Views After My Commute

After I rode home from work, Vera and I were ready for a little more action and some visual stimulation.

So we climbed the stairs to the walkway/bike lane of the RFK/Triborough Bridge.  We could not have had a better view of Upper Astoria clothed in fall colors:

It's a New York view most people never see.  But, when I turned around, I encountered the sort of vista almost everyone expects late on a mid-autumn afternoon in the Big Apple:

Even the Hell Gate railroad trestle took on the hues of foliage reflected in the late-day sun:

Vera was being modest about helping to make this mini-revelry possible:

 

Where These Tracks Could Lead

Back when I was doing a pretty fair amount of off-road riding, I often sluiced through the hills and gullies of Forest Park in Queens.  I was living in Park Slope then, and the park--which was bigger and less agressively policed than Prospect--was about half an hour away. So, on a spring or summer day, I could get in a ride after work.

Since I sold my Bontrager and stopped riding off-road, I have cycled to Forest Park, but not in it.  That is, until today.

Most of the park lies to the west of Woodhaven Boulevard.  But the part to the east is more thickly wooded and has a few other interesting geological features the other side lacks.  (Or, perhaps, the west side had them but they were obliterated by the golf course, bandshell and other things built there.)  I was riding south, toward JFK airport, when I espied one of the paths I used to ride.  It wasn't very long and ended abruptly in the trotting course, where other cyclists and I used to upset the horse riders.  I didn't see any today.

But I saw something more interesting, at least to me (or in terms of this blog):

 Did I never notice the track all those times I rode off-road?  Or did I forget about it?

When I chanced upon it, a cute tuxedo cat scurried across.  I don't know how long it's been since a train last rumbled and clattered over it, but I'm sure it's been decades.   It parallels a Long Island Rail Road (Yes, it's spelled as two words!) line that runs through another part of the neighborhood.  Perhaps some now-discontinued branch of the line ran here.  Or, maybe, freight trains:  The Atlas Park mall is about a kilometer to the southwest.  It used to be an industrial park (That phrase seems so strange) that, at one time, housed General Electric, Kraft, Westinghouse, New York Telephone and other large companies.  There are still some small factories as well as warehouses near the mall.

Anyway, I can't see abandoned railroad tracks without thinking, "Now this would be a great bike path!"  Old rail lines have been so re-purposed in other places; if the same were done to the tracks I saw today, they could be linked to the nearby section of the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway , which might one day be a continuous greenway that connects Brooklyn and Queens. 

On The Right Track In Ghent?

 When I was in high school, I took my first organized charity bike ride. It was in the Spring of 1976: the tide of the 1970s Bike Boom was ebbing and few (at least compared to today) adults rode bikes.  In fact, most had not pedaled since they were kids, if they ever had ridden.

That is what made some of my sponsors hesitant before signing up:  They simply could not imagine anyone riding the distance of that ride: 25 miles.  Little did they know that I had already done rides twice and three times as long and a “century” was not far in my future.

Of course I finished that ride easily and my sponsors paid up. But the reason I am recalling that ride now is because of a near-tragedy. 

The ride crossed railroad tracks. Many riders were inexperienced and almost none wore helmets. (I didn’t!) Someone apparently didn’t realize that cyclists should ride across at a 90 degree angle, preferably while lifting themselves off their seats—or, if the tracks protrude too far off the ground or are wet, simply walk across.

That cyclist’s tire skidded against a rail and when he fell, his head struck the rail. At least that was the story I heard. About a week later, I heard that he’d recovered and was out of the hospital. I wonder, though, whether he suffered any permanent damage that wasn’t detected in those days before CAT scans (as they were called) were widely used.

I got to thinking about that incident, nearly half a century (!) later when I read about how the city of Ghent, Belgium is trying to deal with a similar problem.  Ghent and other European cities have trams—similar to the streetcars that once laced many American cities and “light rail” lines that have recently been built in Jersey City and other places. Those conveyances run on a narrower set of rails that are more likely to be at or near pavement level.  Also, in some places, cyclists and trams share the same spaces.

So while it is easier to traverse them, it is also easier to miss them or simply not to take the necessary precautions. In Ghent, with a population of around 264,000, bike crashes on tram lines send about 500 cyclists to the hospital every year.

The elastic solution would be injected in the area marked by green paint.

The city is testing a possible solution: Lining the cavity in which the track lies with a new elastic compound.  While it won’t sit completely flush with the pavement, there would be enough so that a cyclist could more easily move cross or move out of a tram’s way—and is less likely to get a tire caught between the track and pavement.

Is Amtrak About To Make It Easier To Travel With Your Bike?

One nice thing about cycling in Europe (at least, when I've done it) was the relative ease of bringing bikes on trains.  I've brought my bikes on intercity trains in England, France, Italy and Germany.  The drill was always more or less the same:  Wheel the bike up to the baggage handler's booth.  A clerk would give you a ticket and bring your bike onto the train.  Or, in some stations, you could roll your machine directly into the baggage car. Then, wherever you disembarked, you brought your ticket to the baggage counter--or retrieved your bike from the baggage car.  The only variable was cost:  It seemed to vary with the length of your train trip.


Of course, things have never been so felicitous here in the good ol' USA. Some local rail networks, like Metro North and the Long Island Rail Road here in New York, require that you purchase a pass ($5 when I got mine) good for all routes at all times.  If the train is crowded, the conductor might direct you to the rear of the train, or tell you to take a later train. 


 


But things are trickier on Amtrak:  The bike has to be boxed and checked as luggage.   If you want to ride to the station, you can buy a box there for $15.  You  have to remove your pedals and turn the handlebars parallel to the frame in order to fit it in the box.   Then you have to tape the box shut.  Your station may or may not have the necessary tape--and probably won't have the tools you need to prepare your bike.  And you aren't allowed to re-use a box.  If I were a tree, I'd protest!


The worst part, though, is that Amtrak regulations are wildly inconsistent.  ("Inconsistent regulations":  Is that an oxymoron?)  An operator at the railroad's customer service line might tell you it's possible to bring your bike to a particular station, but when you arrive, the clerk insists you can't bring your bike with you.   Or that clerk, or a conductor, might tell you bikes aren't allowed, period.  Perhaps most maddening of all, an operator might tell you it's possible to disembark with your bike at a particular station (usually a smaller one), but when the train pulls in, you find that you can't get your bike because there's no baggage handler in the station.


Now it seems that someone at Amtrak has realized that catering to bicycle tourists can be good business for them.  A few days ago, Amtrak spokesman Craig Schulz announced that by the end of this year, all long-distance lines will be equipped with baggage cars containing bicycle racks.


Looks like we might catch up to the Europeans, finally!

Don't Cross Here

We've had the strangest weather over the past couple of days.  Last night, a storm blew into this area.  It was supposed to bury everything between Pittsburgh and Montreal in snow; however, we experienced a deluge in New York, along with gale-force winds.  Through it all, the temperature actually rose overnight, from the mid-30s to around 60F (2 to 15 C).  Then, this afternoon, the temperature dropped again.

Somewhere in all of that I sneaked in a few of miles on Tosca. After descending the ramp from the Queens spur of the RFK Bridge, I wended my way along the path that rims the East River until I reached the Bronx Kill.  No, it's not a dance or crime; it's a strait that separates the borough for which it's named from the Island.  ("Kill" comes from "kille", a Dutch word for "creek".)  Underneath the ramp to the Bronx spur of the RFK, I espied this:

How I missed it in all of the years I've been riding there is beyond me.  As we say in the old country, "What's wrong with this picture?"

Perhaps I need to get out more, but I don't recall seeing, anywhere else, a railroad crossing sign on the bank of a creek, river or stream.  Who are they trying to keep off the tracks?  The Randall's Island Salamander?

To be fair, when the tide recedes (The East River is actually an estuary of the ocean.), the water level in Bronx Kill drops so much that you can walk across the abandoned car and body parts on the bottom.  Still, I don't know why anyone would try to cross the tracks--or jump on a train--from there.

 

5 Cyclists, From The Big Apple To The Capital--In 1928

If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that one of my passions, besides cycling, is history.  And you know that among my particular interests are the history of women and ethnic and racial minorities in cycling.

Well, I have just stumbled across an account of female African-American long-distance cyclists.   Never before had I heard or read any mention of it.  And were it not for the work of an enterprising PhD student, it probably would still be another forgotten episode of history.

Today Marya McQuirter is an historian at the Smithsonian Institution.  Two decades ago, she was doing research for her dissertation on the history of African-American women in Washington, DC in the first half of the twentieth century when she found these names: Marylou Jackson, Velva Jackson, Ethyl Miller, Leolya Nelson and Constance White.

Photograph by Addison Surlock.  Originally published in Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, 1928.  Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

Learning about those women changed Ms. McQuirter's life.  She wanted to understand, as fully as possible, not only what they did, but what might have motivated them.  To do that, she took up cycling.  But being a cyclist wasn't just a role she played and abandoned once she finished her dissertation:  She took cycling classes with the Washington Area Bicycle Association.  Now she teaches those same classes as a Licensed Cycling Instructor certified and supported by the League of American Bicyclists.

What did learning about five women who might otherwise have been forgotten do to inspire Marya McQuirter to become such a dedicated cyclist?  They rode their bicycles from New York City to Washington, DC over three days.  Doing 400 kilometers (250 miles) over that span of time is certainly an accomplishment for just about any cyclist, of any age or background, at any time.  

But those intrepid women--who were African-American, as is Ms. McQuirter--took their ride over Easter weekend in 1928.  Yes, you read that right.

Now, those of us who are cyclists would probably think first about how their ride was made more difficult because of the less-advanced state of bicycles at that time, as well as road conditions (Sometimes there were no roads!)  and the lack of amenities in some areas.  If you know a bit about history, you might think about the fact that they were women:  Even though bicycles may have done more than anything else to liberate women, as Susan B. Anthony declared, the vast majority of long-distance cyclists were, and are, male.   The six-day races popular at that time were almost entirely a white male preserve, even some three decades after Major Taylor won cycling's World Championship.

According to Mc Quirter, though, one of the things that made their journey unique--and the women who undertook it so courageous--is that they were African-American women going from the North to the South.  

When they set out from the Big Apple, "the Great Migration" in the other direction had been in full swing for more than a decade.  Almost overnight, neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and other northern cities became havens for African-Americans fleeing the terror of the Ku Klux Klan and the oppression of Jim Crow laws in the Southern states.  And, at that time, Washington--the nation's capital, no less--was as segregated as Atlanta, Birmingham or any other Southern city you can name. (Many would argue that it is just as segregated now, half a century after the end of Jim Crow.)

According to McQuirter, the Fearless Five returned to New York by train.  Most likely, they would have taken the Baltimore and Ohio or the Pennsylvania Railroad.  On her Facebook page, McQuirter points out that, starting in 1897,  "Pennsy" allowed passengers to take their bikes on the train with them for free.  If only Amtrak had such a policy!

He Didn’t Know He’d Made History

 Today I am invoking, once again, my Howard Cosell Rule:  This post won’t be about bicycles or bicycling.

Almost any someone breaks a barrier—whether it’s based on race, gender, social class or some other trait—that person is referred to as the “Jackie Robinson” of their field. In fact, I had that title bestowed on me when I was the first person to “change” gender in my workplace.

I took that both as a compliment and a warning: I think some were trying to alert me to what I might (and indeed did) face.  On the other hand, I felt honored to be compared to someone I so respect as a human being as well as an athlete.

That respect and admiration is not abstract or idolatory:  I actually met the man when I was very young and—as I could not have known—he was a few years away from the end of his too-brief life.  Years later, I met his widow Rachel, a beautiful and formidable woman.

The man I am about to mention also, when he was very young, met Jackie. At that time, Robinson was in the prime of his baseball career.  And the subject of the rest of this post would embark on his own athletic career, in a league where no one like him played before.

Sixty-six years ago yesterday—18 January 1958–Willie O’Ree’s skate blades glided across the ice in the Montréal Forum.  The hometown fans cheered him and the following day, the city’s sportswriters—lauded his fast, smooth skating.

That Montréal scribes could pay homage to the abilities of á forward who didn’t skate for the hometown Canadiens (Les Habitants) wasn’t unusual, Their praise, however, was particularly interesting given that O’Ree wore the sweater (they’re not called jerseys in hockey) of the Boston Bruins, whose rivalry with the Canadiens is as intense as the enmity between the Red Sox and Yankees.

Oh, and he just happened to be the first Black player in the history of the National Hockey League. That night, Willie was trying to prove himself and win a permanent roster spot in the sport’s top league.  “I did not realize I had made history,” he recalled.

Somehow it seems fitting that he is a descendent of slaves who escaped from the United States into Canada via the Underground Railroad. His family was one of two in Fredericton, the capital of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Like many of his peers, he grew up as a fan of the Canadiens.

His NHL career was brief, but he played professional hockey—and won scoring titles—well into his 40s. I can’t help but to think that as supportive as his teammates and the league’s fans—in Boston, Montréal and Toronto, anyway—were, racism, conscious or not, on the part of management hindered his development. After all, he had enough natural ability for Montréal sportswriters and fans to notice. But he needed to stay in the NHL longer than he did—parts of two seasons—to refine his skills in the way only nightly competition with and against the best players in the world could have. That is what Jackie Robinson was able to do during his decade with the Dodgers.

Cycling By A Graveyard

After the rain stopped, and I'd downed a lunch special from Fatima Chinese Restaurant (a Halal Kung Po Chicken with Hot and Sour Soup), I hopped on Tosca.


My late-afternoon ride took me through some areas that are very familiar to me:  the industrial areas that line Newtown Creek from the Queens side of the Koszciusko Bridge.  Even on weekdays, there really isn't as much traffic as one might expect--and, because much of it is truck traffic, it's sporadic.  


Railroad tracks rim the creek on the Queens side.  Next to the tracks are warehouses and small factories that line Review Avenue.  I've been trying to find out how that street got its name:  It doesn't look to me like very many things ever got reviewed there.


Across the Avenue from those factories and warehouses is a cemetery.  Actually, you can't see the cemetery from the street, as it's on higher ground.  So, what you see is a stone wall.


What's interesting about the stone wall is the graffiti:  It's from a more innocuous time, at least in terms of graffiti:

Also, it's much simpler, in composition and color (Do I sound like a pretentious art critic, or what?), than what we see today.

The style and the content of the graffiti tells you that it's older.  Plus, I've seen the graffiti on that wall for the past 25 or so years.  In fact, I even recall seeing some of it, including the piece in the next photo, during my early adolescence, when my family passed through the area on our way to visit relatives.

It makes me wonder where Joe is now.  He's well into middle age, or possibly even an old man, if he's still alive.  I suspect I could say the same things about Al.  As for Marty and Janet:  Did they stay together?  Get married?  Or did one of them go away to college, or war , and never see each other again?

I also wonder whether any of the people (men, mostly) who work in the area have ever noticed the graffiti on the wall. If they haven't, I guess the job fell to a cyclist.  It makes sense:  Cyclists, in my experience, tend to be curious people.  I wonder why that's so.

Fantasies On Speed, Not Steroids

The other day, and the day before that, I wrote about vintage bike parts that were (and, in some cases, still are) elite, if not sublime.

Now I have to balance it out with the thoroughly ridiculous.  Also, I feel an obligation to show that not all crazy, impractical ideas are being conceived and carried out (of what?) today.

Specifically, I am going to write about a totally ridiculous shift lever.  Having been a cyclist for four decades, and having worked in bike shops, I've seen some doozies, including ones longer and wider than railroad spikes--mounted on top tubes, no less.  (Could that be a cause of the decrease in fertility?)  They are in the category of, "They don't make them like that anymore--thank Goddess!"

So is this shifter I found on eBay:

I mean, in what universe is a shifter shaped like that?  Or, for that matter, in what reality does one combine it with a speedometer.

I'll tell you what milieu I'm talking about, because I spent part of my childhood in it.  It's the decade or so--roughly from the mid-1960s until the mid- or late 1970s--when bikes were designed for boys who, from atop their banana seats and behind their "ape hanger" bars, dreamed of driving "muscle cars" on the Daytona flats.   

Said bikes were designed by like-minded boys, some of them in the bodies of 40-something men.  And the boys of that time are now the 40-, 50- and even 60-something men who still are driven (pun intended) by such fantasies.

I'll bet that someone like that will buy the shift lever/speedometer I found on eBay.  I mean, who else would?

A Crossing

After work today I flew to  San Francisco and have been taking in the Bay Area hills and wind from my bike.  And, yes, I rode by Stanford:

All right.  So I wasn't in the Bay Area.  I was really in Hollywood.  Well, kinda sorta.  I was actually in a neighborhood called Holliswood, which isn't far from where I work.  But I had never been in it before.    At the intersection of Palo Alto and Palo Alto, a car pulled up to me.  A woman whom I would have guessed to be a few years older than me leaned out of her window and asked whether I knew where the Holliswood Hospital is.  


"Sorry, I don't.  Have a good day."


Well, I took a right at that intersection, and two blocks later, there was the hospital!  I felt bad for that woman:  For all I knew, she drove miles in the opposite direction.


Anyway, as it was an utterly gorgeous, if somewhat windy, afternoon, I just rode wherever Arielle took me.  Much of the time, I didn't know where I was.   I didn't mind, really:  Along the way, I stopped at a drive-in convenience store for a drink and snack.  Two men worked there:  I got the impression they were the proprietor and his son, and they had lived in the town--Lynbrook--all of their lives.  And they seemed especially eager to help me--even more so than the other customers, for some reason.


Then I took my Diet Coke with lime and Edy's dixie cup to a schoolyard/playground a block away. I went there because I saw benches in the shade:  I'd been in the sun for a couple of hours and wanted to get out of it for a few minutes, even though the weather wasn't hot at all. There, another black woman a few years older than me started a conversation with me upon seeing Arielle.  She started riding again "a few years ago," after having both of her hips replaced and back surgery.  She says that even though her rides aren't as long as those of some of the cyclists she sees, it's "what I enjoy most in my life, apart from my grandchildren."  I'll think about her the next time I'm whining (even if only to myself) about feeling subpar.


 When I got on my bike again, I finally  knew where I was when I had to stop at a grade crossing for a passing Long Island Rail Road (Yes, they still spell "Rail Road" as two words.)  commuter train.  


I had stopped at that same crossing, which was on Franklin Road, the last time I cycled there.  That was eight years ago, at this time of year.  Then, as now, I didn't get there intentionally, but I didn't mind being there.


I took that ride eight years ago at about this time in September, if I recall correctly.  I probably do, because I also recall it as being around the time I started teaching at La Guardia Community College, which begins its Fall semester around this time of the month.  And it was also about three weeks after I moved out of the apartment Tammy and I shared, and into a neighborhood where I knew no one.


Even though it was less than an hours' ride from where Tammy and I had been living (in Park Slope, Brooklyn), the block to which I moved--which is only seven blocks from where I now live--seemed even more foreign to me than Paris did when I first saw it.  So, for that matter, did most of the rest of Queens, not to mention the Nassau County towns through which I pedaled then and today.


I think that day at the railroad crossing, I knew--or, perhaps, simply accepted the fact--that I was entering a new and very uncertain stage of my life.  I knew what I wanted and needed to do:  In fact, a year earlier I had the experience that taught me I really had no choice but to do it.  And I also realized something I didn't quite understand at the time:  that I wasn't going to be riding "as" Nick for much longer, and that also meant that I probably wouldn't be riding with the racers and wannabes.  


Why didn't I know what all of that meant?  Well, I did know one thing:  that the difference between cycling as Nick and cycling as Justine would not be just a matter of wearing different clothes, having longer hair and possibly riding a different bike.  But how else, I wondered, would they differ? I even asked myself whether I would continue cycling.  After all, I didn't know any other cyclists who were transitioning, and I didn't know (or didn't know that I knew) any who were post-op. Would I even be able to continue?


Well, of course, I found some of the answers through my own research (This is one time I was thankful for the Internet.) and from women cyclists I know.  And, since my operation, Velouria and others have given me some very helpful advice. 


One thing hasn't changed:  I often end up by the ocean even when it isn't my intent.  

I was happy to go to there, though:  Only a few people strolled the boardwalks, and even fewer were on the beaches. I didn't see anyone swimming.


And then there were the couples that remained after the summer romances ended:

Actually, I know nothing about them.  I took the photo because I liked her skirt.


And, once again, I ended up in Coney Island, where I rode down the pier to take a couple of photos.

The young man who was just hanging out was the only other person there.  He asked me what I was doing tonight.  Now that's something I wouldn't have anticipated at that crossing eight years ago!

From Rough Stuff To Gravel

 When you get to, ahem, a certain age, you become very skeptical when you hear the word “new.”  It seems that every genre of bike introduced and every “innovation” coming down the pike has been done decades, or even centuries, earlier.

I am thinking about all of the new and “revolutionary” bike and component designs and materials that appear on the market every year. Carbon fiber frame’s didn’t appear during the ‘90’s any more than the first aluminum frames were made by Alan during the ‘70’s.  Likewise, “rapid rise” derailleurs and disc brakes appeared on bikes decades before they attained their current popularity.

It could also be argued that “mountain” or “off-road” bikes are derivatives of earlier machines made to be ridden away from pavement. Oh, and the newest and latest trend—gravel bikes—is really six decades old, at least.

As a teenager in 1953, John Finley Scott drew a design for a “cow trailing” bike that reflected his interest in riding dirt, gravel and railroad grades.  At that time, few Americans rode bikes once they got their driver’s licenses.  So he looked to England, where there was a culture of “rough stuff” riding. 

John Finley Scott, with his Jim Guard bike as it came from England 

In 1961, he contacted British framebuilder Jim Guard, who brazed together Reynolds 531 manganese-molybdenum steel tubes with Nervex lugs. That was standard for high-quality, high-performance frames of the time.  So was the geometry:  72 degree head and seat tube angles on a 22 1/2 inch frame.  

Little did Guard or Scott know that configuration would become standard for gravel bikes six decades later.

Of course, the frame was outfitted with components very different from today’s.  Disc brakes for bikes were years away.  So Guard brazed on bosses for the most powerful brakes of the time: the extra-beefy cantilevers made for tandems. They, like the Specialites TA Pro Vis 5 (Cyclotouriste) cranks and chainrings Scott chose, would grace early mountain bikes two decades later.

The brakes were originally configured for 27 inch wheels, typical on quality touring bikes in the Anglophone world. Later, Scott had the brake bosses moved to accommodate the smaller-diameter 650b wheels, which allowed him to use wider tires.

Scott rode his proto-gravel bike on and off trails.  He thought it was the perfect way to explore the wonders of the American West. He continued his adventures until 2006, when he was a 72-year-old retired University of California-Davis professor of sociology. He hired a handyman he befriended to trim the trees around his property. That handyman cut down branches—and Scott’s life.

I would love to imagine a 90-year-old John Finley Scott tearing down a mountain pass with riders young enough to be his great-grandchildren on bikes that they probably don’t even realize he conceived, however unwittingly.

A Menage A Trois Of Wolves?

Every culture has its odd and interesting ways of describing natural phenomena.  One of my favorites is the "mariage du loup".  The first time I heard it, I wondered what a wolf's wedding had to do with the weather I'd just experienced.  For that matter, I wondered whether wolves indeed had weddings:  Was there something I missed?

I was cycling near Chenonceau, which alone made me a very privileged individual at that moment. (Really, there are very few better places to ride!)  The weather that day created the sort of picture that every agence du tourisme likes to post on its websites or brochures:  a sea of sunflowers softly undulating a reflection of the sunlight that filled the clear blue sky.  

At least, that's what I saw until the early afternoon.  Then, I felt a couple of drops plip onto my arms.  For a moment, I thought it was sweat, as the air had warmed up.  But then I felt a few more drops on my legs, and on top of my head.  Those drops were falling from the sky--but the sun shone as brightly as it had earlier in the day!

That night, I described my ride to a hostel-keeper.  "Une mariage du loup," he said.  

Most of you,  I am sure, have experienced a "sunshower", perhaps during a ride.  Although I've experienced them here in New York, I think they're more common in more open areas, like the countryside I was touring when I experienced the "mariage du loup".

I encountered it again, sort of, yesterday afternoon:

My first ride since last week's snow took me to Randall's Island, where rain fell on me as the sun shone.  Well, actually, it wasn't rain:  The snow was melting from the railroad viaduct over my head.  

Now, if a train had rumbled overhead, I would have had a sun-thunder shower.  Would that be a menage a trois des loups?

Playing Chicken With The Sunset

In earlier posts, I've written about "playing chicken with the rain".   On days when precipitation the clouds look ready to drop buckets, I might for a ride, all the while daring the sky to deal me a deluge.  I feel I've "won" the "game", if you will, when I arrive home (or wherever I'm going) just as the first drops plop against my skin.

Today there was absolutely no risk of rain.  It was one of those perfect fall days, with the kind of sunlight that feels as if it's trickling through leaves even though the sky is blue.  And the wind and the waves echo a softly crackling flame.  At least, they seem as if they should.

The waves...Yes, I took an afternoon ride to the Rockaways.  Although the water is still warm enough (at least for someone like me) to swim, the air was cool enough that nobody tried.  In fact, the only people in the water were a few surfers.

But I was playing chicken.   You see, I started in the middle of the afternoon and lingered on the boardwalk (actually, it's concrete now) at Rockaway Park.  A month or two ago, I could have lingered--or ridden--even longer than I did.  Well, actually, I could have done that today, too.  But I was also thinking about the time of day--or, more precisely, the time at which the day would end.

After lingering, I rode some more along the boardwalk and, after crossing the Veterans Memorial Bridge into Beach Channel and Howard Beach, took a circuitous route through streets of wood-frame houses--some with boats in their driveways--away from the ocean and bay and up the gradual climb to Forest Park, right in the middle of Queens.  From Forest, I rode streets I've ridden dozens, if not hundreds of times before as the sun began its descent just beyond the railroad tracks and the East River.

Yes, I got back to my apartment just as the twilight began to deepen into evening and the street lamps were lighting.  I had lights with me--  I always keep them in my under-seat bag--but I didn't have to use them.

In other words, I played chicken with the sunset.  And "won"!

A Path From Work

Two of my uncles and my maternal grandfather worked on the Brooklyn waterfront docks. I don't think they could have envisioned anyone going there for a leisurely late-afternoon walk or bike ride.  They probably would have thought such an undertaking in the dead of winter was sheer insanity:  After spending the day working outside in the cold, they wanted to ensconce themselves in the warmth of their apartments and the suppers my grandmother and aunts cooked.  

For that matter, my grandfather and uncles probably could not understand how physical activity could be a way to "relax" at the end of a day.  To be fair, grandpa's last gift to me was a bicycle--albeit one I wouldn't be able to ride for a couple of years--and my uncles lived long enough to see that I would not give up two wheels and two pedals the moment I was legally old enough for four wheels and one pedal with a motor.

Then again, they might have thought it odd that someone would construct a bike and pedestrian lane along the waterfront where they unloaded ships--or that anyone would make a trip, whether by bike, bus or car, to it--and pay money to shop in the stores or eat and drink in the cafes around it.  

Really, I had to wonder what they would have thought of me, spinning my pedals along a path that zigs and zags around places where drinks are poured and shopping carts are unloaded--in the very places where men like them hoisted crates and even railroad cars from ships.

What might have been the strangest thing of all, to them, about the ride I took late yesterday is that I actually find beauty in those places--such that I would stop to take a photo of two bare trees in a copse of steel and brick at the time of day when they would have left the Red Hook twilight's metallic haze  for the incandescent glade of their kitchen tables.

What If Charles V Had A Bicycle?

The hotel in which I'm staying is literally around the corner (all right, and a block away) from the Gare Montparnasse, a railroad station that from which trains depart to, and arrive from, Atlantic coastal cities such as La Rochelle and St. Malo.  It also happens to be very close to a some other interesting places--one in general and the other to me personally.  I cycled to them, and other places.

First to the general interest spot:  Rue Daguerre.  It's been closed off as a pedestrian mall where stands and shops sell everything from Asian fabrics to fresh-baked bread and crayfish that are scooped from a tank when customers buy them.  Most interesting of all--to me, anyway--were the two organ grinders who plied their trade.  Seeing and hearing them on a cool but bright Sunday morning mirrored and echoed the joie de vivre of Paris in the summer. 

On one hand, it seems sad that a street only a couple of blocks long should honor Louis Daguerre.  After all, very few, if any people, contributed as much to science and technology as well as art as he did with his daguerreotype.  What he did was, in essence, was to make it possible to create reproducible--and therefore transferrable-- images directly from real life. 

On another hand, it somehow seems appropriate that such a pedestrian mall would be named for him. Can you imagine what kinds of images he would make from it?

(What's commonly forgotten is that Daguerre was also an accomplished painter.  Then again, people forget that Albert Einstein was a better violinist than most and that Michelangelo was quite a good poet.)

From la rue Daguerre, I pedaled along the southern periphery of the city, past la Place Denfert-Rochereau to Cite Universitaire, the site of dormitories and maisons culturelles that are part of the University of Paris. The first time I came to this city, I stayed in la Maison Norvege.

The funny thing is that the first time I showed up there, the receptionist addressed me in Norwegian, which I have never spoken.  She later told me that I could have passed for a Norwegian--which, given my colorings and facial structure, makes sense.  Almost everywhere I have travelled, people have taken me for Scandanavian, Dutch or German.  Or, when my French was better than it is now (I can still get by with it), people in France, upon seeing and hearing me,  thought I was Breton, Normand or Alsatian.  Now, when I speak French, I am told that I have more of a German than an English or American accent.  How that happened, I don't know.

Anyway, from there I cycled over bridges and overpasses, into and out of Paris.  I rolled by belle epoque buildigs as well as glass-box towers that had even less charm than their stateside counterparts.  And I pedaled through suburbs as well as parts of the city no tourist ever sees.  In one of those suburbs--Ivry--I stopped in a store to buy some fruit and the African proprietors treated me royally.

Speaking of royal:  The highlight of today's ride was the Chateuau de Vincennes.  Think of Versailles without all of the fancy accoutrements and set up to house military weapons, prisoners, manuscripts and religious items as well as the king and his family, and you have Vincennes.

People often forget that a chateau, or castle, is usually not just a single building; it's a compound encompassing a number of buildings over a fairly wide expanse of land.  So it is with Vincennes. 

About Charles V, who commissioned and lived in it:  One might argue that he brought the Renaissance to France.  He commissioned translations of the Greek and Roman classics of literature and science into French, and classical influences can also be seen in the public works commissioned.  Perhaps it's no surprise that his cousin, Charles V of Bohemia, is also considered one of the master builders of that land, which now comprises much of the Czech Republic.

I think he could have used a bicycle to get around that compound, though!