If you head to Tampa from Daytona Beach, you will most likely pass through a city called Lakeland.
I have to admit that I'd never heard of it until my parents moved to Florida. Then it became a name on the weather map of the local television newscasts: The temperature in Lakeland would be shown, along with those of Winter Haven, Titusville, Daytona Beach and a few other locales in the middle of the Sunshine State.
Since then, I've learned that the headquarters of Publix, one of the largest regional supermarket chains, is in Lakeland. (If you've spend any amount of time in Florida, you've almost certainly shopped in a Publix store.) I have also learned another interesting fact about the city: The canine unit of its local police department is regarded as one of the best in the United States. One of its dogs, Nox, took first place in the annual USPCA Police Dog Trials (the largest event of its kind), while another one of its police pooches--Bruno--won the event in 2012 and 2013
Knowing about their canine unit got me to wondering how the police officers themselves are trained. Something told me that their training must be pretty good . After all, studies have confirmed something I've always suspected: Developing a rapport with an animal helps people in their relationships with other people. Now, I realize that a police officer doesn't have the same sort of relationship with a German Shepherd in the unit as a civilian has with a pet poodle. But I think that the ability to communicate with an animal requires intuition, which is certainly useful in human relations.
I got to thinking about those things when I came across a story about a police officer in Lakeland who helped a little girl fix her bicycle chain. Items like that catch my eye, in part, because you would never see them in New York Metro Area media. Also, according to the story, the girl calmed down from the temper tantrum she lapsed into when her bike chain jumped off its sprocket. That's not a reaction one normally associates with seeing police lights flashing here in New York, especially if one is a member of a marginalized community.
I couldn't help but to wonder whether her reaction--and, for that matter, the fact that Shane Stinson stopped to help the girl--was a result of training, Officer Stinson's personal qualities or the community's relations with the police (which are probably a result of those other two factors), or some combination of them.
Whatever the answer, Officer Shane Stinson of the Lakeland, FL Police Department should be commended.
It also has me thinking about whether they should teach bicycle repair in police academies--and elementary schools!
Happy US Independence Day!
I hope that this isn't the last year we'll be able to use the word "independence" in reference to this day. With the Orange One in the Oval Office, I have to wonder just how independent we'll be next year. Or whether we'll be here at all.
On a lighter note: Oliver Stone made a film about me. Really! At least, the title applies to me.
I am thankful that I could come to the convictions I share with Ron Kovic without having to come to them the way he did.
Next Fourth is a round-number birthday for me. And the Mercian Vincitore Special I've ordered is the gift I plan to give myself--and ride!
We're white. We're male. After our training rides in the park, we wheel our flashy carbon-fiber machines under canopies of luxury condo buildings.
We're male, too. But we're brown and black. We pedal dilapidated-looking-bikes--or bikes that we're not supposed to be able to afford because, well... We don't speak English well, or at all. We're probably undocumented, to boot,
We are also male--and could be white, brown or black--but we're not likely to be yellow. We are riding bikes because...we can't afford to drive. Or we can't drive because we've lost our licenses, or couldn't get them in the first place.
The Rev. Laura Everett describes each of these stereotypes about cyclists in her Daily Beast editorial, "We Need To Ditch All The Old Cliches About Cyclists." She makes a very good case against each of those cariactures, using data (e.g., that the majority of cyclists are indeed poor, but don't necessarily fit into the second and third stereotypes) from various studies I have mentioned in some of my earlier posts.
She also makes a very interesting point: During the two previous "golden ages" of cycling in the US--1890-1910 and the 1970s--cycling was seen as a pastime of the leisured class. And, once it lost that status, cycling fell into a steep decline. The first "boom" ended when automobiles became affordable to average working people. (Interestingly, during the 1890s, a bicycle cost what an average worker earned in year!) The second declined with a deep recession fueled by a spike in petrol prices and suffered its death blow when the election of Ronald Reagan ended the first major environmental movements in the US.
She sees that we are in a third "golden age" of cycling. In order to sustain it, she says, all of the stereotypes have to be shattered. Cycling will never become mainstream if it is not seen, by planners and the general public alike, as a vital link in the transportation system. That, in turn, will not happen if cycling is seen only as a leisuretime activity of the privileged or as the "last resort" of the poor, nonwhite or criminal classes.
For her part, Rev. Everett says she began cycle-commuting because she was a poor recent graduate who was just starting her career. Seven years later, she continues to ride because, as she says, it really is the best transportation option for her--and because she enjoys it.
To me, she sounds like the kind of cyclist the public needs to know more about if cycling is to become mainstream And, I must add: She's a woman. Thus, she can't help but to break the stereotype. I like to believe that I am, too.
For as long as there have been bicycles, artists have been riding them. Of course, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century, bicycle riding was pretty much de rigeur. But even after automobiles changed the landscapes of much of the world, artists continued to pedal. Many have ridden, and still ride, for transportation, as many live in cities where it's the most practical way to go. But others have also ridden as part of their creative process, or simply for fun.
Then there are those artists who were inspired by the machine itself:
It's getting to be a habit for me...
I've stripped another one of my bikes.
My latest "victim" is Vera, my green Miss Mercian mixte.
Like Helene, the last bike I stripped, Vera is going away.
But fear not...she'll come back.
I'm sending her on this trip as a kind of reward, a spa treatment. She's been good to me. Now she's going to get some TLC.
You see, I've been riding her with a shim in the seat lug. I think someone tried to jam a 27.2mm diameter seatpost into the frame, which takes a 27.0. So I'm having that fixed.
Also, the cable guides are going to be replaced with shifter bosses--which can also be used for those bolt-on cable guides used with "brifters", in case I ever decide to install handlebar end shifters. But, for the foreseeable future, I'm going to use down-tube shifters, which I ride on all of my geared bikes.
And, finally, her new finish will make her more like the rest of the family. She won't be painted the "flip-flop" purple/green (#57) of Arielle and Tosca, the Mercians I have now. Nor will she be adorned with the Lilac Polychromatic (#17) paint and Deep Plum Pearl (#56) headtube and seat tube panel I've requested for the Vincitore Special I ordered.
Instead, I'm ordering Mauve Pearl (#53), without any panels or bands: It's hard to do those on a mixte, especially one with twin laterals, without cluttering the frame.
Vera deserves the treatment. Also, I think seeing her renovated will be a kind of appetizer for the Vincitore Special.
So why am I beginning this post with a photo of a house in France most Americans have never seen?
Well, if you've been reading this blog long enough, you know that I'm a bit of a Francophile. Yes, just a little bit. One way you know that I'm American is that I am also something of an Anglophile and see no contradiction!
Anyway, the house is in a French city most foreigners (except, perhaps, from neighboring countries) never visit. That's a shame, really, because it reveals so much about France that people don't experience during the three or four das they spend in Paris as part of their European trips.
You can probably guess one reason I included the photo: I have cycled to that house. And to this one:
Now, that's one tourists are more likely to see. It's in Paris, on one of the city's most elegant squares, the Place des Vosges. There's a nice little park in the middle of the square where Parisians take lunch breaks or walk their dogs or kids, or just loll around on the grass. And folks like me ride or walk there, baguette and hunk of cheese in hand.
One great thing about the Place des Vosges is that it's next to one of the most historic parts of Paris--le Marais--and literally steps from all sorts of interesting museums, galleries and shops.
Anyway, the house in Besancon and the one in Paris share something: specifically, someone who lived in them.
I'll give you a hint: He wrote the novel more people know about without actually having read. In the English-speaking world that has much to do with a musical--a musical!--made out of that novel. You may have seen it.
That novel is, of course, Les Miserables, written by none other than Victor Hugo.
Just as more people know about Les Miserables than any other novel without having read it, more people lie about having read Moby Dick than any other novel. Now I'm going to tell you a secret: If you're ever at a dinner party with a bunch of snotty pseudo-intellectuals, you can more or less bluff your way through a discussion of MD if you've read Old Man and the Sea!
But I digress. No, it's not really a digression: It's part of what I'm going to say, just like all of those hundred-page long asides about the Paris sewer system or whaling in New England are integral to LM and MD, respectively.
You see, such seeming digressions are part of some of the best bike rides. You might start with a destination in mind or that you are simply going to ride a certain distance or amount of time. Unless you're riding strictly for training purposes, the parts of the ride you'll remember are the things you encountered along the way.
In the case of Besancon, I found myself there because of a challenge. In the summer of 1997, I bought a round-trip ticket to Paris--with a return date of a month after my departure--and brought my bicycle, among other things. I had no particular plan except to visit my friends in Paris and get on my bike. In those days, I used to take trips like that, staying in hostels or pensiones--or simply rolling out my sleeping bag--wherever I found myself when I stopped riding for the day.
I was talking to Jay and Isabelle, whom I've mentioned in other posts, when Isabelle asked, "Ou n'avais pas visite en France?" As I tried to think of some place in France where I hadn't been, Jay blurted "Alpes"!
"Les Alpes?" Even though I understood perfectly well, I just had to make sure.
They both nodded. So did I.
And so I pedaled south and east from Paris. That is how I found myself, five days later (spending days in Troyes and Chaumont) in Besancon, on the edge of the Jura mountains, which are a kind of sub-range of the Alps. A few days after that I was in Chamonix and hiked up part of Mont Blanc.
Anyway, Victor Hugo was born in the house in Besancon. That house, amazingly enough, is in a square that also contains the houses in which painter Gustave Courbet, writer Charles Nodier and the Lumiere brothers--considered the "fathers" of cinema--were born!
And, of course, I've cycled (and walked) to the Hugo house on Place des Vosges any number of times during my stays in Paris.
So why am I thinking about Victor Hugo now? Turns out, on this date in 1862, he completed Les Miserables. It was published soon after and became popular with soldiers on both sides of the US Civil War. "I've been reading Hugo's account of Waterloo in Les Miserables and preparing my mind for something of the same sort," wrote Wilky James of the Massachusetts Free Black Regiment in 1863. "God grant the battle may do as much harm to the rebels as Waterloo did to the French."
The funny thing is that the sections about Waterloo--and the Paris sewer system--are what got the novel both praised and lambasted. But Les Miserables could no more exist without them than Moby Dick could without al the stuff about New England whaling practices--or our favorite ride without whatever you encountered along the way.
Now tell me: Is there a surer sign of an early summer day than this?
It was a little cooler than normal (high temperature of 27C, or 80F) but I didn't mind. From that tree, you might know where I rode: Connecticut.
(I have to admit, I couldn't help but to think of the quarter coin dedicated to the Nutmeg State--one of the prettiest pieces of currency ever issued.)
Anyway, the sky was as bright and blue as my cell-phone photos make it seem. I rode into a fairly stiff wind on the way up, which meant, of course, that I had it at my back on my way home.
I couldn't have asked for anything better. Nor could Arielle, my Mercian Audax.
Some things simply don't make any sense.
On the other hand, there are many more things that make sense to somebody--but not to me. Maybe they make sense to you, or someone you know. Or perhaps not.
The category of things that make sense to somebody is comprised, in part, of ideas and inventions that make you scratch your head. They make sense to whoever came up with them, and they might work "on paper" or in some alternative universe.
One such idea/invention is a bicycle that's pedaled with both feet together. How or why anyone came up with it is beyond me.
For one thing, pedaling with both feet together means standing up, then sitting back down to propel one's self. Now, I realize there are people who ride that way normally, but they are almost always novices and, if they continue to ride, eventually shed the habit.
The creators of "Swingbike" refer to it as "The Athletic Perfection." The reason, as I understand it, is that in standing up and sitting down through the pedal stroke, the rider has to pump his or her arms. I guess that's somebody's idea of a "full body workout."
I don't know whether the "Swingbike" was ever produced. Perhaps it was made under another name: After all, there are many other machines with the same name; in some cases, they're called "Swing Bike" (two words). Or, perhaps, it was aborted by copyright laws!
Someone wasn't feeling the love in the City of Brotherly Love.
Around 2:30 yesterday morning, three Philadelphia police officers on bicycle arrived at the intersection of I Street and Erie Avenue to help with the arrest of a carjacker.
Suddenly, a black sedan--possibly a Nissan Altima--with tinted windows bore down, at high speed, a group of Philadelphia police officers on bicycle patrol.
Fortunately for the men in blue, they hopped off their bikes before the sedan tangled them into a mess of twisted spokes and sped off.
According to a Philly.com report, "Police said the driver's actions appeared to have been deliberate." No! Really? What I'd like to know is whether the driver of the sedan knew the carjacker, or simply had a grudge against cops--or cyclists.
Another beautiful early summer day means...a ride, of course. This one took me to Point Lookout. I pedaled against the wind most of the way out and with it most of the way back.
When I got back, I talked to my mother and told her I "looked like a tomato." She asked whether I'd used sunscreen; which, of course, I had. In fact, both of my stops were for the purpose of applying "beach grease".
What was most striking about the ride, though, was that the tide at the Point had receded further than I'd ever seen before. I can't recall the sandbars stretching as far and wide as the ones that were exposed yesterday.
Speaking of exposure: I could just barely see that couple on the sandbar. It didn't look like they were wearing a whole lot, though it looked like they were doing quite a bit. One of the things they were doing, of course, was leaving something to the imagnation!
What else might we lose if and when sea levels rise?
