I took a similar diversion yesterday after I crossed the Victory Bridge over the Raritan River in New Jersey.  On the Sayreville side, I zigged and zagged through an industrial area and residential streets simply to avoid a stretch where State Route 35 (of which the Bridge is a part), US 1 and US 9 merge and are one for about five miles.  There, it's a four-lane road which, at times, sees surprisingly little traffic but, at times, really seems to be carrying the load of three major highways.  

That wouldn't be so bad if there was a shoulder for the whole length.  Unfortunately, the shoulder appears and disappears, much like those bike lanes to nowhere that I see too often.  Worse, a large part of the traffic consists of trucks, which aren't allowed on the stretch of the Garden State Parkway that parallels the section of Route 35/US 1 and 9 in question.  

My detour, naturally, added some distance to my ride, which I'd started in the afternoon.  I didn't mind:  I avoided that potentially-bad section of road and wandered through a couple of historic districts and other areas with cute little gingerbread houses by lakes, streams, Raritan Bay (with great views of New York City) and the ocean.

Starting my ride in mid-afternoon and taking a circuitous route had its advantages, including this:

Now, if you've been reading this blog regularly, that I love descending bridges that lead to the ocean.  I coasted down this one, after pedaling up the hills on Route 36 (They don't call it the Atlantic Highlands for nothing!) for the first time when I was about 13 or 14 years old--either the year my family moved to New Jersey, or not long afterward.  

Call me sentimental, but I still get goose-bumps, especially when it's late in the day and the sun, through a scrim of clouds and haze, begins to tint the blue sea and sky with shades of violet and orange.  Once I reached the base of that bridge--in Sea Bright, on a strip of land not much wider than a football field with the ocean lapping up one side and the river on the other--I was floating.  My bike was a cloud; I had wings.  I felt that within an instant, I'd sailed--on two wheels--into Long Branch, some 8 kilometers down the road--without effort, and that every drop of surf mist, every ripple of wind, and every step of people walking with their partners, their children and their dogs along, had become a part of me.  

In Long Branch, I saw the soft twilight colors darken into the night that would engulf the streets as well as the sky and sea.  All rides are good; this, like so many others, made me happy in its own way.

Making An Entrance

There was a time, about ten or fifteen years ago, when it seemed that every other urban and suburban bicycle shop was trying to be a "bicycle boutique".  There are still shops like that, though, it seems, not as many as there were in those days: I guess folks who can afford such places don't have the time to go to them, so they shop online.

The "boutiques" did everything they could not to seem like bike shops.  If anything, some of them tried to look and feel like the sorts of gyms young people with lots of disposable income frequent in order to meet other young people with lots of disposable income.  Or they tried to look like the sorts of coffee bars that try to be like Starbucks without being Starbucks.

There's a certain kind of atmosphere, though, that simply can't be achieved merely with track lighting and espresso machines.  Those things simply can't match a great entrance:

Some things, you can only find in Italy--Florence, to be specific.

Across Siberia, To The Extreme

Some say the Tour de France is the world's most difficult bicycle race.  Some have even called it the world's most challenging sporting event.  It's not difficult to understand why:  Nearly every day for three weeks, cyclists pedal through all sorts of conditions, climbing mountains, sprinting across flatlands and fighting heat, wind and fatigue.

Others might say the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana are as unforgiving as the Tour.  After all, each of those races is, like the Tour, a multi-day, multi-stage event that presents similar challenges.  

I can't help but to wonder, though, how each of them compares to the Red Bull Trans-Siberian Extreme Race. This year's version began on 18 July in Moscow's Red Square and ended on 10 August in Vladivostok, a port city near the Chinese border.

At the starting line

Over the course of 24 days, the riders pedaled 14 stages covering 9211 kilometers (about 5700 miles).  That's nearly three times as long as any of the Big Three races in Western Europe.  And, because it goes across Russia--in contrast to the other races, whose courses are loops or rings--the riders cross seven time zones before reaching the finish line.

That feat was accomplished by only three of the ten riders who started.  Russia's Alexey Shchebelin won the general classification for covering the stages in the shortest time, followed by Pierre Bischoff of Germany and Florentino Marcelo Soares of Brazil.  They did what none of the riders could accomplish in last year's edition of the race, and what only one rider did in 2015, the first year of the Trans-Siberian Extreme.  

Interestingly, the race is open to women as well as men.   Shangrila Rendon, a Filipina and Thursday Gervais Dubina of the USA were the only two female contestants.  Paul Bruck, a race organizer, says he wants to make the race "more attractive" for women but is not sure of how to do it.  

One option he might explore is one used in the Race Across America, in which women are given 21 hours more than men (who get 12 days) to complete the 3000-mile course from California to Maryland.  Riders who do not complete the race in the required time frame are listed as "Did not finish" although they are allowed to complete the ride if they wish.

Another option might be to allow the women to compete in two-person teams rather than solo, which would give them the opportunity to hand off and get more rest.  Rendon and Gervais Dubina found that as they fell behind, they lost time for meals and recovery between stages.  

Whatever the race organizers decide for next year, the riders--whatever their gender--will have to prepare for the same sorts of weather and topographical extremes riders encounter in other big races, in addition to the roads themselves.  From what I've been reading, I gather that the road conditions are even worse than in any of the three major Tours.  If anything, they seem like the pave of the Paris-Roubaix after an earthquake.  

No, Alexey, we're not in "Breaking Away"!

Worst of all, those roads aren't closed to traffic for the race.   That, rather than the speed of the race, the weather or the mountain climbs, is what caused Gervais Dubina to withdraw from the race.  "I had three instances in which traffic was coming straight at me on the shoulder," she explained.  "It just got too much for me."

I'm not so sure changing the qualifying times or other rules would have kept her, or very many other riders, whatever their gender idenities, in a race with such conditions.

Heather Heyer Didn't Deserve It. Nobody Does.

By now, you've no doubt heard about the awful events in Charlottesville, VA this past weekend.

If anyone didn't deserve to die the way she did, it was Heather Heyer, the young woman run over by  "white nationalist" James Allen Fields Jr.,  who drove his car into a group of protesters at high speed, then backed up to flee the scene.

Heather Heyer

His action is despicable and cowardly.  So is the reaction of Justin Moore.  In an e-mail, he said, "I'm sorta glad them people got hit and I'm glad the girl died."  He went on to denounce Ms. Heyer and the other protesters as "a bunch of Communists out there protesting someone's freedom of speech, so it doesn't bother me that they got hurt at all."

Such a tirade, shocking as it is, shouldn't come as a surprise from Mr. Moore, who is the Grand Dragon for the Loyal White Knights of Ku Klux Klan, based in the neighboring state of North Carolina.  Nor, I suppose, should it surprise us that he praised Fields as the sort of man who "made the great white race strong" and who will help to make it "strong again."

When I first heard the news about Heather Heyer, I immediately thought of the former Park Slope neighbor of mine whom I encountered in Paris last year, some two decades after we last saw each other.  Now she, her husband and daughter live in Charlottesville.  I knew her reaction would be strong, not only because the clash took place in her backyard (more or less), but also because of her convictions:  She has spent all of her professional life in the service of women and children who are vulnerable in physical, economic and other ways.

After corresponding with her, I checked some of my other e-mail.  I found a message from a professor who heads the Italian American Institute of the university system in which I teach.  He pointed out that because Italian immigrants (like my grandparents) experienced hate and bigotry--back then, they weren't considered "white"--we should stand with others who are hated for their race, ethnicity or any other intrinsic trait.  I responded to him with this:

The murder of a peaceful protester by a hater is tragic in and of itself.

The President's response is salt in the wound of our grief  At first, he denounced "all sides" which, of course, implies that the young woman was run down was somehow complicit in her own death  Until he was pressed to do so, he did not specifically name the sorts of people who foment the hate expressed by the driver of that car.  Then, he used only labels, some of which overlapped each other (white nationalists, etc.).

Even more important than denouncing the act of hate and the person who committed it--as well as whatever group(s) supported the hate he espoused--is to understand, and fight, the ignorance that makes it possible.  They do not understand the profound effect racism and slavery have had upon this country, and they seem to think that whenever someone different from themselves is finally gaining the same rights they've always taken for granted, they are somehow "losing out."  To them, blacks and LGBT people and whoever else you might name are "taking over" "their" country.  

Sadly, I have relatives who share this mindset.  Never mind that their parents or grandparents were among the people who earlier generations of haters and resenters tried to keep from "taking over" their country.  (My Italian grandparents were not considered "white".)  They say that blacks, LGBT people, Hispanics and others are getting "special privileges" at their expense.  (As a transgender woman, I can only dream of having such "privilege.!) Not surprisingly, they thought Hillary is the she-devil (I'm no fan of hers, but I also know she's not that powerful!) and voted for Trump even though much of what he promises can and will hurt them.

Some would say that such ignorance is a result of the way history is or isn't taught.  That is one part of the problem.  Another part is ignorance of what the definition of "American" is.  Nowhere in the Constitution is this country defined by a race of people or a culture.  To this day, we don't even have an official language.  I always had the impression the framers of the Constitution wanted it that way:  To them, the definition of "American" would change over time but still be bound by principles to which all who call themselves "Americans" would subscribe.  In short, this is a country founded on ideas, not on racial identity, national origins or religion.

In other words, white nationalism or white supremacy is nothing more or less than the expression of a notion that white people, however they are defined, are the only "real" Americans:  Never mind that blacks and Native Americans were here long before any of their ancestors--and that some of them were gay, lesbian, transgender or otherwise gender non-conforming long before anyone came up with names for them!