1934: Pedaling The Lake

I occasionally ride to, or through, Flushing Meadow Park.  If you've never been there (or haven't read my posts about it), you might recognize at least one of its landmarks:  the Unisphere, built for the 1964-65 World's Fair and featured in Men In Black as well as other movies and TV shows.  

What you also might not know is that, like Prospect and Central Parks, it surrounds an artificial lake.  During the summer, those lakes are popular for, among other things, boat rides.  

Flushing Meadow, however, offers a type of water craft not available in the other city playgrounds:  pedal boats.  While they bear more resemblance to oversized beach toys than to boats or bicycles, they are propelled in the same way as your bicycle:  Your feet spin the pedals.  

I haven't tried one, but I plan to, if for no other reason than to see whether the experience is more like cycling or boating--or neither.

Perhaps these young women could have offered some insight:

For ten cents, had the opportunity  pedal across the waters of Lake Lucerne, near Seattle, Washington.  Their pedal boat literally combined two bicycles with a boat (or, more precisely, a raft) made of milled timbers.  The women's leg power propels the contraption forward by means of a water wheel attached to the bicycle gears.

It's pretty clever, if you ask me. If only the resort's managers could have had such acumen:  In December 1934, four months after the photo was taken, the property (which included 98 acres of land in addition to 16 acres of lake) was seized and sold at a U.S. Marshal's auction to satisfy a $22,763 court judgment. 

As far as I know, there haven't been any pedal boats on the lake since then.

Did He Ride Hands-Free?

I've done all sorts of things on a bicycle that, until I did them, I wouldn't have thought possible.

And I've done most of the things most people do but would never admit to doing.  Among them are at least one  most people will admit to having done during puberty or even in their teen years, but not as an adult.

I think you know where this is going.

The things I've done that most people won't admit to having done aren't all things I've done on a bicycle.  In fact, it never even occurred to me to try one of those things while astride two wheels.

Hint:  It's something that shocks people when they catch someone doing it precisely because they know they themselves have done it but would never own up to it.

It was a cause of consternation for me when, as a teenager, I was supposed to watch for shoplifters in the Alexander's department store where I was working.  

When I heard some suspicious rustling in the next aisle over--women's wear--I was ready to spring into action. The man in the aisle indeed had a pair of silky panties in his hand.  But he wasn't stuffing them into a bag or his pocket:  Filling the latter would have been difficult, as his pants were pulled down.  So were his underpants. 

As extensive as Alexander's employee training was, it didn't teach us how to deal with a man masturbating in the lingerie aisle.  Being the teenager I was, I was tempted to say something snarky (or that my young mind would have thought clever).  Instead, I called a security guard who dragged the guy away and called the cops.  

I'm guessing that the guy was charged with public lewdness, or some such thing--even though the "public", as far as I know, consisted only of that security guard and myself.

I hadn't thought about the incident in a long time.  A news story that came my way brought it back to mind, and with it, a question I never thought I'd ask:  What would I do if I saw someone masturbating on a bicycle?  Oh, and what if I were a cop and caught someone in the act?

I'm sure there must be something in police academy training that covers, if not such a specific incidence, then at least what to do if a person is pleasuring him or her self in public.  

That is the situation an off-duty police  officer in Macomb County, Michigan (near Detroit) faced recently. She was jogging on an asphalt trail in a county park when she "observed a very tall man in gray pants riding a mountain bike and fondling his genitals in full view of the public."  According to that same report, about half an hour later, another woman saw the same man "on his bike with his penis exposed."

Did he ride hands-free?

The man, William Benjamin Brown, was charged with two counts of "aggravated indecent exposure," which could bring him a two-year prison sentence.

Here's what I'd like to know:  Did he ride hands-free?  Or did he use one hand  to keep a straight line and the other to wiggle?

A Bike Bay In The Steel City

Possibly the most difficult part of cycling in traffic is navigating intersections.

In jurisdictions that don't have some form of the "Idaho stop," cyclists are expected to follow the traffic signals as either vehicles or pedestrians.  One problem with that is that a cyclist proceeding straight through an intersection is in danger of getting hit by turning vehicles--especially right-turning trucks and buses, as their drivers often do not see cyclists who are far to the right of them. Another problem is that in very large intersections, it is all but impossible to turn left without running into danger from oncoming traffic.

Of course, the "Idaho stop" is meant to remedy the first problem:  Treating a red light as a "stop" sign or a "stop" sign as a "yield" sign (which is what the Idaho stop is, in essence) allows the cyclist to get out ahead of drivers who are making right turns.  As for the second problem, a new solution is being tried out in Pittsburgh.

In the city's Oakland neighborhood, boxes--"bays"--are being carved out in intersections.  Cyclists proceed to them and wait for their signal--which is activated by radar designed to detect their presence--before continuing through the intersection. 


I, for one, will be very interested to see how this idea works out.  In principle, it sounds good, though I must admit that I'm skeptical about a "bay" in the middle of an intersection that is separated from traffic only by lines of paint.