For many years, my favorite candy was the chocolate nonpareil. During my childhood, they usually came on waxed-paper sheets. I think part of the appeal (pun intended) of the nonpareil was peeling it off the sheet. It was sort of like pulling a button off a shirt.
I haven't eaten those candies in years. Now I see they're sold in little bags for about five dollars. I'd probably like them if they were made from really good dark chocolate, which would be a nice counterpoint to the sugar pearls that coat them.
(I've often wondered whether I'd like some of my other favorites from childhood--like Nestle's Crunch and Kit Kat--if they were made with high-quality dark chocolate. The dark-chocolate Kit Kat that's sometimes sold in the US seems to be just a Hershey bittersweet bar with wafers in it.)
Back when my grandmother was bringing those sheets of nonpareils, I didn't know any French. Later, I'd learn that "nonpareil" means "without parallel"--or, if you like, "There's nothing like it", which is how I probably described my favorite candy at one time or another.
Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that this is also called "nonpareil":
The Classic Cycle website describes it as "the missing link in the evolution of the bicycle". Apparently, it was built around 1890, after bike makers moved away from the "hobby horse" design and had been making "penny farthings" (high-wheelers) for a decade or so.
The Nonpareil seems to have been one of the first bikes with wheels of equal size. Most likely, it's also one of the first chain-driven bikes. I must say, though, there's nothing remotely like its chain on modern bikes:
For that matter, there's nothing like that frame, either. Given that everything that's been done (in bike design, anyway) gets done again, I have to wonder whether someone's designing a frame with a single tube that slopes from the front to the rear stays. It eliminates the top or down tube, depending on how you look at it. Can you imagine how much weight that saves? I'd bet that, rendered in carbon fiber, such a frame could be built into a complete bike that weighs less than 5 kilograms.
Of course, unless the UCI changes its rules, no racer could use such a bike in competition. But someone would want it anyway just because it's, well, nonpareil.
P.S. I'd love to find the oil lamp that fit on the fork. There's definitely nothing like it made today!
Today I rode to test a new electronic device and, well, ride. It was a perfect day for both.
But I had to test the electronic device before I could out of the house, let alone get on my bike. To be fair, Max has never given me as hard a time as former partners, roommates and others (including an ex-spouse) have about going out without them.
He didn't say "Vous ne passerez pas!" mainly because he doesn't speak French (though he understands some). But he insisted that my first photo on my new camera would be a portrait of him.
Anyway... Today was another near-perfect day for a ride. The temperature reached 30C (86F), but it dropped as I neared the water. The humidity was low and the clouds were high and sparse.
Actually, I didn't take a direct path to the water: I wandered through various parts of Queens and Nassau County before heading toward the southern bays of Long Island.
For a moment, I wondered whether those folks might be in trouble. I couldn't see what, if anything, was propelling their watercraft. (I'm not sure of whether to call it a boat or something else.) From my admittedly limited perspective, they didn't seem to be in any distress.
One thing about the ocean: It's pretty easy to tell whether the tide is in or out, and its clock, if you will, is fairly predictable. On the other hand, the bays and inlets from East Rockaway to Freeport can ebb or swell in an instant, and the tides and currents seem to have even more random effects than those of the ocean. You can see the results of what I'm talking about in the waterfront residential areas: One home seems to have been untouched by Superstorm Sandy or any other natural phenomenon, while a house next to it looks, nearly three years after the storm, as if it's being held up by the boards nailed over its windows and doorways.
On this day, however, almost nothing besides those houses even hinted at one of the worst natural disasters this area has experienced in its recorded history. Looking at the sky and the sunlight, such a catastrophe doesn't even seem possible, let alone probable.
Vera knows all about those things, but she rode like a magic carpet. She almost always does.
P.S.: I bought the camera because of something I'm going to talk about a couple of posts from now.
Today I took Tosca, my fixed-gear Mercian, for a ride.
Sometimes people who haven't ridden a track bike or a "fixie" ask me what it's like. One description I've given is that--if you'll pardon me a cliche--it's like "riding on rails".
Perhaps that's what, subconsciously, led me along the South Shore of Nassau County, Queens and Brooklyn to Coney Island:
Now, if you want to talk about "riding on rails", you have to think about the Thunderbolt.
If you ask most people to name a roller coaster on Coney Island, they'll say "Cyclone", with good reason: Few amusement-park rides, anywhere, are better-known. Even if you've never been to Coney Island, you've probably seen it in movies (such as The Wiz and The Sting II), Beyonce's video XO or in Grand Theft Auto IV (in which it's called The Screamer). Roller-coaster aficionados still rate it as among the best; it's almost certainly one the most thrilling rides to be had anywhere and one of the best remaining examples of a wooden-car roller coaster.
The current Thunderbolt, by contrast, opened only last year. It's more like a modern mega-amusement park ride, with its twists and turns. What most people under a certain age don't realize is that there was another Thunderbolt, which opened in 1925 (two years before the Cyclone) and closed in 1982. The Cyclone very nearly met the same fate in the late 1960s, when attendance at Coney Island's amusement parks and beaches declined sharply with the opening of newer parks and beaches, accessible by expressways, and the deterioration of the neighborhood around the roller coaster. (In the 1980s, Coney Island was often referred to as "Crack Island"; since the late 1990s, the area has been rebuilt, bit by bit.) Today I saw crowds like I've never before seen; kids of various ages screamed with terror or squealed with delight as the the Thunderbolt rose and dropped.
Speaking of dropping: For the past half-century or so, the Parachute Jump (the "umbrella" you see in the background) has been closed. There have been rumors about reopening it. Perhaps there could be some way to connect it to the Thunderbolt: When it reaches the peak of the loop, riders could "bail out".
Hmm...I wonder what the city Parks Department would think of that.
As for me: I'll stick to "riding on rails"--on Tosca.
Have you ever gone someplace--particularly a place very different from the one in which you were born, raised or lived--and felt as if the people there were always there, as if they were part of the land, sea, wind, stones or sky--or as if they were forms of the very light in which you were seeing them?
I hope that I don't seem to be dehumanizing or merely trivializing him, but this fisherman, when I first looked at him, seemed to be part of the rocks and concrete slabs on the beach:
Perhaps he looked that way because I'd pedaled against the wind all the way from my apartment to Point Lookout before I saw him. I wasn't tired: I've been feeling really good on my bikes--especially Arielle, my Mercian Audax, which I rode today--lately. If anything, I was feeling pretty giddy. For some reason (or perhaps no reason), I've often felt that way while and after riding.
Somehow I felt that man will be there again the next time I ride to Point Lookout, along with all of those slabs and stones, and the tides, whether they're in or out--and, oh, yes, the Point Lookout Orca.
I assured Arielle that she didn't have to become part of the rocks, or part of any art installation. All I wanted was for her to take me back--with the wind at my back, all the way to my apartment. After you're giddy, you get to exhale.
On this blog, I have written several posts about bicycles, and the ways they have been used, in war. It may surprise you to learn that the reason why I am interested in such things--and in military history, with an emphasis on the history--is that I am anti-war. In fact, I believe that the only chance the human race has of surviving-- let alone becoming a better, more enlightened species--is to render war obsolete. Only then will we be truly able to address issues of environmental degradation and economic injustice.
That last sentence also explains why I am anti-war and pro-veteran: To me, few things show how pointless war is than seeing a veteran sleeping under a bridge, highway overpass or train trestle, as I sometimes see on my way to work. It also explains why I see bicycling to work and school, and even for recreation --and not as a self-conscious fashion statement or a callow attempt at irony (Can it really be irony if you're trying to achieve it?)--as an instrument for attaining peace and justice.
So, in that spirit, I am posting this photograph:
Why?, you ask. Well, on this date 70 years ago, a boy named Shin and his best friend, a girl named Kimi, were playing with it when--to paraphrase Albert Camus in The Plague--death rained on them from the clear blue sky.
When Shin's family found him under a house beam, he was too weak to talk. But his hand still held the red grip of that tricycle. And Kimi was nowhere to be found.
Shin would not survive that night. Nor would Kimi, who was found later. Shin's father could not bear to leave him in a lonely graveyard, so he was interred--along with Kimi and the tricycle--in the family's backyard.
In 1985--forty years after the first atomic bomb leveled their home town of Hiroshima--his father decided to move his remains to the family's gravesite. He, with the help of his wife, dug up the backyard burial ground. There they found "the little white bones of Kimi and Shin, hand in hand as we had placed them," according to the father.
Also present was the tricycle, which the father had all but forgotten. Lifting it out of the grave, he said, "This should never happen to children. The world should be a peaceful place where children can play and laugh."
The next day, he would donate the tricycle to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where it is exhibited with other artifacts, as well as drawings, photos and stories from survivors of the first atomic bomb, exploded over the city 70 years ago today.
The tricycle inspired a children's book written by survivor Tatsuharu Kodama. Published in 1995, Shin's Tricycle is narrated by Nobuo Tetsunani, Shin's father. It's as painful as it is beautiful. I urge you to read it--and to take a good look at those stark drawings!
