Old Bikes Never Die, They Just...

Sometimes I'll see the same bikes parked in the same place for what seem to be aeons.  

These golden oldies have been parked on Broadway at 11th Street (by the post office) for as long as I can remember.   The nearest one is a Ross "compact" bike from, I think, the 1970's.  But those other two bikes are much older. 

I've been known to "rescue" books from unsavory surroundings.  As an example, during a ride I used to take regularly when I was a Rutgers student, I stopped at a truck stop in the foothills of the Watchungs.  On my way out, I saw, from the corner of my eye, a little paperback volume of "Silver" poets.  Even if I hadn't been interested in some of the poems that were in it, I would have felt sorry for that book, stuck among the 57 varieties of porn on the racks.

I brought it to the man at the counter, who looked as if he could have been one of the truck drivers who patronized the place.  He squinted.  "Give me 75 cents for it." 

I rolled it up, tucked it into the rails of my saddle and pedalled off into the sunset.  Well, maybe I'm exaggerating, er, taking poetic license, about the sunset.

Sometimes I have a similar impulse when I see old bikes, unless they're absolutely awful.  The problem is that it takes a lot more space and money to rescue old bikes than old books, or even cats.  I know about the latter:  Charlie and Max were both rescued from the street and the pleasure they give me makes what I spend on them one of the great bargains of my life.

Anyway, I often wonder how Charlie and Max ended up on the street.  Or how a volume of Silver Poets ends up in a rack full of porn at a New Jersey truck stop.  Or how bikes end up locked forlornly to various sign posts, parking meters and other immovable objects for geological ages.

Did those bikes' owners suddenly have to leave town?  At least books can be left with the Strand Bookstore, which is only a block from where I saw the bikes in the photos.  And cats, dogs and other animals can be left with the ASPCA, though I will do my damndest never to leave Charlie, Max or any other animal I may adopt (or, more accurately, who adopts me) to such a fate.  But where is there a Strand Bookstore or ASPCA for bikes?  I know, you can leave them with the thrift stores--when they have the room.  Otherwise, those bikes end up on the same streets as those benighted animals.

When A Favorite Ride Changes

I, of all people, should not be fazed by change.

But how do you react when one of your favorite bike rides is about to be altered, possibly beyond recognition?:

I guess I shouldn't be so worried about what's going to happen to Rockaway Beach.  This guy looks like he might not survive the changes.


Just for  the heck of it, I decided to see how close I could ride to him.  How close I got to him surprised me.  What disturbed me was the reason why I could:

Not only is his wing broken; he was even more sickly than he looked from a hundred feet away.  


I may not be much of a naturalist, much less an orinthologist.  But I think it's a pretty safe to say he won't be there come next spring's cycling season.  I wonder who else won't--and will--be.


Much of the boardwalk--like many of its counterparts up and down the East Coast--hasn't borne the brunt of this year's storms very well.  So it's being rebuilt:

I always wondered what a boardwalk would look like if it were built in the Brutalist style.  Well, all right, I never did.  But now I know.  


My dislike of this boardwalk is not only from an aesthetic point of view.  The lines between the slabs are even sharper than the ones between the weathered wooden boards of the old boardwalk.  Those slabs are not always perfectly level with each other, and even if they were, the edge of a tire could skid against the edge of one of those slabs and cause a nasty spill.


As much as I dislike them, I can understand why they're being built that way. For one thing, it probably fits in with the row houses that are being built on the streets leading to it.  But more important--at least to the builders--it's probably cheaper than rebuilding with wooden boards.  It also won't weather and splinter the way wooden boards do, though concrete doesn't always age well in damp places, either.  


The latter, by the way, is the reason why builders have gotten away from the Brutalist style.  That, and the fact that raw concrete slabs can be unbelievably depressing, especially under the gray skies that one sees about 250 days a year in much of Northern Europe and northeastern North America, where so many of those buidings went up.


My question is:  If it's made of concrete, can it still be called a boardwalk?


Anyway, I have to wonder what next spring's--or even this winter's--rides will look like.  I hope that some of the old bungalows will remain:

Well, whatever happens, I guess I should be happy if the concrete replacement for the boardwalk remains open to cyclists.  I can tolerate almost anything that's by the ocean, so I guess whatever they're building will work, in some way or another, for me.


Still, I can't say I am happy about the prospect of a ride I've done for about 25 years being changed irrevocably.  All  I can hope is that at least something about it will be for the better for us.

At Journeys' End

Today seemed chillier than it actually was because of the wind--and a cold and one of those headaches that makes it seem as if a vise was clamping and squeezing at my temples. So I didn't ride.  I hope to feel better tomorrow.


Janine's death hasn't helped my mood much.  Although she wasn't a cyclist herself, she did a nice series (Click onto "Serie des Cyclistes")  of engravings with cyclists as her theme. 

One of the wonderful things about cycling in France is eating at the end of a day's ride.  If you've ever done a long or hard ride, you know that nothing tastes better than that roast chicken, pasta, ear of corn, salad, wine, pastry, fruit or anything you might consume afterward.  That's true even if you're eating in some truck stop off a highway in the middle of some place God seems to have forgotten.  So, imagine how good the bird, the grain, the soup are when your day's ride ends next to a chateau by the Loire--or in Paris.


It was even better when  that meal in Paris at the end of a day of riding was made by Janine.  I've spent enough time in France and eaten enough French cooking not to be impressed by all of it.  But I'll rave about Janine's culinary work.  So do her French friends, with whom I've shared some meals and other good times.


In recalling her, two words came up repeatedly: genereuse and vitale.  As creative and independent as she was, I never had the sense that she was, or felt, alienated from the world in which she lived.  Over time, I slowly came to realize how much the "cowboy" notion of creativity as the product of isolated, alienated individuals had crippled me as well as countless other people, particularly in America. 


For a long time, I rode because I was, or thought I had no choice but to be, that "cowboy."  I don't think Janine ever tried to teach or convince me of anything different.  She simply was a light at the end of those journeys--including the one that brought me from Nick to Justine.

Agoraphobia Opening, or Opening Agoraphobia

Marianela's ready for another commute:

She might be showing her age.  But, like girls of any age, she likes new accessories--especially a new bag:

And she especially likes it if the bag is retro:  real retro, like the OYB bag I described in an earlier post.


Down my street to start another day:

You can tell there's not much left of autumn.  Every day, the wind sweeps more leaves off the branches.  It leaves the trees more barren, and sometimes even a bit forlorn-looking.  And it exposes them to the expanse of sky:  a gray sky:

It's a bit like my morning commute:  the road and the world open before me, if only for moments. But some days what unfolds is a Mercator Projection of concrete lines and angles puncuated by windows filled with the ashen sky.  


At least, at the end of the days like that, I can ride away from it.  That was always the second attraction of cycling for me.  The first is to pedal into the open waves, whether they are in front of or within me.

For Two

The other day, I saw a tandem propped against someone's hedges

It's a Motobecane tandem from, as best as I can tell, some time in the late 1970's or early 1980's.  I am always surprised to see a tandem, much less anyone riding one.  But it was even more unusual to see one after the cycling season has passed its peak.

Anyone who drives in New York will tell you that parking is one of the most difficult things about life in this city.  I think it's just as true for tandems as it is for cars.  Actually, parking a bicycle built for two may actually be even more difficult than parking a car built for four.  After all, tandems don't fit very well in spaces where people park regular bikes.  And the spaces in which most New Yorkers live don't leave much room for a tandem.

I've ridden a tandem twice in my life.  The first time was, in fact, around this time of year.  I rode with a group that took rides to various ethnic neighborhoods in this city to sample foods and restaurants.  A young blind woman wanted to ride with them, but she needed someone to ride the front of a tandem the Light House supplied.  Enter me.

The bike was a single speed Schwinn:  heavy, but not a bad bike.  As I recall, it's what the bike rental places in Central Park offered.  So, while it wasn't the most responsive thing in the world, at least it didn't "fishtail" in the rear, as some tandems are prone to do.

I think my story-telling skills were more important than my bike-riding prowess for that woman.  I gave her a running narrative of the neighborhoods through which we rode and explained why we were riding them.  

After a while, I found myself sad and frustrated because I had to explain all sorts of things most of us take for granted.  For example, when we rode by the brownstones of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, I realized she had no idea of what they looked like.  She didn't even know about red, brown or any other color.  

Unfortunately for that young woman, I didn't do quite as well as the narrator did at the end of Raymond Carver's Cathedral.

Then again, that narrator wasn't pedaling and balancing the front of a tandem!