the bicycle diaries

Robert and I rode to Audubon Park, mostly up Magazine. It’s only 7.5 miles but it took 50 minutes and we were both too exhausted to bike back home. Not so much physically exhausted as mentally exhausted. Robert was tired from straining to keep up with me and I was having a hard time making sure I wasn’t leaving him in behind. What’s more, my foot slipped or something, I don’t even know, but whatever happened inflicted excruciating pain on the soft back part of my ankle. That really put me out, too. Riding in traffic was terrible as well. A woman at a red like said “I ride all the time, you should ride one street over to avoid all this traffic!” but one street over was absurdly rough, pitted and patched and cracked. I do need to find an alternative route, though. That would make things nicer.

The riding was good. I think I figured out good muscle-supported posture. I also tilted my seat forward a little more, which was an astonishing relief. I had blamed my shoulder/neck pain on having my seat tilted too far, but I realized that wasn’t it. I’m even better at stopping! And I didn’t even break a sweat, somehow. It was so cool outside, which helped, but I’ve sweated in 20-degree weather in Boston, so I don’t know. 

I called my parents and my dad said he’d come get us. While we waited, we did laps around the paved track in the park. I figured Robert would be okay alone, so I sped off and really got my heart racing. I was definitely showing off, crouching low and zipping past everyone, certainly surpassing the 10mph speed limit. It’s actually a really nice place to ride, but I’m always too exhausted from riding TO it to actually do much. I need to bring my bike over there in my car and just do laps. It doesn’t fully fit in the trunk or the backseat, but it stays quite secure with the trunk bungee-corded shut.

I really want a chopper/stingray type bike. Maybe I’ll build one at Plan B. I think that would be fun. And cheap!

I think I’m going to take my bike geocaching tomorrow.

One side of my pedals gives me a better grip. Naturally it’s the heavy side that ends up on the bottom.

I wish I could have one bike and use it in New Orleans and Boston. The $40+ shipping/baggage fee isn’t really worth it until you have a $3000 bike.

I was thinking I would buy a bike here in New Orleans and sell it at the end of the summer, endlessly recycling the bike money into more bikes. But I’ve become really attached to my red road bike. It’s so nice. The money is not really a problem. I can come up with another $200 or so. But I will hold any bike in Boston to the standards of my bike here.

That means it has to be nice, and it has to have been loved and taken care of consistently. I want to know that it will perform beautifully, not come away wondering what it can handle. “Rides nice” does not inspire confidence. So I have to buy it from someone who knows about bikes and loves them. It also has to be very reasonably priced, prohibitively narrowing my options. What’s more, it has to be as small as possible. I’m not that tall and I have mad short legs.

I torture myself by stalking craigslist, and today I found this gem:

IN LOVE. Breathless. Goddamn I wish I could commit to this thing. Perfect price, size, style, condition, and color scheme. It was just rebuilt by a bike mechanic. It’s totally something I can get behind. There are two problems: I’m not going to be ready to buy a bike in Boston until late August and I can’t imagine having the guy hold it for me until then, and I still feel shaky riding this kind of bike.

That second bit shouldn’t deter me, though. I got comfortable with the bony seat of the old green cruiser, and I spent months taking both cruisers on trips that were much too long. I will continue to ride my current bike until I’ve got that down pat, too. By the time I’m back in Boston, I’ll be a road bike pro, even with the perilous Massachusetts drivers who have it out for me. Hell, I used to be scared to leave my neighborhood at home. Biking is something I’ve yet to give up on. I’ve only gotten better and more knowledgeable about what I like and want. While it’s hard for me to mentally commit to this for Boston, It’s even more unthinkable to buy a cruiser or mountain bike or generic-looking road bike. I’m smitten with the drop-bar, the parallel top tube, the impossibly skinny tires, and the twitchy handling, however inept I am.

I feel like Lance fucking Armstrong.

[edit]
I just re-read post 27 about the bike from MacKenzie’s dad. I mentioned that it was much harder to handle than my cruiser. I had forgotten about that challenge. I’m inspired to leave this new challenge in the dust as well. 

The last time I wrote here, I was riding a single-speed cruiser. It was beautiful and warranted many catcalls, but it was not the right bike to take on 25-mile trips, especially not at top speed. I think I knew this early on, but I only came to terms with it recently. First I felt guilty. I left the bike at home when I left for school, but I didn’t ride it when I came home for Christmas or spring break. I just…didn’t want to. She sat in my room like a sad princess in a tower for eight months.

Two weeks ago, I realized that someone else could love her the way she deserved. I put her up for sale on Craigslist. My mom was horrified. She loved the bike, but I was past sentimentality.

Sally/Sunny (I never even permanently named the poor thing) got half a dozen replies within two hours of being listed, and as many more the next day. A girl from the neighborhood came by and was instantly smitten. I wasn’t really sad to see the bike go. Seeing it neglected made me feel worse.

Craigslist gave me a few dead-end leads on road bikes, but I did get a response from someone just down the street in Bywater. He had a 50cm road bike from the 80’s but in excellent condition. What sold me was that he had loved the bike and hated to part with it. He was going to take it state-to-state, but decided it was time to upgrade. I truly understood. After my incredibly shaky test ride, he told me that I was clearly afraid of the bike (I was) and that I just didn’t know how to ride it yet (I didn’t). I wasn’t just buying a bike from someone who got it at a yard sale and wanted to make a buck. In fact, this guy gave me a great deal. So I took the bike home.

It’s like, pretty fancy. It has custom wheels and nice tires and something about the crank or something makes it go fast, and I don’t even know what else.

These things all made it really hard for me to figure out what to do when I decided the bike was too big for me. It was really awkward and sometimes painful for me to ride, and I just couldn’t believe that I would get used to it. I thought maybe I wasn’t ready for a road bike. But it was so nice. And I couldn’t just turn around and sell it after parting this poor guy with it. I kept it around and gave it a few more tries, none of them particularly inspiring. Sure, it was so fast, but stopping was hard because I can barely straddle the top tube on tiptoes and certainly can’t reach the ground while seated on the saddle, although this second part is standard to proper road bike fit. Stopping was usually more like falling.

But today I had a ride that made me want to write about it.

I had gotten a flat, so I wheeled it over to Plan B bike shop to fix it myself. My mother just bought my brother a mountain bike at Wal-Mart, so he came along so we could ride together afterwards. After a good half hour of frustration, sweat, B.O., grease, water, dirt, patch cement, and blood, the tire was fixed and re-inflated. I am embarrassed by how much trouble I had patching the stupid tube. It was absurd and there was no reason for it.

I was tired and frustrated, but somehow I gathered the energy to undertake a serious journey with Robert, probably because the entire time I was in the shop, he waited patiently and quickly obeyed any orders I barked at him. Bless his fucking heart. He only wanted to ride with me.

We went barreling down Esplanade towards City Park, one of my favorite rides just because it’s a good destination. It’s certainly not because of the terrain. Well, I was barreling. I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder to check on Robert, and I was often heartbroken to see that I was leaving him in my dust. The poor kid. I didn’t really have an idea of just how fast my new bike went until I had a basis for comparison. I compromised by alternately pedaling slowly and coasting.

I taught him some more about bike etiquette as we rode, shouting over my shoulder. He knows not to go the wrong way down one-way streets, but that it’s sometimes safer to run a red light. I told him how not to get doored and what it means when someone honks behind you. I couldn’t help it. I was so scared he would get smooshed. Once, he changed his gears and the crunching clanking made my heart stop. I whipped my head around, but he was still going.

Esplanade was bumpy and exhausting as ever, but I think I’m learning proper muscle-supported posture out of necessity. I’m evolving! So the bumps hurt less, my shoulders and neck hurt less, and I was even doing much better at stopping. I was scared at first to go all the way to the park. I thought I would be too tired and sore to go back, but somehow I wasn’t. Things are looking up!

We sat on my favorite bench at City Park and watched the ducks charging around going uck uck uck and drained our water bottles. Somehow, I hadn’t broken a sweat. We both had crazy person hair. I still felt so bad for throwing him into such an extreme cycling situation. I feel like he didn’t really know what he was in for.

But he performed beautifully. He’s a good kid.

TUNE IN NEXT FOR: Will we buy a new cruiser saddle for the old green bike and all four of us go on family rides?

1. mackenzie’s dad had a couple of trek road bikes laying around and let us have them

2. this bike is much harder to handle than my cruiser at home. i’ve had the trek since the second week of september and i’m only just getting the hang of getting started by standing on a pedal rather than sitting and then pedaling. mackenzie does this thing when she’s about to dismount where she swings her right leg around the back and stands on the left pedal and just coasts. that is my next task.

3. i fell off a bike for the first time since i was a kid or whatever. mackenzie and i were coming back from the arboretum, and i was standing up and pedaling but not keeping good control. the bike was swinging from side to side and i couldn’t keep it stabilized, so it slammed down to the left and i was very gracefully pinned to the asphalt. i came away with a sore shoulder, a scraped elbow that’s only just healing, and a linear bruise across the top of my thigh from the top tube. gnarly.

4. biking on boston is kind of hard. definitely different from new orleans. it’s busier. well, i guess biking around northeastern is like biking around the CBD. heavy traffic and lots of pedestrians. again, i’m only just getting the hang of it.

5. biking on campus is super awkward. people are just walking everywhere and no one seems to know what to do when a bike is coming towards them. some people stop dead in their tracks when stepping to the side would be much more helpful, and others assume that it’s easy for me to stop for them to go past me. it’s not! i understand that it’s annoying to walk where there are people biking because i’ve been on that end, but you really have to work with cyclists. coexist!

i am tired of biking in new orleans. it’s not that i’m just tired of biking, i still like biking, i’ve been fantasizing about biking in boston. i am tired of biking and not getting to a place at the end maybe. i am for sure tired of summer. it is stagnating, the dragging high-pitched maraca of the cicadas in the evening demonstrating my ennui. HHHHHHHAHAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. over and over again. i got a premonition of fall the other day. it came to me in a strange october light, high and diffused. for a split second i felt buttery air, cool and dry, and the smell of hot grass, hot street, hot everything was gone. my skin didn’t stick to other skin. my hair felt clean. yeah, i want that.

1. this man modified a dog kennel so his miniature schnauzer could ride on his bike.

2. i caught a baby lizard when i got home. i let him go.

so i went on a bike ride with my mom. i sort of made her ride esmeralda. we went to city park and stopped at my favorite bench.

then a man paddled a large gondola out of the brush.

he wore a striped shirt and a flat boater hat with a black ribbon. my mom was all like, “yeah, that’s the gondola guy!” i was dumbfounded. she walked over to talk to him but i had to watch the bikes. the man’s name is robert dula, and he runs a business called NOLA gondola. “business” might be too strong of a word because the business consists of him and this boat. the business is humble and dear. he has ice buckets, wine glasses, and italian music on CD. he’s only been back for three weeks since katrina! he says the hour tour is the best and takes you through every part of the city park lagoon. twice he has had to sink his boat to keep it safe — once in florida for hurricane ivan, and once for katrina. i can’t find a comprehensive history, but some cursory googling revealed that he grew up in rural lafayette, LA and has been all over the place…new orleans; huntsville, alabama; florida; he even once did a private pool party. this guy is mad legit and i want to give him my business!

i offered to ride the green bike on the way back, thinking it would be bearable for me but not my mother’s unaccustomed bottom. i was wrong. i forgot how wildly uncomfortable that seat is. it’s even more uncomfortable to hold the handlebars. they’re farther away and closer together. sally spoils me.

i felt like i needed to get out, so i did a little tour through the french quarter. it was the usual, tourists roaming the streets like they didn’t see the cars who were also driving like ass hats, music blasting at supersonic levels from dance clubs, warm mucky air. i mean, it is special, this place. i like to be here.

on the way back, two tiny little boys were leaving port of call with their families. they shouted “A BIKE! A BIKE!” and one of them waved his arm side to side above his head, swinging his hips in unison like a dance move. “WAVE, BIKE! BIKE BIKE BIKE!” i laughed out loud and held up a hand. they cheered.

a problem that continues to plague me in my biking forays is stopping at intersections, and then getting started again. first of all it is hard to remain seated on the bike while my toes are extended into charlie horse danger area just to keep me balanced. then it is so hard to get rolling again, especially with a coaster brake because i can’t just spin the pedals backwards to get them into position. i have to do this awkward bounce-wobble thing to roll them forward, and even then my feet can’t get enough purchase to kick off so it’s all up to my legs, which is harder than you’d think if you’d never had to do it before, PLUS the streets are so unlevel that i’m often pedaling out of a veritable pit in the asphalt, PLUS i’m trying not to hold up anyone behind me who wants to turn right or even go straight, really.

there are two ways i combat this: light cycle management and foot-on-curb maneuvering.  the first is, if i’m heading toward an intersection and the light is green and i feel close enough that i could make it through a possible yellow light at top speed BUT i’m not so far away that i wouldn’t make a yellow light even at top speed and then stopping would be taxing, i gun it. i gun it as much as you can gun it on a bike. alternately, if i am headed toward a red light, i go as slowly as possible so maybe the light will change before i have to stop. this works pretty well! if i do have to stop, i try to do it extremely close to the curb at the corner so i can rest my right foot on it, which helps with staying seated and with having enough purchase to get going more easily.

STRATEGIES.

i rode to lakeview again, just to the back of the museum, sat on my favorite bench, drank lemon water. i’ve never been able to drink plain water except in cases of extreme thirst. this is going to sound stuck-up, like what, water isn’t good enough for me? but it makes me gag. lemon makes it palatable.

i popped out of the west side of city park onto orleans avenue and instead of going home on esplanade, i took city park avenue to moss street. it runs along the bayou, studded with adorable homes. the place has a nautical air to it, even though the bayou is hardly majestic. the street is rough but there are bike path markings, and people are more than willing to share the road with you. i stayed on until it became north jeff and took a random right at orleans avenue. i went down a few blocks but didn’t feel particularly inspired, so i went to make a u-turn and as i waited for the cars, one of them honked at me. my friend sarah waved from the window, made a right turn, and parked. i had managed a wave back but then wondered if she had stopped to talk to me. i felt awkward and solitary so i kept going. sarah and i discussed this later. she said she wondered if i had stopped to talk to her as well. it turned out she had parked at her house. what a weird coincidence, though.

coming back up orleans, i remembered i had seen the lindy boggs medical center looming ahead on north jeff. it’s this big old hospital, closed since katrina, the floor-to-ceiling windows now shattered with rolling office chairs dangling over the ledges. the entire place is surrounded by a 7- or 8-foot barbed-wired fence and “danger, no trespassing” signs. i have this really bad desire to trespass. i bet it’s really cool. i rode my bike into the parking lot. a modest security sentry tower stood in the center. there was a breach in the fence at the separating the building from the parking lot, perfect for snoopers. why do i feel the urgent need to stomp around in a building whose floors are waiting to swallow me up into a splintery death?

bahahahaha

finally, finally, finally got my shit together for a ride with rémy. i actually rode my bike uptown to her house in the noonday sun (i get through it by thinking of the tan i’m getting) and stood on her porch, sweat dripping into my eyes, trying to look composed as i chatted with rémy and her momma. i imagined that i looked like a gnarled swamp creature, oozing slime from its matted hair, tank top creased with sweat, projecting a powerful odor of things decomposing in the silt of my brackish home behind a bald cypress. i kept wondering “why are they even looking at me” and “how do they bear to speak to me.” once inside i popped into the bathroom to put on my human suit and discovered that i actually didn’t look that bad. i didn’t look bad at all, really. just a little hot. huh.

remy and i made a peanut butter pie, no big deal, and then got to business. her bike tires were flat and of course there was no air at the circle K around the corner. so i rode my bike the short distance to her dad’s house where bikes could be found, and she drove. we’d ridden the bikes there before, sophomore year, forever ago. i didn’t have bike fever back then but i vaguely remembered one having flowers on it and the other being black and named janet. since contracting bike fever, i’ve thought about them, and suspected that they are electras. remy wasn’t sure, but to my delight, i turned out to be correct. “ELECTRA” emblazoned on the chain guard, remy’s bike is white with stylized rose-printed fenders. it’s disgustingly cute. i could be wrong but i think janet is the betty cruiser.

audubon park is, you know, right there, so that’s where we went. we started out on the bike path, but i saw people zooming around the golf course sidewalks and wanted in. we broke off from the path and went up a little curvy bit that went downhill and made a counterclockwise circle around a stand of trees at the same time. it was like a bike roller coaster! probably against the rules but definitely so much fun. no one was playing golf, so we whipped down the twisty, hilly paths, feeling like bad kids.

people who live here hang out on their porches with friends, their gay, unintelligible voices carrying to the street. they ride their bikes laden with groceries, and they walk their dogs after putting on pajamas. i really want to be one of them. i definitely live in new orleans, yes, no contest there, but i hardly feel like a citizen. it could be because i’m home for the summer, staying at my parents’ house, not feeling very collegy at all anymore.

but then, i’ve always felt this way. people who live across town hang out in my neighborhood more than i do. my whole life, mentions that i live in faubourg marigny have been met with exclamations of how cool that is, how lucky i am to have grown up there, how much i must love it. yes it’s cool, yes i love having that claim to fame, but it was kind of a crap place to grow up. it’s a very adult neighborhood, populated by those twenty-something and up, so there were never any kids to hang out with, and my parents didn’t bring me around much because they didn’t go around much themselves. my dad used to bring me to the neighborhood association meetings to sell girl scout cookies or keep him company, and my whole family would go down the street for church, so people knew who i was, and i had a presence. but i never felt connected, never was that precocious kid hanging with the grown-ups or striking out on her own.

and now, i blame it on not biking. there are two reasons for this. in addition to being quirky, my neighborhood is also not the safest. it’s all artists and gays (sometimes even affectionately called the “fagbourg marigny”) and eccentrics and single mothers and people who look like hipsters but have probably never heard the term before. but there are less savory neighborhoods nearby, so there is the odd burglary, the occasional sketchy person passing through, and one time i heard a terrible story about a mugging at gunpoint. so my parents were never too hot on the idea of me venturing out on my own. i remember one time freshman year, i leashed up our dogs for a walk around the block, and when i got home my mom made a hysterical comment about me being out alone wearing a tank top. so there was that. there was also the lack of anything for me to ride my bike to. no friends to visit, no parks to play at without my parents, no ice cream shops, no interest in being at the church building when i wasn’t forced to be. when i was home, i stayed inside.

i feel like a citizen when i’m in boston and i like that. it has something to do with how much time we spend outside there, exposed to the world, no cars between our feet and the ground, no walls between the gaps in our clothing and the niggling chill that always finds a way in. i miss that chill. we walk to CVS, to shaw’s, to the pru, to the reflecting pool, to boylston street, to class and to the library, to museums and restaurants, to any place we want to be. and when we are not walking, we are on the T with other citizens, being the general public, leaving fingerprints on the support poles, passing through the pupils of other passengers as a conglomeration of reflected light.

when i’m in the house, i feel as though i might be in any city in the world. when i’m in my car, i feel like i’m on a disney world ride, tugged along on a set of tracks. when i’m on my bike, i feel limitless. i’m still too young to spend my time at the lounges around here, not self-sufficient enough to need to give my service to the market behind my block, and i shower too often to really fit in at these places anyway, but biking makes me feel like i’m reclaiming this city in some small way.