Making Friends At The End of The Year

For my last ride of 2010, I did a few easy miles on the local paths.  On my way to them, a cute stranger crossed my path:

He was roaming around in front of somebody's house, saw me coming and nonchalantly started to cross the street.  Somehow he knew I would stop to stroke him. 

At least it's good to know that someone finds me more interesting than the newspaper--one called the "Observer," yet.  If an observer something and no one pays attention....how does that question end?

So what do I miss most about home?  My cats?  My bikes?  My books?  My friends?  It's really close.  

Happy New Year!

Bridges to Deja Vu

There are at least a couple of different ways in which you can experience deja vu during a bike ride.


The most common way, of course, is to see familiar sights during along a route you've ridden before.  More often than not, that is a pleasant or at least agreeable situation.  After all, you wouldn't be doing the ride again if you don't get some kind of pleasure from it.


Then there is what I will call, for lack of a better term, situational deja vu.  Any number of situations or other experiences can repeat themselves during a ride. Among them are weather, road conditions, fatigue, exhiliaration or some emotion or another that you're dealing with.


Yet another kind of deja vu is, paradoxically, the most ephemeral yet the one that affects us most deeply.  It's the one in which we recall feelings or memories which may have come to us on rides very different from the one we're on at the moment.  Or we have expereinced those emotions during rides we did much earlier in our lives, or in places very different from the one in which we happen to be riding.


There are other ways, I'm sure, in which we can experience deja vu during a bike ride.  I've just mentioned three I could think of at this moment.  They also happen to be the ways in which I experienced deja vu on today's ride.


Although this is my first visit to, and therefore my first bike ride in, Florida in two years, every inch of today's ride was at least somewhat familiar to me.  I had previously ridden every crack and grain of sand my tires tread, though not necessarily in the sequence in which I rode them today.  But it seemed that the flow of sense memories was all but seamless.


It began when I crossed the bridge from Palm Coast Parkway to Route A1A:

Hannibal is said to have shouted "Excelsior!" after conquering the Alps.  Whatever he was feeling, it has nothing on the sensation I experience as I reach the apex of a bridge that connects the mainland to a strip of land along the sea.  At such moments, I feel as if I'm exhaling for the first time, whether the bridge is the one I crossed today, the one that connects Broad Channel to Rockaway Beach, the one I crossed over the estuary of the Dordogne river to the coast near Bordeaux or the one from Highlands to Sandy Hook in New Jersey. 


It was over that last bridge that I took my first long rides during my early teen years.


And that bridge led, like the one I crossed today, led to a spit of land that stands, almost defiantly, between the ocean and another body of water.  When you ride along Route 36 from Sandy Hook to Long Branch, the ocean is never more than two hundred feet to your left and the Shrewsbury River is no further than that to your right.  When you ride A1A from Palm Coast to Flagler Beach, the dunes of Painters Hill (such an apt name!) and Beverly Beach are practically at arm's length on your left, and you're separated by no more than the width of a grove or mobile-home "campground" from the Florida Intercoastal Waterway.


Even though this is Florida, I'll admit that today's ride is more beautiful than the ones in New Jersey or to Rockaway Beach.  But in the end, I enjoy it--and, more important, it matters to me for the same reasons as those rides, and the one in the southwest of France.  They all are bridges to deja vu.

Riding A Borrowed Bike On Its Own Time

Dear Reader, I really want you to feel pity for me.

Yeah, I know, I'm spending the holidays in Florida.  And, in doing so, I avoided the Great Christmas Blizzard of 2010 (or whatever the media are calling it) that hit the Northeast.

But where I am, while it's lovely enough, it ain't South Beach.  Then again, I never really wanted to go there.  In fact, I never had much of a yearning to go to Miami, or to come to this state at all.  My reasons are beyond the scope of this post or this blog, but suffice to say that my parents are the reason I come here, to a place that's about halfway between Jacksonville and Orlando--and, for that matter, about halfway between Saint Augustine and Daytona Beach. 

Now, all of those towns except Jacksonville (which, frankly, I don't know very well and--again, for reasons beyond the scope of this post and blog--don't want to know very well), have much to recommend them.  The town in which my parents live is not without its charms, including some nice pedestrian/bike lanes.

So, there's some good riding here.  The problem is this:

Yes, this is what I have been riding.  My parents borrowed it from a neighbor.  While I appreciate that neighbor's kindness, I have to wonder how much she actually rides it.  I saw it two years ago, and it looked no more used when I saw again this week.

It's a very cushy bike: the sort of machine on which you'd float along on a boardwalk or around the golf course.  But try to ride it more than half an hour, or make it go more than about three times your normal walking speed, and this bike will ignore your efforts and continue on its merry but very slow ways.

It's not too bad when ridden on level ground (which, around here, is pretty much the only kind of ground) and with the wind.  But pedal against the wind, which sometimes kicks up along the coastline, and it feels as if you're riding suspended in syrup.

This is giving me incentive to order a Brompton.  Of course, if I were to bring it (or any other) bike down, I'd have to check it in.  Usually, I bring everything I need for a trip down here in a carry-on.

Well, I'm glad I have a bike to ride, anyway.  And this one makes me appreciate my own bikes all the more.

Cycling Under A Sword of Damocles

This is one way you know you're in The South (and I ain't talkin' about the Bronx):

Between this bike/pedestrian path and the ocean is a strip of land about 200 yards wide, consisting of more trees-- like the one in the photo-- with moss cascading from them, interrupted by roadside ice cream and hot dog stands, biker bars, gated communities and a Publix supermarket.  Between this bike/pedestrian path and the Inland Waterway are a couple of state parks, a couple of convenience store/gas stations, a couple more biker bars and a couple of "professional buildings."

I stopped in one of the convenience store/gas stations.  The latter is owned by Citgo, but the store is part of a local chain called Jiffy.  This part of Florida, like much of the US, has experienced its coldest weather on record for this time of year.  So, I had a yen for something I never craved in my previous trips down here:  hot chocolate.  Also, I started the day with a headache, which I incorrectly thought I could pedal off.  So I also wanted aspirin. 

While there, I got talking with Sharon, the store manager.  I can best describe her as a redneck wife, and I don't necessarily mean that disparagingly.  She's somewhere between my and my parents' age and has lived all of her life in this area.  Business was slow, she said, but that's how it is everywhere: "Nobody has any money." 

She said she'd seen a report saying that the county in which her store is located--and in which my parents live--has the highest unemployment rate in the country. It's hard not to believe that:  Everywhere I've pedalled, and every place I've gone with my parents, I've seen empty stores and condo buildings.  A so-called European Village consists of a pedestrian plaza ringed with restaurants and shops, about half of which were vacant.  When I last saw it, two years ago, all of the spaces were occupied and business, although not booming, had yet to be wracked by the ravages of the implosion of the local and national economy. 

Sharon says she's never seen anything this bad.   In a nearby town, where she sometimes has to go on business, she sees "kids with eighteen siblings, and none of them have the same father."  And, she says, "They're white."

Five years ago, someone with no job, no income and no assets could get a loan to buy a house.  Today, this county and other places are full of young people with no job, no education and no future.  Now, if they had education, they'd be like certain young people in the Northwest of England nearly four decades ago.  What did they do?  They became the Johnny Rottens and Sid Vicouses of this world.  If, instead of education, they had religious dogma, they'd be suicide bombers. 

But those young men and women truly believe in nothing at all.  At least, they're not willing to die for anything, and they're living, not for the future, not for (much less in) the moment, and not even for the present or the Eternal Present.  Instead, they are in a chasm that cannot be filled with anything, not even their own deaths.

You can see it on their faces.  In fact, during the time Sharon and I were talking to each other, three of them--the "rock-heads," as she called them, came into the store.  One young man used the bathroom and left; a girl, younger, tried to buy cigarettes and another bought a case of beer. 

"You've got to watch out for them," she warned me.

"They look pretty scary."

"You're on your bicycle.  You're a woman riding alone.  Around here, that can be dangerous, epecially between here and the bridge."

"What do you mean?"

"They attack people and rob them.  And sometimes they do worse."

I thanked her for her advice and wished her a happy new year. And she wished me a safe trip, which I continued under the trees with moss hanging from them.

Cycling Where North Is South and South Is North

The local forecasters are saying that tonight we're going to have the coldest weather we've had for this date in at least forty years.  The temperature is supposed to fall to 27 degrees here; with the wind-chill, the "real-feel" temperature will be 20 or less.

Now, if I were in New York, I probably wouldn't give a second thought to this weather.  But I'm in Florida.  Granted, it's about an hour and a half northeast of Orlando, but still...

I guess this weather is Floridian compared to what they're having in New York and, in fact, just about all of the Eastern seabord north of Savannah, GA.  And I did get out for a brief ride this afternoon.  Although it was still chilly and breezy, there was scarcely a cloud in the sky.  Plus, I saw very little traffic.  On the other hand, I did see lots of pine trees.  I've nothing against them, but after an hour of seeing little else, they can get monotonous.  Perhaps I wouldn't have felt that way if they were magnolias or some other trees I don't normally see.

The other day, I described the apparent lack of commuter and utility cyclists in these parts.  That leads to drivers, whether intentionally or not, riding close to cyclists or turning into an intersection as a cyclist crosses.  To be fair, the latter may be due to the faulty timing of traffic signals.

Those same motorists, once they leave their steel cocoons, can be very pleasant and polite, or even charming.  I encountered one such driver today:  He made an uncomfortably close turn and, upon noticing me, rolled his eyes and said "Dang!" or something stronger.  As his window was closed and my lip-reading skills are only slightly better than my navigational or computational skills, I can't be entirely sure.

Anyway, I stopped in "Monkey," one of a local chain of 7-11 type gas stations/convenience stores, to use their bathroom.  On the way out, I picked up a pack of Crysto-Mint Life Savers.  As I walked up to the counter, that same man was chatting with the cashier.  He turned and, upon seeing me, drawled, "How d'ya do, ma'am?" 

"Oh, very well, thank you.  Lovely day, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is, ma'am.  I hope you're having a nice holiday."

"Why, thank you.  And I hope you're having the same."

When I used to come down here in boy-drag, I found that some of the young good ol' boys would run me almost off the road and whoop, yell or make comments about my obvious Yankee-ness.  Ironically, I was born in Georgia, though I spent only the first five months of my life there.  My father was stationed there with the Strategic Air Command, and during my infancy, they moved him, my mother and me back to New York. 

In the visits I've made since becoming Justine, I find that the motorists act more out of neglect or ignorance, or an unconscious sense of entitlement, than out of outright hostility than they did when I was Nick.  And, in my days as the "before" photo,  people were invariably polite and often friendly when they encountered me off my bike.  Now, I still find most of them polite and friendly, though some men are what some would characterise as chauvinistic and sometimes solicitous.

These experiences remind me of what someone once told me:  In Florida, South is North and North is South.  Down to about Orlando, it's very much like one encounters in Georgia or Alabama.  But much of the area south of Epcot Center has been colonized by Yankees and Quebecois.

But as far as today's weather goes, North is North, all right. 

A Parliament of Fowles By The Sea

This week, I'm posting from a computer that's not my own.  So, for some reason, I'm not able to include more than one photo in any given posting. 

That's a shame, because even the two relatively brief rides I've done since arriving here have given me opportunities to seem like I'm a better photographer than I actually am!

As you can see, Christmas Day was a nice time to be at the beach.  Today, not so much.  Maybe they flew to Bermuda and are celebrating Boxing Day.

Monet, On The Other Side

No, I'm not taking a cycling trip in France with a stop in Giverny. (I did that once, though!)  This is a good bit closer to home and family.  And I am in a place whose name begins with an "F." 

And, much to my delight, I've found one of the best walking/cycling trails I've seen in a while.  Perhaps even more gratifyingly, it was built within the past two years, in a place with a terribly depressed economy.

Think of the places in the US that have been left on the verge of asphyxiation since the housing bubble burst.  I'm in one of them right now:  a county with an official unemployment rate of 18 percent.  That's where I'm going to be this week. 

Yes, I am in Florida.  The weather was warm today, and I overdressed a bit when I rode.  I guess I was expecting a repeat of yesterday's weather, which was cooler.  Before I came here, Mom and Dad relayed some details of the coldest December this area has experienced in the time they've been living here, and for many years before that.  As an example, my mother said, oranges fell off the tree in their yard because they'd frozen.

Well, whatever it's been here, it's still not Bedford Falls.  Last night, I watched It's A Wonderful Life with Mom and Dad.  It's the first time in many years that I've seen the movie.  It's actually a rather good movie; it is cloying and sentimental, which, I suppose, a holiday movie should be, at least if its makers want to have a large audience.  And it does make a timely and timeless point about the human condition.  However, even though it was worth seeing again, I can't honestly say that I saw anyone or anything in it differently than I did when I last saw it.  Then again, maybe I'm not supposed to.  After all, we're not talking about Othello, from which I learned a few new things when I taught it this semester.

About the bike riding here:  There are actually a pretty fair number of dedicated cycling/pedestrian paths that are set off from the main roads. In fact, one starts just down the road from my parents' house.  The problem with them, as in so many other places, is that they begin and end abruptly, and pick up in other places.  Such has been the case since I first came here seventeen years ago. 

It is perhaps the most frustrating in my favorite place to ride around here.  Route A-1A skirts the ocean from Marineland to Daytona Beach. (It may go further in either direction; I know only about the stretch I've mentioned--and cycled.)  It's as beautiful a ride as one can find anywhere, but it's narrow and full of turns.  And some drivers see cyclists as obstacles--to what, I don't know--even when we're nowhere near them.  Of course, that's no different from the situation in so many other places.  But it's frustrating, and even dangerous, to be cycling along a dedicated path that ends abruptly and to have to pedal out onto a roadway where drivers aren't anticipating you.

I guess the situation I've described is a result of two things.  One is that most of the drivers don't use that road on a daily basis, so they have no way of knowing what to expect.  The other has to do with the fact that almost no one here cycles for transportation.  I've seen a pretty fair number of cyclists in the times I've visited, but they were all riding for recreation.  Of course, I'm not knocking that:  After all, that's what I was doing, too. But, having spent most of my life in urban areas, and much of that time in communities where significant numbers of people pedal to work, shop, go to school, visit museums and to other daily activites, I am convinced that unless there is a critical mass, if you will, of cyclo-commuters, non-cyclists will treat cyclists out of ignorance or with disrespect, or even hostility. Lycra-clad racers and wannabes, of which I was both for long periods of my life, do nothing to change motorists' attitudes about cycling and cyclists.

Now I realize I've stumbled over one of the great paradoxes of cycling in America.  The places where people would most want to ride are the ones with the least (or non-existent) cycling culture.  On the other hand, the places where there are the largest numbers of people who use their bikes for transportation are the most congested and polluted, not to mention the sorts of places where people wouldn't choose to take a cycling trip.

Then again, Monet and other artists often had to get away from the art world in order to create their best work.  Would he have come here?  With his bike or on it?

Alpina or Grand Cru?

I've decided that I'd like to relieve Arielle of the burden of a triple.  That burden includes extra weight, redundant gears  and shifting that, while precise enough, is tedious. 

So I want to install a so-called "compact" road road double.  Now I'm trying to choose between the Sugino Alpina and the Velo Orange Grand Cru.

My heart says "Alpina" because of its looks.  As I don't do retro for retro's sake, I couldn't care less that the Grand Cru mimics some visual elements of old Stronglight and other European cranksets from the 1960's amd '70's.  That's not to say that the Grand Cru is unattractive; I just prefer the looks of the Alpina.

On the other had, the Grand Cru has a significantly lower tread, or Q-factor, than the Alpina.  That will make it feel more like the Campagnolo and Stronglight cranks I rode in the old days.  I'm not so sure of whether they were more comofrtable than current cranks, or whether I am simply older and not in the shape I was during my racing days. 

Another consideration, for me, is that I've used Sugino products for a long time, while VO is only a few years old and the GC is a new product.  Then again, I've been happy with the VO in-house products I've used.  But those products have included, maninly, accessories like fenders and bells, not central drivetrain components like cranks.  Then again, Chris, the proprietor of VO, stands by what he sells and has always been friendly and helpful to me.

One last consideration is that, whatever I buy, I may swap the chainrings, as I have some 110 BCD 'rings  in different sizes.  So I would be buying mainly for the arms, and the Alpina can be had for a bit less than the Grand Cru.

Decisions, decisions. What do you, dear readers, think?

Marianela Gets Fixed Up

When I rebuilt Marianela, I'd given her an ability she hadn't used--until the other day, when I fixed her up.

All right...If you know the story of Marianela, you know she wasn't fixed up.  But my old orange bike was. 

You see, her new wheels have a "flip-flop" hub in the rear.  Until the other day, I'd ridden her with a single freewheel.  But I decided that if I go through a period--as I just did--of not having time to ride save for my commutes and errands, I at least want to derive as much benefit and pleasure as possible from them.  So I gave  la pobre Nela a fixed gear.

I've only been able to ride it twice.  The drivetrain is surprisingly smooth, especially given the fact that it consists of low-cost parts. 

Of course, the only thing crazier and holding a greater potential for disfigurement and premature death than riding a fixie with no brake on the streets is riding one without some sort of foot retention.  So off came the rubber pedals and on went these:

Talk about back to the future:  These pedals are among the first made specifically for mountain biking.  They date to about 1985 or earlier.  Note that they have very wide platforms, which are great for foot support and comfort.  But they're also terrible for cornering and ground clearance, which is probably one reason why they haven't been made in more than twenty years. 

Also note a feature lacking in today's mountain bike pedals:  provisions for toe clips and straps.  The ones I installed are probably almost as old as the pedals themselves altough, unlike the pedals, they had never been used. 

So tell me:  How many bikes have you seen with those pedals--and Velo Orange fenders and "Milan" handlebars?  Or fixed gears with cyclocross/winter tires?

Pas de Randonnee

Today's only the first day of winter, at least officially. And I already have a case of the midwinter blues.

This year, we've had colder and windier weather earlier in the season than in any recent year, at least as I recall. But that doesn't usually affect my mood.  It is nearing the end of the semester and, as I told my brother, this time is for college instructors as tax season is to accountants. That means some sleepless nights and little time for anything besides work.

So, naturally, I haven't had much time to ride.  In times past, that's really gotten me down.  Tammy and Eva both used to say that they could tell I'd gone too long (for me, at least) without riding when I got annoyed with everything they said and did.  Of course, I annoyed pretty easily in those days anyway, and perhaps I still do.  But there was no denying that a lack of time in the saddle led to all sorts of moodiness.

In recent years, I've had two fairly lengthy spells without cycling.  One, of course, followed my surgery.  The other came during my first year of living as Justine.

The obvious answer is that I had so wanted to undergo my transition and surgery that I was willing to give up, at least for a time, cycling.  Actually, I didn't stop riding altogether during that first year: I simply did much less, mostly because of circumstance but somewhat out of choice.   I was, for the first time in a very long time, turning into a social creature and was mostly enjoying it.  As it happened, the people around whom I was spending a lot of time weren't cyclists.   And I made no effort to "convert" them.

For about four months after my surgery, I simply couldn't ride.  In the beginning, I couldn't have even lifted any of my bikes, or much of anything weighing more than a  couple of books in a bookbag or knapsack.  Before the surgery, I knew that my recovery would be spent off the bike.  So, I guess, I was menatally ready for it.  

You might also say that my work at the college is an extenuating circumstance.  Indeed it is.  But in some weird way, even though the end of the semester is almost here, it still seems even further away than getting on my bike again seemed the day after my surgery.

I'm not the only one to get the no-biking blues.  Back in my racing days, a fellow racer told me he felt became really depressed when an injury kept him off his bike for a few months.  At one point, the doctor told him that he would never ride again.  At that point, he said, he seriously thought about killing himself.

Recently I did a Google search and found that he's not only still alive; he's still racing in the senior category.  (He's about three or four years older than I am.)  And he's an independent businessman.

Dear Readers, do you get depressed when you can't ride for extended periods of time?