Tomorrow Scottish voters will vote to decide whether to secede from the United Kingdom and form their own nation.
The question on the ballot is simple: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" Voters can only check "yes" or "no".
The latest polls indicate that the vote could go either way. I am not going to make a prediction or take a position on this blog.
If the "yes" voters rule the day, they might want a "trophy" from fellow Scot Reagan Appleton:
How often do you go for a bike ride to "clear your mind"? Or "to think about" something or another? To "de-stress"? Or "focus"?
It probably wouldn't surprise you that I've hopped on my bike many, many times for those reasons or to free my spirit. I know, that last phrase sounds misty and musty and woo-woo, but there it is.
Given that I've spun my wheels to get my mental wheels spinning (or to give them a rest), it might surprise you to know that I've never done yoga or engaged in any sort of meditation practice. Oh, I've gone to seminars, workshops and classes on various topics that began with exercises that called for participants to be conscious of their breathing and other basic functions. But I've never taken yoga classes, gone on zen retreats or done anything of that sort.
I've had acquaintances and friends--including one with whom I rode fairly regularly for a few years--who spent weekends and vacations going to ashrams and such. I have even entertained the thought of doing so myself. But I've never gotten to it. I don't feel guilty or that something is missing in my life. It just occurs to me that perhaps that lapse is rather odd, considering how I sometimes spend my bike rides.
So, what started this rumination, you ask? I ran across an announcement of a yoga-and-bicycling weekend retreat that took place the weekend before last at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Ranch in the Catskill Mountains, about 200 kilometers from where I live.
Somehow I get the feeling that riding with a yogi would be a very interesting experience.
I grew up at the tail end of a generation in which boys (of all ages) venerated comic-book superheroes. We had the Green Hornet, Captain America, Spiderman, the Hulk and, of course, Superman, among others.
As I recall, the only female superhero was Wonder Woman. There was Batgirl, but I never thought of her as a hero (heroine) because she always seemed subordinate to Batman, and even Robin.
Now, I could tell you that the dearth of girls with superpowers is the reason why I never was never a fan of the superhero genre. I didn't hate it, mind you: I just never could care about it.
(By the way, that's more or less the way I feel about science fiction and fantasy. It's not that I think of them as inferior genres: I simply never could, for whatever reasons, immerse myself in them.)
Still, I have to wonder how my life might have been different had I grown up seeing something like this:
She's the creation of Thought You Knew founder Alexis Finch. The lissome lass (!) in the drawing appeared in TyK's Bicycle Pinup Calendar fo 2012.
Ms. Finch says Thought You Knew is a "knee-jerk reaction to the lack of strong women as cycling role models in Chicago. She explains she was "tired of leaving my sexuality at the door to get taken seriously in bike shops" and "frustrated at seeing so many women sitting on the sidelines at bike events".
For that alone, Ms. Finch sounds like a hero for me!
Now this looks like an end-of-summer ride I'd like:
Actually, given that summer has not yet ended (at least, not officially) and that it's in northern Florida (where summer doesn't end until around Halloween), perhaps it can't really be considered an end-of-summer ride.
But it looks like fun nonetheless!
Back when I was doing a pretty fair amount of off-road riding, I often sluiced through the hills and gullies of Forest Park in Queens. I was living in Park Slope then, and the park--which was bigger and less agressively policed than Prospect--was about half an hour away. So, on a spring or summer day, I could get in a ride after work.
Since I sold my Bontrager and stopped riding off-road, I have cycled to Forest Park, but not in it. That is, until today.
Most of the park lies to the west of Woodhaven Boulevard. But the part to the east is more thickly wooded and has a few other interesting geological features the other side lacks. (Or, perhaps, the west side had them but they were obliterated by the golf course, bandshell and other things built there.) I was riding south, toward JFK airport, when I espied one of the paths I used to ride. It wasn't very long and ended abruptly in the trotting course, where other cyclists and I used to upset the horse riders. I didn't see any today.
But I saw something more interesting, at least to me (or in terms of this blog):
Did I never notice the track all those times I rode off-road? Or did I forget about it?
When I chanced upon it, a cute tuxedo cat scurried across. I don't know how long it's been since a train last rumbled and clattered over it, but I'm sure it's been decades. It parallels a Long Island Rail Road (Yes, it's spelled as two words!) line that runs through another part of the neighborhood. Perhaps some now-discontinued branch of the line ran here. Or, maybe, freight trains: The Atlas Park mall is about a kilometer to the southwest. It used to be an industrial park (That phrase seems so strange) that, at one time, housed General Electric, Kraft, Westinghouse, New York Telephone and other large companies. There are still some small factories as well as warehouses near the mall.
Anyway, I can't see abandoned railroad tracks without thinking, "Now this would be a great bike path!" Old rail lines have been so re-purposed in other places; if the same were done to the tracks I saw today, they could be linked to the nearby section of the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway , which might one day be a continuous greenway that connects Brooklyn and Queens.
