It’s A Cool, Cool Autumn Tonight

Parked in a hallway, locked to a table, it looks like a beast peeking around a corner.  My bike in Warde Hall at MMU.  It was inside during the afternoon rain, and will take me home tonight.

A front moved through today and brought a bit of rain, which is all to the good, but the north winds behind it seem pretty chilly.

My bike, if you recall, had a broken spoke last week.  It’s back, now.  I got a call Saturday while I was out of town saying the bike was ready, and the shop was closed Sunday.  Today, at mid-day, Audrey gave me a ride.

As I rode my bike from the shop back to campus, rain started fitfully spitting.  I parked inside, locking Old Blackie to a table. Anybody could lift the table and free her, but it would be a minor hassle and the wheels would still not turn.

Anwyay, a bit of rain passed through, and now there are the cold winds.  The ride home, due in about hour, will be a bit darker due to clouds, so I’m sure lights will be called for.  I do have a very bright reflective garment—not my vest, but a similar bright hoodie—to wear.

All in all, I’m glad to be riding again.  There may be some rain later this week, but as the year cools off, the riding becomes even more pleasant—until, of course, it gets really cold and it’s not as fun anymore.

Still, despite the wind, I think I’ll enjoy my brisk ride home.  Here’s hoping the spokes all stay intact!

Biking In The In-Between Times

Me this morning between leaving the house and getting on the bike, in the 7:15 a.m. light. 
The sun is just up so I  need shades, but I thought of lights, too.

As the year starts to fade towards the darker months, I find myself biking a bit more during the in-between times.

This morning, the sun was low in the eastern sky, creating glares that made me want shades (and I carry clip-ons in my manly murse, so it was all good).  Yet, the shadows were still long enough and deep enough that I considered running with lights.  In the end, I decided that my vest was bright enough.

Last night, bell choir practice ended at 6, so then I headed home around 6:15.  Six is still light out, we’re not into the December days of darkness falling somewhere between 4 and 5, but still, it was pushing 7 and pushing the quality of light by the time I got home.

Audrey had some grandkids over, and they had eaten already, so I fixed myself a quick omelet and then offered Tristan a ride home on my bike.

Sadly, that put the idea into Nikayla’s head that she wanted a ride, too—but she has grown to the point where I don’t think she fits well into the small-child seat that I have.  Eventually, I would like to get one of those “ride along” bikes that would attach to my bike—but I think she would have to be big enough to sit on a small bicycle to use that.

Right now she’s in between.

I can hitch the trailer to Audrey’s bike and tow her—and I hope to do that soon—but the view from the trailer and the experience of being towed isn’t as cool as being up on the bike seat.  It’s an experience in between not biking and being really engaged in it.

Tristan loved the ride home with the sky darkening from pale blue to purple and the clouds turning pink.  We rode with lights on and both of us had reflective vests.  We were on the sidewalk most of the way, and quiet streets, otherwise, so despite the dusky in between hour of our ride, we had a good journey.

“I’m happy,” he assured me, something he sometimes says when he’s nervous because maybe he got in a little trouble lately.  His little hands gripped my arms as he assured me of his happy state—and I think he was being honest, he was a bit nervous being out in the twilight, but happy, too.

I was thinking in between thoughts this morning as I pedaled to work, this time in the gathering light.  I was between Kenwood School and a Rockwell Collins plant when I heard a noise that was way too familiar.  A low percussive sounds, a painful “snap.”

I guess I’m lucky it wasn’t one of my tendons.  It was a spoke, and the back wheel has a wobble.

Well, with one broken spoke I could proceed slowly to work.  If a tube had blown, I would have been stopped.  Although, on the other hand, I carry a spare tube and have a bike pump with me, so I could have repaired that damage.

Anyway, here’s to in between times.  Until Audrey picks me up and I take my bike in and get that spoke replaced, I’m in between bike commutes.  I am hoping to get back to two wheels again soon.

A somewhat unhappy biking adventure

I’m cheating with this blog post, a little bit.  As a 30-minute writing exercise in a journalism class, students had to think of a childhood memory for 20 minutes and then write for 10.  I had not planned to in advance—but I was feeling lazy, not like grading or doing other productive work—so while my students did this exercise, so did I.  The results are below, a somewhat unhappy biking memory, and one that I’m glad to say stands out for that reason—most of my childhood biking memories, like my adult biking memories, are happy ones.  I have done minimal editing on this essay, it’s mostly just as written, but I have taken the liberty of cleaning up some of the typos and inconsistencies, although I don’t doubt some typos remain for the amusement of my sisters.  Details of this story could be wrong, but it’s an honest memory—as far as I could recall in 20 minutes, the story you are about to read is true, with only the typos changed to protect the writer:

What do I remember and what do I recreate out of what I think I remember?

I know it was summer, and the sun was bright.  Clinton, Iowa was not a particularly flat piece of planet Earth, but from our house on Seventh Avenue South to downtown and Riverfront Park was a pretty straight shot on flat land.  You just headed east up Seventh Avenue, turned north on Third Street, and then east again, maybe on Fourth Avenue—or, just because we had lived in a rental house there when we first moved to town, Third Avenue South.

I think I was going to Riverfront Park.  I know I was alone.  I was headed east, and if it was late morning, the sun was high but in my face as I pedaled my red Schwinn one-speed, the first bike I had ever owned, a gift from my father on my eighth birthday.

But, by now I was 11.  I was big for my age, and I probably dwarfed that bike, although it was my exclusive mode of transport until I bought my first 10-speed in 1974.

This was probably a day in June in 1970, and I had not yet turned 12.  I was close to 6-feet tall, but a boy still, not yet really into adolescence despite my near-adult size.

A pudgy boy, but one who could ride his bike the 2 miles or so to visit my favorite park along the Mississippi River.

A picture of a 1958 Schwinn,
from wikimedia.org commons area,
orignally posted posted to Flickr by Wha'ppen.
Mine was red, had fenders
and was built 8 years after this bike,
but it's still pretty similar.

As you pedaled east, the houses started fairly modest, but sizeable on our block.  West was the direction for bigger, grander houses, east was the direction where houses slowly grew smaller and closer together until they petered out at a stop light, where, once you crossed it, you were in the central commercial district, with a grocery story on your right and a big city parking lot on your left.  That stop light marked the start of block-by-block electric traffic control, pedal, stop, wait for green, pedal, stop, wait for green.

I was within a block of the library, although I wasn’t headed there on this particular day.  I don’t think I ever rode my bike there because it was not convenient to carry books, and the library seemed to be within easy walking distance.  The river and its park was a bit farther.

As I neared the stop light where I would cross Third Street and turn north, a pickup truck roared up beside me.  There’s a special terror for bikers when a pickup truck approaches, particularly one where you can practically smell the testosterone given off by the newly minted, teenage, jerk, man-child driver.

Several boys were in the bed of the truck sitting on something, maybe a tool box, so their backs were against the rear window.  The boy nearest me was lean, tan, blond, wearing a t-shirt and jeans.  He was drinking something, probably water, which was a good thing, because he took a big swig of it, looked at me, and spit it all out, an impressive ejaculation of liquid that drenched me.

From the bed of the truck and from the cab, the raucous sound of young male laughter tore at the quiet of an Iowa summer as the truck roared off.

I was stunned, humiliated, drenched.  Luckily, the liquid appeared to have no noxious smell and wasn’t sticky—just my luck that in the era before bottled water, this guy still had a canteen or some other water container to drink.

Of course, I felt powerless. Despite my height, I was not in physical shape nor experienced enough in hand-to-hand combat to challenge one, let alone a group, of teen boys.

I didn’t cry.  I didn’t even turn for home.  The truck was gone and I kept going, letting the sun evaporate the water, if not the memory.

Growing up as one boy in a family with six sisters sounds like an ordeal.  It wasn’t really, for me.  I never got into “boy” stuff that much.  I was lousy at sports, didn’t watch baseball on TV and couldn’t shoot a basketball.  None of that mattered much to me, and it still doesn’t.  I don’t like loud, boisterous, obnoxious people, especially boy bullies.

I don’t understand the pleasure that a random stranger took in spitting on a kid he didn’t know and who had done nothing to him.  I still don’t.  And, I think, that’s good karma for me.

It’s A Party On A Bike!

Part of the crowd at the start of the Linn County Mayors' Bike Ride.

Well, the annual Labor Day mayor’s bike ride—actually the Linn County Mayors’ Bike Ride sponsored by the Linn County Trails Association— was a bit of a lark.  I haven’t biked in such a crowd since RAGBRAI, and it was just fun to be in a large group of bikers.

Bob Naujoks before the ride.

The route was easy, an 8-mile loop through Cedar Rapids.  The toughest part was the bottleneck when the route went from street to bike trail.  I had to make an unplanned stop and worried about being struck—but it all worked out.

I only had one minor mishap.  When I pulled into Ellis Park to start the ride, I hopped off to go register.  Meanwhile, some kid ran into my bike, knocking it over.  His mom was pretty embarrassed, but frankly I think I should have done a better job of parking my bike farther out of the way of traffic.  Kid, it was not your fault.

The handlebar of my bike was knocked out of alignment, something I didn’t notice until the ride began.  Straightening my handlebar caused me to have to stop early and lose contact with Bob Naujoks, with whom I had been biking.

It was nice to see Bob again.  He’s been retired from MMU for several years, and I have run into him now and then.  I learned a surprising piece of Bob trivia chatting before the ride:  Bob Naujoks, who before my time was the most consistent bike commuters at MMU and who is a veteran of many long-distance bike adventures, has never done RAGBRAI.

“Maybe next year is my RAGBRAI year,” he said.

Well, let’s hope so.  By the way, Bob, I did see you leaving the ride—you where headed north on First Avenue and I was headed west on the Cedar River Trail.  You were a bit too far for me to hail, which is too bad, but happy trails biker Bob.

MMU student Shannon Brown (right)
and his wife before the ride.

I also ran into Shannon Brown, one of my students, who quickly volunteered to write a feature story for the MMU Times about the ride.  That’s good thinking—grab the story that’s right in front of you which nobody else is doing.  I’m glad to see one of my students thinking as a writer does.

The ride itself was a bit muggy and warm.  I regretted not having my sunglasses or sunscreen, but didn’t toast as badly as I feared I might—even in a crowd in town, it just doesn’t take that long to roll 8 miles.

I heard a little grousing from some of the bikers about there being no big food and music event at the end.  I understand there has been more of a party post ride in the past, but since I’ve never done this ride before, I can’t attest to that.  Frankly, as a college professor on Labor Day, I had to hit the road and get home and get to work anyway, so I personally didn’t miss the party.

Besides, the real pleasure in biking is in the biking.  And this ride still felt festive.  Cedar Rapids and surrounding towns are getting more serious about bike-friendly development—expanding the network of local trails, for example.

Well, that calls for a celebration and a ride, and Monday’s event provided both.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett addresses riders at the start of the journey.

Early in the ride.  Yes, blog fans, CR Biker shot and rode.  Probably not a great idea.

A few minutes later, luckily no accidents.  I like the shadows.  It's around 10:15 a.m.

The yellow sticker identifies me as a registered rider, and also promotes a good idea--wear a helmet when you ride, dear blog readers.  CR Biker always does.  Not that everything I do is smart--but always bike with a helmet on.