If you are a cycle-commuter, someone is sure to ask, "What do you do when it rains?"
In most places, you have the following choices:
1. Use fenders and raingear (or carry a change of clothes).
2. Get wet.
3. Use other means of transportation.
I'll admit to having used 3.) when it's raining, cold and windy--or during a hard, driving rain when I could hardly see in front of me. I also have used alternative means of transportation--which, for me, here in New York, means the subway--when there was more than a dusting of snow.
Some day the weather excuse won't wash--at least, if architect Richard Moreta has any influence over urban planners.
He has just unveiled his "MINILOOP", an enclosed elevated bikeway designed to snake alongside streets or highways, or cut their own paths through cities.
Moreta says he has designed MINILOOP to be easily replicated in, and adapted to, different locales: It can be made open-air for warmer climates and fully enclosed in less hospitable environs. Most important, though, he believes his design will not only help to reduce the number of motor vehicles used for transportation; they will afford more vertical space for trees and plants to grow and help filter the air.
Today's Shimano Ultegra components trace their lineage to the "600" derailleurs introduced in 1975. The following year, a complete "600" groupset was introduced. Two years later, an iteration of them appeared with some fancy scrolls and engravings.
Shimano offered this groupset, called the "600 EX Arabesque" until 1984. It was good stuff, especially for its time, except for one thing: the headset required a special tool to adjust it. Apparently, some Shimano marketing person thought the lace and filigree engraved into the other components would be difficult to replicate on a headset. So, that person figured the best way to distinguish the headset was to shape the locknut like those scrolls. Still, it was a good headset: At least, the one I had served me well.
(Can you imagine Dee-Lilah, my fancy-lugged Mercian Vincitore Special, with an Arabesque groupset? Maybe that would be a bit much, aesthetically.)
Anyway, even with all those fancy scrolls engraved into the parts, I have always thought "Arabesque" was an odd name for a line of bike components. I wonder who their intended audience was. Perhaps it included someone like her:
Some people still can't fathom that I--or anyone else, for that matter--pedal from our homes to the next county or state. They express wonderment or disbelief when I tell them I've essentially lived on my bike in Europe or that I pedaled up and down mountains in Vermont, upstate New York, California, Nevada, France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain.
I have to chuckle. After all, my exploits pale in comparison to those of folks like John Rakowski, who spent three years cycling around the world in the 1970s--or Greg and June Sipel who, around the same time, rode their laden bikes from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of South America.
Now Chris and Sophie Haag plan to take a similar journey. Come late June, they will take a ferry from Bellingham, Washington to Homer, Alaska. Then, on 2 July, they plan to pedal north and cross the Canadian border. From there, they will bike south, through western Canada and the United States to Central America. From there, they expect to follow the Pan-American Highway into South America.
They anticipate spending two years on the road--about the same amount of time the Sippels took.
Even if they have studied what the Sippels did, the Haags probably don't know what the most difficult part of their journey will be. But they know what has been the most difficult part of their planning: finding someone to take care of their pets. Fortunately for them, some friends in their hometown of St. George, Utah, have agreed to take on the task.
If Marlee were to ask me, "Where have you been for the past two years?", what would I tell her?
Kyle Bailey was born with Cystic Fibrosis. At age 25, he underwent a double lung transplant. Since then, he's endured a liver and kidney transplant. He likes to say that he's been "given four chances at life." So, perhaps not surprisingly, he's started a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading awareness about the importance of organ donation and helping to provide for the medical needs of children with disabilities and limited-income families.
What some people might find surprising, however, is that the native of Port Huron, Michigan starting a 1400 mile (2200 km) bicycle trip today. He plans to pedal from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Orlando, Florida to raise awareness (and funds) for the work he and his organization are doing.
One goal of his, he says, is to change the organ donor system in his home state of Michigan. Currently, a would-be donor has to "opt in" at the Secretary of State's office. Bailey would like to see it changed to an "opt out" policy, in which everyone is automatically an organ donor unless he or she says otherwise. Currently, several European and Latin American countries have such a policy, and several US states have considered them.
Whatever happens with those policies, I think Kyle's ride just might convince a few people to become organ donors. If nothing else, it might help people realize that there is indeed life after getting a new liver.
When I was in Rome last summer, I learned that during the centuries when the Colosseum was all but abandoned, so many species of vegetation grew in it that Domenico Panaroli cataloged them.
According to some writers and chroniclers, all of those herbs and other plants created micro-climates within the Colosseum's walls. I don't find that so difficult to believe: Different parts felt hotter or cooler, depending on the sun, shade and wind, during my visit there.
My commute this morning got met to thinking about the possibility of Colosseum "microclimates". For one thing, the lane I ride to the Randall's Island Connector winds underneath the tracks on which Acela trains shuttle between New York and Boston. Those tracks run on a viaduct supported by stone arches that would not look out of place in Rome, or the ancient parts of many other cities in the Old World.
But, more important, I think I rode into a microclimate:
The remanants of yesterday's storm dripped, and rays of sunlight flickered, through the tracks above. And I pedaled through the "rainbow" you see in the photo. I didn't see another rainbow anywhere else, nor did any rain fall. And the sky grew brighter as I neared the college.
