Like Another Day Of Riding In Europe--Well, Sort Of

In addition to Paris, I have cycled in other parts of France, including the Alps, Pyrenees, Loire Valley, Normandy, Alsace and Vosges.  I have also pedaled through other European countries:  England, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic.  

Something occured to me today:  In all of those places, I never felt as tired after a day of riding as I sometimes do after a day of cycling near my home.  It didn't matter whether I was riding through hills and mountains, through valleys or along sea coasts:  Even the days I spent climbing the Tour and Giro peaks didn't leave me as spent as a day of riding up North American peaks.

Now, you might be thinking that it has to do with the excitement I feel about being in another country.  That certainly is true:  I savored the experiences of riding through medieval villages as well as the streets of the capitals because they were different and because I knew that I might never see them again.  On the other hand, when I ride to, say, Point Lookout, I enjoy it but I know that chances are that I'll be doing it again fairly soon.

But now I realize something else about riding in Europe leaves me less tired:  The sun, even in most parts of Italy and Spain, isn't as strong as it is here.  Most people are surprised, as I was, the first time they look at a map or globe and see, for example, that London lies at almost exactly the same latitude as Calgary, or that Rome is actually a degree further north in latitude than New York City.

Not only is the sun less intense in most of Europe than it is in most of the 'States; it is also more likely (except, perhaps in some of the Mediterranean regions) to be shielded, partially or wholly, by clouds.  

Arielle

Which brings me to today's ride--on Arielle, my Mercian Audax.  It started sunny, but about an hour and a half into it, the sky thickened with cumulus clouds.  They even darkened a bit, but there did not seem to be an imminent threat of rain.

And the day warmed up to 31C (88F):  not a "scorcher", but a couple of degrees warmer than what we normally experience in this part of the world at this time of year.  Normally, that combination of cloud cover and heat means one thing:  high humidity.

From I Love Bicycling

Except that wasn't the case today.  The weather reports said we won't experience high humidity until the day after tomorrow.   If what I felt during my ride is any indication, those reports weren't lying:  Even though I was riding in higher gears and at higher RPMs through much of my ride, I wasn't sweating nearly as much as I would expect.

Back to the sun:  I slathered myself in sunscreen before I started my ride, and I brought a vial of it with me.  But I never used it and didn't notice any burn at the end of my ride.  In fact, one way I know I've absorbed a lot of sun on my skin is that I feel sleepy afterward.  At the end of my ride, however, I had the energy to play with Max and Marlee, and to make dinner rather than order it.

The best part, though, is that I rode longer than I intended:  I turned a 120 kilometer (75 mile) ride into 165 (a little more than 100) by making a couple of "wrong" turns.  Furthermore, I rode up a ridge and over a couple of chains of hills I wouldn't have encountered had I stuck to my original plan, such as it was.  In fact, I spent an hour and a half doing nothing but riding up and down hills.

Near the end of my ride, clouds parted and the sun shone brightly.  Even with my fair skin, though, it didn't sap my energy.  It was almost like extending my European trip by another day!

This Explains Everything--Or Me, Anyway

Some of the experiences I've recounted in this blog are part of my "previous life", if you will.  In fact, my other blog--on which I haven't written much lately--started as a kind of journal or diary about my transition from that life to the one I'm living now.

When people learn that, for many years, I moved through this world as a guy named Nick, the question they most often ask is, "When did you know?"  Like so many things in my life, I knew about it long before I had the words for it.  

Another piece of self-knowledge that came to me before the language I needed to describe or explain it is that of my sexual orientation.  Even after I came to terms with my gender identity, I still struggled to explain, in any way that would make sense to anyone else, my attractions. Gay, straight, bi, homo, hetero, lesbian, pansexual, asexual: None of those terms seemed to fit.

But maybe, just maybe, I've finally come across le mot juste (Pardon my French, s'il vous plait!):

From Pinterest

DIY Facial Surgery

I'm not going to name any names.

Could these be the faces of those older white guys* who would vote for a rich right-wing racist demagogue?

Could they be the ones who are in danger of losing their jobs--or have already lost them, or never had them in the first place--and vote for the very candidates who destroy their jobs or send them overseas?

Could they--children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants, all of them--vote for someone who wants to build a wall between this country and its neighbor, and wants to ban all adherents of the world's largest religion from entering the United Sates?

Could those folks--half of whom would have trouble coming up with $400 to meet an emergency expense--be the ones voting for someone who would make it easier for employers to get away with paying less than minimum wage to immigrants?

Could they--whose schools, hospitals and infrastructure are crumbling--vote for someone who'd slash funding for such things--just to make sure "freeloaders" from other countries can't have them?

Tell me:  Do they really, knowingly, go into the voting booth and cut off their noses to spite their faces?

*--Disclosure: Had it not been for my transition, I'd be an old (or old-ish) white guy!  

What Makes Her Think She Can't?

After eating a tasty, thoroughly unhealthy, Original Stromboli--one of those foods you live on when you're a twenty-year-old student precisely because it's so tasty and unhealthy, in addition to filling and cheap--I managed to ju-u-ust miss a train back to New York. 

It was nearly dark by that time, and riding back would have meant pedaling another 40 kilometers or so (I'd already done about 120).  I didn't mind the distance, but the last part of that route would have taken me through desolate industrial and post-industrial areas near Newark-Liberty Airport.  

I seriously wonder whether the lights on the streets in those areas are turned off after trucks make their last deliveries--or disappear into one of the potholes in those streets.  Seriously, those craters can make the Ho Chih Minh trail seem like a magic carpet.  I've cycled those streets in the dark.  If some of my Catholic school education had stuck, I might've been fingering a rosary strand (what we used to call "worry beads").

No, she's not me.  From San Diego Magazine

The time-table indicated that another train would arrive in bit more than half an hour.  I didn't want to wait that long, and I could've wandered around New Brunswick and discovered other old haunts that have been turned into sushi restaurants or ice cream parlors.  But I figured that doing so would cause me to miss another train.

So what to do?  Well, I knew that if I crossed the bridge over the Raritan and continued up Route 27--something I did many times in the old days--I probably could catch the next train a little further along the line.  

The next stop is Edison, a small station that the trains skip sometimes.  Besides, it wasn't very far:  I could make it in ten minutes without trying.  After that, there was Metuchen--"the Brainy Borough".  I knew I had plenty of time to get there and that, if I channeled the inner racer I never had, I could make it to Metro Park, the station after that.  Along the way, I'd burn off at least a little of the mozzerella cheese, cappicola, salami, peppers and onions stuffed into Italian bread dough (I told you it was unhealthy!)  I downed before missing the train in New Brunswick.

I played it safe, getting to Metuchen with about ten minutes to spare.  The train I boarded was nearly empty.  At the next station, a friendly black woman boarded and sat across from me.

She wanted to charge her smart phone.  I pointed to what looked like--turns out, what was--a port.  She admired my bike and asked where I'd been riding.

"You can actually ride a bike that far?" she wondered.

I assured her that it's not only possible, but that I've done even longer rides, and other people have done rides that were longer still.

"I couldn't make it around the block, let alone do what you did."

I explained that nobody rides that long on his or her first ride; you build yourself up to ever-increasing distances.  And, really, if you keep on riding, you don't even have to plan on building yourself up; it just happens as a matter of course.

She explained that she'd "have a hard time riding" because her legs were "shot" from years of playing racquetball.  I pointed out that if she has a bike with gears, she can shift to a lower gear and get as much exercise as she gets from racquetball or any other sport, without the stress on her knees.

"I don't know how you do it!" she marvelled.

I find it interesting that people who engage in all manner of athletic pursuits simply can't fathom the idea of riding a bike more than a few blocks.  Even long-distance runners I've talked to don't believe they can ride a bike as far, let alone further, than they run.

But the woman I met last night was even more astounding than any of them.  Not only was she a racquetball player, she is, from what she told me, an accomplished medical researcher.   I don't doubt it:  I mentioned that my sister-in-law is a microbiologist and she was familiar with, not only the kind of work she does, but the institute in which she conducts it.

I don't know about you, but I think that if I were involved in cutting-edge research and could play racquetball, I'd be pretty confident in my ability to do just about anything--including a bike ride!

We disembarked at Penn Station. ("Lead us not into Penn Station"?)  She was going to meet her boyfriend.  I wonder whether she told him about the crazy cyclist she met on the train, and whether he believed anyone would ride as much as I did. 

A Ride Along Another Canal: A Path To Memory

Today it was Vera's turn.

I took my green Miss Mercian mixte on a ride to, and along, the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath.  I used to pedal along that path when I was a Rutgers student; last year I rode it for the first time since those days.

Today I rode it just a week after pedaling and walking by the  Canal St. Martin through what has become a district of young artists and animators--and interesting, quirky restaurants and cafes--to the city's "little Africa".  Years ago, I also pedaled a section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath near Washington, DC.  Like the D&R towpath, its surface (at least on the section I rode) is dirt and clay, with pebbles in some areas. A section of the St. Martin has a path with a similar surface, while another part is cobblestoned.

Towpaths along canals were constructed so that horses or mules could tow barges from the shore. Even if their surfaces are not paved, they make nice bike lanes as well as hiking trails because they are usually table-flat, or close to it.  The engineering that went into building them--not to mention the canals themselves--has seldom been bettered.

It's interesting that one reason we like to ride along canals is that they seem peaceful.  Their still waters reflect and refract light in sometimes-painterly sorts of ways, whether the canal courses through Paris residences or old factories in New England--or winds through stands of trees and follows railroad tracks in central New Jersey.  One often sees couples riding or walking, or simply sitting, along canal banks:  Canals and their paths are often among the most romantic sites in their locales.  

I also find it interesting that some canal towpaths are seen as "natural" sites.  Along some parts of the Delaware and Raritan, as well as other canals, trees and other vegetation have reclaimed the land from the remains of abandoned factories and other structures.  Areas along canals have also been turned into, or become, sanctuaries for various animals and birds.  But as lovely as all of those animal habitats, and all of the flora and fauna, are, they are no more "natural" than the canal itself. 

In saying what I've just said, I do not mean to diminish the aesthetic or recreational value of such sites.  I just find it ironic that we now ride along canal towpaths like the Delaware and Raritan to get away from the sometimes-dreary, or even grim, industrial and post-industrial landscapes those canals helped to create, or were built to serve.  

In fact, the city of New Brunswick--the locale of Rutgers University, located at one end of the canal--is such a place.  I don't know whether the term "post-industrial" had been coined by the time I attended university there, but it certainly would have fit:  A number of large and small enterprises had gone out of business or simply left:  Johnson and Johnson was threatening to do the same.  In fact, even some Rutgers administrators, and New Jersey state officials, talked about abandoning the Old Queens campus and moving all of the university's facilities across the Raritan River to Piscataway, where Rutgers already had some of its research laboratories as well as a residential campus.

Instead, they decided to "revitalize" the city.  In essence, they made it just like the downtowns of so many other cities, with all of the same chain stores and restaurants. (I mean, what town worth its salt would do without Starbucks, right?)  So it doesn't look as run-down as much of the town did when I lived there, but it has all of the character of a Sunbelt suburb.

And, of course, my favorite places--except for one--are gone.  Those places include what remains, to this day, my favorite music store I have ever encountered:  Cheap Thrills, on George Street. The prices were indeed cheap, which allowed me and many other students to buy albums (vinyl!) of all of those esoteric bands and kinds of music we learned about from each other.  

(That shop, and a Pyramid Books, which I also loved, were part of the Hiram Market district, which was designated a historic district, then de-designated because, as one architect put it, the area didn't fit into Johnson and Johnson's "clean desk" mentality.)

The only "old favorite" of mine that remains is a restaurant called Stuff Yer Face.  Of course, the menu includes all sorts of things we couldn't have imagined in those days. It also has a bar with an enormous beer selection.  Back in my day, they didn't (couldn't?) sell alcohol, but we could bring it in.  Of course, most of us did!

I ordered an Original Stromboli, for old time's sake.  The young woman who took my order and the one who brought it to me were, no doubt, not even born the last or first time I ordered one.  It was every bit as good--and unhealthy--as the first one I ate in 1979 or thereabouts.  A bargain, frankly, at $6.75. 

At least there was that--and the canal towpath.  They made the ride more than worthwhile.

Happy To Ride Them Again

Today I luxuriated in riding another one of my own bikes.

Yesterday I took flight on Arielle, my Mercian Audax.  Today I spun the pedals on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bike.  

Tosca

For over a week, I rode a relatively heavy hybrid/city bike with a geometry more relaxed than on any bike I own.  I understand why rental centers choose such bikes:  They stand up better than road racing or touring bikes to the rigors of city streets--which, in Paris, often include cobblestones.  Also, they are more responsive than mountain bikes.

The bike I rode in Paris this year, like the one I rode there last year, has a dropped-bar ("ladies'") frame made of oversized aluminum tubes.  The bike I rented in Montreal in October was also aluminum, but with a "diamond" ("men's") frame configuration.  Long-accepted wisdom (or dogma, depending on how you look at it) says that diamond frames are inherently more responsive than those with dropped bars because they are more rigid. My experience confirms that notion, at least for me.  I notice such differences on steel bikes, but they don't seem as pronounced as on the aluminum bikes I rode.  I wonder whether oversized aluminum tubes exaggerate the differences between these frame designs.

The Paris Bike Tour machine I rode this year.

Now, of course, my Mercians are lighter than those rental bikes, even though I made no effort to save weight in building my bikes.  And, even 700 X 28 tires--which both Arielle and Tosca sport--are narrower and much lighter than the rubber on the rentals.  So it's no surprise that my bikes would feel livelier.

But perhaps the most differences of all have to do with fit and my personal preferences.  Mercian custom-built the frames of both Arielle and Tosca for me, to fit the idiosyncracies of my body and riding preferences.  No amount of fiddling with the saddle and handlebar positions on rental bikes will make them fit me as well as my Mercians. 

Also, no matter how the handlebars are adjusted, the rental bikes all left me in a more upright riding position than even my most upright bike, the Schwinn LeTour that's become my beater/commuter.  Moreover, even that bike has a narrower and less-cushy saddle than any of the rentals had--and my saddles, all of which are leather (Gyes on the LeTour and Brooks on my Mercians) are broken in.

The Paris Bike Tour 

Then again, my riding in Paris did not have speed or even long distances as an objective.  I stopped frequently, whether to look at interesting things, shop or eat.  I suppose most people who rent bikes or use Velib (Paris' bike share program) are riding in similar ways.  

The bike I rented from Velo Urbain in Montreal

Don't get me wrong:  The bikes I rented this year and last from Paris Bike Tour were pleasant to ride and well-suited to their intended purposes.  So was the bike I rented from Velo Urbain in Montreal.  I would rent those bikes, from those places, again.  Still, I'm very happy to be riding my own bikes--especially Arielle and Tosca.

For Love And Hunger

The other morning, before going out for a ride, I went to see my friend Mildred.

She had another visitor:

The cat has been a "regular", and Mildred feeds her.  I would, too.

Perhaps we should take our friend here:

What Do I Miss? Mes Chats et Mes Velos

In 1992, I did a bike tour from Paris to Chartres, and from there to the Loire Valley and Burgundy to Dijon, before heading back to Paris--and, from there, taking a train, boat and train to England to visit my aunt.  

As I was about to head to Blighty, I was away from home for nearly a month.  I spent time with one of my friends, who lived near Paris at that time.  She asked what I missed most about home.

"Ma chat":  my cat.

Charlie I:  The cat who brought me back home.

Now, it  wasn't as if I didn't have friends in New York or anywhere else in the US.  Ditto for family: An aunt, uncle and cousin were still in Brooklyn, and my parents and one of my brothers were still living on the (New) Jersey Shore.  But the previous year had been a very difficult--though, in many ways, fruitful--time for me.  I wrote a lot.  How could I not?:  I was in graduate school, studying poetry.  My marriage had officially ended that year (though, in reality, it was dead long before that), and from Memorial Day until Christmas of 1991, I lost five friends to AIDS-related illnesses and the brother of someone I dated was murdered in the hallway of the building in which I was living.

Max

I was tempted not to go back, even though I had only to take a couple more courses, complete my dissertation (a book of poems) and take my comprehensive exam (which wasn't as difficult as I expected) to complete my degree.  After experiencing the losses I've mentioned, I had a kind of crisis from that happened much earlier in my life.  In retrospect, I realize that dealing with it--in part, by taking the trip I've mentioned--led me, if as indirectly as the route that took me from and to Paris, to the transition I would start a decade later.  

Marlee

Anyway, aside from the pain of past experience, I wanted to leave the United States behind, or so I believed.  Oh--I should mention that an acquaintance of mine was killed during our first invasion of Iraq.  I really believed that the country in which I'd spent most of my life was not, and could not be, a force for good in this world (I still feel that way, often) and it looked like Daddy Bush would be re-elected.  Him!--after eight years of Reagan!  I simply did not want to be associated with such things.  

(Would that I could have seen the future!)

Anyway, it seemed as if the only answer to my friend's question was, indeed, "ma chat".  (I had one at the time.)  She was convinced there had to be something else waiting for me:  she pointed out the family, friends, studies and writing I've mentioned.  And, of course, there were my bikes, although the one I was riding during that trip was quite nice.

The funny thing is I felt almost exactly the same way a couple of days ago, as I was leaving Paris.  In so many ways, my home country, and even my home town, are less tenable than they were nearly a quarter-century ago.  We have had non-stop war for the past fifteen years, and Donald Trump makes Bush The Elder seem like Nelson Mandela.  The idea of leaving is even more tempting than it was then, though I know it will be more difficult than I realized it could be in those days.

Arielle

I am back, for now.  And what did I miss, aside from some people?  Well, Max and Marlee--yes, I have one more cat than I did in those days.  And, today, I realized, I missed my bikes.  After spending more than a week riding a rental--which, as rentals go, was actually pretty good--taking Arielle, my Mercian Audax, for a ride today, with its perfect weather, seemed heavenly.  

So I missed my cats, my bikes and....

So What Do Picasso's Handlebars Really Mean?

The Presidentiad is in full swing here in the US.  If you like to hear lies, double-talk, evasion, babble, euphemism and things that are just purely and simply ridiculous, you can be, in the immortal words of H.L. Mencken, "entertained as Solomon never was by his hooch dancers".

I couldn't help but to think that the Musee Picasso let some candidate's speech writer--or some candidate for some office somewhere--write the commentary for one of the exhibits:

The good folks at Musee Picasso very thoughtfully provided this translation:

When I read the French, the last two sentences caused me to titter, with my fingers covering my lips, in that very discreet Parisienne sort of way.  The English translation made me laugh out loud.  That, of course, gave me away as an American.

So, gee, maybe, just maybe, Picasso's goats were a stand-in for lust and sex.  Really, now?  My first art history professor--a gay man who devoted the last years of his professional life to explicating the homoeroticism in Caravaggio--would be shocked--shocked, I say!--to learn that.

Hmm...I thought--with all due respect to the man and his work--that everything about Picasso had to do with sex, whether in general or about his own lustfulness.  I mean, you don't even have to read two sentences in any biography of him to know that he was a horny guy.

Want proof?  Take a look:

Lest you think that is an isolated example, check this out:

Now you know what this is really about--and it wasn't about a charge at the end of a Tour de France stage!:

Do Places Change, Or Do Journeys Remain The Same?

I'm back in New York but still living on Paris time, at least for today.  That means I couldn't sleep when I got home, fell asleep after opening my suitcase (at least, that's what I think), feeling too tired to fall asleep (or not tired enough to stay awake?) , then falling asleep again by my kitchen table.

In between, I found myself thinking 

My fourth-favorite sculpture from my favorite sculptor.

about the trip, and other things.

Although some things in Paris change, if you go back to it, you'll find more similarities with the City of Light you remember from however-many-yearsh ago when you first visited, or lived or worked, there.  At least, that is how I felt last year--returning after being away for more than a decade--and this year, more than three decades after I first saw the French capital.

In contrast, New York--parts of it, anyway--can change more in a few years than Paris or other cities can change in decades, or even centuries.  I was reminded of that when the former neighbor I encountered in the Cluny recounted going back to our old block recently and noticing how it was "so different" from what we lived in.

In Paris, of course, there are buildings that stood for centuries before Europeans got lost on a trip to India and found themselves in the Americas.  (No, Columbus did not "discover" America!)  But there are also aspects of daily living that haven't changed much, if at all.  Although it's a major, fast-paced city, people still take time to enjoy meals and passing streams of humanity.  Those things happen to a greater degree in other parts of France (at least they did when I saw them about 15 years ago), but there are still lively street scenes that, I feel, are quickly disappearing in New York--and never existed in the first place in other parts of the United States.

And, let's face it, you are never going to see anything like this anywhere in the US:

New bikes might have technology.  But they--save for those made by custom and traditional builders like Mercian--or those, like Mariposa, who are inspired by them--don't have the heart and style of this:

Yes, it's a Peugeot, and many more like it were built.  But it has all sorts of details--which, like cornices on Victorian buildings or harmonies in Mozart sonatas--that are actually functional and not only aesthetic or merely stylistic. 

OK, so I wouldn't have seen a bike like that ridden to victory, or at all, down the Boulevard des Champs Elysees last Sunday.  And its rider wouldn't have dismounted under the Arc de Triomphe to ascend the winners' platform.  But its owner may well have ridden through this:

La Porte St. Denis is one of Paris's "other arcs" (the Porte St. Martin is the other)--and, in my opinion,  more interesting than that more famous one.   And a lot easier to ride.  I know:  I rode by and through la Porte St. Denis (in the above photo) the other day, and I've ridden round and round the other one!

And I went back, and came back.