Celebration Rides

Yesterday's post was rather depressing, if necessary.  So today I'll be a bit more cheerful.  Or, at least, I'll follow Walt Whitman and celebrate myself.

Last Thursday, on the Fourth, I said I'd "sneak in" a ride before going to a barbecue with friends.  Well, that barbecue started a bit later than planned and, of course, there was no rule about being there when it started.  

When does a barbecue "start" anyway?  When the first burger or chicken wing is placed on the grill?  Or when the first one is eaten?  Even if you can fix a "start" time, when is someone "late" for a barbecue?  When the food runs out?  

Cyclists Resting at the Top of Pendle Hill by Gosha Gibek

Anyway, the ride I "snuck" in took me to Connecticut and back:  137 kilometers, or about 85 miles.  

A ride and a barbecue:  Really, what more could I want on my birthday--which just happens to be US Independence Day!


The other day, I celebrated another "birthday".  On Sunday, the 7th, I took another ride to Connecticut. I took a longer route, though, from Rye to the Nutmeg State, over a series of roads that climbed ridges and looped around farms north of Greenwich.  Then I descended one of those ridges into the town of Greenwich.  In all, I rode 169 kilometers, or 105 miles.

When I set out on my ride, though, I didn't realize I was celebrating another "birthday":  It's something that occurred to me while I was climbing one of the ridges.  On that day, exactly ten years ago (7 July 2009), I had my gender reassignment surgery.  It kept me off my bike for a few months and I started this blog not long after I started riding again.

Oh, and while I was riding/celebrating, the US Women's Soccer/Football team won the World Cup.  If I were just a little more self-centered, I'd say they did it for me, or there was some sort of cosmic convergence.  But I have just enough humility to believe in coincidences that I can't explain.

Then again, when you can celebrate, do you really need to explain?

It Was Always The Future--Until Now?

A sportswriter once joked that soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) will always be the sport of the future in America.

And an economist once said, only half in-jest, that Brazil will always be the country of the future.

Likewise, back in the '70's Bike Boom, bicycles were being touted as the "transportation of the future."  Around 1979 (the time of the second American "gas crisis") I saw, in a shop window, a touring bike with a sign hanging from it proclaiming it "the RV (recreational vehicle) of the '80's."

Then, of course, Ronald Reagan was elected and put the kibosh on anything--except nuclear power--that might've reduced this country's dependence on fossil fuels.

Through the '80's and '90's, bicycle sales in the US basically flatlined, with a few upticks in the middle of each decade.  Anecdotally, I don't recall seeing many more cyclists on the road in the late '90's than I saw around 1983, when I first moved back to New York.  When I was mountain biking in the mid- and late '90's, I would sometimes see new faces on the trails, but they never seemed to do any other kind of cycling.  I wonder how many of them still ride.

I got to thinking about these phenomena after I came across Clive Thompson's article in Wired. "The Vehicle of the Future Has Two Wheels, Handlebars and is a Bike," exclaims the title.   I checked my cynicism at the door and read it.  He made one really interesting point:  The same technologies that are bringing us driverless cars and other things that seemed like the stuff of science fiction not so long ago are bringing us back to a reliable technology that's more than a century old, i.e., the bicycle.

Photo by Noah Berger

One of the main drivers, if you will, of that would-be trend is bike-sharing programs.  As he pointed out, they were tried way back in the '60's but, with no way to track the location of the bikes, the programs quickly died.  When the first of the modern share programs started just over a decade ago, the technology that gave rise to "smart" phones and their apps made it possible to track bikes--and, in the early programs, to create docks where bicycles could be secured.  Newer programs are, of course, dockless because they rely on another technology--phone apps.

Thompson didn't intend any pun when he said that to see the future, we don't have to re-invent the wheel.  And I don't mean a pun when I say that perhaps technology is bringing us full circle.

Bicycles just might be the transportation of the future--right now.

Why Was I Doing My Commute On Sunday?

Sometimes I joke about "going through the Gate of Hell to get to work every day."  The truth is, I ride over Hell Gate and by the Hell Gate Bridge when I cross the RFK Memorial (a.k.a. Triborough) Bridge every morning.

On Sunday I took Bill and Cindy by it.  If that was supposed to scare them into living on the straight and narrow, it wasn't very effective.  Then again, how could I scare, or persuade, anybody or anything into being straight?  


But I digress.  We were riding to Van Cortland Park.  They wanted to take the Greenway along the Hudson River (and the West Side Highway.)  While I like the views and that it's so close to the water, I knew that on a sunny Sunday, half of the cyclists, 70 percent of the skateboarders and 99 percent of the people with dogs or baby strollers would be on that path.  Pedaling through the Port Morris industrial area--deserted on Sunday--and Bronx side streets would be bucolic by comparison.

So, after taking Bill and Cindy through, or by, the Gates of Hell, we descended (literally) to Randall's Island where we rode underneath the Amtrak viaduct.  After the Gate, these arches were rather impressive.  Funny thing is, I don't normally see them that way:  They are, after all, part of my commute.

So are these houses on Alexander Avenue in the Bronx:

Not far away are these houses.   Save for the graffiti next to the "fish" building, almost nobody expects to see them in the South Bronx:

They're diagonally across from each other on the Grand Concourse.  The mansion is the Freedman House, built in the 1920s for formerly-wealthy people who had fallen on hard times. Now it contains an event space, art studio and bed-and-breakfast. It's almost jarring to see such a classically Florentine house across the Concourse from the Art Deco building with its mosaic. 

Anyway, Cindy had an appointment and had to leave us before we reached Van Cortlandt Park. Back when I lived on the Upper West Side and in Washington Heights, I used to take quick spins to the park, where I would check out whatever was on display in the Manor or watch the Irish rugby and soccer players. Time marches on, and now there are different folks playing a different game.

The clouds thickened, but never threatened rain.  But they didn't portend anything like Spring, either.  Rolling across the hills of Riverdale, they broke against the shore of Spuyten Duyvil, another place almost nobody expects to find in the Bronx:

When Carelessness And Distraction Collide

In my high school, one of the science teachers was also the soccer coach.   I heard that he used to give his students a "problem":  If a ball is rolling at 10 mph, a 140-pound player is running at it from one direction and a 180-pound player is running from another direction, what will be the trajectories of the players and the ball?

Then he would tell his students, "We can go down to the field and find out."  For the rest of class, they would watch the team (which included me) at practice.

Now here's another real-life physics problem, albeit without much humor:  A woman is driving a Buick at 62 MPH in a 45 MPH zone.  She picks up her cell phone.  

What will happen to the cyclist who just happens to be riding along the same road, in the same direction?

Jeffrey Gordon Pierce

Well, the answer to that one is grim, to say the least.  Jeffrey Gordon Pierce, a 53-year-old teacher at the Inman (South Carolina) Intermediate School was thrown off his bike after he was hit by said Buick, driven by Heather Renee Hall, an Inman resident.

Heather Renee Hall

Well, she was an Inman resident until yesterday.  Her new residence, for now, is the Spartanburg County Detention Center.  Jeffrey Gordon Pierce, meanwhile, is in the South Carolina earth:  He died at the scene of the crash.

And, yes, he wore a helmet.  Even that wasn't enough to prevent a horrible crash, let alone influence its outcome, when carelessness and distraction collided.  

R.I.P. The Bicycle Chef

A few days ago, I wrote about Stephen Ambruzs' bike shop/ cafe, "Downshift", and how it--and other bike cafes--could be affected by the repeal of "net neutrality."

Today, nearly any municipality with a community of a few hundred or more cyclists has at least one place where you can have espresso or Earl Grey--or even a craft beer or cider--and chat, check your e-mail or check out some books and magazines while your brakes are being adjusted.  It's sometimes hard to believe that just a decade ago, very few such places existed.

One of the first bicycle cafes--or, at least, one of the first places to bill itself as such--opened in Sacramento (near Davis), California in 2005.  Business owners, especially restaurateurs, often name their enterprises after themselves.  Well, the fellow who started the bicycle cafe I'm about to mention did just that--well, sort of.  Bicycle Chef was indeed begun by someone who was a bicycle racer--Category II, to be exact--and a certified chef.

Actually, by the time he started the cafe, he was no longer racing:  a back injury ended his career. But he never gave up his passion for pedaling:  He continued to ride and coach young riders--as well as football (soccer) players--even as the responsibilities of his business and family took up most of his time.

Christopher Davis-Murai with his wife, Jennifer Davis-Murai, and their children, Naomi and Toshiro.

It never seems fair that, like the rest of us, such a person has only a limited amount of time in this world.  For Christopher Davis-Murai, that amount of time totaled 51 years, and it ended last Thursday when he collapsed just after stepping outside his house. 

Jennifer Davis-Murai has just lost her husband, and Naomi and Toshiro their father.  Many others in their community lost a mentor and friend.  And, many of us could say we've lost a pioneer who helped to create an idea--a bicycle cafe--that is part of today's cycling landscape.

Riding Into Crowds And The Wild Blue Yonder

One thing about air shows:  You don't have to be at the venue in which they're held in order to see them.  You can see them for miles around.

I should have remembered that when I decided to head for Point Lookout yesterday.  When I got there, I wondered why it was so crowded (well, at least in comparison to the way it usually is).  Jones Beach, where the the Bethpage Air Show was held, is only the length of a football (soccer, I mean) field from the rocks at Point Lookout where I usually lunch and/or meditate in the middle of my ride.  So, of course, the spectators at Point Lookout had as good a vantage point as the folks at Jones Beach or Bethpage.

In a way, that turned out just as well.  I took Tosca--my Mercian fixed gear--along a sandy path to a more remote area of the beach.  The tide was out, so there was a lot of beach.  (In places like Jones Inlet, what's good for bathers or beach loungers is not good for boaters:  The fact that the tide was out also meant that sandbars were exposed.) She didn't mind that I pushed her along the sand:  I pedaled into the wind most of the way out there, so I was pushing pretty hard on the pedals.  

Of course, that meant I had the wind at my back for most of my way back. Interestingly, even though there was a crowd at Point Lookout, I didn't see much traffic anywhere along my ride--not even along the strips of bars and restaurants in Long Beach and Rockaway Beach.

They were still watching the air show, I think, when I got home.

Striders: The Future Peloton?

When I first became a dedicated cyclist, during my teen years, I started to follow bicycle racing.  In those days, before the Internet and 24-hour news cycles, it was much more difficult to do.  There was little or no coverage in any of the mainstream media.  Bicycling! ran stories about the Tour, the Giro and some of the classics, but that came out only once a month.  You pretty much had to go to a large city to find a place like Hotaling's, where I used to find French, British and other European publications.

During my rides, I would sometimes imagine myself in the peloton with Eddy Mercx or Bernard Hinault.  I wondered, then, if I would have been like them--or one of their competitors--had I grown up in Brittany or Flanders or Tuscany and pedaled in the midget and youth races in the days when I was playing Babe Ruth League baseball (and high-school soccer) in New Jersey.

What I would have done to ride in a Strider race!



This one was just held in Fort Worth, Texas.  It's part of a series of Strider races that will culminate in a Strider World Championship on 21-22 July, in Salt Lake City.

I mean, really, how can you not love it?

Strider, the sponsor of these races, is the leading brand of so-called "balance bikes", which have no pedals--or training wheels.  Proponents of this type of bike claim that the most important skill in cycling is balance, and a kid learns it more quickly than on a bike with training wheels.  Moreover, their advocates argue, because balance bikes don't have pedals, chains or sprockets, they are free of the sharp surfaces that can hurt a kid or simply snag his or her pants.

If I had a kid, I don't know whether I'd choose a balance bike or training wheels.  Well, maybe after watching Strider races, I might be swayed!

Riding On Air--Or Full Of Hot Air?

When I first built my Bontrager Race Lite frame--my Christmas present to myself in 1995--I installed a Rock Shox Mag 21 fork because that was what I had.  Within a few months, though, I'd replaced it with a Rock Shox Judy SL.  Even if you weren't a mountain biker--or on this planet--back then, you've probably seen the Judy SL, with its distinctive yellow finish, in person or images.

It was a great fork, at least for a few rides.  It suspension consisted of a Monocellular Urethane (MCU) spring with a hydraulic damping cartridge.  MCU, like "carbon fiber", shows the power of words or, more precisely, marketing:  Both terms entice people to fork (pun intended) over large sums of money for plastic.

To be fair, though, the hydraulic damping cartridges weren't much sturdier than those springs.  Neither one stood up to sustained punishment, something I could inflict on a bike even in those days, when I was skinny.  

I would soon find out, though, that my springs and cartridges weren't failing because I was a particularly hard-charging rider, as much as I fancied myself as one.  Other mountain bikers were having similar experiences.  In fact, I even witnessed riders losing their suspension in the middle of rides or, worse, jumps.  

Some of those riders switched to other suspension forks, like those from Manitou and Marzocchi.  On the other hand, other riders--including yours truly--retrofitted their Judy forks with Englund air cartridges that we kept inflated with tiny pumps that had needles like the ones used to fill up basketballs and soccer balls at the ends of them.

Those air cartridges were far more durable and were smoother than elastomers (especially when they got dirty) or other kinds of suspension.  It makes sense when you realize that what is arguably the first successful kind of suspension for bicycles (or wheeled vehicles generally) ever made is the pneumatic tire.

Hey, it's not for nothing that we have the phrase "like floating on air" to describe a smooth ride.

With that in mind, I can't help but to wonder how this bicycle would ride:

What I am about to tell you is not a joke:  The bike is inflatable.  Yes, the bike.  

Its frame consists of a series of rubber tubes connected by valves.  This system is supposed to help keep the bike rigid while it's ridden.  The seat stays (or, as the psfk article calls them, the "tubes connecting the seat and back wheel") can be adjusted to give a softer or harder ride.

In case you were wondering:  The rubber tubes were designed with a Kevlar sheath which, according to the bike's designers, make it difficult to cut and help to support the rider's weight.

The bike is designed so that when it's deflated, it will fit in the storage boot of a car.  So, perhaps, it won't surprise you to learn that the bicycle was designed by Ford engineers.

Henry Ford was a bicycle mechanic and, even in his seventies, took "a three mile spin every evening after supper," according to a Time magazine article.  I wonder what he would make of this inflatable bike.

From A Late Night, Into The Mists

Last night, I stayed at work a bit later than I expected.  What that meant was, among other things, encountering less traffic than I usually see.

It also meant dealing with a change in the weather.  In the morning, I rode to work in a drizzle that occasionally turned into rain.  But, by the time night rolled around, a dense fog blanketed the city.

Normally, I can see the towers on the Queens spur of the RFK Memorial Bridge as soon as I make the turn from 132nd Street onto the Randall's Island Connector.  At that point, the entrance to the RFK Bridge lane is about 1 3/4 miles, or about 3 kilometers, away.  

Last night, though, I could not see the towers or cables until they were right in front of me--when I was in the lane.

When I reached the middle of the bridge, over the waters of Hell Gate (which I couldn't see), I looked back at the soccer field on the Randall's Island shore:

and ahead to the Queens side

My apartment is in there, somewhere!

Out Front? Or A Fashion Accessory? Or A Human Shield?

If you live any place long enough, you notice changes.  Even if you find yourself with more choices in stores, restaurants or whatever--or if the buildings and parks get fixed up--you'll probably become one of those bitter or cantankerous people who grumbles, "I remember when..."

I'm starting to become one of those people in my current neighborhood of Astoria, Queens.   Before I moved here, I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn for eleven years.  That was long enough for me to see it turn from "Dyke Slope" (The Lesbian Herstory Archives are still located in the neighborhood.) to a colony of affluent young couples who divided their work thusly:  one worked worked on Wall Street or was running a tech startup, the other pushed the kid in a stroller from pre-school to soccer practice or dance lessons while toting a yoga mat (and wearing $100 yoga pants).  

By that time, the joke was that the kids were the fashion accessories.  If you saw the way those parents (yes, some of them were men) pushed their carts, with the kid (or, more precisely, the kid's outfit) prominently displayed, you might think it wasn't a joke.

When some of those parents crossed the street, I really thought some of them might be using the kids as human shields!

I was thinking of them when I came across this bike:

It would be perfect for them, don't you think?

Davis: Still Trying To Set People On The Path Of Cycling

"It was Portland before Portland was Portland."

That is how someone described Davis, California for me. 

 Today, when you ask people to name a "bicycle-friendly", they are likely to think of the City of Roses.  I will not quibble with its reputation:  Few American cities have done more to promote bicycling as a viable means of transportation (though, as in most places, some of those efforts have been misguided).  Portlanders adopted their first bike plan in 1973; after meeting its goals, which included 190 miles of bike paths, new bike plans followed in 1996 and 2010.

It should be pointed out, however, that Davis was developing a reputation as a bicycle haven as early as the 1950's, at a time when few American adults cycled--and Portland was still a lumber-and-mining town.  (When Bill Walton arrived to play with the Trailblazers, the local NBA team, he was dismayed to find a "redneck" burg.)  The local agricultural college had just become the University of California-Davis (UC's seventh campus); the city's flat terrain and warm climate as well as enthusiasm over a new educational project attracted a diverse group of people who were willing, well, to try something new.  

According to local lore, the real driving (pun intended!) force behind the city's pro-bike efforts were a family who returned from a year in the Netherlands in the early 1960s.  They found sympathetic ears in a newly-elected city council that, no doubt, saw bicycling as a way to promote their city as well as the new UC campus. In 1967, Davis striped what were claimed to be the first bicycle-specific lanes in the US.  

Other efforts and experiments soon followed, which included facilities  and ways of accommodating bicycles at traffic signals.   The university invented the bicycle roundabout, now used on many other schools, to handle the large number of bicycles on campus.  Today, the city of ten  square miles boasts 50 miles of on-street bike lanes the same amount of off-street bike paths.

Even after other cities have ramped up their efforts to make themselves more appealing to cyclists, Davis is still seen as a cyclist's paradise--at least, in comparison to other American locales.  A far higher percentage of its citizens cycle to work or school every day than in almost any other city of its population (67,666, according to a 2015 estimate).  Still, Susan L. Handy muses, "Perhaps even more interesting than the fact that so many people in Davis cycle is the fact that so many more don't."

Professor Handy is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC-Davis.  She is also Director of the Sustainable Transportation Center, part of the Federal University Transportation Centers Program.  She is probably  in as good a position as anyone can be to understand patterns of bicycle usage--and, more important, what might be behind those patterns.

She also uses what is, arguably, some of the best bicycle infrastructure in the United States. Still, she says it is not enough.  "[W]hile good infrastructure is necessary to get many people bicycling, it is not enough to get most people bicycling".  The experience of Davis would seem to bear this out:  Although a higher percentage of Davis workers ride their bikes to their jobs than their colleagues even in nearby Berkeley (home to another UC campus)  or Palo Alto (Stanford University), or in other campus towns like Ithaca, New York (Cornell University)  and Boulder, Colorado, the number for Professor Handy's hometown is still only 15 percent.  

Still more telling, a similar percentage of children cycle to their soccer games, even though most don't have to go very far.  

According to Professor Handy's research, whether or not children cycle to their soccer games is influenced by whether or not their parents also ride.  Ditto for whether or not they--or their older siblings who attend high school--ride their bikes to classes.  Of course, as in most places, whether or not kids ride to their high schools is also a function of whether or not they have drivers' licenses or access to automobiles.

Interestingly, according to the research, friends' and peers' attitudes about cycling have little or no effect on whether kids or teenagers ride to school or their soccer games.  Based on my own admittedly informal observations, I would say the same for whether or not adults ride their bikes to work.

Another factors that  helps to depress the numbers of cyclists who ride to school or work is the perception of safety:  People often express fear of traffic, crime or other factors.  (I often hear such anxieties expressed here in New York.) Perhaps not surprisingly, women express these fears more than men do.  And then there are those who simply don't like to ride bikes.

Nobody seems to know how to influence that last category. (I failed with a spouse and a couple of romantic partners!) They, like those who come from families who don't ride or worry about their safety, are not pedaling to work because of their attitudes about cycling.  And, as Professor Handy says, attitudes are even more important than infrastructure in getting people to forsake the steering wheel and grab a handlebar.

If there is anything discouraging about Professor Handy's conclusions, it is this:  She came to them in one of the few places in the United States with two generations' worth of "cycling memory", if you will.  In most other places in this country, most drivers have little or no idea of how to act around cyclists because they haven't ridden a bike  on a street, for transportation or other utilitarian purposes, since they were children--if indeed they even rode then.  In much of Europe, by contrast, far greater numbers of drivers are still cyclists, or have ridden recently in their lives.  And they are more likely to have come from families with at least one member who regularly cycled.  

I offer myself as an example:  I am the first--and, to date, only-- member of my family to regularly ride a bike beyond the age at which I could hold a drivers' license.  (I am also the first to do a number of other things, such as earn a high school diploma and college degree, and to do things that are the subject of my other blog!)   But I am an anomaly:    I simply found that I enjoyed riding and never lost that love.  I rode, even with a complete lack of infrastructure , very little cycling culture and few peers who rode. And I continue to ride. On the other hand, I have never been successful at enticing anyone to ride who wasn't already inclined to do so. The complaints and excuses were the same then as the ones I hear now.  

As Professor Handy points out, the real challenge is to change those attitudes--if they can indeed be changed.  She seems to think it possible.

A Paris Bike Tour To The Grand Train

Sometimes I am a creature of habit.  Yesterday I went to Paris Bike Tour, from whom I rented a bike when I was here last year.  I did the same this time, except that I  got one of their "official" bikes (with the PBT logo and colors) this time.  Last year's bike was a silver Arcade, which was similar, if not the same, except for one thing:  the bike I got this year has a Shimano Dynohub powering the front and rear light, which I used last night.  Last year's bike had battery lights.

At first, I thought this year's bike was slower--or that I've aged more than a year or gained more weight than I thought I did since last year. (Don't ask!  Never ask a woman questions about her weight! ;-)) Then I thought that the seat was slowing me down--after all, it's the cushy sort found on bikes like this, and I'm used to my Brooks saddles.  But, finally, after steering out of the rond (or roundabout, as the Brits call them) of the Place de la Bastille, I realized why everything felt so sluggish:  The tires had about half as much air in them as they needed.  

I could have topped off the tires at any number of places, namely bike shops and gas stations.  As it happened, PBT is closer to Bastille to any other such place (that I know about, anyway), so I went to them.  Just for good measure, they did a quick check of the rest of the bike, and found nothing amiss.

All was well with the world, and off I went on the bike.  Mostly, I've rambled:  I've had no particular destinations in mind.  Actually, I headed for the hills, such as they exist.  Of course, I rode up the longest and steepest hill in Paris:  the one leading to the Sacre Coeur de Montmartre--and, of course, down to the teeming streets and open-air markets of Goutte d'Or, often called the "petite Afrique" (little Africa) of Paris.

When I pedaled in that neighborhood--and neighboring Barbes-Rochechouart-- this year and last, I noticed that however well-intentioned the bike lanes are, it is all but impossible to stay on them unless you want to stop-and-start, or do a lot of dodging and weaving.  It seems that, even by Paris standards, the streets and sidewalks of that neighborhood are narrow, and people are always out shopping or otherwise out and about, always in large groups. So, they almost can't help but to spill into the bike lanes.  They almost invariably get out of your way, at least to the degree they can, and say "pardon".  I saw only one cyclist argue with the pedestrians.  That cyclist himself is African, from Senegal.  "Vous n'etes pas francaise"--"You are not French" he said with a knowing grin.  I nodded, sheepishly.  "Pas problem.  Vous etes sympathique."  I almost expected him to say I am "tel" or "trop" sympathique--so or too nice--buy he just left it at "nice".  

Anyway, from there, I rode to Saint Denis--home of the Stade de France, site of the Euro soccer championship and one of the terror attacks in November--only to find the Basilica closed.  Still, it's impressive from the outside:

If it looks unbalanced, that's because the North Tower (the one that would have been on the left) was removed in 1840 after it was damaged by lightning three years earlier and subsequent storms.  Work on reassembling and installing is now in progress.  

But the ride to St. Denis was not for naught, as I found a path along the canal to La Villette, a few kilometers away in the northern part of Paris, where it connects with Canal de l'Ourcq, which in turn connects  with the Canal St. Martin-- an extremely popular spot for cycling, walking and picnics.

Then, after some more wandering I decided to hop a train:

No, I didn't go back to New York.  Rather, I chanced upon something I'd heard about before coming to Paris.

The Grand Train is held, as you might expect, in an old rail terminal and storage yard.  It was nice to look at tains that had, not only power, but also style.

You really had the sense that people rode those trains.

  

In those days, all Frenchmen wore moustaches.  At least, in the movies--and on trains--they did:

The engine in the photo below was designed for use in rugged Pyrenees terrain no other vehicles could reach.  It was used as a "relay" to and from ambulances and other cars and trucks, as well as to get pilgrims to Lourdes. 

It made its first run more than two decades after the first Tour de France cyclists climbed those peaks in the Pyrennes, and its last about two decades before I pedaled up them.

The organizers of Grand Train seem to have "discovered" some interesting uses for old track beds--like a "beach"

a "garden" 

and even a chicken coop.

(It looks like someone thought formal wear was required for this event!)

Hey, they even figured out that a gravelled track bed makes great petanque  court.

I was not surprised:  My Italian grandfather used to play bocce on a disused rail bed underneath an almost-equally disused viaduct of the New York transit system.

What would he think of that young lady?

Why Aren't You Paying Attention To The Tour de France?

Funny he should mention it:  The Tour de France is in progress.  

Yesterday, "Retrogrouch" said he is "barely" following this year's race.  I could say the same thing.  In fact, other cyclists I know who've followed Tours (and Giros and Vueltas) past say that they're paying little or no attention to the latest editions of these contests.

It got me to wondering why this is so, and whether it's just an American phenomenon.  Could Europeans' interest in those races also be waning?

Now, to be fair, the Euro football (soccer) championship ended three days ago.  It's held every four years, like the Olympics, and this year's version was held in France.  As it happens, les bleus made it to the championship game, which they lost to the Portuguese side.

Then again, the tournament was held in France in 1984 and 2000, both of which the French won.  This year's final matchup brought Cristiano Ronaldo-- who some regard as the world's best player-- and Antoine Greizmann--who could become his successor, according to some experts--onto the pitch as opponents.  So, even those football fans who aren't French or Portuguese (or simply fans of those teams) could find something interesting to watch.  Also, there was the "feel good" story about the Icelandic squad, which made it all the way to the quarterfinals against France (and, along the way, beat England).  This is especially shocking when you realize that more people live on Staten Island than in Iceland, where there are no professional leagues!

Stories like those keep casual fans interested in major sporting events.   Such drama seems to be lacking in this year's Tour.  There are favorites and "dark horses", to be sure.  But there aren't the sort of compelling rivalries, in part there is no rider-of-his-generation like Bernard Hinault and, thus, no one who's in a position to ascend to the throne, if you will.   There is also not a "feel good" story like the pre-fall-from-grace Lance Armstrong's (though, even in his heyday, there were whispers that he was doping).  




And, let's face it, there's nationalism in sports.  It's no longer startling to see British riders dominate the race, just it was no longer a shock to see Americans win after Greg LeMond.  While there are some very good riders from the former Soviet Bloc countries, none of them yet poses a challenge to the established order.  One reason, I think, is that those riders tend to dominate in sprints, often at the expense of other events, just as the best British riders--until about fifteen years ago--were time trialists.  Even Peter Sagan doesn't look ready to make the "breakthrough", and even if it did, it wouldn't excite fans in the US or the major cycling nations of Western Europe.

Finally, I think some people have given up, or are giving up, on cycling because of the widespread doping.  While football and other sports have their share of "juicers", the problem doesn't seem anywhere near as rampant.  At least, that's how fans seem to see it.

Anyway, if you want to read about a really exciting Tour, Retrogrouch wrote a very nice account of the 1986 version, which had everything this year's edition seems to lack.