The Bridge Called My Bicycle

As I rode this evening, I  was thinking about what "Velouria" posted yesterday on her Lovely Bicycle! blog.  In it, she talks about bicycles with "trusses":  an old design that is apparently being revived by a few small builders like A.N.T.  


The "truss" frames she showed are indeed lovely, and she mentioned that the bicycles that inspired them were built about 100 years ago and patterned after truss bridges.  


You simply can't spend any time in New York without going over some bridge or another.  Even the sorts of people who leave Manhattan only to go to Europe pass over stone or girdered spans over streets and roads that were, in some cases, streams or small rivers before they were filled in.  


And I can't help but to think of bicycles themselves as bridges.  After all, there is something "on the other side" of every bike ride.  This evening, it happened to be the wonders of New York--and Nature's-- architecture:

You all know the building in the center:  It's the one phoenetically-challenged kids of my generation used to call "the En-tire State Building."  I took this admittedly primitive photo from this spot:

The pier in the photo is part of Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City.  Of course, the opportunity to experience a nautical breeze while taking in one of the best possible views of the Manhattan skyline is reason enough to go there.  It also happens to be just a few blocks from the PS 1 Contemporary Art Center. 


What's interesting about the park and the museum--and much of the rest of the neighborhood--is that about 15 years ago, they were part of an industrial area, much of which was decaying or derelict.  Stolen cars were abandoned there; indeed, the area was, as I understand, the setting for part of the Grand Theft Auto series. In 1885, the Long Island City docks bustled with shipments of Long Island produce headed for Manhattan and points beyond; a hundred years later, those docks were all but abandoned.


However, even in its dilapidated state, the waterfront and some of the buildings on it shared a trait with those classic and classy bicycles that people sometimes find in basements and barns.  That trait was perhaps best expressed by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables:  "Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile.  Plus peut-etre."  ("The beautiful is as useful as the useful.  Perhaps more so.")


I apologize that my keyboard doesn't have those fancy and pretty markings the French and other speakers of non-English languages like to put on their words.  My favorite one in French is the "hat," or accent circumflex.  Since I couldn't type one, I'll give you a photograph of one.  In fact, this photo has a whole bunch of them:

Even if it's named after an auto company that got bailed out twice, it's still beautiful.  In fact, the Chrysler Building is still my favorite skyscraper, and one of my favorite buildings in New York.  This one ain't bad, either:

Still, to me, nothing constructed by humans compares to a bridge.  

And the bicycle is a bridge for many of us.

Night Commute

Today I rode to, and tonight I rode from, work--in a sundress. When I got to work, I slipped on a cardigan (which is half of a twinset) in a shade of blue like the one in the bands on the dress.


One of the things I'm enjoying about teaching an evening class is the commute home.  I'm only doing it twice a week, but it's enough to remind me of an aspect of cycling I've always loved.

Riding at night, even if only for a commute, has its own rhythms and therefore requires its own mindset.  What I've always loved, of course, is the calmness that fills the air, and me, from the time the sun sets.  I especially like it after teaching a class, which requires an energy entirely the opposite of what I feel on a ride under moonlight. Plus, as it happens, the route I took tonight (I have four different routes to and from work.) takes me through some residential areas that are possibly the most resolutely middle-class in Queens or New York City:  They are quieter than, say, the stretch of Broadway around the corner from my apartment. 


Ironically, for all that I'm praising night riding, I almost never end up riding at night by design.  It's usually been the result of working later in the day, as I am now, or of getting lost or otherwise seeing plans go awry.  One of the few times I deliberately went on a late-night ride was when I met up with a Critical Mass rally in Columbus Circle about a dozen or so years ago.   I didn't do another CM ride for a number of reasons.  For one, I'm not crazy about riding in such large groups.  And, for another, I really would prefer not to be arrested or go to jail, even if only for a few minutes.   Finally, I'm not quite certain about what organizers are trying to accomplish.


On the other hand, being out at night by choice can be enchanting, if you're in the right areas.  That happened to me during my tours in France and other places.  In particular, I think of the time I rode in circles (squares?) around Orleans and found myself pedaling ,or seeming to pedal, with the rhythms of moonlight reflected on a Loire that seemed to be just barely rippled by the breeze and in the almost silvery shadows of leaves on the vines and pear trees.


Now, I didn't see vineyards or pear trees, much less chateaux, on my ride home.  But I still had the air that was beginning to cool down after another day of 90-plus degree weather.

Flight, Water and Heat

Today was another beast of a day:  ninety-five degrees, with more humidity than we had yesterday.  I'm definitely not a hot-weather person, but I wanted to get in a ride, however brief.  And I did, until I simply didn't want to deal with the heat anymore.


Time was when I would have soldiered on in even hotter weather than what we had today.  But I'm guessing that I'm still not at 50 percent of my normal condition, so I don't want to take unreasonable chances.  I know, I could ride more if I hydrate.  But I'm not training for any races, and a big tour--if I am going to do another one--is probably two years away.  And, being older and presumably wiser--and without testosterone--I'm not trying to prove anything.

Part of my ride took me along the World's Fair Marina.  It's just north of the site of the two World's Fairs held in New York City. (1939-40 and 1964-65:  I attended the latter as a small child.)  Between the Marina and the Fairgrounds (a.k.a. Flushing Meadow Park) stand Citi Field and the US Open Tennis Center, where Arthur Ashe and others had some of their greatest moments.  Citi Field replaced Shea Stadium, which opened at about the same time as the second Fair in 1964.  Just to the east of everything I've described is everyone's least favorite airport:  LaGuardia.


I did a "slalom" here:

It seems that every structure built around the time of the second Fair was either built by Eero Saarinen or was a copy of or parody of something he did.  A year or two before the Fair, he designed the TWA terminal of the JFK (Don't you love all of these three-letter abbreviations?) International Airport, which has been closed since TWA was grounded about a decade ago.

I remember being in that terminal for the first time when I was about fifteen years old.  One could still feel the romance of flight Antoine Saint Exupery conveyed in books like Vol de Nuit (Night Flight) and Pilote de Guerre. (Why that was translated as Flight to Arras is beyond me.  Then again, I still don't understand how Se Questo e Un Uomo became Survival at Auschwitz.)  And to think that some French teacher ruined him--and French literature--for you when she force-fed you Le Petit Prince!


Anyway...Arielle is still one of my preferred methods of transportation.  She withstood the heat better than I did:

A Dream In Sunset Park

I am going to make the most audacious claim you'll hear for a while.


I am going to show you a photo of a dream:

Here's another photo of that same dream:

Believe it or not, the place in the photo looked more or less as you see it back around 1961.  Yes, it's a place I'd actually been to before today.  This is how I got there today:

OK, so now you know I'm not in some exotic foreign land.  To give you an idea of where I am, here's another shot.

Those of you who are familiar with Brooklyn, NY--or part of it, anyway--now know where I am.  It's Sunset Park, which is on a hill surrounded by the eponymous neighborhood.  


Save for the views, not many people would call it their "dream" park.  But it has become mine, through no choice of my own.


I don't make any great effort to remember my dreams.  Some of them just happen to stick with me, for whatever reasons.  But I know that I have had more than a few dreams in Sunset Park, or some place that looks very much like it.  


One of those dreams came during my first night in France.  That day, I took the boat from Dover to Calais.   After I'd gone through French customs, I went to a bar.  In those days, Calais was fairly gritty and, being a seaport town, full of sailors, dockworkers and such:  the very kinds of people who were in the bar.  


Every one of them was even more inebriated than I would become.  Given the sort of person I was then--at age twenty-one--that's saying quite a bit.  However, I'm not sure if the libations were lubricating their tongues and making them start conversations with me.  


I wasn't worried about them.  I was, however, worried about this:  The only word I understood of what they were saying was "miss-shyure."  Did I not work hard enough in my French classes?  Was I taught a dialect they didn't speak?  


Anyway, we all got laughs at each other's expense and I managed to ride to Boulogne-sur-mer.   It wasn't very far, but the town had a hostel listed in the Hosteling International guide.  It was clean and relatively quiet.  At least, it was quiet enough for me to fall asleep not long after I had supper.  Or maybe the alcohol had something to do with it--or the dream I would have in Sunset Park.


My grandmother was in that dream.  I spent a lot of time with her and my grandfather when my mother had to go to work. My grandparents lived not far from the park and, very early in my childhood, they used to take me to it.  In those days, it had a garden in the middle of it.  Of course, in my memory, it's one of the most beautiful gardens in the history or horticulture--or, at least, one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen.  So is the view I've shown, which--as I've said--is much like the view I have in my memory.  


The following day after my first dream in that park, I cycled into a town called Montreuil-sur-mer.  It's a few kilometres inland from the English Channel, but a few centuries ago, before its harbor silted up,  it was right on the coast and was a fairly major port.  It's the town in which Jean Valjean of Les Miserables becomes one of  les bourgeois and serves as mayor--and where Inspector Jalabert tracks him down.


Nothing quite that dramatic happened to me.  (After all, we're talking about life, not fiction, here!)  However, I did come to a garden in the town that overlooked the sea and gave me a clear view--even on that overcast day--of the coast from which I'd sailed the day before.  And the grayness of the day did nothing to dampen the vibrancy of the colors in that garden:  there were sunrises, sunsets and dusks, and all of the seasons, in it even thought the sky wasn't expressing any of them.  Perhaps the view of the sea had something to do with that.  


Now, remember that I was twenty-one years old when I say what I'm going to say next:  That was the first time I cried during that trip.   At least, it's the first time I recall crying.


That evening, I got to a town called Abbeville and called my grandmother.  Somehow I knew she sounded better than she actually was.   And, without my asking or prompting, she talked about that park, and that we used to go to it.  "You loved to go there."


"Yes, I did.  I always loved going there with you and grandpa." 


"It seems like only yesterday that we used to go there."


I didn't tell her I had indeed been there the night before.

Air Conditioning

After riding, however briefly, on a hot day, it's refreshing or jarring or both to go into an air-conditioned space.

It's really odd when that air-conditioned space is a bicycle shop.  You see those shiny, new bicycles and they betray nary a hint of the sweaty cyclists who might be astride them one day.  Even the mustard-yellow Salsa and the cruiser in the color of moss look nearly as fluorescent as the store's lighting in the chilled air.

At least, when I ride to work, I am ready for the chill I will feel upon entering the building.  I teach in one of those places where they seem to turn on the air conditioning in June and leave it on, full-blast, until September.  Mark Twain once joked that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.  A summer class in the college where I teach might've changed his mind.

Yesterday, I had both of the experiences I've just described.  I took midday ride on Tosca, my fixie, down to Battery Park.  On the way back, I stopped at Bicycle Habitat to pick up a wheel Hal built for me. This wheel has a Phil Wood front track hub, a black Mavic Open Pro rim and DT spokes. It's on the front of Tosca, which previously had a road front wheel and has a rear wheel with the same rim and spokes and a Phil Wood "flip-flop" hub with a fixed gear on one side and a freewheel (which I have yet to use) on the other side.

Then, I rode the LeTour to my class.   In between, I changed clothes:  I was wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt for my early ride.  When I rode to class,  I wore knee-length skirt and sleeveless top that's part of a twinset . When I got to the college, I put on the cardigan from the twinset.  I find that when I feel cold, I tend to feel it more around my shoulders and chest.  I felt comfortable and rather liked the little bit of chill I felt around my legs:  It's the next best thing to a breeze by the ocean.

Back when I was Professor Nick, I didn't think as much about how I was dressed when I taught.  When I taught evening classes during the summer, as I'm teaching now, I sometimes came to class in the shorts and T-shirt I wore when I rode in.  No one seemed to mind, and since neither my department chair nor any of the administrators were there in the evening, I don't think any of them knew.  If anyone complained, I probably would have heard about it.

I never rode to class in lycra.

Although there are no official dress codes at the college, I don't think I could get away with teaching in shorts and a T-shirt, much less lycra, now.  Then again, I wouldn't do it: As Professor Justine (or simply Justine),  I am more conscious of how I dress and otherwise present myself.  Some of that may simply have to do with getting older and perhaps, in some way, more conservative.  Some of the more radical feminists and queer theorists might say that I'm taking on society's feminine gender role, or some such thing. 

But I digress.  Bicycling and air conditioning seem like the opposite poles of a summer's day.  Or are they?

Hmm....If I hook up my helmet with an air conditioner, does that violate the manufacturer's warranty?  Will it be safe if I ever decide to try to break some motor-paced speed record?

Cycling On Le Quatorzieme: Revolutionary?

Today is, of course, le jour de Bastille.   Three times in my life, I've been in France on this date: Twice I was cycling in the countryside; the other time I was just barely keeping myself out of trouble in Paris. 


Possibly the most interesting of those quatorziemes was the one I spent in a town called Foix.  I ridden from Toulouse through the Pyrenees into Spain and had just come back into France when I came to Foix.  If you are in that part of the world, I definitely recommend going there.  It's not a big city at all, but it has played significant roles in the history of France and the region.  I won't get into it here, for much more than a blog post would be needed to do it justice.  But it's also worth going simply for the spectacular views. friendly people and the castle:

According to a local song, El castels es tant fortz qu’el mezis se defent: The castle is so strong it can defend itself.   Indeed, since it was built around the year 1000 C.E.,  it has never been captured.  Within its walls resided the counts of Foix, who were considered l'ame  of the Occitan resistance against the Albigensians in the 13th Century.


Most people think that some particularly clever Marine came up with the slogan Kill 'em all.  Let God sort 'em out. Actually, it was Arnaud Amaury, the Abbot of Citeaux and the Papal Legate to the Crusaders, who said Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet ("Kill them all; God will know His own.") when Simon de Montfort, the Commander of the Crusade, pointed out that not everyone in Beziers, a town he was ordered to sack and burn, was a heretic.

No matter how many people they killed, they couldn't touch the Foix castle. I have no idea of what the Bastille was like. But I imagine they would have had a much, much more difficult time storming the Foix castle than they did with the Bastille. How would history be different if the Foix castle had been built in Paris or the Bastille in Foix?

Anyway...When I showed up at the castle on my bike, people--all of them strangers--applauded. Do people applaud during revolutions?

For A Light, The End Is Style

Today, as each drop of rain pelted the streets, sidewalk and window, you could practically feel the steam rising. I didn't ride to work, or at all.  That meant, of course, that I took mass transit.  


It amazes me, even after all of these years of living in New York and having used the subways and buses, to see just how grimy the stations and other facilities can be.  Having had the opportunity to ride to work again only makes some of the stations seem even more squalid than they were before.  It only makes me want to ride to work all the more.


As you've seen in previous postings, I've added rear baskets to the Le Tour.  Soon I'm going to install a small (just enough for my pocketbook) front basket.  I've also attached lights to the bike:  a Planet Bike "Blinky" on the rear and two headlights on the front.  One is also from Planet Bike:  an LED light that can be used as a regular light or as a stobe.


But I also added something almost nostalgic and whimsical:

Cyclists of my generation will recognize it:  the Schwinn-approved "bloc" generator, which was made by Soubitez of France.  I had one on my Schwinn Continental when I was fourteen years old.  


One thing I liked about it was that using it with a battery-operated tail light eliminated the need for long wires to connect the generator with the light.  Plus, for such a small lamp, the light output was good, at least by the standards of that time.


I tried it the other night.  It's pretty good:  It will help me to see road obstructions and make me more visible to oncoming motorists.  But there still is a lot of drag, and the conventional tungsten bulb will never be as bright as a halogen, much less an LED, light.   Still, I've always liked its style.  And that's what really counts. Right?

The Tides, Coming and Leaving

Today I did another ride to Point Lookout.  This is the third time in the last four weeks I've done that ride.  So, as you might imagine, I'm starting to feel like my physical condition is returning, and I am therefore gaining some more confidence. 


The ride offers so much that I like:  seaside vistas, a laid-back feel and the opportunity to ride from city to small town and back again.  In that sense, it reminds me a bit of touring in Europe:  Because that continent and its countries are smaller than North America and the United States, city and country are closer to each other in the "Old World" than they are here.  So I could indulge my passions for art and architecture as well as for sunshine and fresh air and food.


In a way, you can say that today I channeled my Inner European in one small way:  the way I made my bike stand when I got to Point Lookout:

Obviously, I'm not doing a track stand.  And there's no kickstand on my bike.   So what's my secret?  It's one of those many tricks I learned in Europe:

If you lean the bike on the left pedal, make sure it's slightly behind the 90 degree position.  Otherwise, the bike will topple--unless, of course, it has  a fixed gear.


I've done this ride at least a hundred times before, and I'll probably do it that many more times, as long as I'm living within a morning's ride of it. According to Bike Snob, I'm in the same league as babies, dogs and designers.  Like them, I can be fascinated by everyday objects, or at least by the everyday.  So, when I got to Point Lookout, I watched the tide going out.  

People who live there can tell you when the tide comes in or leaves.  They remind me, in a way, of a rather old couple I met in Liborune, France.  The town is about 30 kilometres from Bordeaux and is situated at the point at which the Garonne river bends and begins to open to the sea.  I'd cycled from Paris via the Loire Valley and Aquitaine; my intention was to cycle to and along the sea.   It was late in the afternoon; I'd stopped by a riverside grove.  The couple were   taking a walk, as they did every day, he told me.  They'd asked about my ride and what brought me to their part of the world.  "J'aime ces pays," I said.


"D'accord," they replied in unison.  Then, suddenly, the woman tapped me on the shoulder.  "Regardez!  Regardez!"  

I turned to look at the river, which was swelling like a small tide.  The man explained, "Les marees vienent deux fois chaque jour":  The tides come in twice every day.  He took pride, not simply in knowing that fact, but in his intimacy with a place and life he clearly loved, and with a woman who shared his passion.


The tide left, and I did some time later.  Just a little way down the road from that grove, I picked up a bike path that paralleled a route departmentale to Bordeaux city line.


(Note:  I'm looking for a scanner I can use on some of the photos I took during that, and other bike trips.)