I put back together my "commuter bike," which I've rarely used since I stopped delivering in May. I finally took off a saddle that I had hoped would come around to being comfortable, and put on a reliable classic Flite. What a difference - the bike is ridable and I had a blast riding all over the past few days. Feeling a solid strength in my legs again - I've missed riding fixed.

So I also put back together my pretty steel track bike, and intend to put many long park miles on it in the next few months.

Of course, once I put all the parts on to my new road frame, it might take precedence.

This morning, I pumped up my road bike's rear tire. It's got a slow leak - never enough to make it flat enough to ride, but enough to make it soft.

I've been feeling slow lately. For the past few weeks, it's felt as though everything on the bike takes a lot of energy - when I'm going, I'm crawling, spinning slowly, struggling up the bridge, never cruising at those fast paces that I love so much. I thought it was me having gotten knocked out of shape by my somewhat dismal August.

Um. Do you see where this is going?

This morning, I pumped up my road bike's rear tire. When I stuck the pumphead on, the pressure guage read 50psi. Seriously? I've been riding 50psi, thinking "it feels a little bit soft," for a month. Where has my head been?

Oh dear.

So I put it at 120 psi, had a bone-jarring ride to work ("oh right, this is what it feels like to ride over these streets at this pressure") that was also much, much swifter than it has been.

Oh dear.

So my head might be stuck thinking I'm way off my top form (which I might be), and though my body had been agreeing, it seems like some sensible changes to my bike might reverse the whole course and get me back on track for some fun-level competitions this fall: Nyack and Back, being put on by Crihs late this month, and the Wednesday night Prospect Park track bike races that Al is doing.

Of course, knowing that Jersey Dan will be competing - after having taken first cat 4 in the Green Mountain Stage Race - well, it's not like I'm gonna win.

But I'll have fun, and I won't be whining about how I can't make my bike move.

Racin' some bikes!

I took my chances in another alleycat race this past weekend, and rode to a respectable 10th place in New Haven, Connecticut. There's nothing quite like doing well despite a couple of mix-ups and getting lost to make you vow to do a whole lot better next time, especially when it's combined with repeatedly catching up to (and passing) a fast local, only to have them pick a better route from behind you, and emerge in front of you yet again.

On my commute to work this morning I thought a little bit about why I ride in alleycat races. I'm aware of the tendency for bikeishness to lean toward snobbishness and general jockery, and don't want to be a part of it. Bikes are for fun, not status symbols. So it was a funny moment to realize, hey, wait, alleycat races are surprisingly non-competetive. I mean, people aim to do well, but I haven't seen any idiotic cock-measuring of "I'm gonna kick your ass today!" People ride hard, cooperate frequently (I rode the whole race alternating between drafting off of and pulling another NYC rider, and was joined by several CT folks at many points of the race), and are generally out to have fun with the mentality that anything can happen in an alleycat race. It's not about speed, nor is it about geographical knowledge. It's about both, with a healthy bit of luck thrown in - are you going to get a good sequence of lights down that avenue? Flat right after the first checkpoint? Pick a direct route only to run into a devastating headwind? Kiss the hood of a taxi?

I think that a lot of riders know that when they ride, there's a lot that is within their control, and a whole lot that is out of it. The sobering threat of an inattentive driver damaging your frame or your body adds to the mix the knowledge that whatever happens happens, and it's preferable to some of the worse-case scenarios.

Bike races are fun. Before I started doing them, I was pretty convinced (based on slim evidence, mind you) that racers were a hardcore, exclusive bunch. I've since been proven wrong. When you're on the outside of something, it's really easy to be scared of stepping in. When you're inside something, though, it can slip one's mind to reach outside. That's why I like having fun at races, being friendly to bikers who haven't raced, encouraging them to race - to test their limits, improve themselves.

After all, I'm at a point where one of my notions of fun is to sprint my bike around for 20+ miles through traffic, and I can do it well enough, too. It's a physical feat that I never really thought I could accomplish until I realized it was within my grasp.

That was the point at which I thought, I wonder what else I can do - on bikes, and off.

Two things that are really weird are on my mind.

One is my strange desire to get in to altercations with strangers. When I'm crossing the street, I slow down, daring that SUV that's turning through the crosswalk to come too close to me. I stand on the subway platform, reading a book, minding my own business, but expecting or waiting for somebody to brush by me and knock the book out of my hands so that I can let out an exasperated "Excuse me!"

I'm not sure why. Psychoanalyze me.

The other odd thing is walking down a corridor in an office. Doors half-open, doors closed, the clickety-clack of keyboards, murmering of telephone conversations. Always, somebody's disembodied voice trickles from an unidentifiable source, around a corner or through a wall. Somewhere, a telephone is ringing. It's an uncomfortable, hypoxic, hypnotic effect.

Yesterday evening, as I was curled up on the couch with a book, my bike gave me one of those reproaching looks. It's been a while. Yeah, I know that. You know you want to. Yeah, I know that too. Is there a problem? Naw, it's just... it's cold outside. That's never stopped you before. I know, but... Is it me? No, darling, it's not you. There's no other Italian Steel between my legs - just you.

I've spent a lot of time on the subway. It's not too cold to ride, just a little too cold to be motivated to ride. It's just cold enough to make me use a hackneyed conversation-with-an-inanimate-object device.

Anyway, I've been riding a lot of subway, which lets me either curl up with a book for a half hour in the mornings (love it), or press my face against the glass and look at the graffiti as the train tumbles down the tunnel at 32 miles per hour (love it).

I'm getting more tuned in to street art. Not all of it thrills me - far from it - but I've been seeing it, noticing it more often, and it's been making me think about it. How did somebody get up to that billboard? On to that rooftop? Were they speaking in hushed voices when they trotted down the subway track, looking over their shoulder, carrying a backpack full of cans.

Not that all of it is good. I have a hard time imagining the point of venturing on to the subway tracks (though maybe the barrier is a level of risk that's only in my head) just to toss up a scrawled tag; but then again, some of the stuff that Revs and Cost did also elicits some head-scratching, like the billboard-sized roller tags they left all over the city (so odd to see one of those and have my breath taken away from it while driving in a livery cab, too well dressed for my comfort, with coworkers on a work trip...).

I like graffiti because of its low signal-to-noise ratio. Is it art? Yes no and I don't care. Is it vandalism? Yes no and I don't care. Does it require skill? Yes no and I don't care. Is it rebellious? Yes no and I don't care. Is it anti-capitalism? A baffling reversal of advertising? Self advertising? Yes no and I don't care. Graffiti artists, dissatisfied perhaps with the blandness of their surroundings, transform their surroundings. And yet graf has become an easily expected part of the urban landscape - ubiquitous, omnipresent, unsurprising. A tag, a mural, in unsurprising spots. Much of it being absolutly and utterly formulaic, noteworthy only in its mediocrity.

And then, every now and then, something grabs my attention. Sometimes a mural's freshness. Sometimes the curve of a tag. Sometimes something undescribable that makes something stand out. Sometimes, just the color, or the surprising legibility of a word or the vagueness of a phrase or tag. If graf artists are transforming their surroundings, they are recreating a domineering blandness with occasional moments of incredible beauty. How appropriate.

I'm keeping my eyes open a little bit more these days than I have been in some of the recent past, and I suppose it's paying off. Maybe I'll carry a camera more often, and preserve little bits of things that are making me think or gasp.

Image found at ofb.net/~epstein.

On the fairly rare occasions that I drive a car, I remind myself to be extra careful. As a biker, I've got firsthand experience with dangers of a moment of inattention or a risky lane change - I have been hit by cars and daily I have the opportunity to take evasive action that would be unnecessary were there a culture of safe, competant driving, and adequate infrastructure for bikers. When I'm driving a car, I don't want to contribute to the dynamic that I hate while biking, so I'm extra careful.

When I'm biking, I try to reign in my frustration with pedestrians. We have to share the same inadequate spaces, we share similar dangers from cars, and we stand to benefit most from (and ought to be united by) the Liveable Streets Movement. However, it is extremely frustrating navigating jaywalking pedestrians. Yelling "Heads up!" or "Coming through!" will get their attention, but too often, people just freeze, or the step further into my path in a confused attempt to get out of my way.

A fraction of a second to react.

This morning: kaboom. He puts his arms up, I go flying. A drawback to weighing a paltry 135lbs is that my momentum wasn't enough to knock him over instead of crashing.

So, my first crash on the Pogliaghi. The bike is fine and I'm fine - physically - but I am annoyed, peeved, disgruntled. Five months I've been commuting in this city, 20 miles a day, and I've gotten in to two crashes. That's a crash every thousand miles of commuting, which is a little bit too high for my liking. It's not my riding that's doing it - it's the conditions: manifestly unsafe. The sidewalks are narrow, the avenues are highways in disguise; the speed is low, but the speed limit is high, so if there is a yellow light or an open strip of asphalt, then there's weight on the gas pedal, a revving of the engines.

Expecting safety on New York City streets makes about as much sense as expecting your Cheerios not to bump each other in the breakfast bowl. Demanding safety? This is something every New Yorker should be doing. Anybody who has ever frowned at a delivery truck gunning it through a red light, anybody who has ever had a cab come too close as it's rounding a corner, anybody who grips their child's hand tightly when they cross the street, saying, "Always look both ways!" Anybody who has ever gotten on a bike, and, more importantly, anybody who finds too many reasons not to ride. Anybody who has ever dodged an SUV. Anybody who walks on Manhattan's narrow, crowded sidewalks and sighs as cars go roaring by. Anybody who looks at the incredible amount of space taken up by gridlocked cars and wonders if maybe it wouldn't be nicer if some of those were plazas, with outdoor cafes, vendors, exchange students playing guitar for quarters... the sights, sounds, and smells of New Yorkers interacting with each other, instead of muttering as they push by each other, competing for scraps of sidewalk space, forced to the edges by a culture that's willing to go to any extent - even destroying a beautiful city - so that everybody can drive where they please.

This morning's commute:
19 degrees Farenheit.
Winds at 26 mph, gusting to 35 mph.
1 degree with the wind chill.

Fucker!

On Monday morning, I hit snooze on my cell phone alarm clock a few times before seriously lifting my head. I muttered to myself and kicked at the sheets, grabbed the string for the venetians that dangled by the head of my bed and tugged the blinds open - not much brighter.

Yeah, it's getting toward December all right.

It's still mild out but I took a look at the bike, and at the clock steadily creeping past 8 AM, and decided I'd take the subway in. It's not really a decision based on how much time I have, because riding the bike is quicker especially when I factor in the walk from MSG to my office, but the later it gets, the harder it is to get going, and something just made me not want to get on my bike that morning.

Maybe there was an accident waiting to happen.

On the subway I got the opportunity to watch people disengage with their surroundings. iPods everywhere, tinkering with cell phones, or just staring straight ahead, numbed out. What a world we live in, where we take every opportunity to shut ourselves out from it. It makes me grateful I don't have an iPod and it makes me grateful that I don't take the subway to work - with fatigue and resign, I too would just look for ways to disengage.

I've spent a lot of time in various parts of my life doing things that have been disengaging rather than engaging. I like to think that biking is a way to engage with the world - I get outside more often, go places I wouldn't otherwise, meet people I wouldn't otherwise, interact with strangers more, perhaps, than I would if I were on foot - but it's a bit more complicated and more dynamic than that, because I'm sure that some people around me may have noticed my occasional tendency to sink into a space where I only think about riding. It's happened. It will happen again. I try to be careful with myself when patterns and priorities emerge in my life. There was a few months last year when I spent almost no money at all, except on alcohol. It's good to track those sort of things, to be clear about how it's choice and not happenstance.

This started with me thinking about how I'm glad I don't have an iPod. But I also have to realize that I've barely discovered new music in the past two years. I can count on one hand the number of artists who have broken in to my steady rotation. So what I really need to do is give friends 5 blank CDs and tell them to get to work on my "New Year, New Music" gift.

I gotta get on that.