When you reach a certain age, you see young people who don't ride nearly as much or eat as well as you do, but are skinnier.
Here is one possible explanation:
I have to admit that I never worked an unpaid internship. But I have worked for very little money and, like the cyclist in the illustration, survived on food not bought in my local bodega!
Definitions of a good cycling diet have changed and diverged during my nearly-half century of dedicated riding. Around the time I first started taking rides more of more than an hour from my family's home, Eddy Mercx broke the hour record in Mexico City on a day when he downed toast, ham and cheese--all of which he brought from his native Belgium--for breakfast.
Over the years, we've been told not to eat meat or dairy during a ride, or at all. We've also been advised that we should consume carbohydrates and everything from GORP (good ol' raisins and peanuts) to Himalayan foxtail millet cakes slathered with yak butter touted as the ideal cycling foods.
Deep down, though, we all know there's one food all cyclists--in fact, all people--love:
Aside from showing a woman eating a slice while cradling a box of pizza on her exercise bike, this photo is funny in other ways. For one, it could only be from the '80's: When else would someone wear sport an outfit or hairdo like hers? Or wear a waist pack on an exercise bike?
But eating pizza: That's always permissible. It's one of the few things that never goes out of style, among cyclists or anyone else!
In my half-century of dedicated cycling, I've noticed that, when it comes to food, there are two extreme types of cyclists. One fuels up on pepperoni pizza washed down with Coke or Pepsi and eats steaks or cheeseburgers and ice cream after the ride. The other wants the packaging to be as organic as the food in it.
Most cyclists, of course, fall somewhere in between. I admit that I eat and drink stuff that isn't found on most training tables, but I cringe at Twinkies, Jell-O and the like. I eat less meat in all forms than I did in my youth--and I not only eat more vegetables, but more of them are fresh rather than processed.
Like many other Americans, during the past decade or so, I have discovered the joys of one vegetable in particular:
A few years ago, I spent an extremely pleasant long weekend in Montréal . What's not to like about a beautiful, diverse city with good food and art where French is spoken?
What made all of that even better? Cycling. La ville aux cent clochers is, simply, one of the best cities for cycling I've encountered. The bike lanes aren't just lines of paint in a street: They're physically separated from the rest of the traffic (although a couple I rode seemed a bit narrow for two-way bicycle traffic) and there seems to be more respect, or at least a better detente , between cyclists and drivers than I've seen in any US locale.
Moreover, the lanes I encountered weren't just paths that suddenly began in one place and just as suddenly ended somewhere else, far from any place else. (Perhaps if I'd spent more time in the city, I might have found such useless paths.) Instead, there are at least a couple of lanes on which you can cross the city, and other lanes are actually useful in getting to and from anywhere you might be or want or need to go. You can even ride a lane to the Jacques Cartier Bridge or other crossings to or from the city, which is on an island.
What I didn't realize was that much of that pleasant, stress-free riding was a result, directly or indirectly, of "Bicycle Bob" Silverman.
In 1975, he co-founded Le Monde à Bicyclette, or Citizens on Bicycles. His choice of the French name was important because he knew that if he were to realize his dream of starting a "velorution " to break the "auto-cracy," he would need to reach beyond his mainly-anglophone circle. Also, he said, the main cycling organization in his province--la Fédération quebecoise de cylotourisme , now known as Vélo-Québec, was focused mainly on recreational cycling.
In the previous paragraph, you might've noticed that Silverman had a penchant for appropriating the rhetoric of political upheval. That was no accident: He identified as a Trotskyite and, in his twenties, lived in Cuba, where he met Che Guevara, before he was deported for distributing anti-Soviet literature. After that, he lived and worked on an Israeli kibutz before
"bouncing around Europe" and falling in love with cycling while riding in France (of course!).
His vocabulary also reflected his flair for the dramatic. Le Monde à Bicyclette staged "die-ins" to protest cyclist deaths--which have since decreased significantly--in the city and province. Silverman and his organization argued that the reason was not, as some claimed, that cyclists were careless or they shouldn't have been cycling in the city in the first place. Rather, he argued that there were too many cars and that their number wouldn't stop growing as long as the city's and province's infrastructure is built around moving them rather than on human interactions and sustainable transportation--and that the bicycle is as viable a mode of transport as any other.
He also led other kinds of demonstrations, like the time he dressed up as Moses* and pretended to part the waters of the St. Lawrence River to lead cyclists across. (Hmm...Maybe this is why he was called a "prophet" of the bicycle-friendly, sustainable city.) Another time, he rolled out a carpet on Boulevard Maisonneuve to press for the group's demand for an east-west cycle route (which now exists) across the city. In yet another action--which got Silverman three days in prison--he and a group of fellow cyclists painted clandestine cycle lanes in the dark of night.
Save for his time in Cuba, Israel and Europe, and the past few years in the Laurentians, Bob Silverman was a lifelong Montreal resident born and raised in the city. His work was therefore not only abstract ideas about sustainability (before that became a widely-used term) or even cycling itself; it was his way of trying to achieve the kind of city he wanted. That, according to Michael Fish, the architect who founded Save Montréal at around the same time Silverman and his friends started Le Monde à Bicyclette. "Nothing since the multiple achievements of Robert Silverman for the rights of cyclists has so affected positively the environment of the region, at almost no public cost," he explained.
He and others want to memorialize Robert Silverman, who passed away at age 87 on Sunday.
Whatever the city does, the next time you ride there (or if you ever get to ride there), thank him.
*—I tried to find a photo of “Bicycle Bob” in Old Testament prophet mode. To this day, my mental image of Moses is Charlton Heston: a result, most likely, of seeing “The Ten Commandments “ every year, on the night before Easter, during my childhood.
Just after Hurricane Katrina, I talked with Bill Laine, the now-retired owner of New Orleans-based Wallingford Bikes.
Katrina devastated the city, prompting an unprecedented total evacuation. Some folks defied the order and took advantage of the desolation by looting homes, stores and warehouses.
Bill explained that his business was spared because, he thought, thieves probably were looking for bikes but found saddles (The biggest part of their trade was in Brooks), bags and other parts and accessories.
These days, thieves know better. COVID-19 pandemic-induced shortages have affected bike parts as well as complete bikes. One result has been a spike in bike thefts as well as burglaries and robberies of bike shops.
Some seemingly-professional thieves in Germany have moved up the food chain, if you will. As a truck driver took a break at a rest stop, a well-organized gang released sleeping gas into the vehicle’s cab and raided the trailer filled with Shimano parts destined for BFI, the Czech Republic’s largest bike producer.
One particularly disturbing aspect of this crime, as a BFI spokesperson explained, is that it seemed to be intricately pre-planned to the point that “in all likelihood, the truck had been followed from the time it was loaded.” Also alarming is that the thieves knew what they were looking for: They left nine boxes of low-end parts but took the more expensive components.
This story reminds me of something I reported when I was writing for local Queens and Brooklyn newspapers: Car thieves were turning their attention away from luxury vehicles in affluent neighborhoods to good, solid everyday cars like the Toyota Camry in middle- and working-class neighborhoods. Those cars were targeted because they proved more lucrative when sold to “chop shops” for parts.
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| From the City of Austin |
My first time in Paris, so many things impressed me. Among them were, of course, the food and the architecture—and that an entire street—l’Avenue de la Grande Armeé —was lined with boutiques of every major French bike maker and a couple of étrangers like Raleigh.
And the city’s Métro system seemed like a fleet of high-tech yachts compared to the only such system—New York’s—I knew at the time. The feature that seemed most other-worldly, though, was the interactive route maps in the major stations like Châtelet-Les Halles. Three decades before GPS, it was about as high-tech as urban subterranean navigation got: You pointed your finger to the name of a street or landmark and a string of lights marked the route and transfer (correspondance) points.
Now the city of Austin, Texas has something that reminds me of that old Paris map. The city’s Public Works and Transportation Departments have collaborated to create the ATX Walk Bike Roll to solicit ideas for improvements to the Lone Star capital’s bike and pedestrian infrastructure. To that end, they’ve designed an interactive map where residents can drop a “pin” wherever they find, say, “hilariously narrow “ or non-existent sidewalks or bike lanes that are more like “obstacle courses.”
If we had such a map here in New York, I—or any regular cyclist—alone could fill it. And to think this city is better than others in the US—including, possibly, Austin—for pedestrians and cyclists!
This post will be a tale of two cities--without the capital letters.
They have roughly the same population. One is the capital of its nation; the other is, at least in some senses, in its country. They could be said to be rivals because they are renowned for many of the same things: food, fashion, finance, the arts, education and technology.
Now one of those cities is not only wants to emulate something the other has been doing; it plans to do even more of it.
I am talking about urban bike lane networks. While Copenhagen and Amsterdam are seen, perhaps rightly, as the most bike-friendly capitals in Europe, Paris is leading the way in creating new bike infrastructure. It plans to have 680 kilometers (423 miles) of bike lanes in the City of Light and its surrounding areas.
Rental Bikes by the Duomo Cathedral, Milan. Photo by Alessia Pierdomenico for Bloomberg
Well, in the city's chief rival for food and fashion--Milan--the City Council has approved a plan that will include 750 kilometers (466 miles) of lanes that will connect not only major areas of the immediate city, but also its suburbs and some rural areas. The goal of the Cambio Biciplan is to make bicycling the "first and easiest" way of getting around Metropolitan Milan.
One of the motivations for this plan is a problem the city is trying to tackle. Among Italian cities, only Turin has worse air pollution; both have some of the worst air quality in Europe. The factors contributing to that toxicity are similar in both cities: population density, industrial activity and automobile density. That pollution intensifies in winter, when temperature inversions trap pollutants in the lower atmosphere, leaving a toxic blanket of smog. Also, I suspect that each of those cities shares a problem with Denver: the mountains that surround (Turin) or abut (Milan) those cities also trap some of the pollutants. (Denver consistently has some of the worst air quality in the US.)
So, in the near future, bike advocacy groups may well emulate fashion and culinary institutions in seeing their "capitals" as New York, Paris and Milan!
Last week, I wrote two posts that might indicate a future direction for this blog. (Don't worry, I'll still write about my rides, bikes and all things related to them!) One post, about a German study, discussed who is becoming a new cyclist, and why. The other discussed a mechanics' petition calling for repairable bicycles: Turns out, most of the new cheap bikes, which are usually the ones bought by people with limited funds, have faultily-designed frames made from shoddy materials and are equipped with proprietary parts that break easily or wear out quickly.
In brief, those new cyclists on nice new bikes bought in Cannondale, Giant, Specialized or Trek showrooms are mainly people with advanced educations who live in fashionable or gentrifying urban areas. They might be riding to work or school, or simply for exercise and, as often as not, they are signaling that they care about their health and/or the environment. In other words, they are cycling by choice.
On the other hand, folks buying the cheap bikes, if they're not cycling for the first time in decades and therefore don't want to spend a lot of money, are buying that big-box special in a big box because they can't afford anything else, including a bus or train pass--if indeed there is a bus or train that will get them from wherever they sleep to wherever they work.
One of the sad ironies--following the logic of the German study--is that we see a kind of social, economic, racial and gender segregation that would have astounded or appalled the man who is being commemorated today in the US: Martin Luther King Jr.
Now, I don't think King would have denounced cycling or cyclists per se: He was often seen riding, which he probably saw as a way of bringing him closer to some of the people he was trying to help. And, because he was turning more of his attention to economic justice issues in his last days, I can somehow see him advising bike share organizations on ways to bridge the cultural divides and media representations that cause some people to believe they can't ride because they're not white and don't look good in lycra--or those who harass cyclists because they see us as entitled jerks (the educated riders of the German study) or the scum of the earth (cf. police who are trained to automatically assume that any cyclist in a low-income neighborhood is a criminal).
So...while I wasn't thinking specifically of King, or any activist in particular, when I was writing the posts I've linked in this post, thinking about King today is causing me to realize that my almost half a century of cycling--and nearly two decades of living as a woman--makes it all but impossible not to connect my experiences and even the things I most love (bicycling, reading, writing, food, travel, animals) to questions of justice. In other words, the work of Martin Luther King Jr is one of the major byways, if you will, of my journey.
Exactly one month before I was born (OK, you can do the math!), Charles de Gaulle proclaimed, "Je vous ai compris!" to a crowd in Algiers.
What, exactly, he understood--or whom he was trying to reassure that he understood--is not clear. Was he trying to reassure les pieds noirs--French colonials who lived (and some of whom were born) in Algeria that they could stay? Was he telling military personnel--French? Algerian? French Foreign Legion?--that he had their backs? Or was he guaranteeing Algerians that their country would become independent (as it did four years later)?
Some would say that he meant all, or none, of those things--that, perhaps, "je vous ai compris" was a "weasel" phrase.
If the latter is true, then the phrase could also be interpreted, if not translated, as "I have taken it under consideration" or "I have considered what you've said."
I have spent enough time around academic administrators to know that, for them and other bureaucrats, "consider" is too often a synonym for "ignore" or "pretend to hear."
What brought those locutions to mind is the recent law requiring New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority--which includes New York City's subway and bus systems, the region's commuter railroads and some of its bridges and tunnels--to "consider" bicycle and pedestrian access in its capital plans. Those plans would include not only new infrastructure, but also improvements to existing structures that currently lack such access.
Call me cynical (Hey, I'm a New Yorker!), but I have to wonder just what "consider" means. Or, for that matter, "access." Some of the "access" I've seen to bridges is "access" in the same way that the stuff McDonald's and Burger King serve is "food."
And, if the MTA actually does "consider" bike and pedestrian access, I have to wonder if it will be as poorly-conceived, -constructed and -maintained as most of the bike lanes I've seen in this city.
So I rode to the Flushing Bay Promenade, recently renamed the Malcolm X Promenade. He lived in nearby East Elmhurst, along with other luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.
The ride is pleasant enough, sort of like comfort food for me and my bikes. I rode up and down the promenade a few times, in part to get into a physical and mental “groove,” but also because of two men.
Short and squat but broad-shouldered and thick-fingered, they looked like the sort of Central American immigrants who wait at strategic but discreet intersections in residential neighborhoods where contractors, landscapers and other small business people hire people like them as day laborers.
Such people work and sleep hard, wherever they can. So it’s unusual to see men like them dozing on park benches.
But were they sleeping ?
Their faces, which probably would have been colored like terra cota or the earth from which they came, instead looked as if they’d been worn to reflect the gray sky and water. One man’s hand drooped in front of him, his fingers frozen in a grip of something no longer there.
The other man’s head was cocked to his side, as if he stopped himself from resting it on the other man’s shoulders—or a pillow he realized wasn’t there.
A mobile phone propped between them played bouncy conga drum and stringed music. But it could just as well have emitted “elevator music,” for all of the effect it had on them.
Finally, when I rode by them for the sixth time, I think, the man with the cocked head stirred.
“¿Estás bien?” I shouted. He nodded.
“¿Necesitas algo?” He moved his head slowly from side to side.
“¿Estás seguro?” Another nod.
“OK. Feliz año nuevo.” Even if they’re OK, I hope the path ahead is easier and clearer for them in the coming year.
At least the ride back was, for me.
On the other hand, Afghanistan’s female cyclists have no such hope. Nobody really knows what could return that country to what it was three months ago, before the Taliban took power. Women are losing the rights they regained during the past two decades—including, in effect, the right to ride a bicycle, an effect of the Taliban’s dress codes and prohibition against women venturing outside their homes without a male relative.
For some women, not being allowed to ride a bike means that they have no way to get to their jobs or schools—if indeed they are still allowed to work or study. For some, though, it spells the end of their lives unless they can get out of the country and have a sponsor or other help waiting for them wherever they land.
Those women include Rukhsar Habibzi. Before she evacuated from Kabul Airport (just before it shut down) she was riding with the Afghan women’s national team and attending dental school. Oh, and her activism got her a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize—and threats of gender-based violence.
From Kabul, she was brought to Quatar, then to a US military base in Germany and an immigration center in New Jersey, where she waited for an emergency visa before settling in another state last week.
She is slated to compete through 2023 for the Twenty24 development team. Twenty24 owner Nicola Cranmer has set up a GoFundMe page to help Habibzai with rent, food, utilities, clothing, books and tuition. This fundraising effort “is not to fund a cycling team,” Cranmer stresses. Rather, she is trying to help a young woman become “the best athlete, student and leader she can be” after leaving her country “with just her purse.” As an emergency visa holder, Habibzai gets very little assistance from the government.
She probably has dreams of winning races. But Habibzai summed up her real goal in training and studying: “I want to showcase the physical and mental strength of an Afghan woman to Afghanistan and the whole world.” That, she believes, will show that “a woman is not weak” and that “success can be achieved by any gender.”
I’d be happy to have someone like her in my country!
This weekend included a change of seasons and cultures--and rides.
While, officially, we're deep into Fall, from Thursday through the middle of Saturday, it felt more like early summer. I took Friday's ride, to Connecticut, in what I might wear around Memorial Day or Labor Day--a pair of shorts and a fluorescent green T-shirt. The breeze took some of the edge off the humidity.
Saturday morning, I pedaled out to Kesso's for some fresh Greek yogurt. Alas, they were closed. I hope everything is OK there: Perhaps they, like so many other shops--and people--couldn't get some thing or another they needed because of the interrupted supply chains that have emptied store shelves. Later in the day, wind drove hard rain against leaves, windows and faces.
Yesterday, the wind let up--for a little while--and temperatures were more fall-like. I took a spin along the North Shore of Queens and western Nassau County, which took me into a neighborhood frequented by almost nobody who doesn't live there--in spite of its proximity to a mecca for in-the-know food enthusiasts.
On a map, College Point is next to Flushing. But the two neighborhoods could just as well be on diffeent planets. The latter neighborhood, one of the city's most crowded, has been known as the "Queens Chinatown" for the past three decades or so. There are dozens of places where one can sample a variety of regional cuisines, and have everything from a formal dining experience to chow on the run. Those places are centered around Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street, at the end of the 7 line of the New York subway system--and one stop away from Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, and the US Tennis Center, site of the US Open and other events.
College Point is "off the grid," if you will--away from the city's transit systems and accessible only by winding, narrow streets that dead-end in inconvenient places or truck-trodden throughfares that, at times, resemble a moonscape, that weave through industrial parks, insular blue-collar communities and views of LaGuardia Airport and the Manhattan skyline one doesn't see in guidebooks.
Until recently, College Point--which, pervesely, includes no college--was populated mostly by the children and Irish, German and Italian construction workers and city employees who were the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Irish, German and Italian construction workers and city employees. Their houses were smaller versions of the nearby factories and warehouses: squat brick structures framed by latticeworks of steel or wooden trellises, cornices and fences.
In that sense, this place fits right in:
The New York Hua Lian Tsu Hui Temple is--you guessed it--a square brick building framed with wooden cornices and a steel fence. The cornices, though, are different: They signal the purpose of the building, and signify other things. Apparently, Chinese and Korean people who needed more space to raise their kids--or simply wanted to escape the crowding of Flushing--have "discovered" the neighborhood.
Some have families and pets:
Marlee, though, was not impressed! All she knows is that when I'm on my bike (or doing anything outside the apartment), I'm not there for her to curl up on.
Yesterday, I wrote about last weekend's varied rides. Not only were the locales and sights different on each ride; so were the bikes I rode.
There was also variation within the rides, as there always is. As an example, my Friday ride took me into Brooklyn and included two utterly different neighborhoods.
The metallic hues of New York Bay and its piers, docks, towers and bridges formed the vista of Red Hook
where one bridge rims the curvature of the earth, while another doesn't go far enough.
A few miles inland, a post-industrial streetscape stands a few blocks from where I grew up, at the edge of Borough Park, now one of Brooklyn's two major Hasidic neighborhoods.
Change, however, can't seem to efface old identities and purposes:
Tell me that wasn't a Shell station.
I was tempted to check out the convenience store. Perhaps I will if I take another ride out that way. Whether or not they're different, I hope it doesn't sell sushi: There should be a law against selling it any service station convenience store.
But at least one law says it's OK for folks who'd shop in a place like that to eat sushi. According to every interpretation of Halakhic law I've read, sushis made with vegetables or raw fish comply with Kosher dietary laws. I don't imagine, though, anyone who likes sushi, whether or not they follow any religious edicts about food, would eat sushi from that place!
By the way, I had vegetable enchiladas after the ride.
Tomorrow will mark 20 years since the deadliest terror attack on US soil. During the commemorations, there will be much talk of "heroes." And that awful day produced many, some of whom didn't survive the day.
I will say more about them tomorrow. (Don't worry: The post will relate to bicycling as well as that terrible event.) Today, though, I want talk about another hero who had yet to be born on that day.
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| Jyoti Kumari, self-portrait |
Jyoti Kumari bought a purple bicycle for the equivalent of $20. Unlike other 15-year-olds, however, she didn't pedal it to school or work. Instead, she used it to bring her father home.
To say that was no small feat was an understatement. Mohan Paswan was a big man, carrying a big bag. A migrant worker had been injured on a job near New Delhi, about 1200 kilometers (700 miles) from his family's home. Compounding the difficulty of that situation was the lockdowns, then some of the world's strictest, that had been imposed on India. So, even if he could've worked, there was no work for him. He was stranded, broke, just as India and the world were plunging into the abyss of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Home, for him and Ms. Kumari, was a village near the Nepalese border. Their journey would take them along a route where people younger and healthier than Mohan died in the brutal heat, or were run down by trucks or trains. And there would be few places where he and Jyoti could find food or water.
Still, Kumari managed to bring her father home. She pedaled all the way back, with her father riding in back. Along the way, some locals jeered or castigated her for pedaling while her father sat. But others offered help, including the use of their cell phones so she could let her mother know she and her father were on their way.
After they arrived, she garnered a lot of media attention, from the likes of people and outlets far bigger and more famous than yours truly. The Prime Minister gave her the National Children's Award, which included a medal and about $1300. There were offers and promises of jobs, scholarships and other kinds of help. And Onkar Singh, the chairman of the Cycling Federation of India, invited her to a tryout for the national team, which could mean a trip to the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Singh's offer still stands. Kumari, however, is more anxious to finish her studies (understandable, especially given that she comes from a lower-caste family). To do that, she would need to catch up on academic work she missed while helping to care for her father. She has been taking some lessons from a local teacher, but her village's school remains closed.
And some of the offers and promises of help were not fulfilled. So, while her family were able to build a bigger house with water and toilet connections and sustain themselves for a while, some of the money was used to pay off debts. Now "the funds are drying up," explains Mukesh Kumari Paswan, Kumari's brother-in-law. He was an X-ray technician but, like everyone else in his family, is out of work. "We don't know what to do now," he says.
As if the family weren't facing enough difficulties, her mother isn't well and minor physical activity leaves her out of breath. Worst of all, in May--one year after Kumari brought her father home--he died of cardiac arrest.
Whether or not Jyoti Kumari takes up Onkar Singh on his offer, one can only hope that the road ahead is less difficult for her and her family isn't as difficult as it's been. Any teenage girl who can pedal her father home through the conditions she endured certainly deserves better!
I will try to sneak in another ride this morning, as I did yesterday.
Although I knew a storm was coming, that wasn’t the reason why I limited yesterday’s ride to Fort Totten and the North Shore of Queens (with a yogurt stop at Kesso’s). I had an appointment with my opthamologist in the afternoon, and I knew he was going to dilate my pupils. So, my vision would be blurred for a while and I’d be very tired. Marlee took advantage of the latter and curled up on me after I fell asleep!
The first wave of the storm struck some time after midnight. The sky is overcast and the air thick with humidity, but the wind and rain have stopped, for a while anyway. I don’t mind riding in the rain, especially on a day as warm as today (two of my bikes have fenders, after all) but I draw the line at torrential downpours!
The storm pushing its way through this neighborhood is called Fred. That should be food for thought for anyone who’s derisively used that name in reference to someone who isn’t twiddling $400 pedals on a $12,000 carbon bike while clad in Lycra kit.
Fred will pass, and Freds will pass them!
Yesterday I followed the shorelines of Queens as closely as I could. Close to home, I chanced upon a vista that encapsulates some of the waterfront’s visual variety.
I remember when the southern part of Hunters Point, in Long Island City, consisted of industrial waiting rooms and necropolis—and when the Twin Towers stood where the Liberty Tower now looms. Back then, much of the waterfront, and its views, were inaccessible.
Now there are pedestrian and bike lanes, food trucks, cafes and some rather nice gardens—alongside “affordable” apartments for people making $125,000 a year.
Lockdowns and other restrictions induced by COVID-19 have left people dependent on deliveries for everything from pharmaceutical s to pizza.
Here in New York, as in much of the developed world, Amazon trucks and electric bicycles with delivery boxes have become ubiquitous. A shrinking but still significant number of restaurant and store delivery workers, however, still use bicycles that have only the riders’ legs as their power source.
It seems that the less-developed and poorer parts of the world depend to an even greater degree on regular pedal bicycle. Those are also areas that, because they have fewer resources, have been even more devastated by the pandemic. They also tend to have tighter restrictions on people’s movements and on businesses because their hospitals are even more overburdened than those in wealthier areas.
Just about everything I’ve mentioned in my previous paragraph could be used to describe the situation in Semarang. This city of three million (roughly the same as Chicago) is one of the worst-hit areas of Indonesia , which has become Asia’s epicenter of the epidemic.
Such places also tend to rely to a greater degree on volunteers. They include 35-year-old Arrahman Surya Atmaja, who delivers food, prescriptions and other items to isolated residents as part of the volunteer delivery service he started in April.
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| Arrahman Surya Abakan, left, with another volunteer .Phoro by Budi Purvanto, for Reuters. |
He says his most common deliveries include medicines or vitamins he picks up via WhatsApp or Instagram. He and other volunteers have had to lift their bikes over barricades blocking off “red zones” with high rates of infection. “Maybe because we are helping the community, it will somehow boost our immunity,” he joked.
While most of his runs are to residences, he unwittingly went to an ICU ward. “I got scared, but my feelings went away when I remembered I only want to help.” He added that he and other cyclists try to make contactless deliveries.
Most races and other organized rides are named for the places in which they’re held, sponsors or a person or event commemorated by the ride.
Now, it seems, the name of one California race describes, if unintentionally, its terrain.
On Sunday, Peter Stetina won the men’s Belgian Waffle Ride, which includes single-track, sandy trails and roughly-paved roads near San Diego. That last feature—rough roads— makes me think the Paris-Roubaix race could be named for the beloved snack or breakfast food, depending on your point of view.
(What would a mousse ride look like? A pizza ride?)
If Peter Stetina’s name looks familiar, you follow bike racing or are about my age. His father, Dale, and his uncle, Wayne, were part of a generation of cyclists who, during the 1970s, helped to pull the United States out of what Sheldon Brown has called it’s “Dark Ages” of cycling.
It’s fun to imagine that family celebrating—with waffles, of course!
Back in February, I wrote about Bicycle Meals and its founder, Mike Pak.
Last year, on a Monday, he put up a flyer on Instagram, calling for help in assembling and distributing packets to the un-housed of Koreatown, the Los Angeles community he calls home. The following Friday, 20 strangers rolled up to his apartment, ready to help.
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| Bicycle Meals volunteer getting ready to deliver. Photo by Angel Carreras, from KCRW. |
The volunteers included people of varied backgrounds, including graphic designers, audio producers and former chefs. Most were either working from home or not working at all, so they were able to contribute much time and energy--and, in many cases, their own money (to purchase food and other items). They assembled packets containing sandwiches, fruit, snacks, masks and hand sanitizer--in the apartments of Pak and Bicycle Meals co-founder Jacob Halpern.
They have since moved the assembly operation to the basement of a nearby church. Halpern notes that this has made the operation more efficient, but there is another problem: As pandemic restrictions loosen, many volunteers have returned to their old workplaces and schedules, which doesn't leave them as much time to be, well, volunteers.
The need for their services, however, has not decreased. Nor is the need for food and supplies. Local businesses supplied some of them, but much also came from the volunteers themselves. Some of the businesses can't donate as much as they did at first because they've lost so much revenue, and some of the volunteers are tapped out. So, Pak and Halpern are hoping to engage more of, and beyond, the community for help--not only with money and material resources, but also help in accessing social services and job placement.
It seems that with all of the changes, Pak and Halpern are still trying to deliver.
