In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
Yesterday afternoon, I unwound myself with a no-destination ride. I have no idea of how many miles or kilometers I pedaled. All I know is: a.) I was hungry when I got home (I fed Marlee first!) and b.) I wandered through Brooklyn neighborhoods seen by almost no one who doesn’t live in them—streets where women in long dresses and thick hosiery pushed baby carriages while young men in colorful shirts chatted and swaggered to the beat of Bob Marley songs and other sounds from Jamaica, other parts of the Caribbean and Africa.
I also wended down streets in a neck of Queens between Jamaica Bay and the Hawtree Inlet. The narrow streets, some barely or not at all paved, could just as well be part of a New England or Gulf fishing village. It would be easy to believe they weren’t part of the New York City borough of Queens were it not for this:
Part of the neighborhood—Hamilton Beach* —lies within the Gateway National Recreation Area, which includes parts of the New York and New Jersey coastlines. The West Hamilton Beach part might well be the only part of the US National Park system that has a municipal railway running through it.
That subway line is the A train—yes, the one in Duke Ellington’s song. The Hamilton Beach section of Gateway is about 30 miles as the crow (or seagull or egret or whatever bird you like) flies from Harlem. As Ellington reminds us, if you miss the A train, you’ve missed the fastest way to Harlem—especially from one of New York’s most remote locales.
Fortunately, I was riding Negrosa, my vintage Mercian Olympic, so I didn’t have to worry about missing the train.
*—Although the neighborhood shares its name with a brand of kitchen appliances, there is no relation between them. Supposedly, the community is named for two of its early developers.
Fun Fact: Hamilton Beach is one of the few NYC communities with a volunteer fire department!
Around this time, I believe, Spring starts to tilt toward Summer, at least in the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Every few years, Memorial Day falls on this date, as it did last year. It's the birthday of Lucy, of the eponymous novel by Jamaica Kincaid. In 1787, the US Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia; Argentina's revolt against Spanish rule began in 1810. And, interestingly, on this date in 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged his country to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade; exactly 16 years later, one of the most popular movie franchises in history--Star Wars--premiered.
And, one year ago today, enough happened that, if Stephen Dedalus of The Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man had witnessed it, he'd have to repeat his assertion that history is a nightmare from which he was trying to awake.
Amy Cooper, a.k.a. Central Park Karen, falsely accused a black man of threatening her and her dog. Fortunately, the man--Christian Cooper, no relation--captured the event on his phone. Still, in February, a judge dismissed the charges against her after she completed five therapy sessions "designed for introspection and progress," according to the Assistant District Attorney.
Not surprisingly, that incident was overshadowed by the murder of George Floyd. That, at least, has brought issues of policing in "minority" communities (in which I include not only non-white people, but those of us who aren't cisgender or heterosexual, or don't otherwise fit into societal standards of gender and sexuality) to the forefront.
Those incidents, I believe, are relevant to us as cyclists because in too many places, at least here in the US, incidents in which motorists run down cyclists aren't taken seriously. The driver, even if he or she is impaired, distracted or should not have been driving for some other reason, gets off with a "slap on the wrist" and the cyclist is blamed for his or her injury or death.
Oh, while I'm on the subject of relations between non-majority or non-mainstream communities and those who police or rule them, I want to call attention to another incident that occured on the traditional Memorial Day--31 May (next Monday). Exactly a century ago, on that date, one of the worst incidents of racial violence and mass murder took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A black shoeshine "boy" rode an elevator with a white woman. I think you can guess what happened next: the "black ram is tupping the white ewe" rumors began. They led to confrontations in which the city's police chief deputized white mobs and commandeering gun shops to arm them--and private planes to drop bombs on the Greenwood district, then known as "Black Wall Street."
Like most other people, I learned about the incident, in which the district was wiped off the face of the earth, by accident, when I was researching something else. I was, to say, the least, astounded--but not surprised--that the Tulsa Massacre has been omitted from history books. (Victor Imperatus, anyone?) My shock led me to write an article about it nearly five years ago.
I mention that incident, and the George Floyd murder because, although one is being brought to light (because of its centenary) and the other resulted in the conviction of a police officer, we as cyclists still need to be wary of increasingly-militarized police forces who still, in too many cases, harass, ticket and even arrest cyclists on specious or simply phony charges (as happened recently in Perth Amboy, New Jersey) -- and the power structures that give rogue officers more credibility than those they victimize.
That sounds like something Muhammad Ali could have said at the peak of his career. Or, perhaps, Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault or Martina Navritilova. I think we could also add Serena Williams, Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky to the list of athletes who were in a class by themselves when they were at the top of their game.
The man who uttered it, though, may have had even more of a right to make such a claim. In February 2012, he rode 24.250 kilometers (15.1 miles) in an hour, on a track. That might not seem remarkable, much less like a record of any sort, until you realize that the ride was accomplished by a man who had turned 100 a few months earlier.
Robert Marchand thus set a record for track cyclists 100 years or older. Two years later, he bested that mark with 26.927 kilometers (16.73 miles) in an hour.
If he was looking for a rival then, he would have an even more difficult time finding one on 4 January 2017. That day, an hour of pedaling the Velodrome National, just outside of Paris, added up to 22.547 kilometers (14.01 miles). That would set one-hour track record for the 105-and-over age group, a category created specifically for him.
Now tell me, who is going to rival that?
What's really interesting about Robert Marchand's feats, though, is that he isn't a "career" cyclist. He had racing aspirations in his youth, but a coach advised him to give them up because, he said, his size (1.52 meters, or 5 feet and 52 kilograms, or 115 pounds) would hold him back.
Robert Marchand was born in the northern French city of Amiens on 26 November 1911. After decades of working in Venezuela and Canada, he returned to France in the 1960s. At age 68, he dedicated himself to his youthful passion of cycling.
Before setting his track his track records, he took some long-distance rides, including a trek from Paris to Moscow in 1992.
In addition to the track records I previously mentioned, he also holds the record for someone over the age of 100 riding 100 kilometers. When he turned 106, his doctors advised him to stop training for records. But he continued to ride, at least 20 minutes every day. In February 2018, he completed a 4000 meter race in the same stadium where he set his over-105 record. And he celebrated his 107th birthday with a 20 kilometer ride.
He finally transitioned to indoor riding, due to hearing loss, after he turned 108. He continued, however, to ride every day until a week before his death on Saturday, age 109.
Even if he hadn't set records for his age group, I think one would have to look very, very long and very, very far to find a rival for Robert Marchand.
