In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
Compared to past winters, this one has been brutal--or, at least, especially dreary--and has seemed endless. This putative beginning of spring feels more like a truce, one that can be broken at any moment, than a true end to the hostilities. So far, I've done three rides that weren't commutes or related to some specific purposes. Even though I pedaled along streets, paths and boardwalks I've ridden many times before, those rides felt like discoveries and releases at the same time: The tears that rolled down my cheeks were not only from the wind.
But somehow I feel I rode as furtively as the season slinking its way among bare branches piqued with buds not yet ready to open. I am like a cat creeping, ready at any moment to scamper back into shelter. The rides have been really good. But I am anxious for the season to take root, for flowers to open and to ride expansively and endlessly. Hopefully all of those things will happen soon.
Normally, I'm not much of a fan of organized bike rides. But I must admit that the first time I did the Five Boro Bike Tour, it felt great to be "taking over" the Verrazano Bridge and various streets throughout the city. Sometimes people stood on the sidelines and cheered us on. But some jeered us, and once I heard someone scream, "Go to Cuba, you f---ing commies!" I guess if I feel that I can "claim", if you will, a place by pedaling across or through it, someone's going to feel threatened. I don't think my "claim" gives me sole possession; rather, it makes me a part of where I've ridden, and that place becomes part of me--and others can feel the same way. But I guess that's just not how some people see it: To them, a group of people riding through their neighborhood--especially if they look and dress a little different--is an invasion, an intrusion, on their way of life. The funny thing is that even though I am white, the most hostile reactions I've experienced were from other white people. Some of the friendliest receptions I encountered while on organized rides came in Harlem, when it was still entirely black, and Williamsburg when it was Puerto Rican. So...What kind of a reaction would I and fellow riders had been black or Latina, and riding through some white ghetto? Would the irrational resentments some feel toward cyclists have been exacerbated by racial tension? I got to thinking about such questions after showing A Bronx Tale to two of my classes last week. It's the first film Robert de Niro directed. In it, he plays Lorenzo, an Italian-American bus driver whose son, Calogero, witnesses a mob hit and doesn't "rat out" the perpetrator. From there, the film follows Colagero--then nine years old, in 1960--through the ensuing decade as he, and his world change. One of said changes is in the complexions of the skins of people who live in the neighborhood. By 1968 or thereabouts, blacks have moved within a few blocks of their neighborhood. A group of them rides down the street where the young Italian-American hoods hang out. They--with the exception of Colagero--charge into them, knocking them off their bikes, and beat and kick them to the ground. Colagero--"C" to everyone in the neighborhood--tries, in vain, to stop them. As the young black men are being beaten and their bikes trashed, the Moody Blues' Nights In White Satin plays in the background.
Back when I was racing, we had to wear white socks. I don't remember whether that was a UCI, or merely a USCF (now USA Cycling), rule. But wearing any other color under your Detto Pietro cleated shoes got you disqualified from a race. In the early days of mountain biking, riders wore black socks in defiance of that tradition. I wonder what they--or the UCI or USCF--would make of this:
Yesterday I took one of my seashore rambles that have been so much a part of my cycling life. You know something's a part of you when you've been away from it for a while and, when you go back, it's like reconnecting with an old friend: It's familiar and new at the same time.
The beaches and boardwalks are all imprinted in my mind. And the bracing wind that pushed at me, whipped me sideways and, finally, took me home felt as if it had always traveled with me, in my skin and on it, yet was as bracing and chilly as the air itself feels to someone who's coming out from layers of stilled dreams, of time itself.
And there is the light I have always seen again for the first time.
I wish all of my fatigue were that of the kind I experienced while riding yesterday: of waking again for the first time.
Many, many years ago, I took Chemistry. It was so long ago that whatever I learned could just as well have been alchemy. Anyway, I had a really strange prof. Since then, I've been told that all chemists are strange because of the fumes they breathe in the laboratory. Even if that is the case, I still think my prof was strange for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it's because, on the first day of class, he said, "You may have heard this course will take all of your time. That's not true, but it does require conscientious attention on your part--say, four or five hours a night." After a couple dozen people walked out, he continued: "Now look at the person on your left. Now look at the person on your right. One of them will fail, if not you." Then, after a few dozen more people walked out, he said, "We're going to start this course by learning the alphabet." I thought, "OK, maybe this won't be so bad after all." If that didn't show what I clueless freshman I was, I don't know what did. By "alphabet", he meant the periodic table. There would be a test on it, he said. I thought about that when I saw this "alphabet"--or is it a periodic table?:
