Today the US National Soccer team played its counterpart from England. I would've liked to watch it, but I don't have the necessary cable service (by choice) and I didn't want to go into a sports bar. I think most of you could understand why.
Being a good American, I would've rooted for this country's team. But I don't expect them to win the tournament. Not many other people do, either. If and when the US team is eliminated, if Italy's still standing, I'll root for them. And after la forza azzuri, I'll root for les bleus of France. But if Brazil wins, I won't be upset.
However, I don't follow sports with the same passion I once did. I could blame the hormones and such, and Dirt and her ilk will say that I'm impersonating feminized behavior. Rather, it's harder to feel passion for pursuits and performers that have little, if anything, to do with my own life. Plus, professional sports is an overwhelmingly male field. Now, sometimes I don't mind that. After all, when you I someone like Lance Armstrong (who, by the way, I have seen in person and photographed climbing Chamrousse in the 2001 Tour de France) exerting himself and not wearing much while doing it, well, let's say I don't look the other way or think about strategy.
Anyway...oh, wait, you wanted serious intellectual discussion, didn't you? OK, here goes. Well, OK, what follows may not be terribly intellectual. But you might enjoy some of it. After all, it is about a bike ride. And you know how I love to ride, and to write about it!
Well, today I took another one of those aimless rambles that led me to some of the same streets three or four times and others in ways I hadn't expected. And somehow I ended up, after an hour and a half of pedalling my fixed-gear, here:
If you hear me or anyone else speaking in superlatives about this place, as some wise ol' philosopher once said, believe the hype. I have slurped lemon Italian ices in any number of communes in and out of this country. None come close to what they make in this place. Yes, they make the stuff themselves. And, yes, you're likely to find actual lemon in yours, just as you'll find pieces of whatever fruit went into whatever flavor you've ordred. (Their flavor list is in the window, to the right of the guys in white.) I haven't tried all of their flavors--somehow I just can't bring myself to eat an Italian ice with peanut butter in it--but the ones I've tried were all excellent: cherry, coconut, cremolata (like the ice cream), pistachio, cantaloupe, watermelon and a couple of others I can't think of right now. Lemon is, of course, the classic, and when you eat it, you realize just how good the ice is: It's elegant and, in its own way, pure--sort of like a beautifully done classic sauce, without any extra ingredients to detract from it. Of the other flavors, I like cherry the best. The office manager of my department likes the coconut ice.
It may not be Gatorade or an energy bar, but in its own way, it's the perfect snack to have during a ride: It's delicious and refreshing, but not too heavy. And, right across from LIKC, there's the perfect spot to enjoy it:
Yes, what better place to enjoy an Italian ice than in a park where older Italian men are playing bocce, watching their friends play it or simply passing the time of day? Now there's a sport. Imagine the sense of deja vu I had at the end of a day of ascending and descending Pyreneean peaks and seeing, in the parc de ville of a ville that was tres petite, a bunch of weathered but rather dignified men immersed in their day's petanque match.
Neither they nor the men I saw in Corona were making any money from making metal balls roll and sometimes skitter on strips of sand. Nor did the friends of my grandfather and uncles who played underneath the ancient railroad viaduct in my old Brooklyn neighborhood. But they were having as much serious fun, or were having as much fun about being serious, as anyone in Major League Baseball, the NBA or the English Premier League. Maybe more so.
Could this be Il Giro d'Italia meets Les Bourgeois de Calais?
But the determined faces were not just those of older men. On this day of major World Cup games, a couple of aspiring stars were in their own shootout:
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I was scooping and slurping my sublime glacial confection on a bench about fifteen feet behind the kid in the red shirt. When the ball sailed by him and missed me and Tosca by less than the width of her handlebar, the kid turned and said, "I'm sorry, lady!"
Can you imagine some goalie in the World Cup doing that? Clint Dempsey's shot leaves Robert Green sprawled on his side and, after getting up and dusting himself off, he turns to the crowd, looks at a middle-aged female spectator and says, "Pardon me, ma'am"? Now that would be a World Cup moment!
Even Tosca would appreciate it:
Which reminds me: I caught her in just the right light and she showed something she shares with Arielle, my road bike:
You can see, at least somewhat, what makes their finishes unusual. They're both Mercian's Number 57, the so-called "flip-flop" finish. If you look at the top tube, you can see what happens to the color when the purple flips or flops, depending on your point of view.
In case you're interested: That's a single-speed freewheel on the left side. (Why am I bragging about that? I have no excuse: I have no more testosterone!) I haven't ridden it yet. On the bike's right is a fixed gear. I know I don't use the same gear ratio as anyone who's ever riden in Vigorelli, but what the hell.
It's a little odd to write in a cycling blog when you haven't ridden in a couple of days. We've had some rain, and I feel like I have a chest cold. I think it may have developed when I fell asleep the other night in front of my open window with neither a blanket nor very much clothing on me. And the temperature dropped steeply.
Anyway, the parts I ordered from Velo Orange came today: handlebars, brake levers, fenders and a bell. They're all going on the Schwinn I bought over the weekend. I guess it's appropriate that I ordered Velo Orange parts to go on the orange bike. But I also have Velo Orange stuff on my Mercians, and my Miss Mercian will also have some of their parts and accessories. Sometimes I think a velo orange is a state of mind--even if the bike is "flip-flop purple/green," a.k.a. Number 57 on Mercian's colour chart.
Now that I haven't ridden in a couple of days, I've found myself thinking about someplace where I'd like to ride again, but can't. Actually, one can ride there only once a year: during the Five Boro Bike Tour. I've done that ride a number of times, including a few of the early editions. Those were the best because it wasn't quite as big as it is now. Although I'm happy to see more people cycling, I get wistful sometimes about the days when we were the fringe.
But I digress. There's one part of the ride that can be done only on the day of the ride, for it is off-limits to bicycles at any other time. Here it is:
I took this photo from the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, on my way home from my ride in Jersey. Even though I have seen this image--or some reflection of it--thousands of times, I still get woozy with deja vu, as Kurt Vonnegut said in Breakfast of Champions.
I saw an image very much like the one you see here from the window of my room on Dahill Road in Brooklyn when I was a child. It was like a neon sign in a window of my dreams. And, of course, when I woke from the dream, I saw the bridge and wanted to cross it, wherever it went.
The bridge in the photo is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. There is a promenade that winds under it as curls around the rocks and flotsam on the Brooklyn shore, from Coney Island to near the old Brooklyn Army Terminal. If you're ever down that way, take the ride: The bridge, the rocky shores and the wide expanse of the bay could make you think, if only for a moment, that you're in San Francisco.
Even though I know exactly where the bridge goes, it still is the symbol for every crossing, if you will, I encounter.
And I think of it when I get on a bike, wherever I am and wherever I'm going--especially if I still haven't decided on my destination when I start to pedal.
"Velouria" wrote about me and this blog on her "Lovely Bicycle!" blog.
She made me blush. I may not know much, but I know this: The only thing better than a man who can make a woman blush is another woman who can make another woman blush!
Part of me wonders whether I deserve such a wonderful write-up. First of all, look at the photo at the top of her blog and the one at the top of this one. Not only is she (or whoever took that photo) a better photographer than I'll ever be, she's also more beautiful and stylish. Take a look another look at that photo: Do you really think I can compete with that?
Also, look at the layout and design of Lovely Bicycle! I wouldn't have a clue as to how to do anything like that. And, finally, read her writing and compare it to my ragged prose.
But, hey, what can I say? I'll take the compliments. Besides, she's right definitely right about the fact that I've experienced two completely different aspects of cycling, and I'm one of the very few people who's experienced both of them.
The funny thing is that I was the "lycra-wearing, hard-training, fast-spinning, Alps-conquering roadie...named Nick" precisely because I wanted to be "the woman who cycles to work in a skirt and heels." Or, more precisely, I was the hard-riding guy precisely because I always knew that, deep down, I was, and was meant to be, that woman cycling to work, to the marketplace and down a country lane to the sea.
So why did I live and cycle as I did? Well, I have to admit, I enjoyed competitive riding, whether or not it was sanctioned in a race, and the camaraderie that accompanied and followed it. But I now realize that I wanted to ride as hard and as long as I did because I had so much anger in me. By now, you probably realize what forged much of that anger: the cauldron of rage that roiled from the fires of my unfulfilled desire--to live as the woman that I always knew myself to be.
Some guys' worst nightmare is finding out that the girl for whom they've fallen was once a guy--and probably even more of a guy than any of them ever were! Of course, I don't mean to make light of that: Too many of us have been killed over that. But, it's hard not to see the irony in it, and to apply it to my cycling life: What if some of those guys I used to ride with and against were to meet me today?
Actually, one of those guys has. And he's taken it very well. He has an even stronger sense of himself than I ever imagined he did. What am I saying? Back in the day, I wasn't even thinking about whether he or anyone else was secure within his own skin. There was simply no way I--as I was in those days-- could have thought about that.
But as for the other guys...well, I'll tell you about one of them. He would have utterly despised me, as I am now. Or, at least, he would not have been seen with me, whether or not either of us was on a bike. But I know for a fact that if no one else were watching, I am the very first person he would have come to, for love, advice or just about anything else. He would have--if he were honest with himself--spent the night with me rather than with his wife or any girlfriend he ever had--or, for that matter, almost any other woman and absolutely any man. He would have gone for rides with me for the same reasons he would have gone to museums, poetry readings and stores, and walked the streets of Paris, San Francisco, Rome and Boston with me.
Actually, he wouldn't have done any of those things with me. He did those things with me. What's more, he did them with me, and in the presence of his wife and girlfriends.
By now, you've probably figured out who that man was. Yes, he was me. And he was who he was--including that "lycra-wearing, hard-training, fast-spinning, Alps-conquering roadie"--because he was me: the "woman who cycles to work in skirts and heels."
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