Sunshine, Waves And Coquina Stone

I've waited on some long lines.  And I've seen people take some extreme measures to keep their place in line.  

As I've mentioned in other posts, it's much easier to acquire a gun in the Sunshine State than it is in the Empire State, or almost any other north of the Potomac River.  And, five years ago, this state gained fame or infamy, depending on one's views, for its "stand your ground" law--or, more precisely, the way it was used.

I could have told that guy that the place would be open for another five hours, which would be plenty of time to make the $10 admission price worthwhile.  But I didn't, not because I was afraid of his weapon, but because I knew he wasn't going to use it.  If he did, as the saying goes, he'll never work in this town again.

What town is that?  St. Augustine, Florida.  I rode there today, on the beach cruiser, from my parents' house a couple of counties away.  According to my calculations, I pedaled 65 miles,  a little more than a metric century.  And I did it the "ideal" way:  I pedaled into the wind to get there and allowed it to blow me back.  I don't know exactly how strong the wind was, but it took me a little more than half an hour less to get back than it did for me to ride into St. Augustine.

It was one of those days everyone hopes to have, weather-wise, when coming to Florida at this time of year:  The temperature rose to 75F (24C) and, after a brief but intense rain this morning, the sun shone brightly.  I haven't used as much sunscreen--and still gotten as much sunburn--in the past three months as I did today.

Sunshine and warmth and the ocean:  Those are the reasons (besides visiting family members) one comes to Florida, right?  And, in my case, to do some bike-riding.  But there are, believe it or not, other things to see and do here.

One thing about being rich:  You can have whatever you want wherever you want it.  Of course, if you're really rich, you can go to wherever your favorite buildings, foods or whatever any time the mood strikes you.  To be fair, however, it wasn't so easy to do such things a century ago when, no matter how rich you were, it took days or weeks to cross oceans or continents.

Franklin Smith could have been just another Boston millionaire (Hmm...I never thought I'd write a phrase like that!) who took a trip to Europe had it not been for this:

He was so impressed by the Alhambra Palace in Grenada, Spain, that he--an amateur architect--decided to model his new home after it.  More precisely, he built a 1/10 scale replica of a wing of the palace.  He used a then-new construction technique: poured concrete reinforced with crushed coquina stone, which abundant in Florida.  Some of the finishing materials, on the other hand, were imported from Spain.

Coquina stone has been used for centuries, particularly here in Florida, because of its unusual qualities.  It's actually soft when it first comes out of the ground, which makes it easy to quarry.  Even so, it is very strong when it is built, and can withstand the elements of the Florida climate.  Most important--at least in the view of the early Spanish settlers who built Fort San Marcos from it--walls built from it can absorb cannon balls fired into it in much the same way that jabbing a knife or other tool into styrofoam will make a hole in, but not break, it.

Across the street from Smith's house, known as Villa Zorayda or Zorayda Castle, is the main building of Flagler College.  Its namesake built it, but not as a college buildings.  Rather, it was one of the first luxury resorts on the Florida coast:  the Hotel Ponce de Leon.

Henry Flagler, for whom the county in which my parents live is named, was a Gilded Age entrepreneur who also built the Florida East Coast Railway and partnered with John D. Rockefeller to start Standard Oil. 

The Hotel Ponce de Leon has windows designed by Louis Tiffany and was one of the nation's first electrified buildings.  It was designed by two architects who had just graduated college:  John Carrere and Thomas Hastings.  If their names are familiar to you, it's because you've read about this nation's architectural history--or read a lot of plaques on buildings.  Their later works included the New York Public Library (the one guarded by Patience and Fortitude) and the House and Senate office bulidings adjacent to the Capitol in Washington, DC.

I had a great ride today--and, if you'll indulge me in a cliche, a bit of a journey.  And Mom's cooking.

Friday The 13th.

Today is Friday the 13th.  

I am not superstitious about that, or much else. The only reason why I am thinking about the fact that it's Friday the 13th is something that happened the last time Friday the 13th came in January.

The year was 2012:  five years ago.  I was pedaling home from work when, all of a sudden, I burst into tears.  I was crying so hard that I could barely see in front of me or control my bike.  I stopped in an ATM vestibule and let it all out.  Or so I thought.  I got back on my bike, but only for a couple of blocks before I saw a cat in a store window.   Then the tears streamed out even more and I could barely stand, let alone pedal.

I am almost entirely sure that some time during my crying fits, Charlie died.  When I got home, I found him lying stiff on the floor, his hind legs crossed.  

Max and Marlee, the cats who currently reside with me, are sweet and loving.  In fact, I adopted Marlee just a few weeks after I lost Charlie.  But I will never forget Charlie:  He came into my life as I was undergoing fundamental and sometimes dramatic (and traumatic!) changes.  He was with me through some very happy and very intense times, including my gender reassignment.  And, of course, he was reading over my shoulder (!) as I typed the early entries of this blog.

When anyone, human or otherwise, shows you nothing but love of the kind that renders you incapable of feeling anything but love for him or her, you don't "get over" losing him or her.  And you shouldn't:  That love becomes a part of you, along with all sorts of memories.  It becomes, perhaps paradoxically, why you find new friends or companions after such a loss:  They are a testament to what you have shared with the one who has departed.

Max and Marlee greet me when I come back from a bike ride.  So did Charlie.  So does he.

P.S.  The "Charlie" to whom I am referring was the second cat I lived with who was named Charlie.  So in earlier posts, I referred to him as Charlie II and the first as Charlie I.

Out Of Season, Again

Earlier today, I wrote about a "winter" ride in a place that doesn't have winter--at least, not in any way people in my part of the world--let alone places like Minnesota and Canada and Scotland and Finland--experience it.  In other words, I was writing about a warm-weather ride in January.

Well, I had the opportunity to experience such a thing.  If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might have guessed where I am.  

Yes, that is the ocean on the horizon.  Of course, there are places not far from my apartment where I can ride up the slope of a bridge and, at its apex, gaze out into an expanse of sea and sky:  the Veterans' Memorial Bridge from Broad Channel to Rockaway Beach, for example.  But yesterday I rode in a place where I could do it in shorts, sans jacket.

Here is another clue to where I am:

They don't sell fishing equipment in the Key Food or Stop & Shop supermarkets in Rockaway Beach--or, to my knowledge,anyplace else in New York.  For that matter, you can't buy a hunting rifle--or any other kind of firearm--from the Walmart in the Green Acres Shopping Mall, just over the city line in Nassau County. But you can get them in the "Wally World" about two kilometers from where I am now.

Yes, I am in Florida, for my more-or-less annual visit with my parents.  I got here this morning.  After the snow that turned to wind and rain during the past week, it is almost surreal to ride in bright sunlight and into a warm breeze that would later blow at my back as I spun and glided up Route A1A, beside dunes covered with sea oats and cacti that rippled and echoed the rustling hiss of the roiling tides.

Then again, it might be just as strange, or even stranger, to encounter unseasonably warm weather when I return to New York!

Tour De Palm Springs

In places where they don't have winter--or, at least, not anything anyone living north of the Potomac would call "winter"--there are bike rides of the sort we, in the so-called temperate zones, would have in May or June or September.

One such place is Palm Springs, California.  I've never been there, even though I have traveled in that part of California.  I guess I believed the rumors that Versace-uniformed agents at the city limits wouldn't let you in unless you showed your Coutts World Silk Card. (If it's good enough for the Queen of England, it's good enough for me!)  Then again, I once went to the opera wearing the same clothes I wore while helping to paint a friend's house that day.  That's a story for another time.

Anyway, the ride itself sounds interesting.  I wonder how many celebrities ride, or just show up.  

Actually, I wonder about one celebrity in particular:

If he ever rode in that area (if indeed he rode at all), I assume he didn't have to worry about trees.  Now, on the ski slopes....that was another story!

All right.  To be fair, I'll point out that he stood by his child, Chastity, when she "came out".  Of course, Chastity is now a guy named Chaz.  And some folks say he was a good mayor of Palm Springs.

Shorter And Shorter, A Century Apart

The other day, and in a few previous posts, I mentioned the Rigi frame.  It had twin vertical seat stays, like the twin laterals found on the "top tubes" of many classic mixte bikes (and Vera, my green Mercian mixte).  The rear wheel actually ran between those tubes.

The reason for it was to shorten the bike's chainstays and, therefore, wheelbase.  Shorter wheelbases make for quicker acceleration and response, all other things being equal.  Rigi was probably one of the more extreme results of a race, which ran its course during the late 1970s and early 1980s, to create bikes with the shortest possible wheelbases.

That trend resulted in other permutations of bike design, like curved seat tubes.  It seemed to run again, if briefly and less widespread, just before the turn of this century, when KHS and other companies made bikes (mainly track and fixed-gear) with curved seat tubes.

Like other fads, it's not new.  Within a few years of the invention of the "safety" bicycles, designers and builders had essentially figured out what we now know about bicycle geometry.  For the most part, bikes had longer wheelbases and shallower angles than the ones on current bikes because road conditions were worse (when, indeed, there were roads!). Also, few cyclists owned (or even had access) to more than one bike, so their steeds had to be more versatile.  And, I would imagine, the materials available then weren't as strong as what we have now (most bikes were still made of iron or mild steel) and could not withstand the pounding a shorter wheelbase and shallower angles--which absorb less shock than longer wheelbases and shallower angles--would deliver.

Still, there were apparent attempts to make bikes with shorter wheelbases at the turn from the 19th to the 20th Century. (I can still remember when "the turn of the century" meant the period from about 1890 until World War I!)  This one looks particularly interesting:

If you sneeze on this 1890s "Bronco" bike, you just might go backwards!  All right, I'm exaggerating, just a little.  What I find intriguing--almost astounding, really--is that the auction house selling the bike listed it as a "cross" bike.  Did they mean "cyclo-cross"?  If they did, I wonder whether the bike was intended as such when it was made--and, presumably ridden.

The auction house also says the bike has an "axle driven crank".  Today, we call that "fixed gear":  The wheel and pedals cannot turn independently of each other.  High-wheel or "penny farthing" bikes had such a system--on the front wheel.  

That is the reason why those bikes had such large front wheels:  To get what most of us, today, would consider to be a normal riding gear--let alone anything high enough to allow for any speed--a front wheel of at least 1.5 meters (60 inches) in diameter was necessary.

Hmm...That means the gear on the Bronco must be pretty low!

Low gear and short wheelbase:  Could this be a bike intended for uphill time trials?