Colors That Haven't Changed From My Youth

Yesterday's ride was all about color.  So was today's ride.  At least, my ride ended with them, though the hues I saw were very different from the ones I saw in Connecticut and Westchester County and the Bronx--or even in my neighborhood.

Of course, not every vista on today's trip looked like that.  But it's hard to have a better ending, wouldn't you say?

Certainly, it was a reward for pedaling through the industrial and post-industrial badlands of Essex, Union and Middlesex Counties--and, I guess, for something I did about an hour and a half before I saw the sunset.

A cool wind at my back glided me and Vera, my green Mercian mixte, down Route 36, a two-lane valley of asphalt running along the length of an isthmus about 150 meters wide, with the Atlantic Ocean to my left and the confluence of the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers on my right.  As I mentioned in other posts, I pedaled this road many times during my teen years, and during visits to my parents' house after I moved out, and before they moved to Florida. 

Tears rolled down my cheeks.  I couldn't blame them on the wind, or even the chill.  I was thinking a bit about some of those past rides, but I was also very, very happy to be riding a road--and through a community--Superstorm Sandy all but submerged four years ago.  

In spite of the beautiful weather, I saw little motor traffic. Of course, even on unseasonably warm days at this time of year, few people go to the beach.  I did see, however, more than a few cyclists--including a twelve-year-old boy crumpled on the side of the road, his bike lying on its side.

Fortunately for him, I wasn't the first person to see him:  A man and woman who were walking by, and a friend who was riding with him, were standing around, talking to and touching him on his shoulder, neck and arms.  

He'd  been riding on the sidewalk and, from what he said, grazed the side of the curb.  When I chanced upon him, he was clutching the right side of his head, which struck the curb when he fell and rendered him unconscious for a few seconds.

The couple had already called the police.  I told his friend to dial the boy's family, who live just over the bridge that crosses the river from Sea Bright, where we were, into Rumson.  Soon the officers, EMS workers and a fire captain arrived; a few minutes later, the boy's father showed up.

In response to the fire captain's questions, the boy gave his name, address, birthdate, parents' names, and telephone numbers--and correctly identified today's date, the town an state in which we found ourselves.  And he named the current President.  He reported no pain anywhere in his body but his head, from which a lump was starting to throb.

The fire captain, police and EMS workers admonished him to wear a helmet the next time he rides, and his father to buy it for him.  As they left, the father thanked me, even though I didn't do much more than stay with the boy and say some reassuring things to him.

It wasn't exactly heroism on my part, but somehow I felt rewarded for it at the end of the day.  If I indeed was, perhaps what I did, however small it was, could have been some sort of atonement for committing one of the worst sins a cyclist can commit.  At least, I would have regarded it as such back when I had pretensions to racing.

I mean, how could I resist the Polar Bear Ice Cream.  Even Bruce Springsteen couldn't have come up with something more old-school, blue-collar Jersey Shore than that place.

It's not one of those places that will dazzle you with exotic flavors or architectural presentations.  Instead,it offers some of the classic flavors and toppings of hard and soft ice cream, home made. They are offering smoothies and other things that none of us could have dreamed of in my youth.  Still, I went with something basic:  a waffle cone with the vanilla-chocolate swirl. (Think of it as the black-and-white cookie of ice cream.)  It was all that I remembered--except, of course, for the price, which was still modest.

I think the young woman who worked the counter wasn't even born the last time I stopped there before today.

Funny, though, I don't remember one of my early mentors (in cycling) telling me, or anyone else, not to eat ice cream while riding.  I don't remember how I got the fear that consuming anything like that cone, or a sundae, during a ride would shut down my digestive system and, possibly, everything else in my body.  But it certainly wasn't from "Ducky" Schiavo, or his son who now runs this shop:

The Peddler, in its first location a few blocks from its present one, was one of the first shops in the area to sell high-performance bikes.  I bought my Nishiki International and Peugeot PX-10 there.  Now Michael, his son--who bears a striking resemblance to him--carries a combination of the ultra-modern and retro stuff.  I learned a few things about cycling culture, to the degree it existed when the Peddler opened, as well as other bits of history.  Perhaps I'll write another post about that.

For now, I'll leave you with the colors that ended my ride, and day.

Cycling, In Living Color

Time was when I wore nothing but black:  black leather, black lycra, black latex and black everything else.

Yes, I even had an all-black bike outfit before carbon fiber and the "stealth" look became so prevalent!

Now, understand that I was young and had just moved back to New York:  to the East Village, no less.  Even two of the three bikes I owned at that time were black. The Peugeot PX-10 was available only in white the year mine was made. Somehow that was overlooked in the circles in which I found myself.  Actually, I know how:  None of them were cyclists, and I'm not sure that any of them saw me on my bike.  And if they had, I'm not sure they would have noticed or recognized me:  Rare was the occasion on which we saw each other sober or in daylight.

Anyway, in my "black" period I was keeping a terrible, terrible secret.  No, it's not the one that became the subject of my other blog. Well, all right, I was keeping that secret, but that's not the one I meant. Nor was it that I'd voted for Reagan. (I didn't, but I later learned that some of them had, in secret.)  Or that I was having splendid relationships with my family:  My father and I were barely on speaking terms at that time.

My hidden vice, if you will, had to do with my tastes in art. Actually, the fact that I cared about art at all would have enraged some of my not-so-fellow-after-all travelers.   Some of them thought the whole idea of art was inherently bourgeois; at least one wore a T-shirt that read "I Hate Art."  (I thought she was talking about her ex until I learned otherwise.)

My dim, dark perversion was...my weakness for Jean-Honore Fragonard, which I retain to this day.  Yes, he represented every excess of the ancien regime.  When the Reign of Terror descended upon Paris, he fled and died, nearly forgotten, a decade and a half later.  Given the sort of person I was in my faux-punk days, I could have hated him for painting such subjects as the wife of a nobleman on a swing in her garden, much as I once hated writers like Henry James for their focus on high society.  (I've gotten over that!)  

So what attracted me to such paintings as "Blind Man's Bluff" and "The Stolen Kiss"?  All right, the title--and the none-too-thinly-veiled eroticism--of the latter.  But even more important, to me, were those colors.  Oh, those colors!  And the way he used them!  

(Hmm...Maybe I'm really a magpie in a human's body.)

So of course I had to get myself out to ride today.  No classes on a cool, fairly windy day when fall is just starting to tip toward winter.  The sun shining brightly.  And colors everywhere.  

I figured that if the red, orange and yellow leaves were so vibrant in my neighborhood, they must be blazing in other places--like, say, New England.  Or, more specifically, the part of it closest to me:  Connecticut.

So now you know where I rode today.  I pedaled into the wind most of the way up, which sharpened my senses, I think. (That, or the colors were even deeper than I thought they were!)  And Arielle, my Mercian Audax, felt even more lively than she usually does, which is saying something.

Call me shallow or trivial or--if you want to sound like someone who's trying to sound like he or she knows better--a sensualist who has never grown up.  And I won't, as long as I can do rides like the one I did today.  They just might keep me from fading back to black!

Seeing The Signs

Caterina, Charlie (I), Candice, Charlie (II), Max and Marlee.

I have loved them all.  I miss Caterina, both Charlies and Candice.  At least I have Max and Marlee.

They all did, and gave, everything I ever could have wanted from the likes of them.  Well, all except one thing.

I never could get any of them to do this:

For that matter, I've never been able to persuade any cat to ride with me.  

A few years ago, on New Years' morning, I stopped for a cat I saw and who looked almost pleadingly at me.  As soon as I got off my bike, he darted to my ankles and rubbed himself against me.  I picked him up.  For a moment, he curled on my shoulder and I tried getting on my bike, figuring I could start off the new year by rescuing a feline friend.  But he was having none of it:  As soon as I lifted my leg over the bike, he dropped himself off my chest and landed on his feet.

I tried a similar rescue about a year ago, on another cat who greeted me.  It ended much like the first one I tried:  When I got on the bike, the cat decided to go airborne.

Perhaps those felines--and my own--saw this sign:

Well, now I know what they're doing while I'm riding!  Hmm...Maybe that's the reason they won't ride with me. 

Abigail Dougherty: She "Collided" With A Garbage Truck

Even though it's something I haven't done often, I've done it too frequently.

I am talking about writing posts like this one—in which I describe an encounter between a bicycle and a motor vehicle results in a dead cyclist.  Or dead cyclists, plural.

In too many such incidents, the driver was intoxicated.  Or, worse, the driver simply took off after running down a bike rider.  

From what I've read so far, the tragedy I'm about to relate doesn't fit into either of those categories.  It seems that the driver in question simply didn't see the cyclist:  a plausible scenario, especially given a few factors I'll mention in this post.


Abigail Dougherty, a University of Florida student just a couple of weeks from turning 21, was riding southbound on NW 17th Street in Gainesville and was starting to cross University Avenue.  

A garbage truck was rumbling along the same street, in the same direction at the same moment.  It, however turned right to go west on University.

Abigail Dougherty

A local news report said she "collided" with the garbage truck.  It's difficult to imagine how she could have done such a thing--unless she rode into the intersection as the truck was in the process of turning.

The more likely scenario, it seems, is that she was partway into the intersection when the driver started to round the corner for the turn.  If things transpired that way, it's not difficult to imagine how the driver might have lost sight of her, or never saw her in the first place, especially since garbage truck drivers don't have the best sight lines.

Having cycled for decades in New York, I have had tailed, dodged  and weaved around all manner of vehicles, including garbage trucks.  Probably the only vehicles with worse sight lines are long-haul trucks.  The best chance I have with garbage trucks or long-haul drivers, it seems, is to get them to see me. 

Of course, I do not know how Abigail Dougherty fell victim to a turning garbage truck. An investigation is ongoing, as of now; officials aren't even sure of who had the right-of-way.  According to a local attorney, motorists are expected to yield to cyclists and pedestrians before making a turn.  If footage of the incident can be found, I would think the question of right-of-way would be fairly easy to solve.  

Whatever the answer, we--cyclists and motorists, as well as pedestrians--need to be more cognizant of each other, and how each of us has different needs, but the same responsibilities, on the road.

Now that Ms. Dougherty's death has sparked a conversation about cyclists and drivers on the road, I hope it won't lead to misguided attempts--like bike lanes that, too often, are more dangerous than the streets--to make cycling "safer".

Whatever comes of this tragedy, I hope it helps to prevent more like it.  After all, who wants to hear about another cyclist (or anyone else, for that matter) cut down in the bloom of youth?

Rides And Memories From The Day Of The Dead

I grew up thinking today was All Saints' Day.

Later, I learned that it was also called All Souls' Day.

Either way, it was the reason Halloween (All Hallows' E'en) existed.

Then I learned that those two days, and the one that follows are celebrated as Dia de Muertos in Mexico, and now in Mexican communities here in the US. 

Actually, only the southern part of Mexico, where Aztec and other indigenous cultures were still strong, celebrated it until the middle of the 20th Century.  Until then, the north--which was almost entirely Roman Catholic and mainly of European ancestry--commemorated All Saints' Day in a fashion similar to the rest of the Catholic world.  What that meant, mainly, was going to Mass and, for some families, a commemorative meal or other event for their dear departed.

I must say, though, that for a time in my life, it didn't seem to have anything to do with death--unless, perhaps, the weather was particularly gloomy.  Catholic schools, including the one I attended, were closed that day.  We were expected to go to church, but other than that, we were free.  At least, I was, because my family didn't do anything special for the day.

I can remember going for bike rides on the first of November, both as a child and as an adult.  According to the calendar, this day is the first day of the year's penultimate month.  Some years, the weather told us that the cycling season was winding down, or even on its last legs.  

Whatever the day was like, the sensual feast of October would soon be over and the more austere beauty of November would lead to rides that shortened with the amount of daylight available but grew in intensity, sometimes physically but more often emotionally.

Today I rode to work and  I might get to sneak out for a "quickie" before riding home.  Whatever I do, I am sure to think about not only my rides past, but also the people who rode (some of) them with me--and the person I was on those rides.  And, of course, about the rides ahead.  

Yes, on the Day of the Dead.

About the Images:  The first is the box from a special edition "Day of the Dead" Bicycle playing card set.  The second, third and fourth are by Heather Calderon and are titled "Hollywood Bicycle Woman," "Hollywood Bicycle Man" and "El Panadero", respectively. 

After You Make Your Pie...

When should you replace your helmet?

Giro, the manufacturer of the helmets I currently ride, recommends getting a new helmet every three years.    MET, an Italian constructor of cranial caskets, says that a helmet should be good for eight years after the date it's manufactured.  The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, on the other hand,says that while the rumors about sweat and sunlight degrading helmets aren't true (in the case of sweat) or exaggerated (in the case of sunlight), five years is a "reasonable" lifespan for the helmet of a cyclist who rides thousands of miles a year.

So, according to Giro, both of my helmets should be replaced (coincidence?) and the folks at BHSI would tell me that replacing mine would be a good idea.  According to MET's recommendations, one of my helmets should be retired, while the other has a year and a half or so left.

Giro, MET, BHSI and every other helmet-maker and safety organization of which I'm aware say that you if you crash your helmet, it should be replaced.  Some say that dropping it onto a hard surface is reason enough to consign it to the scrap heap.

I actually had planned to replace my helmets in the spring. About two weeks ago, I bought two new helmets, both Giros, that were on sale.  (This, it seems, is the best time of year to buy a helmet, as retailers are clearing out this year's stock to make room for wares from the new model year.)  Soon, I'm going to toss the older of my current helmets.  I'll replace the fitting pads in the other with thinner ones so I can ride it with winter headgear underneath.

I got a really good deal on the new helmets.  Still, before I bought them, I wish I'd known about this:

From Alienation Bicycle Components

I would love to read the report if Snell or the American Society for Testing and Materials did a crash test on pumpkins.  Do the kinds of patterns you carve in them affect their structural integrity?

Happy Halloween! 

Tell Them Groucho Sent You

When I was a kid, we thought Rambler was a car old people drove.

Such a conclusion was based on the impeccable powers of observation children have:  Everyone we saw driving a car with the "R" was old enough to be one of our grandparents.  Also, everything about it just seemed like it was meant to be driven by someone who would have fit the demographic of Brezhnev's last Politburo.  The word for it--which I didn't know at the time, because it wasn't used in my blue-collar milieu--was stodgy.

Thus, when the brand died, one could, perhaps, have been forgiven for thinking that its demise came because all of its potential customers had gone to the Great Golf Course In The Sky.

I was just short of eleven years old at the time.  Not only had I seen what we would, in more politically correct times, call "senior citizens" driving Ramblers, I also noticed some cars--also, as often as not, driven by members of the same age group--bearing a brand that wasn't advertised on TV.

Several years earlier, that brand--named for the first known European to cross the Mississippi River--crossed the Rubicon, or the River Styx, or whatever body of water separates us from The End.  I am referring, of course, to De Soto.

Now, I don't recall the passing of De Soto--the car or the explorer (in spite of what some of my students might have you believe!).  The brand died around the time I was passing through a "terrible" age.  Aside from seeing  some of their cars--which, by the time of Rambler's end, were about a decade old--the only other reference I saw to the brand was in re-runs of You Bet Your Life.  The popular game show's host would urge viewers to go to their nearest De Soto dealers and tell them "Groucho sent you."   

Hmm...If you did utter that magic phrase, did you get a free duck on your dashboard?

Or, perhaps, if you bought one of their cars, you'd get this as a bonus:

I tried to find information on De Soto bicycles.  I don't know whether they were made by any company connected with the automobiles.   It wouldn't surprise me if they were, or at least if someone in the auto company had a hand in designing them.  After all, you can see some of the same "aerodynamic" features--which, on both the bike and the car, were probably more design flourishes than engineering innovations.  And, at the time of the ad (probably the 1950s), bicycle makers marketed their wares to appeal to the fantasies children--boys, mainly--had about the cars they would drive when they were of age.

From what little information I can find, I think I can safely assume that the De Soto bicycles of that time have no more relation to today's De Soto adult tricycles than the bikes today sold as "Motobecane", "Windsor", "Mercier" and "Dawes" have to the classic marques of the Bike Boom and earlier.  

We Can Use The Jump, And The NY Post Needs To Get A Grip

The other day, I chastised the Mayor of Montreal for his plan to paint lanes that would be shared by bikes and buses on some of his city's main thoroughfares.  An editorial in the Montreal Gazette  lambasted the idea--rightly, in my opinion.

Today the script is flipped, if you will, in my hometown:  a sensible piece of bicycle policy is proposed, but an idiotic newspaper editorial denounces it.

You probably wouldn't be surprised to find out that said editorial is in the New York Post: you know, the rag that became famous for headlines like Headless Body In Topless Bar and has lately become the print media's biggest cheerleader for Donald Trump's candidacy.  They've published a lot of diatribes against cyclists and this city's attempts to be more "bike friendly".  Some of the latter, to be fair, were on the mark, if for the wrong reasons,  such as their early criticisms of bike lanes.

Today their editorial begins thusly:

It seems it's not enough to ease up on anti-social behavior, from urinating on the street to public pot-smoking:  Next, the City Council may let cyclists legally jump red lights.

Here in New York, many intersections have traffic signals with four-way red lights and "walk" signals that precede the green light by 20 seconds.  In principle, I think it's a good idea, because it allows pedestrians to enter the intersection before, and thus be seen by, motorists who might make turns.  If anything, I think the interval should be longer along some of the city's wider streets such as Queens Boulevard, along which many senior citizens and disabled people live.

The City Council proposal would allow cyclists to follow the pedestrian signal in crossing an intersection.  Frankly, I think a 20-second interval for "jumping" red lights makes even more sense for cyclists than it does for pedestrians, especially for cyclists crossing intersections from bike lanes.  Twenty seconds is plenty of time for cyclists to cross just about any intersection, and even the slowest cyclists at the widest boulevards will have enough time to get through the immediate traffic lanes and avoid motorists making right turns.

The Post does have one thing right:  Many cyclists already do that because we know that it's much safer to cross that way than according to motorists' signals.  But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a paper of their caliber compares legalizing the practice to tolerating public pot-smoking and urination.

If you follow the logic, if it can be called that, of some of the Post's other editorials and articles, allowing public urination unfairly privileges 49 percent of the population (of which I am not a part:  boo hoo).  So, perhaps, it's not surprising that the esteemed editors would follow the passage I italicized above with this:  It's not as bad as it sounds.  Then, they use even more tortured, to put it kindly, logic to dismiss the City Council proposal.

Usually, when folks like Denis Cordierre propose wrongheaded policies about cycling and pundits endorse them (or oppose good ideas), I can attribute it to a lack of knowledge about-- usually because of a lack of experience in-- cycling.  The Post, however, has magnified that lack of knowledge with an apparent inability to construct a cogent argument. Had any of my students submitted anything like it, he or she would see lots of red ink upon getting it back!

I wonder what Alexander Hamilton would think of that editorial--or the Post?

Ou Sont Les Cyclistes Jeunes d'Antan?

Ou sont les neiges d'antan.

If you recognize that line, you've probably seen (or at least read) The Glass Menagerie.  As great an artist as he was, Tennessee Williams didn't write that line:  He took it from Ballade des dames du temps jadis (Ballad of the Ladies of Ancient Times), a poem Francois Villon wrote some four centuries earlier.

The line means "Where have the snows of yesteryear gone?"  Most of us, I believe, have asked some version or another of that question at least once in our lives:  perhaps when looking at an old photo album or yearbook, for instance.

Even if I have no connection to the subjects of an old image, I can't help but to wonder who they are and where they might be now.  

This photo was taken by John E. Scott and is dated 27 October 1954.  Posted on the website of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, it shows boys with bicycles they'd won in a contest which may have been sponsored by the Montgomery Examiner in Alabama.

Hmm...Not only do I wonder where those boys are, I wonder whether any of them are still riding today.  One can hope!

A Wrong Path To Bike Safety

I am generally not a fan of bike lanes.  While data from Antwerp, Belgium indicate that they cut the accident rate in half on high-speed (75KPH/45MPH or more) roads, that same study shows that a cyclist riding in either a separated or painted lane along a medium-speed (50KPH, or 30 MPH) has roughly the same accident risk as one riding on the road itself.  

The same research shows, most tellingly, that along low-speed roads (30KPH/20MPH)--meaning most urban streets--a cyclist in a painted lane is nearly five times as likely to get in an accident.  And, if he or she is riding in a separated lane, the risk increases to more than six times what it would be if the road had no lane.

Studies from other locales corroborate the main lesson of Antwerp's experience:  that bike lanes make cyclists safer only in comparison to riding on a highway.  On most suburban streets, the safety level is about the same as it is for lanes.  And on city streets, using bike lanes actually puts cyclists at greater risk for accidents than if they rode on sidewalks, which have long been considered--by planners and everyday cyclists alike--to be the most dangerous places to ride.

Yet transportation planners and "experts" insist that the best way to make urban cycling safer is to paint or install more lanes.  When confronted with findings like the ones I've mentioned, their response usually goes along the lines of "Well, bike lanes make people feel safer.  And if people feel cycling is safer, more of them will do it."

Some people feel safer if they sleep with a gun under their pillow. I wonder how well that logic works.

Anyway, it seems that in transportation planning--especially as it pertains to bicycles--there isn't an idea that's so bad that nobody can come up with something worse.  And, sadly, those worse ideas are just as likely to come from "bike friendly" burgs as they are to emanate from those places where one is not considered fully human without an internal combustion engine.

For the past decade or so, Montreal has been done as much as any city to encourage cycling.  Like other municipalities with "bike friendly" reputations, it established a bike-share program (Bixi) and turned disused byways like the path along the Lachine Canal into bike lanes.  To be sure, it made some mistakes, but on the whole, Montreal has probably done more than most cities (at least in the Americas) to consider cyclists in its transportation planning.

From CBC News

But now it seems that Denis Corderre, the Mayor the City of a Hundred Steeples, plans to take one of the most unsafe practices of contemporary urban planning and make it even more hazardous for cyclists--and just about everyone else.

La Rue St. Denis and Le Boulevard St. Laurent are the two main north-south thoroughfares on the island of Montreal, while Sherbrooke Street is one of its major east-west conduits.  Monsieur Corderrre wants to paint lanes on them that will be shared by bikes and buses.

Let that one sink in.  Bikes and buses in the same lane.  I don't see how anyone can feel, let alone be, safer.  Buses have a lot of blind spots, so it's easier for a bus driver to simply not see a cyclist in the lane.  Also, buses pulling over to pick up and discharge passengers, and pulling away from those bus stops are at least as much of a hazard as motorists making turns into intersections into which bike lanes feed.  

Oh, but it gets worse.  You see, Corderre's plan also calls for turning Avenues Papineau and de Lorimier--two other important north-south routes--into one-way streets simply to accomodate the bus/bike lanes.  

When I visited the City of Saints last year, I spent a fair amount of time riding all of those streets.  They are heavily trafficked, but one can ride them by exercising the same sort of caution one would employ on a major street in almost any western city.  Even a separate bike-only lanes would probably do nothing to make cycling safer.  In fact, they would most likely make riding more dangerous for the same reasons they put pedalers in greater peril in other cities.  On those streets, as well as on streets in other cities in which I've cycled, it's easier and safer to negotiate with buses when they, and cyclists, are part of the regular traffic flow.  I know:  I do it nearly every day!

Denis Corderre, reconsiderez s'il vous plait!