An Adventure To The Familiar

Perhaps you've done something like what I am about to describe.

I packed lunch-- salsa I made myself, with some excellent locally-made tortilla chips--into the front bag on Vera, my green Mercian mixte.  With no particular destination or route in mind, I started riding. 

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The first few kilometers--along Sunnyside and Woodside streets, under the #7 train, into Corona and Flushing Meadow Park--were all familiar.  They could have taken me to some of the rides I do regularly:  the Rockaways, the South Shore, the North Shore.  But once I exited the park, I turned onto unfamiliar streets in a familiar (more or less) neighborhood.

I knew more or less the direction in which I was riding. But I didn't know, exactly, what I was riding into.  Mind you, I wasn't worried:  I wasn't beyond the reach of civilization or even in a place where I didn't understand the language.  But the rows of houses, surrounded by their patches of lawn and hedges, aren't the best of navigational aids.

No matter.  I kept on riding.  A turn here, another turn there.  Turn around where the road ends, then turn again.  Cross under a highway.  Spot a sign for a pond hidden by trees.  Do I take the path through the park on the left?  Or...are those old railroad tracks on the right?

Before I knew it, I had diagonally traversed Queens and was somewhere in Nassau County.  Mid-island, as they'd call it: somewhere between the North and South Shores.  More suburban developments, except now the lawns are bigger.  Some even have flower gardens. Then I found myself in a downtown area of one of those towns and noticed a sign for "Tulip Bakery".  OK, I guess that works:  cute cookies and pastries in the window, cute name on the sign.  

After running out of bakeries and cafes and boutiques, the street provided another stream of houses with lawns.  And its name:  Tulip Lane.  All right.  That bakery wasn't trying to be so cute after all.  Tip toe through the tulips.  Ride along Tulip Lane.  I continued:  It was longer than I expected, through a couple of places with "Franklin" in their names:  Franklin Square.  Franklin Lake.  Franklin something or other.  Then the Rockvilles.    Under another set of railroad tracks, and across still another.  Faces lightening and darkening and lightening again.  Still on Tulip Lane.

After crossing a state route, it stopped being Tulip Lane.  I didn't notice until much later, when I noticed I was riding on Long Beach Road.  I really had no idea of how far I'd ridden; I had just a vague notion that I'd been riding mostly south and east since I got on my bike.  The suburban houses had turned into garages, boat repair shops, a fishery and a tatoo parlor.  They didn't look like anything I ever saw in Long Beach before, on previous rides.

But the bridge at the end of them took me right into the heart of the town.  Over the bay, to the ocean.  I really enjoyed my lunch--and the unfamiliar ride to a completely familiar place.

Waffles And Mud

If you are a cyclocross racer living in Belgium, today is your day.

Now, you might be thiking that if I could write that previous sentence, I must have waaay too much time on my hands.  Well, that is a matter of debate, I guess.  But l swear, I wasn't web-surfing when I came up with the information that allowed me to come up with such a statement.

You see, this morning, I turned on a local community-radio station. The host of one of those crazy programs one finds on such stations mentioned that today is International Mud Day.  I didn't catch his name, but I did hear him add, a few minutes later, that today is Waffle Iron Day.

Thus, in writing the opening sentence of this post, I have performed a creative act and a public service.  Just imagine:  If those two bits of information hadn't found my way, perhaps no one ever would have connected them.  The world would be this much (she holds her forefinger and thumb a hair's breadth apart) poorer.

(How's that for grandiosity?)

Anyway, I found out tht neither holiday was created by, well, people with too much time on their hands and possibly-legal (or not) intoxicating substances.  Turns out, Mud Day originated in Nepal, in an attempt to enrich the lives of orphans by getting them to spend more time outdoors. 

It's therapy!  Really!  From Cyclocross magazine

Someone noticed that kids' attitudes and moods improved after spending time wallowing around in the mud.  Like so many things "primitive" people in places like Nepal have observed for centuries, Western science has discovered this fact and confirmed it with empirical data.  Actually, even some beauticians have beaten those scientists to their discovery: Why do you think salons offer mud treatments for the face and other areas of skin?

As for waffle irons:  A while back, I read that waffles evolved, if you will, from the making of communion wafers. In those days, they were made individually by pressing the batter between--you guessed it--two heated irons.  Patterns, and sometimes even images, were engraved into the irons, so the wafers came out embossed with with grid patterns (like most current waffles) or, perhaps, the seal of a particular saint or church.

Wouldn't you love to see this first thing in the morning?

Later, someone got the idea of adding wine, beer and other things with yeast to leaven the batter and make it rise. Then , people discovered that those patterns--especially the grid--trapped air inside, making a treat that's crispy on the outside but fluffy on the inside.

Anyway...I'm sure that plenty of cyclo-cross riders have consumed waffles before and after (and during:  they fit well in jersey pockets!) races or training ride. I've carried waffles with me on all sorts of rides--except when I was in Belgium because, there, they could be found in just about any store or stand.

So...Happy Mud Day and Happy Waffle Iron Day.  Belgium and the world should celebrate!

A Developing Picture: The East Coast Greenway

A decade ago, you could say that the photos you took during your vacation were "being developed", and everybody would know what you ment.

I thought about that one day when a student reported seeing a "One Hour Photo" sign and asked me to explain it.  Until then, it hadn't occured to me that a generation of young people is accustomed to instantly sending or uploading images from cameras and "smart phones" to computers--or other smart phones.  Those pictures do not have to be "processed", at least not by human hands.

When I was in high school, I learned how to develop and print photos in a darkroom.  For those of you who have never experienced the joys of such work, I will describe it, briefly.

A darkroom can be, really, just about any space that's big enoug for your equipment, has access to running water and, as the name indicates, can be sealed against light.  Even the slightest leakage of light--except for special blue light in the last stages of printing--can ruin the film on which the photos were shot or the photographic paper on which they were to be printed. So, all of the memories and imaginings you stored on rolls of film could be obliterated by the flick of a switch or the opening of a door.

(Old joke:  Dick and Jane  are in the darkroom.  Let's see what develops.)

First, the film immersing it in a tank of chemicals that converts or releases the substances in the film that store pieces (pixels, if you will) of the image.  The image emerges, if you will, but you can't see it because the film is in a tank and you are working in the dark.  But, later, when you print the film, you can see lines and shapes forming on the blank paper when it's immersed in another chemical bath after the image is projected onto the paper, which is photosensitive.  As the print is washing, you can turn on a "safelight" and see it emerge.  Lines appear and merge with each other, forming shapes of hair, noses, leaves, petals, wheels or whatever you photographed.

Yesterday, when I rode to Connecticut (again!), I felt as if I were watching a picture emerge from a blank slate, or paper, if you will.  Perhaps it's funny that I should use such a metaphor for a ride in which I didn't take any photos.  I'll explain.

Just over a year ago, on another Connecticut ride, I saw signs for something I'd never, up to that moment, heard of:  the East Coast Greenway.  When completed, it will allow non-motorized travel from Calais, Maine (at the border with New Brunswick, Canada) to Key West, Florida. It will include paths and trails through wooded areas and parkland (like the stretch through Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx), designated bike lanes that parallel main roads and quiet residential streets. . The first ECG symbols I saw stood at the end of the PBP trail, at the city line, and along residential Mount Tom Road in Pelham Manor.

On yesterday's ride, I saw some new ECG signs--or, at least, ones I hadn't noticed before.  I spotted them on my way back, just after I crossed the line back into New York State.  They led me along a series of narrow but lightly-trafficked streets that wound through a series of old churches and stone houses in Port Chester and Rye on the way to Playland.

I welcomed the "detour", if you will, as it was pleasant and relaxing--and took me away from Boston Post Road, one of the area's main streets, for a few miles.  Then, a couple of towns south, I picked up another (shorter) series of ECG signs in Mamaroneck, near the harbor and found myself pedaling down a series of suburban streets lined with houses and small sores down to New Rochelle.

And, after navigating the intersection of the New Rochelle DIner and the Home Depot, I picked up the first stretch of ECG I rode last year, from Mount Tom Road all the way (about ten kilometers) to the Hutchinson River Parkway Bridge.  From there, I zigged, zagged and wound through Bronx streets to the Randall's Island Connector.

It's not yet possible to ride a single unified greenway from the city to Connecticut, let alone to Maine or Florida.  But it's fun, in its own way, to see segments of the Greenway emerging like the lines on a developing photograph.  Perhaps one day soon, those lines will connect,  and the picture--the Greenway--will be complete.