When You Can't See The Gates Of Hell (Or Hell Gate, Anyway).

My students are reading Dante's Inferno.  

As the narrator descends deeper into Hell, it gets darker. It's hard not to wonder how he doesn't stumble more often than he does.  I imagine it was more difficult for him to see when he passed through the Gates of Hell than it was when I rode by Hell Gate:

Yes, that is what I saw from the RFK Memorial Bridge while I rode into and out of showers on my way to work.  Somewhere in that mist are the Hell Gate Bridge as well as the Bronx and Westchester County.

When we started on Canto III--where the narrator and Virgil come to the Gate of Hell--I made a joke with my students.  "I'll tell you how to get to the Gate of Hell".

Then I advised them to go down the Grand Concourse, make a left at 138th Street (where the GC ends).  Then, they should go four blocks, take a right on St. Ann's Avenue, follow it to the end and take another left.  Pass under the RFK Bridge entrance and , underneath the railroad trestle (the Hell Gate Bridge), take a right to the Randall's Island Connector.  On the island, I told them, go left all the way to the water:  That stretch of the East River is known as Hell Gate.  

Most of my students don't live very far from the route.  Yet none realized that stretch is called Hell Gate.  And one student didn't even realize the post office in her neighborhood--the easternmost part of El Barrio, or East Harlem--is called Hell Gate Station (Zip Code 10035).

They think I'm dragging them through Hell in my class.  They are going to experience it only twice a week for a couple more weeks.  Me, I ride by it every day, on my way to meet them!

When You Need Them

You know how it is:  Whenever you need a paper clip, you can't find one.

Same goes for a place to park your bike.  Whenever you really need to lock up, it seems all of the usable lamp posts, parking meters and such are taken.


But what if you need a paper clip and a parking space at the same time?

It just figures that this rack is in Washington, DC!

With Bike-Friendly Cities Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

You know you're an adult when you make the same mistakes as your parents made. 

Sometimes it seems that policy-makers define "progress" in a similar way.  Your city is becoming as big, important and hip as the "big boys" when it emulates their policy and legislative blunders.

At least, it seems that way whenever a city wants to tout itself as "bicycle friendly".  Hardly a day goes by without my learning that some municipality or another tries to show that its affinity for bicycles and cyclists.  The other day Houston was making its declaration of love.  So was Durham, North Carolina.

The enlightened leaders of both metropoli seem to think an alliance with cyclists seems  to involve the same things.  One is "encouraging ridership", whatever that means.  Another is building more bike lanes.

Photo by Marlo Stimpson

The latter always seems to be accepted as the ultimate sign that someone's fair city really and truly wants to make the world--or, at least, its world--safe for cycling.  Surely, they believe, riding in a designated bike lane is better than riding in traffic.  Even if that lane is poorly maintained. Even if there's nothing to stop cars and trucks from parking in it. Even if it leads into a turn more dangerous than anything a cyclist would have to navigate from the main roadway.  Even if it ends, without warning, in the middle of a block.

Or even if that lane is a "contraflow" lane:  a one-way street turned into a roadway shared with bicycle traffic running in the opposite direction from the motor vehicle traffic.

Welcome, Durham, to the Pantheon of Bicycle-Friendly Cities in the United States.  With friends like you, we don't need enemies!