When The Best-Laid Plans Lead To A Lane To Reverend Ike

Hopefully, you have all had an experience of not "getting the guy (or girl)" but ending up with The One.  


I'm not going to describe anything quite as momentous as that.  But I am going to relate a tale of things not going according to plan and turning out better than I'd planned.


I didn't work on any of my bikes yesterday.  The rain didn't materialize.  However, I did other things that took more time than I expected.  So I got to spend only half an hour on my bike.


On the other hand, today I didn't have classes due to a scheduling quirk.  And the afternoon turned into the nicest one we've had in months.  The morning fog and clouds burned away in the afternoon sun; within a couple of hours, the temperature rose from the mid-50's to near 80.  After sending off my state tax return and a birthday card for my father, I gulped down some green tea and yogurt with almonds and raisins and took Tosca out for a spin.

The route I followed today was the same as the one I took last year, when I did my first post-surgery ride of more than an hour.  It's also the route that I took for one of my last rides before surgery.  From my place, I took the RFK Bridge to Randall's Island and Manhattan, where I pedaled through upper Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge.  On the New Jersey side of the bridge, I rode atop the Palisades, along the Hudson River, to the edge of Jersey City, where I descended to the Exchange Place waterfront.   Then it was a matter of following, glancing away from, then following again, the waterfront through Jersey City and Bayonne (the hometown of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons) to the bridge bearing the latter city's name to Staten Island, where I took the Ferry.


It's an interesting combination of urban neighborhoods, cookie-cutter suburbs, blue-collar and yuppie havens, and views of the river, skyline, bridges that reflect the color of the morning mist and trestles that put the rust in Rust Belt.


Just before the GW Bridge, there's an interesting or hideous (depending on your point of view) theatre that was probably built during the 1920's.  It now serves as a pulpit for the ex of a famous singer/performer who has done some of her best-known work since splitting up with him.

Said preacher is Reverend Ike.  Yes, that Rev. Ike:  the one who was Mr. Tina Turner.  Of course, he never saw the relationship that way, though sometimes I think that, deep down, he must have known it would come to that.  Quite possibly the worst thing for the long-term prospects of a marriage is a wife who is obviously more talented than the husband.  (Somehow marriages stay together when the man is more talented.  That's a story for another post, or more precisely, another blog, or some sort of study by the NIH.)  At least Sonny Bono admitted as much about Cher; from what I understand, Rev. Ike was very abusive toward Tina.  


Hmm...Are politics and preaching the last refuges of husbands who can't make it on their own and whose wives get sick of them riding on their coattails?


I digress, again.  About half a mile south (downtown, to New Yorkers) of Rev. Ike's temple, I saw something I hadn't seen since I last rode up that way:

It's the shortest bike lane in New York.  Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit.  But it does serve a purpose:  It guides cyclists through one of the trickiest intersections in upper Manhattan, if not all of the city.  When St. Nicholas Avenue (on which the lane is located) crosses West 163rd Street, it also intersects with Audubon Avenue which, like St. Nicholas, is one of the main thoroughfares of that part of town.  


If the intersection were a clock and you were riding on St. Nicholas from the six o'clock position, the traffic from Audubon would be coming at you from the two and eight o'clock position, while the 163rd Street traffic would be coming from somewhere between the two and three o'clock position, and somewhere between the eight and nine o'clock positions. So, from St. Nick, you would cross 163rd and Audubon as if they were an eight-lane highway.  


The new path leads to a couple of concrete islands where there are signs, and from which the path continues to 165th Street.

After that and Rev. Ike, the rest of the ride was a piece of cake!

Rainy Day Projects

It's supposed to rain on and off today.  I suppose I could play chicken with the rain again.  However, I somehow feel that I wouldn't be so lucky in daring the weather as I was in chancing it.  Actually, I wasn't even chancing it:  I just had enough dumb luck to be able to ride between rainfalls.

If it does rain, I'll probably do some bike work I'd been planning.  Maybe I'll even build the wheels I had planned for Marianela.  I'm not using any fancy components on it, save for the DT spokes.  (They're going to connect Sun CR-18 rims to IRO hubs which look like they're made by Formula.) But I think that, and the care I'll take in building it, will make it a better wheel than some of the stuff they sell on e-Bay.  

What else?  When I swap the wheels, I'm going to put street tires on it rather than the cyclo-cross tires I've been riding.  They still look good, so I'll save them for next winter.

I also just got a pair of shifter pods from Velo Orange.  Those aren't for Marianela, though; they're for Helene.  I was going to get a pair of Paul Thumbies.  But I found out that the road version works only on the part of the bar that bulges near the clamp.  And the mountain version would be too narrow to fit on the grip area of the Velo Orange Porteurs that Helene has.  The VO pods are made to fit either road or mountain bars, and they'll work with the Dia Compe Silver shift levers that are on the bike.  And I just happen to have a pair of cable guides I saved from the last set of Ergo levers I used.

Now...Which do I do first?  Of course Helene is more fun to work with (not to mention ride); Marianela is my "beast."  But Marianela's rear wheel popped a spoke a couple of weeks ago.  That's usually a sign that a wheel needs to be rebuilt or replaced.  Then again, no spokes have broken since.  I find that on dying wheels, spokes tend to break pretty frequently.

Plus, it's been quite a while since I built a pair of wheels.  I used to do it in one of the shops in which I worked, and I've built a few wheels for myself.  But since I haven't done it in a while, I wonder whether my skills have deteriorated?  I know how to do it; I just wonder whether i've lost the "touch" I might have (or merely imagined) I had.

Oh well.  This is probably one of those decisions I should make after I've made (and eaten!) a crepe or two.

Into A Cherry Blossom Sunset

Somehow I get the feeling I might've better appreciated today's weather had I been English.  Then again, upon realizing how much of the Empire consisted of warm climes, one could just as easily conclude that some English people weren't so crazy about their own meteorological conditions after all.


The day remained overcast.  I thought I felt a few drops on my way home.  I kept my fingers crossed:  I received a very important document in the mail at my second job.  And I was bringing it home in a tote bag with an open top that I carried in one of my bike baskets.  Perhaps if the rain had gotten heavier, I could have stopped in some store and asked for a plastic bag.


But the sprinkle seemed to end not much after it started.  While the sky didn't clear, I was treated to an interesting "sunset" as I pedaled through Flushing Meadow Park.

Now, even if you absolutely detest pink, how can you not love a cherry blossom "sunset?"

Playing Chicken With The Rain

The past few days could teach anyone the meaning, if not the precise etymology (Oh, shit, did I just sound like a linguistics professor?) of the phrase "April showers."


Yesterday rain began to fall when I was a couple of blocks from my class.  Today I woke up to tires hissing on slick pavement that was nearly dry by the time I rode to my first class.  But, when I stepped outside between classes, a glaze of rain clung to the concrete and pavement like a honey drizzle on a baking ham.  And, by the time I left for my other job, the streets were once again dry.


However, I could tell that the rain had gone in that direction and left just before I got to my other school by the fresh, dewy scent in the air, which was still pretty chilly.  I haven't seen new flowers on either campus.  But on my second job, I saw this sign of rain that passes over several times a day:

That's The Pinarello, which I saw for the first time since December.  And the cycling colleague in my department also had a "shower cap" on her bike:

And, yes, I saw everything glistening with raindrops when I went outside after class.  But, once again, I had just missed riding in the rain--or it missed me.

It Looks Like A Lane Now

It looks like a real bike lane now.


Last week, I mentioned the construction I saw on the Queens side of the Edward Koch/Queensborough/59th Street Bridge.  (At the rate it's going, the bridge'll have more names than God has in the Old Testament!)  Well, I don't know whether they've finished it.  But at least now the path is useful, and takes you to a practical destination.


More important, it doesn't force cyclists into this:

This is where the lane from the bridge used to end.  Just beyond the orange barrels, 27th Street dead-ends under the elevated tracks of the #7 and N lines of the New York subways.  Most of the traffic on 27th (which is one-way in the direction of the truck in the rear of the photo) merges onto the bridge ramp; a few vehicles turn right onto Queens Plaza North, where you see the black sedan.  Sometimes those streets are completely full of vehicles, and their drivers aren't known for patience.


So, when a cyclist coming off the bridge can turn left onto the lane, which intersects with 23rd, 22nd and 21st Streets. All of them continue underneath the tracks.  Or one can take 23rd in the other direction to go to Astoria.  That street passes through an industrial area and the traffic on it is usually light.   Twenty-Second is one-way in the opposite direction from 23rd, and 21st is a major artery that serves as part of the route for several bus lines.  


I would love it if the path were extended to Vernon Boulevard, which skirts the Queens bank of the East River.   That would offer cyclists relatively easy and safe access to PS 1, Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum, among other things. 


One can always hope.  For now, I'll suspend my cynicism and be grateful for something that's better than what we had.