I Rode From It As Fast As I Could!

Yesterday morning, before I went out to ride, I was listening to the radio while I sipped on green tea and ate some Greek yougurt (from Kesso) with almonds and a banana, which I washed  down with an orange.  

While enjoying my breakfast, I was listening to an interview an NPR host conducted with a fellow in Inverness, Scotland who maintains the official website that records sightings of the Loch Ness Monster.  The interviewer is clearly skeptical, to put it mildly, about the existence of "Nessie" and other mythical creatures like Bigfoot.  

Now, because I'm the sort of person who takes a lot of things--even stuff that's more credible than, say, most of what Trump says in his speeches and tweets--with more than a few grains of salt,you might not expect me to be a believer.  But how can I be anything else?  I know for a fact that the Randall's Island Salamander and Point Lookout Orca exist.  I can't not believe.  After all, I made them up saw them and even photographed them, however crudely.

About the latter:  I didn't see him (I think I decided he's male because he reminds me of a Pac Man!) yesterday even though I rode to Point Lookout.  But could there be something else lurking in the waters by "the Point"?


It looks ready to take over the bay, the ocean and even the land:

A clever creature it is:  It showed up in the same part of all of that photos I took.  I guess it's trying to make me believe that it was dirt or some malfunction in my camera rather than a sea creature.

A tech-savvy monster?  Should we be scared?  Does the Point Lookout Orca stand a chance against it?

Oh, no:  It's following those folks home.  And their little dogs, too!

Review Of A New Bridge

No one will ever confuse Review Avenue in Long Island City with Route Departmentale 618 or the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon.  

I had only one opportunity to do RD 618 and one other for the iconic California ride because, well, each of them is about 6000 kilometers away (in opposite directions) from my apartment.  Review Avenue, on the other hand, is only about five kilometers away (at least via the routes I take), which is one of the reasons I find myself riding there at least a few times a year.

Although it's gritty, to be polite, it is visually interesting.  There aren't any really tall buildings there, which allows the sky to serve as a kind of diorama backdrop for the street that separates the First Calvary Cemetery Wall from the sooty brick and stone industrial structures.  That same street also looks as if it's going to sneak in under the Kosciuszko Bridge, but it makes a sharp left and leaves that job to the railroad tracks and Newtown Creek instead.

Until a few days ago, the Kosciuszko Bridge was the steel-girdered span that looks like an Erector Set project left out in the rain and soot.  It still is, but it's also that other bridge that looks like it's hanging by red and white shoestrings from a couple of concrete tombstones.  

Talk about "build it and they will come":  The new Kosciuszko is already congested with traffic--and the old bridge hasn't been closed!  A second stringed structure is supposed to be constructed parallel to the current one in two years.  I think cars are already lined up to get across it.

Actually, I rather like the look of the new bridge.  And it's probably easier to drive, especially a truck, across as it doesn't have the old bridge's steep inclines and terrible sight lines.  At the dedication ceremony, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he heard his father--three-term Governor Mario Cuomo--use expletives for the first time when he drove the family across the bridge.

Neither bicycles nor pedestrians were allowed on the old "Kos".  As far as I know, they won't be allowed on the new ones, either.  Then again, the bridges are part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where you wouldn't want to ride even if it were allowed!

The old bridge is falling apart.  But some things endure:

I wonder what Joe was thinking when he painted his name on the wall of the cemetery all of those years ago. (Maybe he's inside it now!) I'd love to know what kind of paint he used:  Anything that could withstand all of the fumes from the factories and trucks, along with the weather, must be pretty durable!

Un Coq Citroen Repair Station

When I was living in France, I did a few things--some of them entirely laughable, in retrospect--to make myself feel as if I had "gone native", if you will.

I didn't wear a beret: I soon discovered that, even then (more than three decades ago) only very old men and clochards wore them--or, at least, the kind they sell to tourists. Some farmers, particularly in the central and southwestern parts of the country, still wore the Basque-style beret, which has a larger diameter "crown" than the berets artists and wannabes perched on their crania when they smoked and sipped away their nights in cafes and bars.

Ironically, I wore berets after I returned to the US.  And I continued a few other habits as a way of asserting my Frenchness, or at least my French influences, in the face of the yahoo-ism of the Reagan and Bush I administrations.

While in France, I purchased and wore a few things that were all but unknown in the US at the time.  One was a wool French (Breton) fisherman's sweater.  It was the genuine article, knit from heavy dark navy wool with cream-colored horizontal stripes and buttons on the left shoulder.  Other Gallic accoutrements I acquired and wore included a sweatsuit, bike jersey and shoes from a company called Le Coq Sportif.

Now you can see the tricolore rooster everywhere.  But in those days, you pretty much had to be in France, or perhaps a neighboring country, (Remember:  There was no Amazon or eBay!)  in order to see, let alone wear, that quintessentially French emblem.

Another thing that could mark you as a French person was driving a Citroen.  Renault was still selling cars in the US; so was Peugeot, but their motorized vehicles weren't nearly as ubiquitous as their bicycles.  For a long time, I resolved that if I were to buy a car or van, it would be a Citroen because, well, you couldn't get anything more French than a vehicle with a chevron badge.

Well, Le Coq Sportif and Chevron have joined forces. The occasion is the 70th anniversary of the Type H van.  If you watch old French films, you've seen those boxy mini-trucks driven by farmers and urban delivery couriers.  You still see them in France.

Since both companies have long associations with bicycle racing in France and other countries, it makes sense that their collaboration would produce this:

It's something else I saw for the first time in France:  a mobile bicycle workshop.  

Vive la France!  I just hope they don't elect their own version of Trump.

Riding On Air--Or Full Of Hot Air?

When I first built my Bontrager Race Lite frame--my Christmas present to myself in 1995--I installed a Rock Shox Mag 21 fork because that was what I had.  Within a few months, though, I'd replaced it with a Rock Shox Judy SL.  Even if you weren't a mountain biker--or on this planet--back then, you've probably seen the Judy SL, with its distinctive yellow finish, in person or images.

It was a great fork, at least for a few rides.  It suspension consisted of a Monocellular Urethane (MCU) spring with a hydraulic damping cartridge.  MCU, like "carbon fiber", shows the power of words or, more precisely, marketing:  Both terms entice people to fork (pun intended) over large sums of money for plastic.

To be fair, though, the hydraulic damping cartridges weren't much sturdier than those springs.  Neither one stood up to sustained punishment, something I could inflict on a bike even in those days, when I was skinny.  

I would soon find out, though, that my springs and cartridges weren't failing because I was a particularly hard-charging rider, as much as I fancied myself as one.  Other mountain bikers were having similar experiences.  In fact, I even witnessed riders losing their suspension in the middle of rides or, worse, jumps.  

Some of those riders switched to other suspension forks, like those from Manitou and Marzocchi.  On the other hand, other riders--including yours truly--retrofitted their Judy forks with Englund air cartridges that we kept inflated with tiny pumps that had needles like the ones used to fill up basketballs and soccer balls at the ends of them.

Those air cartridges were far more durable and were smoother than elastomers (especially when they got dirty) or other kinds of suspension.  It makes sense when you realize that what is arguably the first successful kind of suspension for bicycles (or wheeled vehicles generally) ever made is the pneumatic tire.

Hey, it's not for nothing that we have the phrase "like floating on air" to describe a smooth ride.

With that in mind, I can't help but to wonder how this bicycle would ride:

What I am about to tell you is not a joke:  The bike is inflatable.  Yes, the bike.  

Its frame consists of a series of rubber tubes connected by valves.  This system is supposed to help keep the bike rigid while it's ridden.  The seat stays (or, as the psfk article calls them, the "tubes connecting the seat and back wheel") can be adjusted to give a softer or harder ride.

In case you were wondering:  The rubber tubes were designed with a Kevlar sheath which, according to the bike's designers, make it difficult to cut and help to support the rider's weight.

The bike is designed so that when it's deflated, it will fit in the storage boot of a car.  So, perhaps, it won't surprise you to learn that the bicycle was designed by Ford engineers.

Henry Ford was a bicycle mechanic and, even in his seventies, took "a three mile spin every evening after supper," according to a Time magazine article.  I wonder what he would make of this inflatable bike.

I Am An Invasive Species

I am an invasive species.

All right, I won't give myself that much credit.  I am only one of an invasive species.

Is it because I'm female?  Transgender? (Yes, we really are trying to take over the world!;-))  Someone who didn't vote for Trump?

No, it's not because of any of those things.  At least, that's what Scott Sales, a Montana State Senator, would have you believe.

Yes, Senator Sales, I am a cyclist. IIII aaam aaa cyyyy-clisssst.  Booo!  I am coming to take over your state! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

OK, so he didn't say "Cyclists are an invasive species" as an exclamatory or declarative sentence.  But he did something that, in effect, labelled us as such.

He wants to make any out-of-state cyclist entering the state buy a $25 sticker, which would have to be attached to the bicycle and renewed every year, by tacking an amendment onto SB 363, a bill about invasive species management.  Specifically, he wants the money he shakes down from us (Well, all right, I wasn't planning to go to Montana this year!)  to be used against an invasive mussel species in the state's waterways.

So let me get this straight (Please don't read anything into that last word!):  Senator Sales is equating cyclists with invasive mussels.

Please tell me he's being ironic.  Is he capable of irony?  (From Montana Public Radio)

I don't have to tell you how absurd this idea is.  What in the world can taxing cyclists do to halt the spread of a mussel that multiplies faster than anything else in the Big Sky State's rivers, streams and lakes?  

Folks who use motorized fishing boats don't have to pay any such fee for the privilege.  Now, perhaps I'm ignorant in the ways mussels spread their range, but I should think that one boat can do far more to facilitate that than all of the cyclists in the world ever could.

Hon. Sales' proposal, moreover, demonstrates all sorts of  profound ignorance regarding cyclists.  He said that cyclists need "to put some skin in the game" in regards to road and recreation funding in the state".  He has called cyclists "some of the rudest and most self-centered people I've ever met" who "think they own the highway."

This, from a guy who shot down another bill that would have required motorists to give cyclists a three-foot berth when passing at 35MPH and five feet while driving any faster than that.  

Of course, anyone who would put the kibosh on such an idea doesn't realize that, unlike motorists, we can't operate our machines while texting or distracted in other ways.  Moreover, we are far less likely to ride than drivers are to drive while munching on fast food or imbibing alcohol because, well, it's difficult, if not impossible, for us to do those things.

About his "skin in the game" comment:   It's not the first time I've heard this wholly inaccurate perception of what we do or don't have invested "in the game."  Of course, it wasn't nearly as dangerous when it came from the folks from whom I've previously heard it as it is when it emanates from the mouth or pen of a lawmaker.   

You see, we pay the same taxes as motorists pay, whether or not we drive.  Contrary to what some believe, there is no  separate "road tax", at least not from the Federal government or any state or municipality of which I'm aware.  In fact, the only taxes I don't pay that any motorist pays are the ones added to gasoline.

Aside from that, I have just as much "skin in the game" as any motorist.  I'll admit, though, that as the weather gets nicer and I'm riding more, I won't have as much skin in the game because, well, I won't have as much skin.  That, I should think, would make me less invasive.