Cycling In Atlantis

I got up late today and had to run a couple of errands--including a trip to the farmer's market on Roosevelt Island.  As the day was a hot and humid day, I waited until it was almost over to go for a ride.



So I let Tosca take me wherever she wanted.  Being a fixed-gear bike, she tends to favor flat areas.  As I am still not in my best shape, I am happy to go along with her.



Among other places, we went to this:

And this:

 t

In Newark, there's a section of the city called "The Ironbound" because railroad tracks form its borders.  That's not where I rode today.  But the part of the Bronx shown in the photos could just as easily have been so named.  It's ringed, bound and criss-crossed by elevated highways and railroad tracks, all in steel of one kind or another.


I don't spend enough time in the neighborhood on weekdays to know whether or not the tracks shown in the photos see very many trains.  I know that the neighborhood is still an active industrial area:  the fleets of trucks and vans parked in lots and on streets are testimony to that.  But on the weekends, it could just as well be one of those ancient Greek and Roman ghost towns I've seen along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts.  The people are gone, but the looming monoliths stand, and probably will stand for some time to come.


As you might expect, on the other side of the tracks and highways are low-income neighborhoods populated almost entirely by people of color.  Hip hop music was born on those streets.  Someone, I forget who, referred to the Bronx as the "Atlantis of Hip-Hop."  


Sometimes I feel as if I am cycling in Atlantis, or among shipwrecks.  However, the viaducts and buildings, while gritty, are hardly ruins:  They're intact, and on Monday they will be full of people and vehicles.  But, for now, they're empty.



All of the neighborhood is near water--specifically, the East River, which is really an inlet of the ocean.  However, you wouldn't want to swim in it, even if these guys do it:

Actually, they're in the Bronx Kill, which is a branch of the East River.  It separates the Bronx from Randall's Island and may be the most polluted waterway in the United States.  I took the photo from a spur of the RFK/Triborough Bridge.


If you're in the neighborhood and want to swim, this is where you go:

It's a floating pool in Barretto Park.  I always thought the idea of swimming in one body of water that floats on top of another was rather surreal, though, in practice, it's not much different from swimming in any other kind of pool.  Well, I don't know whether I can generalize.  I've swum in only one floating pool:  the old Piscine Deligny.  Going there was more like going on a cruise than it was like going to any other pool I've ever seen. 



I understand that a new Piscine Deligny is being constructed to replace the one in which I swam.  But that's not the reason why it's being replaced:  The old pool sank in 1993.  (I had absolutely nothing to do with that!)



And so people will continue to swim in one body of water that floats on another.  Then again, any journey-any bike ride-- we take is a bit like surfing the march of time.

You Ride Like A Girl!

"You throw like a girl!"

Hearing that'll ruin any boy's day.  I heard it again, today, except that it wasn't directed at me.  Then again, I wasn't throwing anything.

If I were to throw anything, would I throw like a girl?

I just got another catalogue from Terry Bicycles.  Some of their products are printed or emblazoned with the logo "Ride Like A Girl!"

That got me to wondering whether one rider in the Tour de France peloton ever told another, "Vous pedale comme une fille!"  What, exactly, would "pedalling like a girl"  look like?


I remember the time a couple of years ago when I passed a couple of guys on Greenpoint Avenue, just after crossing the bridge from Long Island City.  They caught up to me when I stopped for the light at the intersection with Manhattan Avenue.  One of them yelled, "You ride real good for a lady!"


Then, there was the time--not too long ago--when I was riding down Van Sinderen Avenue in East New York.  A bunch of young guys and a couple of slightly-older men looked like they were having a campfire, sans the campfire, on their bikes.  A couple of the younger guys yelled, "Hey, babe."  Another added, "Wanna ride with us?"  As I passed, I heard one guy say, "That's no chick.  She rides too fast!"


So...Fast women aren't supposed to ride bikes?  Hmm...Well, I'm not a fast woman.  First of all, I just ate.  And I am--and always have been-- monogamous, if serially.  


Now let me get this right:  I might ride like a girl because I ride real good for a lady, but I'm too fast of a woman to ride like a chick.  Now, if I can formulate a relevant syllogism from all that, I might get tenure someplace--unless, of course, some student actually understands anything I said.


Besides...How can you be offended to hear "You play like a girl" after you've seen Mia Hamm?  And why would "You ride like a girl" stick in your craw if you've seen Rebecca Twigg or Paola Pezzo on their mounts?


The irony is that all of the time I spent riding with guys so I could ride like them, only better, actually helped me to my current path.  So where will riding like a woman take me?

Velouria Gets Fixed Up

"Velouria," whose wonderful writing and photography graces her "Lovely Bicycle!" blog, has given new meaning to "Be careful of what you wish for."

She has written about her "attraction to beautiful track bikes" and "wistfulness for the velodrome," which she had dismissed as "ludicrous."

Well, I warned her....If we dismiss or resist something long enough, we'll take to it, or it will take us!  (Trust me, I know that as well as anybody can.) So I exhorted her to "go for it."  And, I made a deal:  My spirit would guide her if she promised to bring back one of those beautiful dress guards she always seems to find when she's in Vienna.

Yesterday she took her first ride on a track bike--yes, in Vienna!  And, from what she says, she enjoyed the experience.

I can just see it now:  Velouria on the velodrome in Vienna!


Could this be her future?:

Congratulations, Velouria.  And you owe me a dress guard! ;-)

A World of Bike Dreams

You've probably heard this joke:   

There are two kinds of people in this world:  Those who categorize people and those who don't.

Well, I haven't met very many people who don't fall into the second category, at least some of the time.  And I am as guilty as anyone of dividing people into categories.  I often do that when I teach, especially when I tell my students that there are basically two kinds of people in the world:  dreamers and schemers.  Very few of us are purely one or the other, but most of us tend toward one or the other.  And, of course, it's very important to know what you tend to, and to find someone else with the opposite tendency.  As if I know how to make a relationship work!

So what are cyclists?  I guess the ones who ride because it's cheaper than driving or using mass transit are schemers, or at least pragmatic people.  And those who do it as a release or escape are most likely dreamers of some kind.

Well, I know which one I am.  Perhaps my condition is genetic.  But I think it also has to do with having seen this very early in my life:

The Unisphere was the centerpiece of the 1964-65 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows Park, which is about six miles from where I live.  My family and I went to the Fair when I was about seven years old.  My youngest brother was born only a few months earlier.

Years later, when I was an undergraduate at Rutgers, I rode in one of the early Five Boro Bike Tours.  At the end of the ride,  a man whom I never saw again invited me to join a couple of other guys and a woman I never saw again for some post-Tour beer.  From Manhattan, where the tour started and ended, we rode across the Queensboro (a.k.a. 59th Street) Bridge to Woodside, a neighborhood that probably had, at the time, the greatest concentration of Irish people--and Irish bars--outside Dublin.  

Back then, my hair was redder than it is now and I think that I'd first grown a beard around that time.  Also, if I recall correctly, I wore a stovepipe hat.  Back in those days, few cyclists wore helmets (which were the useless "leather hairnet" variety), so unless the weather was very hot,  I wore my stovepipe hat or my beret when I rode.  I don't recall why I chose the stovepipe hat on the day of the Tour.

Anyway, a couple of the bar patrons adopted me for the day and, after staying somewhere I can't recall,  we spent much of the following day riding in circles around the Unisphere when we weren't emptying bottles of beer that were much better than any other I'd drunk up to that time in my life.

That, I must say, is a long way--in spirit if not in distance--from my ride today:

Yes, I was test-riding the Le Tour III.  If you saw my previous photos of it, you'll notice one difference:  the Wald fold-up baskets in the rear.  I haven't used them yet, but they look like a good design--and that they would be bombproof.  

Naturally, I had to do a test-ride in a dress or skirt, as I plan to use the bike for commuting.  As it was hot today, I opted for a sun dress.  And I wasn't wearing high heels:  Instead, I wore wedge sandals.  Still, I felt I was close to "real life" commuting conditions, at least for me.  

The bike is "almost there."  I've adjusted the seat and bars to comfortable positons.  I'm still not sure of whether I'll add a front basket.  I like to keep my purse in it when I ride.  But I really don't like to put much more in them, as weight on handlebars affects steering.  (Of course, I didn't say that to the dancer I once escorted on my Cinelli Giro d'Italias through the streets of Soho!)  Plus, I haven't had the best of luck with baskets:  I've broken a couple of wicker ones and a "quick release" version did exactly that as my wheels bounced along a street in an industrial area of Maspeth.  Maybe I'll get a small basket that attaches with a brace to the front dropout.

OK, so I'm being practical--a schemer.  But can one be called a schemer if her real purpose is to enable a dreamer?

Revisiting: Twenty Years After Abandoning and Escaping

If the Lord was the shepherd of some old Hebrew poet, then my navigator, at least for today, was this fella:

He leadeth me to the still (well, not quite) waters of places I haven't seen in a long time--  specifically, about twenty years:

I hadn't actually planned on riding there.  I passed it en route from my house to no place in particular.  Those of you who ride a lot know the kind of ride I'm talking about.

On the ride, I ended up here.... 

...among other places.  I guess, in some weird way, it makes sense that I went by the hospital in the second photo before I came to the house you see above.  Both places housed lives that are no longer there.  The difference is that, to my knowledge, I never knew anyone who lived in the abandoned house.  On the other hand, for two years of my life, I was involved, if in a peripheral way, in the lives of some patients, staff members and the director of surgery at that hospital.  To my knowledge, none of them are there any more. 


If any of you have grown up on military bases, you probably recall at least one house that looks something like this:

Although this house is not abandoned, it is not occupied, at least for now.  But I'm sure it will be soon.  After all, this is one of the  views from it:

And here's another:

It never ceases to amaze me how much prime real estate the military once had--and, in some parts of the country, still has.   


Both of those houses are in Fort Totten, on Long Island Sound in Bayside, NY. It was still an active military base when I was doing poetry workshops with the handicapped and chronically (and, in a couple of cases, terminally) ill kids at St. Mary's Hospital.  Now only a small part of the base is used for Army Reserve exercises; other parts are used to train specialists in the Fire Department.  The rest has become a park with some really lovely car-free places to ride and walk.  Plus--for those of you whose interests are anything like mine--the place is in Gatsby country.


Every week, I used to go to the hospital, which then had a school for the kids who were patients there.  The Board of Ed maintained and staffed it.  


Back then, I was living in Washington Heights,  in upper Manhattan.  Unless it was snowing or sleeting, I used to ride my bike--seventeen miles each way, on a Follis ten-speed from the 1960's that served as my commuter.  In some weird way, riding to the kids made me feel closer to them.  I guess it made me conscious of some of the things I could, and they couldn't, do.


Until today, I hadn't been to the hospital in nearly twenty years.  That means, of course, none of the kids I worked with are there.  Some may have gone on to lives much like other adults of their age; a few might be dead.  One girl died during the time I was there; even though she was only eleven, she lived longer than anyone expected.  


The director of surgery--who actually initiated the project and secured the grant for it--is probably retired.  So are the teachers who were there at the time, as well as many of the staff members: most of them weren't young.  


Even though I haven't seen any of those kids since then, I've thought about them often.  In fact, I thought about them a lot when I was starting my transition.  Many of the poems and stories they wrote--or dictated to me--were about running, flying, jumping, dancing and riding bikes:  the things they couldn't do.  Most people, including their teachers, said the kids had "vivid imaginations."  But one day, when I was talking with the director of surgery--Dr. Burton Grebin--I voiced something I realized at that moment: "They really are doing those things.  Their minds, their spirits, dance, jump and do all those things some of us can do with our bodies."


"That's exactly the reason why I have always supported the project," he said.  "It's the reason why things like poetry and art are, in their own ways, as important as the medicines and procedures we offer here."


That realization, and those kids always stuck in my mind.  And I finally realized why they mattered so much--which is to say, why I, who was pedalling over 300 miles a week, not counting my racing, identified so much with them:  We saw our true selves in our minds and spirits, and our bodies couldn't express who we are.


At the end of every day I worked with them, I used to pedal (actually, coast) down the hill toward Fort Totten.  Back then, it was still an active base and therefore not open to the public.  So, I used to go to a small park that stood just to the west of the fort's entrance, where one could see this:

The suspension bridge is the Bronx-Whitestone.   In the fall and winter, I used to sit there and read or write, or simply gaze, until dusk. Then I would start pedaling home along the nice little promenade that winds its way below the span and skirts the water.


As it was the first day of summer, I didn't wait that long today.  I was getting hungry and tired; I'd pedalled about 30 miles, which included a few hills, on Tosca, my fixed-gear.  What else could have I ridden to a current or former military base?  After all, multiple gears are for sissies.  (You know I couldn't resist that one!)

An Orange Bike

I've got the LeTour in rideable condition.  I'm still going to tweak it a bit.  But it's close to what I want it to be.


Early this evening, after the weather had cooled a bit, I took it on a test ride through the back streets of Astoria and Long Island City.  I ended up in Astoria Park, which is separated from Manhattan, Randall's Island and the Bronx by a strait known as Hell Gate.


This bridge is named for the passage it spans. Do you think it looks like a gate to Hell?:

If you've taken the Amtrak/Acela between Boston and New York, you've gone over this bridge.  The span behind it is the Queens-to-Randalls Island spur of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, which was known as the Triboro Bridge until a couple of years ago.


The waters are deceptively calm.  The strong undercurrent wrecked ships and drowned sailors, which is how the passage got its name.


But you didn't come to this blog to read about that, right?  You want to read about a middle-aged woman riding a bike she just fixed, don't you?


Well, the bike is actually a smooth, almost cushy ride.  Yet it feels very solid.  That last part didn't surprise me:  Schwinn had a reputation for building sturdy bikes, and this one was made in Japan by Panasonic.  The second shop in which I worked sold Panasonics, and I assembled a couple hundred of them.  Even their cheapest models were easier to assemble, and required less tweaking, than most other bikes.  


It won't be as responsive as my Mercians.  It wasn't designed that way.  But I have the feeling it will be very satisfactory for errands and commutes.


When I got to Astoria Park, I made another interesting discovery about the bike.  It's an aesthetic consideration.  


If you've been reading this or my other blog, you have some idea about my tastes in colors.  I like purple, especially lavender, lilac and violet, best.  I also favor most shades of blue, green and pink.  But I can see why  orange is a popular bike color.  I actually think this bike looks better in orange than in the other colors in which Schwinn offered the Le Tour series.  Even more interesting, though, is a quality revealed in this photo:

As ratty as the paint job is, it still has a nice glow to it in the dusk light.  In a way, it made me think of all of those weatherbeaten and even somewhat grimy brick buildings that mirror the sun setting at the end of the day.

OK, so this one came out a bit darker than I hoped it would.  But here's another shot, taken in the same light, of the bike:

And here's one taken a bit earlier:

As I mentioned, the bike is almost complete.  I'm going to add a bell to the handlebar (the Velo Orange Milan Bar which, so far, I really like on this bike) and a pair of Wald folding baskets to the rear rack. I have a feeling those might be the best solution for commuting as well as shopping:  I can simply put grocery bags or my bookbag into one or the other.


Until next time....I'll spare you the cliches about riding into the sunset or crossing that bridge when I get to it!

Rider to the Sea

Today I went for a ride by the sea:

Yes, that's a photo of me...in another life!  

Actually, I got the photo from the blog Bike by the Sea.  It's already become one of my favorite photos, or images of any kind.  In fact, I've made it the wallpaper on my laptop.  What do I have in my computer on my desk at the college?  A photo of Rodin's Je Suis Belle, which is actually part of his La Porte d'Enfer:

It is my favorite piece of sculpture.  And the image of the woman on her bike by the sea may well become my favorite photo.

Anyway...I actually did take a ride to the sea today.  I started late, but I felt motivated when I saw this after about a dozen miles of riding:

Although I had seen it many times before, a tear came to my eye when I saw the sea horizon from the apex of the Cross Bay Bridge, which connects an isthmus that's about four miles long and three blocks wide (Broad Channel, in Queens) with the Rockaway Peninsula, which is also about three blocks wide but about twelve miles long.  

On the peninsula is Rockaway Beach--yes, the one the Ramones sing about!

As much as I have always loved the Ramones, though, that's not the reason why a tear came to my eye.  What happened, at the moment I saw the sea meeting the sky, was that I was having a very intense memory.  The first time--that I can recall, anyway--I ascended the arc of a bridge on my bicycle and saw the horizon of the ocean, I was about thirteen or fourteen.  My family had moved to New Jersey a year or two before that, and on that day I crossed the Highlands Bridge from the eponymous borough to Sandy Hook and Sea Bright.

That day, I had taken the longest ride I had taken up to that time in my life:  25 miles.  It was, believe it or not, the first ride I took for my bicycling merit badge.  (Believe it or not, the Boy Scouts actually had one.)  But that's not the reason why that ride was so important to me.

You see, back then, I knew that I was alone--or, at least, that not many, if any at all, people would ever know me.  Other kids picked on me for all sorts of reasons,  So, I wasn't going to make any effort to get to know them better, and I certainly wasn't going to make any effort to get closer to them.   

But in that horizon of the sea, where light and water become each other, everything is as fluid and seems as graceful as the waves of mist that rise from the sea or fall like a curtain from the sky, depending on how you look at it.  

I could immerse myself in that vision and, for a moment, transcend my ill-fitting, ungainly body and see myself as a nimble mind and blithe spirit swimming through the world with the wisdom of the ages.  

In other words, I could dare to see myself, if only for a moment, as the person I was within myself:  a female, with both the lightness of those waves and the weight of rays refracted through the mist.

That day was the first time in my life I felt tired but somehow fulfilled, filled with an understanding of how difficult things would be but with the knowledge of who and what I was and would need to be in order to live through it all.  It's almost as if the woman I would finally begin to live as was telling this boy who was just entering his teen years that, yes, things are going to be difficult, but that he would be all right.  

And somehow it was all connected to riding my bicycle.

So what happened today?  I ended up here:  

I took that photo from Point Lookout.  Behind those birds and to their left is Jones Beach; even further to their left is Fire Island.


Those birds probably flew further than I rode my bike up to that point:  33 miles.  When I got there, a woman named Catherine, whose husband was sailing in the bay, started a conversation with "Nice bike!"  She was impressed that I'd ridden from Astoria, even if it's the first time I've done it in more than a year. She asked how I felt.  "Tired, a bit sore," I said.  She wondered how I'd get back.  


"I'm going to ride back," I said.


"Will you be OK?"


"Well, there are a couple of places where I could bail out.  I could get on the LIRR in Long Beach or on the A train in the Rockaways."


"Sounds like a plan.  They don't charge you extra."


"No.  You're supposed to have a bike permit on the LIRR, but the conductors never enforce it.  At least, I have one, but they've never asked to see it."


Even though I may never meet Catherine again, I wanted to be able to say "I did it!"  And I did.  So I did a total of sixty-six miles--a bit more than a metric century.  So far, that's my longest ride since my surgery.


Surprisingly, the first twenty-five miles or so back were easier than the ride out to Point Lookout.  Part of it had to do with the direction of the wind.  But I think I also just knew that I was going to finish that ride.  I have done it many times before; why not today?, I asked myself.


By the way, this is--believe it or not--the A train:

It may not be what Duke Ellington had in mind.  But passengers can stay on that train and, in about another hour and a half, end up in Harlem.  


After seeing this along the way,

I got back to Astoria.  It's next to Hell Gate, where the East River (which is really an inlet of the ocean) meets Long Island Sound.  


I guess I am still, and will always be, a rider to the sea.  Really, I didn't want to change that.

Keeping Your Balance: It's In The Shoes

"Life is like riding a bicycle.  To keep your balance, you have to keep on moving."


Who said that?  This guy:

Anyone who can, or even tried, to explain the universe is entitled to a theory or two about life, doncha think?


But you can't keep moving unless you start.  And you can't start if you can't get on the machine:

Emma, I don't mean to be condescending, but you can do it.  If I can ride my diamond-frame fixed-gear bike in a short, snug skirt and boots, and a long jacket, you can do it, too.    If you need some guidance, take a look here:  http://www.sfbike.org/?diva.


On the other hand, you can do things the easy way:

Then again, Audrey Hepburn made everything look easy, or at least effortless.  Isn't that the definition of grace?


Lance said it's not about the bicycle.  He knew a thing or two about moving forward.  One thing he didn't mention--because he couldn't have known--is that a lady needs the proper shoes for cycling:

A big "thank you" to the editor of "Girls and Bicycles" for setting me straight--to the extent that anybody can do that! ;-)


Doncha know?  Bike shoes are for cycling, not walking.  At least, that's what I used to tell customers when I was trying to convince them to spend $200 on a pair of shoes to go with their $200 pedals and $30 cleats.  I actually believed that.  I also believed that one could not move forward--and therefore keep one's balance--without the proper shoes.


Today I know that for a fact.  The difference is in my definition of the proper shoes.  But sometimes it's hard to find them in size 11 wide. 

Still, I will keep moving forward.  And keep my balance.  After all, isn't that what being a woman on a bicycle is all about?