Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

From the Cycling Jewelry website.

Enjoy the ride--whether or not it's on a bike!

Judge Stewart Knows

"I know it when I see it."

We've all heard that declaration.  Perhaps we've even used it ourselves.  The person uttering it is usually trying to categorize something according to a category that lacks clearly-defined parameters.

It may be Judge Potter Stewart who immortalized it.  In Jacobellis vs Ohio, the US Supreme Court reversed the state's conviction of a theatre manager who showed Louis Malle's Film Les Amants (The Lovers).  A court in the Buckeye state ruled that Nico Jacobellis violated Ohio's anti-obscenity law by screening a film it had deemed "pornographic."

Stewart, in concurring with the Supreme Court's majority ruling, said that the First Amendment protected all obscenity but "hard-core pornography."  When asked to define it, he admitted he couldn't, and could say only, "I know it when I see it."

He might well have given the same answer to this question:
What's the difference between a motor-assisted bicycle and a motorcycle?  

Until about World War II, most people would have had trouble telling the difference.  Up to that time, most motorcycles looked like bicycles with motors attached to them--and, in many cases, were effectively just that.  

I was reminded of that when someone sent me an article about Vintage Electric's new Scrambler S electric bicycle. 



It also reminded me of some bikes I saw during my childhood.  There were machines like the Schwinn Phantom that had fake "tanks"--usually, with battery-powered headlights built into them--between the top tube and the twin cantilevers. A few years later, Schwinn would introduce their "Krate" line and Raleigh its "Chopper", which consciously emulated the low-slung motorcycles that became popular during the 1960's and 1970s.

Those bikes didn't have motors.  But if they had, what would have differentiated them from 1970s "mini bikes"?

Judge Stewart would have had the answer.

A Bicycle Ministry For The Poor

Everyone needs a place to live.  To get or keep that, most people need a job.  

To get or keep a job--or simply to survive--most people have to go to appointments with doctors, social workers and agencies.  They may have  training sessions or meetings with support groups.  Or they might be in school.

To get to those meetings, appointments, classes and jobs, they need a way to get to them--i.e., transportation.  In the US, there is little or no public transportation outside of central neighborhoods in large American cities.  Even within such communities, those trains and buses may be inaccessible for one reason or another.  Or their fares might be out of reach for someone without a job or home.

A person who is trying to get his or her life together may not have a car, or may not be able to drive.  That makes getting to work, school, meetings or appointments difficult, if not impossible, for things are usually not within walking distance.

Thus, a bicycle may be the only way for such a person to get around.  Of course, if the person doesn't have income, he or she can't buy a bike.  But even if someone is given a bike or finds it on the street or in the trash, it will probably need to be fixed.  Even the most minimal repairs--even if the person in need can do them--cost money.  A new tire and tube or cable, let alone a shop's labor to install them, can really set someone's budget back.  If "they have to pay $50 or $60 for a repair," says Stephen Bently, "that is money out of their pocket they can use for something else--food, clothing, basic needs."  Not having to pay "is a huge savings for people who are trying to survive on the street," he says.



Bently is a Deacon at St. John's Episcopal Church in downtown Stockton, California.  A little over two years ago, he started a ministry called HUB (Helping Urban Bicyclists) in an old storefront owned by his church.  In that time, he has worked on 250 bikes, including one belonging to Ghafoor Khan.  "I rely on it a lot," says the 50-year-old who is trying to get back on his feet.

He might become one of Bently's success stories:  folks who got jobs and, in some cases, saved up enough to buy cars--and donate their bikes back to the ministry.

Bently says that his work is part of his role as a deacon, which is to "minister to people who have particular needs."  For the people he helps, that need was transportation.  That is why he fixes bikes, and even builds them from scratch.  It gives the people he serves one less thing to worry about, he says.

Commuter's Eclipse

This morning, during my commute, the sun shimmered behind a gray scrim of clouds.  It was a white, almost silvery sphere that shimmered like the moon.

Then, as it drifted across the sky and, in the opposite direction, a curtain of grey clouds crept across its face, it seemed more like the moon.

This "eclipse", like a "real" one, ended not long after it began.  But it left the sky grayer and the sun dimmer, at times almost invisible.

Still, it made for a very easy last leg of my commute:  A slight, cool breeze tickled my back and the sun wasn't beating down on me.

Studying In Copenhagen

When I was an undergraduate, "studying abroad" usually involved foreign-language majors spending a year in the "home" or "mother" country of a language.  So French majors went to France, Spanish majors to Spain and, well, you get the idea.

Occasionally, students in other majors sojourned in other lands.  For example, art and architecture students might go to Italy or France, aspiring Shakespeare scholars trekked to England and some who were training in technical or scientific fields might spend time in Germany.  

In those days, nobody went to another country to study cycling, especially transportation or utility cycling.  Most American urban planning was auto-centric, and even though we'd lived through the '70's Bike Boom, forsaking two pedals and two wheels for one pedal and four wheels was seen as a milestone of maturity for a young person.

Well, it seems that things are changing, if little by little.  Three days from now,  seven Landscape Architecture and four Kinesiology students from Penn State University are going to Copenhagen to learn more about the Danish capital's cycling culture.

Specifically, those students will spend two weeks in a faculty-led program in which they will, according to the university, "observe bicycle infrastructure and multi-modal transportation solutions, learn from programs and policies that support biking, and learn about the role of biking in sustainable, livable communities."

Upon the completion of online course work, the students will earn three credits in their respective disciplines.  We can hope that the experience will help them to make or inform better decisions than most of the ones that have been made by planners who have made most of the policies and infrastructure we have here in New York and other American cities.

Losing Sleep In Seattle

Perhaps you've seen Sleepless In Seattle.

Well, over the weekend, something happened that's causing a few more people to lose sleep near Seattle.

In nearby Spanaway, a trailer was stolen from the Bethel Middle School.  That alone would upset some people.  But what makes this story even more troubling are the contents of that trailer:  20 shiny red bicycles.

I know:  They sound like some kids' dreams.  They probably are.  Those Specialized Roll Sport Low Entry bikes were used in Physical Education classes to teach kids how to ride safely.  I am guessing that some of those kids probably didn't have a bike of their own, or even access to one from a family member, friend or neighbor.  Even some of those who had bikes of their own, I'm sure, looked forward to the classes.

The kids aren't the only ones rattled by the theft.  Funding for the bikes, purchased from Old Town Bikes in Gig Harbor (each bike has a label from the shop),  came from the Cascade Bicycle Club and state grants.

The trailer, a 2016 Mirage Xcel with Washington State license plate number A8106C, was secured with hardened locks on its doors and a hitch lock, and was parked behind a locked gate.

The Pierce County Sheriff's Department  (253-798-4840) would like to hear from anyone with information about the whereabouts of the trailer or its contents.

I hope everything will be found and folks will be able to sleep easily in Seattle.  

Riding For The Maglia Rosa In The Land Of Milk And Honey

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haolam,

shehecheyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higianu laz'man hazeh.

That's about the extent of my Hebrew.  Actually, it's a bit more than I really know.

So what's it doing on this blog?

Well, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my brother's DNA test shows that we are about 3 percent Jewish.  (I can pretty safely assume we inherited the same genetic material.)  Nor does it have to do with my proximity to Orthodox and Hasidic neighborhoods.  Or my ex.

Rather, it has to do with something that was, until Friday, unprecedented: The Giro d'Italia began--you guessed it--in Israel.  

Like the Tour de France and Vuelta a Espana, most of the Giro takes place in the country for which it's named.  Sometimes a stage, or part of one, will venture into a neighboring country.  When that happens, it's likely an Alpine stage and the riders will find themselves pedaling through passes or up mountains in France, Switzerland or Austria.

Moreover, every other year, the Giro opens outside of Italy.  So, in that sense, Friday's prologue wasn't so unusual, except for one thing:  It was held outside the European continent.

(I made a point of saying "the European continent".  Some argue that Israel is essentially a part of Europe, given its population and culture.  Not having been there, I won't argue about it.)

Dutch rider Tom Dumoulin won the 9.7 km time trial in Jerusalem that comprised the Giro's opening round.  Thousands of spectators lined the streets to watch. More than a few, like Simona Maor, admitted they hadn't heard of the Giro until Friday--although Maor says she knew about the Tour de France.

The Giro continued in Israel over the weekend.  The 167 km second stage, won by Italian Elia Viviani, began in Haifa and ended by the sea in Tel Aviv.  Then he broke out of a bunch sprint to take yesterday's 229km stage through the Negev Desert from Be'er Sheva to Eilat.

To him, Dumoulin and all of the other riders, I say מזל טוב!  That means "Bravo!", more or less!

(By the way, the blessing at the beginning of this post translates roughly as:

O praise to you, Eternal God, sovereign of all:
for giving us life, sustaining us and enabling us to reach this season.)

A Chopper Or A Riser?

When I was mountain biking, bikes were often equipped with quick-release seat post clamps.  This allowed seat height changes for different parts of the ride.  On a technical section, you might  lower your saddle.  Then you could raise it when riding a flat, straight section of a trail.

Now, I admit that I didn't change my saddle height very often--or, at least, not as often as I was led to believe I would.  Still, I didn't mind having the quick release on my seatpost clamp.  I just had to remember to remove my seat and post when I parked my bike on the street.

I guess some people feel they need easily variable seat heights on all of their rides--even their commutes.  At least, that's what this rider seems to like:

Confessions

I have a confession.

I took a ride the other day--to Connecticut.

You're probably wondering why that's a "confession".  Well, you see, it's like this...um...well...

All right, I took a "mental health day" from work.

You know that's just another way of saying I played hooky.  But I rationalized it to myself because I had to go into work on a day when I normally wouldn't have.  Also, I suspected that my students are tired.

(When you were a kid, did your parents send you to bed when they were tired?  I was operating on the same sort of logic, or at least rationale.)

The ride to Connecticut was great.  Arielle, my Mercian Audax, knows it well.  And, for a change, it actually looked like Spring:

except that it felt more like summer when I started home.  The temperature had reached 34C (92F) and, after I crossed the state line, I could swear I was pedaling into a wind I didn't feel at my back on my way up.  

In addition to the wind, I was pedaling in continuous sunlight.  And, for the first time this year, I rode in shorts and a short-sleeved top.  So, while I was probably getting a month's worth of Vitamin D, I probably got as much in ultra-violet rays, even though I was re-applying sunscreen hourly. Also, even after drinking a full bottle each of plain water, Poland Spring and Gatorade, I didn't have to pee.  That meant, of course, that the sun, wind and heat were drawing the moisture out of me almost as soon as I replaced it.

In most years, by the time I did my first ride in such heat, I had done several others in gradually-increasing temperatures.  But on Sunday, when I rode with Bill and Cindy, the mercury barely reached 10C (50F).  Also, most of that ride was under partly cloudy skies, and just about all of the riding I've done so far this year has been under varying amounts of cloud cover.

After a cold, wet April, May opened with the kind of weather we might see in late July or early August.  That has people in this part of the world wondering, aloud, "Where did Spring go?"

My skin was probably wondering the same thing.  Even though this is the sixth ride I've taken to Connecticut this year, this one was the most difficult.  It was so difficult, in fact, that...I bailed with about 20km (12 miles) left in a 140 km (85 mile) ride.  Just after I crossed the bridge from the Pelham Bay Park trail to Co-op City, I started to feel lightheaded. At Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, I saw a hot dog stand by the station for the #5 subway.  I bought another bottle of Poland Spring and got on the train.

So...Which is the bigger confession:  that I played hooky or I bailed out on a ride?

Why Was I Doing My Commute On Sunday?

Sometimes I joke about "going through the Gate of Hell to get to work every day."  The truth is, I ride over Hell Gate and by the Hell Gate Bridge when I cross the RFK Memorial (a.k.a. Triborough) Bridge every morning.

On Sunday I took Bill and Cindy by it.  If that was supposed to scare them into living on the straight and narrow, it wasn't very effective.  Then again, how could I scare, or persuade, anybody or anything into being straight?  


But I digress.  We were riding to Van Cortland Park.  They wanted to take the Greenway along the Hudson River (and the West Side Highway.)  While I like the views and that it's so close to the water, I knew that on a sunny Sunday, half of the cyclists, 70 percent of the skateboarders and 99 percent of the people with dogs or baby strollers would be on that path.  Pedaling through the Port Morris industrial area--deserted on Sunday--and Bronx side streets would be bucolic by comparison.

So, after taking Bill and Cindy through, or by, the Gates of Hell, we descended (literally) to Randall's Island where we rode underneath the Amtrak viaduct.  After the Gate, these arches were rather impressive.  Funny thing is, I don't normally see them that way:  They are, after all, part of my commute.

So are these houses on Alexander Avenue in the Bronx:

Not far away are these houses.   Save for the graffiti next to the "fish" building, almost nobody expects to see them in the South Bronx:

They're diagonally across from each other on the Grand Concourse.  The mansion is the Freedman House, built in the 1920s for formerly-wealthy people who had fallen on hard times. Now it contains an event space, art studio and bed-and-breakfast. It's almost jarring to see such a classically Florentine house across the Concourse from the Art Deco building with its mosaic. 

Anyway, Cindy had an appointment and had to leave us before we reached Van Cortlandt Park. Back when I lived on the Upper West Side and in Washington Heights, I used to take quick spins to the park, where I would check out whatever was on display in the Manor or watch the Irish rugby and soccer players. Time marches on, and now there are different folks playing a different game.

The clouds thickened, but never threatened rain.  But they didn't portend anything like Spring, either.  Rolling across the hills of Riverdale, they broke against the shore of Spuyten Duyvil, another place almost nobody expects to find in the Bronx: