Today I rode the LeTour to work for the first time. I was running a bit late--or, at least, I left my place a bit later than I'd planned--and forgot to bring my camera with me. So I have no photos of myself or the bike or the commute. But I'll tell you a bit about it.
First, fashion: I feel as if I cheated a bit here. I didn't ride in a skirt and heels. Rather, I wore a sundress and my Keen sandals. In a tote bag I stashed in my rear basket, I carried a short cardigan from a dusty blue twinset. When I got to work, I slipped it over my dress, which was black with a hibiscus flower print in varying shades of blue. One of those shades matched the sweater from the twinset, more or less. And I also brought a pair of somewhat dressy black wedge sandals.
I was glad to be wearing the sundress, as it was hot (though not as humid as yesterday). And, of course, the Keen sandals were very comfortable.
I didn't have any wardrobe malfunctions. But the bike had a bit of a mishap. Actually, it wasn't the bike itself; it was the rear rack. The bolts that fasten the body of the rack to the arms that connect it to the seat stays fell out. That caused my rack to flip backward and land on my fender.
Fortunately for me, I had just passed a hardware store, where I bought a package of screws and nuts, some lock washers and blue Loctite. I've stopped there a few times before, as it's along one of my routes to and from work and other places. Sometimes the guy behind the counter is an oldish Russian Jew who looks the way Alexander Solzhenitsyn (sp?) might have had he shaved. But today I got this guy who is covered with tatoos and whose yellowing white hair is longer than mine and beard is longer than mine ever was. It's really odd to find him in that shop because it's at the corner of Metropolitan and 71st Avenues in Forest Hills, which is possibly the most resolutely bourgeois part of the city. But he knows his stuff and is very helpful, which is one reason why his shop stays in business.
At one time in my youth, my hair was almost as long as that of the man in the hardware store. And my beard, while not as long as his, was thick around my jaws and chin. With all of the anger I felt in those days, I didn't need tatoos (which I've never gotten and probably never will get) or studded jacket to help me project an aura that said, "Stay the ---- away from me!" I was like a cross between Charles Bronson and a hippie without the charm of either.
One hot day, I was riding my bike to my parents' house. At the time, I was living in the town where I attended college (New Brunswick, NJ) and my parents were living on the Jersey Shore. It was a thirty to thirty-five mile ride, depending on which route I took.
Well, on that day, I peeled off my bike jersey before I passed through Milltown, after which one of the early sedative drugs was named. At that time, it was noted in the area for cops that were rumored to have been recruited in Alabama or from the KKK.
One of those redneck officers actually pulled me over when I was riding along one of the streets. In those days I didn't carry ID with me; most people didn't.
"What are you doin' here?"
It took everything I had not to answer him sarcastically. But, fortunately for me, I managed to check that impulse.
"What are you doin' here?"
"Riding my bicycle, sir."
"To where?"
"My mother's."
"All right. Have a good day."
I haven't thought about that encounter in more than twenty years. Now I wonder: What would it have been like if I were covered with tatoos.
I didn't do a lot of cycling today: just short hops for errands to the bank, post office and dry cleaner. The day grew oppressively hot and humid very early and very quickly, and the haze that stretched like a gauze over the sun actually made it seem hotter somehow. But, of course, that haze was a prelude to the weather about which the forecasters were warning.
I was tempted to go out in the rain. I used to do that often when I was younger: On warm, wet days I would hop on my bike while wearing as little as I could get away with. I reasoned that on a warm day, I didn't need insulation, and that whether or not I wore anything, I'd be soaked to my skin anyway.
Plus, I used to love the feel of the rain against my skin. Actually, I still do. And I'll tell you a secret: It's better when you're not high or drunk. It's even better when you're full of estrogen.
Anyway...I didn't go for a ride in the rain. What the National Weather Service issued was not just a forecast for rain; it was a warning of severe thunderstorms. Somehow I get the feeling that getting struck by lightning wouldn't enhance my experience of the ride. Plus, it got very windy. There was a tornado in Connecticut last week, so I was thinking of that.
Now, I've ridden--though unintentionally--through thunderstorms. Why do they call them "thunderstorms" anyway? The thunder is just a lot of noise: It doesn't do much more than make my cats hide. It's the lightning that really matters, especially when you're riding.
Of the times I've ridden in thunderstorms, two in particular come to mind.
The first was some time in my early adulthood. It was about a year after I'd gotten back from living in France. My grandmother had died a few months before, and I was still grieving and angry (and would remain so for a long time afterward). I had moved back to the town where I went to college. That wasn't a good move, except for one thing: New York wasn't far away. Sometimes I would make a day trip out of pedalling in, riding in the parks or along the Verrazano-Narrows promenade, or through some neighborhood that looked interesting, and having lunch and/or going to book and record shops before riding back.
Well, on that day, I pedalled out to Coney Island--which, in those days, looked like the Atlantic City of Louis Malle's eponymous film, but without the colorful characters. All that you could find there in those days, besides Nathan's (whose French fries I used to love), were whatever the tides deposited on the beach and the subways expelled onto the streets. It was literally the end of the line, in every way you could think of.
And that was part of its appeal for me. It was a time in my life when I was disguising my self-loathing as some sort of somewhat hip misanthropy--and I pretended not to be aware of what I was doing. I convinced myself that I hated all those people who looked like they were having fun when the truth was that I wanted to be one of them. That would have violated almost everything I believed --or professed to believing --in.
So...When I got to Coney Island--after about forty miles of riding--I bought something that was, at the time, illegal everywhere in the US and is now allowed for medical purposes in a few states. (I can say this now, as the statute of limitations has expired!) In those days, it wasn't hard to find on Coney Island. And, let's just say that afterward, I spent I-don't-know-how long watching the waves before going to Nathan's and eating three orders of French fries, the way I have always liked them: garnished with spicy mustard and diced onions.
As I passed under the viaduct for the trains, rain began to drop. As I crossed the bridge over Coney Island Creek into Bath Beach and Bensonhurst, the drops turned into a fall, then a deluge. I heard rumblings, but I kept on riding.
Then I climbed the stairs to the Brooklyn Bridge. (The ramp to Tillary Street hadn't been built yet.) Enough rain had fallen that the pavement and pedestrian path weren't slick; the rain was washing everything away. So, I wasn't concerned until I was near the middle of the span, a couple hundred feet over the water.
Then, the lights of the city got bright--really bright. Lightning flashed all around me: Only Roebling's hundred-year-old steel cables stood between me and it. High as I was, I started to get nervous. I remembered--from Boy Scouts?--that lightning will strike the tallest thing in its path. All right, I thought, the towers of the bridge stood a couple hundred feet higher than I did. But each of them was about a quarter-mile away from me, in either direction. And I was at the point on the bridge where the long transverse cables dip. So, as there were no other cyclists, and no pedestrians, on the bridge, it looked like I was the tallest structure between those two towers.
Nearly two decades later, I would have a much closer encounter with lightning while riding. Tammy and I were touring the Loire Valley. We had left Chinon that morning and were pedalling along one of the many pleasant roads (Routes Departmentales) found in that area. The early sunshine continued into afternoon; about an hour after we had lunch, the sky darkened quickly. We were in flat farm country: The only things that stood before us, besides the tall poppies, grain and trees, was a silo that looked to be a few kilometers away.
Seemingly within an instant, we went from glistening with our sweat to slick from the rain that poured down. She spotted what looked like a lean-to, but we both decided it was better to press on: We were soaked and we didn't know how long the storm would last.
I felt my skin tingle that turned into a subcutaneous electric shock. I yelled, "Watch out!" A bolt of lightining crashed only a few meters, if that, in front of me. That night, ensconced in one of those charming gites one finds whether or not one is looking for them, we agreed that it was the loudest boom either of us had ever heard. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what we said: I think my hearing was just starting to come back.
Hmm...If I'd been struck by lightning that day, I could have been a hero, sort of. After all, it would have hit me because, I was riding in front of Tammy. (I did through most of the trip, mainly because I'd cycled in that part of France before, could speak French and had navigational skills that were less bad than hers. That's not to say mine were or are good: I inherited them from Columbus!) Would I have been given la Legion d'Honneur for protecting a woman's honor?
Of course, I've since learned that a woman is the only one who can protect her own honor, and that we perpetuate the patriarchy--and, sometimes, simply get along--when we let men think they're doing that for us. But I'm digressing--really digressing!
That day in the Loire Valley, I was many years clean and sober and could practically feel the lightning coursing through me. I can only imagine how it would feel now, as the hormones seem to have removed one layer of skin all over my body and the surgery seems to have pulled away another. Actually, it did, but that's another story.
P.S. If you're worried that cycling will make you impotent, don't read this.
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.
