In Place

Yesterday I was torn between taking a familiar or a new ride.  So I did a bit of both:  I pedaled through areas of Westchester County I hadn’t seen in a while, on roads I’d never ridden.

While riding, I couldn’t help but to think about how two affluent towns, so close, could feel so different. Scarsdale, New York, like Greenwich, Connecticut, is one of the most affluent towns in the United States.  Both have quaint downtowns full of shops that offer goods and services you don’t find in big-box stores.  But while some Greenwich establishments have the intimacy of places where generations of people have congregated, others are like the ones in Scarsdale and other wealthy parts of Westchester County:  more self-conscious—you can see it in the names, some of which show merely that whoever came up with the name took French or Italian—and more trendy while trying not to seem trendy.  

Also, the mansions of Greenwich are set further from the roadway than those in Scarsdale.  I suspect that has to do with the differences between the towns’ zoning codes—which has to do with the philosophies of the people who made them.  Also, part of Greenwich includes farms where horses are bred and herbs are grown.

In other words, they reflect the difference between New England and suburban New York wealth (though Greenwich is certainly part of the New York Metro area). 

While both towns have public art and sculpture, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this in Greenwich:

Simone Kestelman, the creator of “Pearls of Wisdom,” says she was inspired by what pearls mean: something to wear for special occasions, purity, spiritual transformation, dignity, charity honesty, integrity—and, of course, wisdom acquired over time.

One might expect to see something like this in Greenwich:

Indeed, the town has public horlogues like that one,  But I encountered it in the Bronx, across the street from Montefiore Hospital!

Simple Arithmetic?

 Only a mathematician could ever come up with that!

I've forgotten what the "that" was.  But I remember that an engineer said it.  Now, my knowledge of mathematics can be summed up, generously, by the divisor of an equation that yields a quotient of infinity. But I understood, I think, that engineer's exclamation:  Almost nothing is as abstract--and, therefore, divorced from reality, at least in the minds of many--as mathematics.

If there are things only a mathematician can come up with, then I imagine there are things an engineer would never try or, probably, even think about.  To wit:

To be fair, Sergii Gordieiev's project was inspired by a real-life situation:  He crushed his front wheel on a curb.  That left him, in essence, with half of a wheel.  So that got him to wondering how to ride with half of a wheel.  The solution came from a mathematical equation so simple even I could understand it:  half plus half equals one.  Thus, he realized, he could make a bike run on two half-wheels--on the rear, anyway.

Your local bike mechanic probably can perform all sorts of miracles.  I know:  I've resurrected a bike or two in my time.  (If you're inculcated with the language of Catholicism, it never leaves you!)  But, my old engineer acquaintance said, there are some things only a mathematician could come up with. 

Next On The Journey--Or: Where Is This Going?

After writing yesterday's post, I noticed something interesting, at least to me.  

I began this blog twelve years ago.  You might say that I spun it off from an earlier blog, Transwoman Times.  I started that blog a year before my gender-affirmation surgery and continued it for several years after.  About a year after my surgery, I--and at least one reader--noticed that I was also writing about my rides and bikes, and cycling in general.  I didn't think bikes or cycling were out of place in TT:  After all, they--and the fact that I couldn't ride for a few months after my surgery--were an important part of my gender affirmation process, as they have been in my life. 

After I started this blog, I wrote less about cycling-related stuff on TT.  So, perhaps not surprisingly, I found myself posting less on that site as I had less and less to say about my gender affirmation.  That is to say, rather than a process of affirmation, my gender identity became a fact of my life.

But now I find that I'm writing more about, if not gender-related topics, then political, social and cultural issues, on this blog.  Those subjects are, of course, related to cycling, especially if it's your primary or a major means of transportation.  You know that from my rants about bicycle "infrastructure" planned, designed and built by people who haven't been on a bicycle since the day they got their driver's licenses. 

I also, however, see that gender-related issues are "creeping" into this blog.  In one way it seems ironic, or at least odd:  Am I coming full-circle (or cycle)?, I wonder.  Then again, this shift in focus, if indeed this blog is moving in that direction, is a fulfillment of what I say in my masthead:  I am--as always--a woman on a bicycle--and something else I say in my profile--this is a blog by a transgender woman.

While I haven't posted on Transwoman Times in a while, I have no plans to let this blog lie fallow.  I just hope that the twists and turns of this blog, and my journey, continue to interest you, and others.  But I must warn you:  I won't stop being "political."  I can't.