Easin' On Down The Road To Hell (Gate)

I'm off to ride my bikeee....and then I'm gonna ease on down, ease on down the road.

OK, you ask, why have I just mangled theme songs from two classic movies.  Well, it has to do with this photo:

One of the few things I have in common with Diana Ross is that I've crossed this bridge.  One difference is that the bridge didn't look like that when she crossed it.    Instead, it looked like this:

This image, of course, comes from the movie version of The Wiz.  It's one of those things that worked much better on stage that it did on celluloid.   The best things about the movie, to me, were "Ease On Down The Road" and Michael Jackson's portrayal of the Scarecrow.  Diana Ross, oddly enough, didn't lend any of her otherworldly charisma to the character of Dorothy, much less portray the character convincingly.  It was a shame:  I've seen her do a much better job as an actress, not to mention as a singer.


In the end, the movie seemed like a shameless attempt to cash in on the popularity of Blaxploitation films that had been popular for a few years before it was made.  Instead, it helped to kill off the genre.


Anyway...You didn't come here to see me do a bad imitation of Siskel or Ebert--or Pauline Kael.  I'll tell you that the bridge in question links Ward's Island with East 103rd Street in Manhattan.  

It's one of the oddest and most interesting structures in New York City--or anywhere.  To my knowledge, it's the only bridge in New York that's dedicated entirely to pedestrian and bicycle traffic.  No motor vehicles are allowed.  It's also odd and interesting for another reason:

As you can see from this photo, which I borrowed from The Bowery Boys, the section between the two towers is lifted when a ship needs to pass underneath the bridge.  The bridge is kept in this position through the winter and is therefore closed to bicycles and pedestrians.


Ward's Island is also a strange place.  There's a big mental hospital on it and, technically, it's no longer an island:  It was connected by landfill to Randall's Island, which is known for its sports venues and as the stage for le Cirque du Soleil.


Ward's and Randall's have a number of paths, some of which are paved, that zig-zag with the shorelines of the East and Harlem Rivers.   They also contain fields used by youth soccer and baseball leagues, a training facility for the Fire Department and a wastewater treatment plant that, at times, fills the islands with the scent of cologne poured down a septic tank.  


The two islands also sit between Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.  All are connected by the RFK Memorial (formerly known as the Triboro) Bridge, which is really a system of three different spans that all meet on Randall's Island.  


There's also a spot where, a little birdie tells me, more than a few New Yorkers were conceived:

It's underneath a bridge over which you've passed if you've taken the Acela (Amtrak Customers Expect Late Arrivals) between New York and Boston.  

Yes, it's the Hell Gate Bridge, which begins near Astoria Park, which is near my home. 


Might Charon himself be the pilot of the lead boat?

Going this way?:

See what happens when you stay up late nights reading The Inferno and drinking espresso?  Hmm....Imagine what would have happened if all those English public school kids grew up reading it instead of Pilgrim's Progress.  Maybe punk rock would have happened 300 years before Richard Hell (I just had to include him in this post!) and Sid Vicious.


Anyway...While we're still in Hell Gate, I want to show you something you definitely wouldn't have seen in a 1970's  Schwinn ad:

Ignaz Schwinn would be spinning (pun intended) in his grave!  This is more like what he would have had in mind:

No wonder 20-year olds weren't buying Schwinns in 1978.  (Trust me, I know:  I was one!)  


Some things never change, though.  In those days, everyone said the world was going to hell in a handbasket.  And our parents and teachers thought we were leading the way.  Really, though, we were just easin' on down the road:  We could, because the world was a simpler place.  Or so we think now.

The Only Girl On A Bike?

The past two days, the temperature rose to 100 degrees F and beyond. Today's 90-degree high seemed autumnal by comparison.

About the only ones I've seen riding are the Mexican delivery guys and  a few older men who were filling the racks and bags attached to their bikes (or, in some cases, held in one hand) with bottles, cans and whatever else they could recycle.  There were also a few young adult males on road or mountain bikes--the latter almost invariably in black, their rear wheels spinning  huge brake discs  like ferris wheels on crystal meth.   

So, as you can imagine, I got an unfair share of attention when I rode to work today in a skirt and blouse.  I didn't wear my heels on the bike; I brought them with me and changed into them from my Keen sandals when I got to work.  I think I got as much attention as  I did, in spite of my un-glamorousness (Is that a word?) because I may well have been the only woman anybody has seen on a bike for the last couple of days.

Back when I was in boy-drag, some people would tell me I was crazy for riding in the hot weather.  But while riding, I was almost never noticed.  The exceptions came when I was in my best physical condition:  Some people, including fellow cyclists, noticed my riding skills; other people--mainly a few women and gay men--noticed my shape.  I can recall times when female and gay male drivers pulled up alongside me and rolled their windows down, ostensibly to ask for directions.  Let's just say that their eyes weren't on the road ahead of them.

Today a man in an Acura Coupe did the same thing when   I pulled up alongside him at a traffic light.  He rolled down his window.  "Babe, could you tell me what time it is?"    Now, he might be from one of those cultures in which it's considered rude to make eye contact.  Still, I thought it a bit strange that his line of vision seemed to begin at one of the curls in the print of my skirt--and that curl rested on my left thigh.

Now, that wasn't the first time a man looked at me that way when I was riding my bike.  Still, it surprised me, or at least caught me off-guard.  As it was such a warm, humid day, plenty of women--many of whom were better-looking, or at least younger and in better shape, than I am--were showing more than I was.  But now I realize I may have been the only one that driver, and some of the other men who were looking at me, had seen riding a bike.  And they certainly weren't expecting to see a woman on a bike on such a hot day.

Waking To A Heat Wave

Today the temperature reached 103 degrees F (about 40 C).  It seemed that even the places that normally seem like iceboxes--like the central building of the college, where, it seems, the air conditioning is turned on in June and kept on full-blast until September--felt soggy today.


I woke up later than I'd planned, and by the time I got outside, the air already felt as if a knife would stand up in it.  I was going to ride to work, but decided against it as soon as I stepped outside to go to the dry cleaner's.


Even people who don't normally complain about the heat were wishing that they were taking an Antarctic cruise.  


I've cycled in weather that's as hot as today's was, but couldn't see the point of riding today.  For one thing, there's an ozone alert, and while I suppose I could  wear a filter mask, I don't think that, given the sinus problems I've had, that doing any outdoor exercise in that heat and air would do me much good.


Plus, I no longer have the need I once had to prove myself to...whom?  People who didn't care?  Myself?  What, exactly, would have I proved to myself by taking a ride on a day like today.  Now, if I had to ride, that would be another story.


There were a few times when I had to ride in heat such as what I experienced today.  It was even more difficult when I wasn't expecting it, as when I was cycling through a mountainous area and found myself in a pass or valley.  The day after I had my life-changing encounter in St.Jean de Maurienne, an Alpine town a few kilometers from the Italian border, I rode down a mountain and into a valley where the thermometer on a bank in town read 40C.  I felt my skin burning, but I wasn't sweating.  That, I understand, is common at very high elevations, which tend to be drier than lower-lying areas.


But at least I knew it would be hot--if not this hot--today.  I just wish I'd awakened earlier.

Adjustments and Sea-Changes

Today my ride consisted of a spin to the park next to the Queensboro Bridge and over the bridge itself to...Bicycle Habitat.  I had to bring in a rear wheel they built for me so it could be tuned up.  Most shops that build custom wheels will tell you to bring them back after two hundred miles or so for a check-up.  

Although the wheel was still rideable, some spokes had come loose.  But, as it's a custom-made lightweight wheel, I want to keep it in optimal condition.  Arielle, my Mercian road bike (which I rode today and the other day), deserves no less.

Hal Ruzal re-tensioned the wheel for me.  

More years ago than either of us will admit (well, OK, more than I'll admit), Hal built me a pair of wheels that I rode along the Mediterranean from Italy into France.  I carried a pair of panniers on my rear which progressively filled with all sorts of chotchkes from flea markets and such, as the exchange rates were very favorable to the dollar.

It's really a wonder I made it through that trip.  I drank way too much wine, and other things.  A glass-half-full person would say that I must have had good bike handling skills.  That's probably true.  But I still don't know how even my pedaling prowess got me through one particular day's ride.

I was about thirty kilometers south of Genoa, somewhere on the road that zigged and zagged along that rocky coastline--or, to be more accurate, along the edges of cliffs from which loose rocks--and pieces of that road--tumbled into the sea.  

The day was overcast when it began; by the time I got to that stretch of road, a storm that surprised me with its violence blew in from the sea.  I didn't know the Mediterranean could have such rough weather!  

I also didn't know--until I got to that stretch of road--that the Romans may have been the greatest road builders in the western world, at least until the nineteenth century.  But they didn't seem to think much about safety, at least not in the ways we think about it.

So that road along the edge of cliffs that drop into the sea was about the width of one and a half vintage Alfa Romeos.  The guard rail on the edge stood up to about my knees.  The wind that was waling at my side could have easily sent me over that guard rail into a wild blue yonder that was darkening in gray.

 

I may not know how I survived that ride.  But I can tell you how my wheels made it:  Hal built them.   

Hal is an excellent wheel builder and mechanic.   He and Charlie, the store's owner, treated me and my fellow employees very well when we worked for American Youth Hostels.  Back then, AYH's New York headquarters were on Spring Street, around the corner from Habitat.  We sent a lot of business there:  People would book their places on AYH-sponsored tours, or simply get their Youth Hostel passes and other necessities from us, and then would go to Habitat for wheels, tires, bags or other things they needed for their tour.  A few of those people even bought new bikes.

Back then, there were still real, live artists living and working in the lofts that abounded in the neighborhood.  The Soho stretch of Broadway hadn't yet become a fashion-designers' strip mall.  So, as you can imagine, the clientèle of the shop was a bit different.  

Then, as now, many messengers went to the shop, as it's along one of the routes they would take from the Wall Street area to Midtown.  Some of Habitat's customers lived nearby.   Most of the neighborhood's residents at that time didn't have a lot of money. One might say that Soho at that time (early 1980's) represented the last stand of genteel poverty in New York.  A few of the artists and others who lived in the neighborhood bought bikes at Habitat; many more had their mounts repaired or resurrected there.

Interestingly, the people who worked in the shop--including Hal and Charlie--reflected what some might have called the spirit of the neighborhood.  Hal is a musician; other current and former shop employees are and were artists of one kind or another, or involved with theater or dance.  And Charlie is a civil engineer by training who, like the so many of the personnel and clientèle of that shop, are or were trying to live in this city without becoming part of the "rat race."

Whether or not cycling was ever the most important thing in my life, it has been one of the few constants for me during the times I've described and the ones in which I'm living.

And now that I think of it, Habitat--like most enthusiasts' bike shops--was, back in the day, overwhelmingly male.  During the busy season, they might have a woman selling the bikes, but all of the permanent employees I recall--and nearly all of the customers that I can remember seeing--were male.  

I'll give you an example of how things have changed:

I couldn't get over how well Melanie's dress and shoes coordinated with her bike, particularly with the gold parts and the blue chainguard.  Can you just see her in the peloton now?

 

I didn't ask whether she chose her bike to go with her ensemble.  Even if she did, I won't complain:  I don't think anyone else in the shop minded.  

Who said that we have to become the change we want to see?

Birthdays

The other day I mailed a birthday card to Marilynne's daughter.  She and I underwent our surgeries on the same day last year.  

If that day is our birthday, then I'm only about five hours older than she is.  Hmm...That sounds like the makings of some sort of science fiction story.   If any of you want to take the idea and run with it, be my guest:  I seriously doubt that I'll ever write science fiction.  I just don't think it's in me.


Anyway, in one sense, we were both born that day. If that's the case, how long was our gestation period?  Was it the time we had been living as female?  Our entire lives?


But today is what most people--as well as the laws of just about every jurisdiction in this world--would define as my birthday.  It is the date on which I came, a whole bunch of years ago, from my mother's body into this world.  I probably will always celebrate this date as my birthday, partly out of habit and, well, because it's the biggest national holiday of the country in which I was born and have spent most of my life.  It's a bit like being born on Bastille Day in France or Christmas in any country that celebrates it.  


The only times I wasn't in this country on the Fourth,  I was in France.  Three times I was in Paris; the other time I was in a town called Auch in the southwest.  Unless you've been there or know something about French history, you've probably never heard of it.  I ended up there on my birthday ten years ago in the middle of a bicycle tour I took through the Pyrenees.   It's a lovely place, and if you should go there, you should certainly go to la Cathedrale Sainte-Marie. 

 It may very well have the best acoustics of any place of worship in the world.  It certainly has one of the best organs and choirs.    The singers were rehearsing that day.  I got into a conversation with a sweet-faced alto-soprano who was about twenty years older than I was.   Even before she talked, I could sense her enthusiasm and passion for that cathedral and for her music.  


When she asked where I came from, I said, "Les Etats-Unis."


"Eh...Votre jour d'independence."


"Oui.  Et mon anniversaire."


Her already bright eyes perked up.  "Voulez-vous une chanson speciale?"  With a smile, I nodded, and she and the choir gave a little impromptu concert for an audience of an American cycling solo in France on his birthday and his country's day of independence.


Whatever my birthday is, I believe I have an interesting heritage.  And I feel honored to share at least something with Marilynne's daughter.

A Short Trip for the Fourth

Today I just barely got on my bike:  About a mile to the barbecue at Millie's house, and a bit more coming home.  I surely consumed many times the number of calories I burned up today.   But, hey, isn't that what barbecues are for?  


And they had a cake for my birthday:

Actually, all of those colors were on a plastic piece that covered the cake.  Underneath, everything was chocolate:  creamy cocoa frosting over a dark devil's food cake.   


It's not the sort of food one finds at training tables.  Then again, although I'm working at getting myself into better shape, I'm not training for anything:  I simply want cycling and better conditioning to be facts of my life.   A wise old philosopher once told me, "Life ain't no rehearsal."  I rode yesterday; I will ride again; I have no goal (at least as a cyclist) but to ride my bike again.


Plus, I was happy to be with Millie and John, their kids and grandkids, and Millie's friend Catherine, again.  This day last year marked the first time since I moved to Queens that I didn't spend the Fourth with them.   Millie decided not to have the barbecue because I couldn't make it.  She saw me off that day when I was leaving for Trinidad.


That day, I knew I wouldn't be cycling again for a long time.  My mother said, only half-jokingly, that she knew I really wanted to go for the operation because I was willing to give up, in essence, a season of cycling for it.   But I knew that I wasn't so much giving up a season of cycling as I was embarking on a journey.  Even the riders of the Tour de France have to get off their bikes sometimes; I knew--or at least hoped--that when I got back on mine, I would be on the tour, if you will, that only I could take.  At least some of it would be on my bicycle, I believed.


After eating barbecued chicken, shish kebabs, corn and a few other things one might expect to consume at a barbecue, I took the long way home.  I still haven't mastered the fine art of taking photos while on the bike.  But, here is a shot I took just outside Rainey Park, which is on the East River:

Perhaps one day I'll get it right.  Until then, it's a journey and I'm on it.  At least today's segment, as short as it was, fulfilled me:   I was happy to go where I went and happy to return.

Without the Need to Escape

I rode to Point Lookout, again.  At approximately 65 miles round-trip, it's tied with the longest trip I've taken this year, and since my surgery.  


On a day like today, when the sea seems to be the shadow of a preternaturally clear sky--or when the sky is light refracted through a cobalt stained-glass reflection of the sea--it seems as if the water is a sort of light, and that light flows and ripples and undulates like the waves of water.  

And the ripples of water and waves of light become each other's reflections:

Just before I crossed the bridge from which I shot the above photo, I saw one of those things that could you forget that you're in Queens:

The dunes are in Arverne, which is just to the east of Rockaway Beach.   The streets leading to the Arverne stretch of the beach and boardwalk were, not too long ago, filled with bungalows and cottages that served as summer homes for some New Yorkers and permanent residences for some cops and firefighters.  Then most of them were abandoned when housing projects were built in Far Rockaway, the next neighborhood to the east and the last before the Nassau County line.  


I was pedalling into a fairly stiff breeze as I rode past those dunes toward Nassau County and Point Lookout.  That meant, of course, that my ride back was actually easier: enough so that I found myself thinking of a poem by Pablo Neruda:


EL viento es un caballo:
óyelo cómo corre
por el mar, por el cielo.

Quiere llevarme: escucha 
cómo recorre el mundo 
para llevarme lejos.

Actually, those are just the first two stanzas of  a poem from "Los Versos del Capitan."  The selection above translates into something like this:

The wind is a horse:

Hear how it runs

through the sea,

through the sky.

He want to take me away:

Hear how he roams 

through the world

To take me far away.

Please forgive my poor translation:  It's really much better in Spanish.  

Here is my "horse" :

And here is how someone is "riding" Neruda's "horse":

Yes, that white object is a board of some kind.  A man is riding it and the wind is pulling his kite.

Somehow these rides that are directed by the wind and follow the sea are even more innocent--almost to the point of being naive and romantic, as Neruda's poem is--than the ones I took as a teenager and in my early adulthood.  Those now-long-ago rides kept me sane, at least to the degree that I was. 

 On summer days, I would ride down to Long Branch, Asbury Park or beyond.  I learned that around 2:00 every afternoon, the wind would shift along the coast, so the wind I fought on the way down would blow me back up to Sandy Hook, the northernmost part of the Jersey shore.

I remember that long, straight flat stretch of Route 36 along the beaches in Long Branch and Sea Bright.  Some days I would just let the wind do my work, while on others I would spin as fast as I could.  It was my release and escape; now that I no longer am trapped by what I was trying to escape, there is just the ride along the sea.

Dead Bikes

Near my apartment is one of my favorite urban spaces:  Socrates Sculpture Park.   Lately, I've seen more cyclists riding to, and into the park.  It makes for a great rest stop, with its combination of benches, grassy areas, riverfront and, of course, the sculpture installations.


Last year, there was an installation called "Dead Bikes."   At least, that's what some of us called it; I'm not sure whether that was the official name.


This isn't the best photo, but it gives you an idea of what the exhibit looked like:

How many times have you seen bicycles stripped to their frames but still locked to a signpost or some other immovable object?  Sometimes I wonder whether how those bikes came to resemble the remains of prey.  


Some people do not bring their bikes into their living spaces.  Perhaps some of those people relocate and simply leave their bicycles. Others, perhaps, decide that they no longer want or need their bikes and simply abandon them.  


I think now of a story someone told me about a friend of a friend of his friend.  She had witnessed what turned out to be a mob execution and had to literally drop what she was doing and get on the next Greyhound bus out of town.  I wonder whether she, or someone else in a similar situation, may have a bike chained to some railing or another.  It wouldn't be long before some bike vulture would pick the carcass clean.


I have had three bicycles stolen and have returned to other bikes I parked only to find a seat, brake or other part missing.  Luckily for me, I have never found my bike stripped.  But I can't help but to wonder whether other cyclists here, or in other cities, have gone to unlock their bikes, only to find them stripped.  Have you had such an experience?