I Paid Again (Don't Tell Anybody!)

Yesterday was a milestone for me:  It was the second day in a row I did an organized ride I had to pay for. I pride myself on not paying to go on a ride unless there's a very, very good reason--say, an event or cause or some ride I purely and simply want to do. (That's why I paid the five-dollar fee in a couple of the early Five Boro Bike Tours.) And it would have been against something--I won't say my religion, because I don't have one--to pay to ride two days in  a row.

 The way I rationalize this second consecutive day of pay-to-ride that I am in a completely unfamiliar place.  I can get around Paris almost as well as I can navigate New York.  After spending a day riding with a guide, Rome wasn't so difficult to figure out from the saddle.  Ditto for Montreal.  But Siem Reap is a whole different experience in every way--from the traffic patterns to the language, of which I can use about five words.

Also, I have no qualms about this second consecutive paid ride because it's very different, in almost every way, from the one I took the other day.  I enjoyed both, but some of you might prefer one to the other, for various reasons.

Yesterday's bike ride was run by a company called Grasshopper Adventure Day Tours, which also organizes rides in other countries.  The first point of difference between the ride I took with them, and the one I took the other day with PURE, is that yesterday's ride was supported en route.  The driver even picked up me and Stuart, the other participant in this ride, from my guest house and his hotel.  

The driver brought us to Angkor Wat, where we watched the sunrise. Well, we saw the dawn, or the beginning of the day, anyway:  A curtain of clouds cloaked the sun and allowed a few orange and pink rays from its fringes.

Oh, well.  For me, it was two days in a row of clouds blocking the sunrise at Angkor Wat.  It's a cliche, but you can't do anything about the weather:  In January, when I went to Florida, I had two days when the temperature didn't get much past 5C (40F) and two nights when it dropped to -4C (25F).  

After that sunrise, we had breakfast.  Yogurt, cereal, bread condiments, juices, coffee and tea were provided, and the driver made omelets (good, in fact) for me and Stuart. But the show-stopper, if you will, was a plate of sliced fruits, including the small but succulent bananas that grow here, as well as papaya, pineapple, a couple of melons and a white dragonfruit I'd never had before.  I could have eaten any of them all day!

That breakfast made me feel like I was part of a racing team.  Perhaps that wasn't a coincidence: Our ride leader, Vichea, is a mountain bike racer here in Cambodia. At least, he is when he isn't leading tours like ours or working his regular job as a teacher.

Before we set out to ride, he took us on a mini-tour of the main Angkor Wat temple.  I complimented his commentary; he demurred, saying, "Well, I  know this because I've been here all of my life."  

He also knows the trails in this area.  Grasshopper promised that this ride would take us away from the crowds.  Indeed, it did:  Even when we arrived at the temples, we were ahead of the biggest throngs of tourists.

Stuart is a regular mountain biker in his native Australia.  I once was semi-regular, but I haven't been since I sold my Bontrager 15 years ago.  Since then, I've stuck to road and street riding.  But I felt comfortable riding with Stuart and Vichea as we bounced oer rocks and tree roots, and navigated the steep turns, on dirt, mud and rock trails between the main Angkor Wat temple and its satellites, including Bayon.  We even rode through jungle but didn't see elephants, lemurs or even big snakes.  Near the end of the ride, though, we did spot some water buffalo.

By the way, in another contrast with my PURE ride, I rode a GT mountain bike with disc brakes and a mid-range suspension fork. When I registered, the Grasshopper administrator asked for my height and I noticed that Stuart, who is taller, had a bigger frame and Vichea, who is shorter, had a smaller frame than mine. I did the  PURE ride on a local-brand "city bike", which is kind of ironic given that the ride ventured  into the countryside.  That bike probably came in only one size.


We concluded with lunch at a roadside restaurant: a Khmer chicken-and-vegetable dish for me, accompanied by a small fruit plate, as every Khmer meal seems to be.  Not that I'm complaining:  I enjoy getting at least a taste of fruits I don't find often, if at all, when I'm at home.  

Now I'll admit that I feel at least one point of pride about this ride:  Stuart and Vichea both complimented my riding. I hope--and suspect--they weren't slowing down for me or tamping the intensity of those trails just because I am nearly two decades older than Sturart and he, in turn, is about a decade and a half older then Vichea!I  Then again, they probably didn't know that about me, if I do say so myself.

I'm Such A Rulebreaker, Sort Of...

I wear a helmet when I ride.  Well, most of the time, I do.  Whatever the naysayers might say, I have had two occasions when wearing my helmet probably, if not saved my life, then at least prevented serious injury.  In the second of those incidents, my helmet actually broke in two but I escaped with only a few scratches.

I admit, though, that I've ridden bareheaded, even after those incidents.  When I ride in Florida, I don't wear a helmet:  Even on cool days, most riders, it seems, aren't wearing them. And on my recent trips to Paris, Rome, Cambodia and Laos, I went sans casque, except on the Grasshopper tour in Siem Reap.  I think the only reason we had those is that Grasshopper tours is run by Westerners and was probably covered (pun intended) by insurance regulations in the US or someplace else.  Otherwise, in Southeast Asian countries, I'm not sure I could have even found a helmet: I didn't see any in the bike shops I peeked into, let alone the bike stalls of the market places. 

In the Italian capital, I followed the age-old advice: Do as the Romans do.  I did the same in Paris, which meant that in both cities I didn't wear helmets.  It wouldn't have been hard to find a hardhat in either city:  In fact, some rental services offer them. But it seemed that no one else was wearing them, so I didn't.

So, even though I have had occasions in which wearing a helmet might have saved me, I am still hesitant to support laws requiring every cyclist to wear one.  We don't have such a law here in New York, though every once in a while some police officer tickets an unsuspecting rider who isn't wearing one. In some places, like New Jersey, helmets are mandatory for kids; a few other places require them for adults.  But even though helmet-wearing has become more or less the norm in much of the US, there are still relatively few places that require it.

I am more ready, however, to support another ban:  one on headphones, at least ones that cover the ear.   Right now, the city of Washington, DC forbids cycling with headphones.  So do a few other jurisdictions; more, however, do not allow motorists to drive with mini-speakers covering their ears.

Now some startup company, Conduit Sports, has come out with a headphone that doesn't cover the ear and block the ear canal.  Its creators say their device allows for "situational awareness". By that, I assume they mean that you can hear horns and other traffic sounds while you listen to Cardi B or Brockhampton.  

Riding with such headphones may well be safe.  Still, I'll stick to riding without them, or without any other audio stimulation other than what's provided by my surroundings when I ride. Even if I'm doing a ride I can do in my sleep, I prefer to hear what's around me, in part because it helps me to think, meditate or simply relax while riding.  Also, I reckon it's safer than riding even with those new headphones.

But I'll still wear my helmet. Most of the time, anyway.

You Weren't Expecting Angelina Jolie, Now, Were You?

In The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot's eponymous speaker laments, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

Most of us, I believe, have measured out something or another in our lives in ways that have nothing to do with the metric or Imperial systems.  Me, I've gone on bike rides that I didn't measure in miles, kilometers, minutes, hours, days, pedal strokes or calories.  

As for the latter, I have followed the example of an old riding buddy and measured out my rides in bananas, water bottle refills, "gorp" or trail mix packets, dark chocolate squares, pizza slices or other foods consumed during the ride--or what was consumed afterward. 

I have also measured rides in the number of climbs or amount of climbing, temperature changes or the number of chateaux I visited. 

You know which country I was touring when I was counting chateaux.  Although the country where I've ridden the last few days was a French colony for a bit less than a century, that method wouldn't work very well. But there is a parallel method of measuring a ride in the vicinity of Siam Reap, Cambodia, where I am now.  


To wit:  I have been able to gauge my rides, more or less, by the temple ruins I've visited en route.  Only one of my rides so far have included none at all, though that one--the PURE countryside tour--took me to a currently-operating temple and monastery.  My other two rides both included the "big one": Angkor Wat.


As I mentioned in yesterday's post, my ride with Grasshopper Adventure Day Tours began with sunrise at Angkor Wat. (Interesting fact:  Angkor Wat is really a nickname. It means "city of temples".  Its original name, in Sanskrit, was Parama Visnuloka.)  Stuart and I, led by Vichea, rode a series of trails that Vichea knows about because he rides and races in this area.  Those trails took us to other temples that have at least some relation to Angkor Wat.  

They were actually part of a complex called Angkor Thom.  If Angkor Wat is the "Temple City", then Angkor Thom is the "Big City"--literally.  It's Angkor Wat on steroids--and at least one other mind-altering drug (at least according to my amateur knowledge of psychopharmacology).  It covers 9 square kilometers, or 3.5 square miles: roughly the size of Manhattan below 14th Street. 

Since it was designed as a city, it has  ports, if you will:  gates leading to  bridges lined with carved images.  All of those bridges and gates have more or  less the same architecture and carvings, which depict the deities involved in the Hindu creation myth.  

Once inside the gates and cross one of the bridges--we came in through the North side--possibly the most striking monument is Bayon, which is full of ecstatic depictions of Hindu deities.  The style of the place is often described as "baroque", in contrast to the "classical" Angkor Wat.  The latter has a symmetry that Bayon lacks, but it's hard to imagine Bayon built, or its carvings rendered, in a more restrained way.

Then there is a temple you might have seen even if you've never gone anywhere near Angkor Wat.  At least, you might have seen it on a screen much bigger than the one you're using to read this post.  Now, though, you get to see it with me in it.  Who needs Angelina Jolie, right?

I'm talking about Ta Prohm, more commonly known as the "Tomb Raider" temple.  Aside from its intricate structure, it's known for the trees whose roots ravel themselves around and under various walls and other parts of the temple.  Next to one of those trees, Jolie's Lara Croft character picks a jasmine flower and tumbles through the earth into....Pinewood Studios.  Hmm...I don't recall seeing that in Dante's Inferno.

I saw other temple ruins with Vachea and Stuart.  But Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm were enough to make the ride a monumental one, however many kilometers we pedaled, tree roots we rumbled across and mud we flung from our tires.  Oh, and just as nature re-conquered the Ta Prohm site once dominated by Khmer kings, at least one creature showed us who really has the run of this country, however slick we were at riding the trails and roads!

Give me a home where the (water) buffalo roam!

How Old Is That Bike?

While in Cambodia and Laos, I visited temples lorded over by statues of Buddha and decorated with carvings of Hindu deities, natural and mythical animals, dancers and other people engaged in tasks as well as celebrations.

(About the dancers:  Since those carvings are centuries old, many are worn in spots, if not wholly.  A guide told me that much of that wear is caused by visitors' touches.  That made sense when I saw that on some of the dancers, a particular body part--a pair, actually--suffered the most erosion.  As Stuart, who accompanied me on the Grasshopper tour, said, "Stones don't lie.")

What I didn't see, though, were depictions of cyclists.  Of course, I wasn't expecting to see them:  Bicycles, at least as most of us would define them, have been around for a century and a half; the temples have stood for centuries, and even a milennia, longer than that.  

So how is it that a carving of a bicycle was found in the Panchavarnaswamy Temple, built over 1300 years ago in India?

At least, that's what Praveen Mohan, host of the "Phenomenal Travel Videos" Youtube channel, claims to have found. 

Of course, he's not the first person to find an anachronistic depiction of technology:  Sometimes I think one of the reasons why Shakespeare's Julius Caesar isn't taught or performed more often (I confess:  I've never taught it!) is that none of us wants to deal with a smart-aleck student who wonders aloud, "What's a clock doing in this play?"  It's hard to answer that one without sounding like, well, an English teacher.  

(Then again, almost no one ever notices the discrepancy of Hamlet going to study at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, which didn't open its doors until three centuries after the time in which the play is set!)

We all know that Shakespeare is allowed to do things like that because of poetic license or dramatic license or because, well, he's Shakespeare and we're not.  But how does one explain an image of a bicycle in a temple built more than a milennium ago?

Since Mohan made his claim, some have tried to discredit it by saying that the temple is really only a century old.  Such is a possibility when you realize that many temples and cathedrals are not, in fact, "original".  As an example, St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican was built during the 16th Century.  At least, the one standing today dates from that time.  Other structures bearing the same name, however, have stood on that site at least since the 4th Century CE.

So, it could be that the current Panchavarnaswamy Temple is not the "origninal" or first built on the site.  Almost nobody with any knowledge of it, however, believes that this is the case:  It's generally agreed that the temple dates to the 7th Century CE or thereabouts.  

The more logical explanation is that the bicycle depiction was added during a renovation.  According to records, one took place early in the 20th Century, when the bicycle was a common mode of transportation in India as well as its colonial overlord, England. 

That explanation makes sense when you realize that "modern touches" are often added to renovations of ancient sites.  For example, a photo of an "ancient astronaut" on the wall of a medieval Spanish cathedral has circulated for years.  But even Erich von Daniken would have trouble believing that someone in the 12th Century would have depicted something that looks like a modern space explorer.  That "ancient astronaut" was most likely an astronaut:  The image was added during a 1990s renovation.  

How Routine Was This Repair?

Have you ever felt yourself just slogging and grinding your way on your bike for no discernible reason?  Then you realize your rear tire was slowly losing air.  Or your chain needed oil even more than the salad everyone thought was dry and lifeless.  Or that some part or another was out of alignment or adjustment.

I had such an experience on Thursday.  I wasn’t feeling very well, but I thought I could shake my lethargy by going on a ride, however short.  I started in a direction that could take me to Coney Island or the Canarsie Pier; either would have been a manageable distance and, if I needed to do so, I could take the subway home.

As I approached the Pulaski Bridge, I found myself making a left turn Jackson Avenue, then Thomson Avenue, which meant Canarsie was in the cards.  It was the sort of not-quite-conscious decision I often make on rides.  That was fine; I hadn’t gone that way in a while.  Tosca seemed to be rolling along fine through the industrial area of Long Island City and Maspeth, the now-Polish and Albanian enclaves of Ridgewood and some almost-suburban stretches of Glendale.  

Then, after descending the hill from a cemetery in Queens to another in Brooklyn, I started to feel like a paraplegic grasshopper pedaling in syrup.  I glanced down at the bike. Nothing seemed wrong.  Must be the engine, not the chassis, I thought.  In other words, I thought perhaps I was less well or in worse shape than I suspected.

Just after crossing Atlantic Avenue, I realized that the human machinery, however out-of-tune, was not to blame.  I saw the telltale sag in my rear tire. So, I did what I often do when I don’t hear a pop or a hiss:  I pumped the tire, figuring I could pedal the rest of the way to the pier and, if necessary, fix the problem there.

The plan almost worked.  I got to a flea market about three-quarters of the way to the pier.   I wended through aisles of polyester sundresses in screaming hues that make “billboard” jerseys seem as if they were designed by Brooks Brothers  (I’ve never seen a man who actually looks good in one!), electronic equipment that was discarded before the guys trying to sell it were born, CDs of bands you’ve never heard of or don’t want to hear again, and all matter of the most cheaply-made watches, appliances and accessories imaginable.  Of course, I didn’t buy anything.  But I had to pump my tire again:  It had lost about half of its pressure.

The air was just barely enough to get me to the Pier.  Then I pumped the tire to hear a hiss growing more insistent.  Turns out, a small hole in the tire’s sidewall was opening. 

I knew there was no point to fixing it:  No patch would be strong enough to keep the tube from blowing out like a bubble from a piece of gum.  So, I took the L train back.  Oh well.

After replacing the tire and tube, I took Tosca out on the same route yesterday.  Now I was riding the bike I’d always loved.  And I felt better.

And yesterday’s ride—Point Lookout, again—on Arielle felt even better.  In fact, it was nearly perfect: About the only time I noticed Arielle (I hope she doesn’t feel rejected) was when I shifted or braked.  The rest of the time, I felt as if I were sailing the air under the cloudless sky on a day that could hardly have felt more like the first of summer. 

I did nothing to maintain or adjust Arielle before the ride.  But somehow I felt I was still riding a wave, if you will, from replacing the tire on Tosca. 

What sorts of routine maintenance and repair make the most difference in the way your bikes ride?