Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“Don't do it,” Billy said to me last week about the trip. Everyone who's known him
forever still calls him Billy. “You did it once,” he said. “You don't have anything to prove.
“It's too dangerous,” he said.
For her part, Jan just wishes she could come along, though she knows even if she
could arrange it, I wouldn't let her.
“I know, I know,” she said the other night, though she added a good point, that we're
getting started late, that we've already had our time apart.
Tick. Tick.
Tuesday, July 12, New York City
A bicyclist not in possession of his bicycle is at sixes and sevens. Mine, brand-new,
custom-made, after only about sixty-five miles of test driving here in New York City, is
now winging its way, via FedEx, to Portland, Oregon, where I'll pick it up on Monday.
In the meantime, like a bereft parent missing a child, I'm happy to tell you about it.
First of all, it's red, rather dashingly so, though with a boxy profile, not terribly sleek.
It doesn't look like an aerodynamically contemporary machine, which was a bit disap-
pointing to me, but it's what I asked for, durability before aesthetics, and anyway, the
more I look at it, the better I like its simplicity, its unadorned form. There is something
tanklike about it; it emanates sturdiness. On a ride through the city the other day my
friend Bobby Ball, riding behind me, reported that it remained uncommonly erect on the
road, with none of the angling away from upright to the right and left, back and forth,
that most bikes effect as their riders stroke their pedals. Even so, compared with the bike
I rode across the country eighteen years ago, it's a featherweight. Before the addition of
a rack, handlebar basket, lights, water bottle cages, bike computer, or any luggage, it
weighed just a shade over twenty pounds.
I'm an experienced cyclist, though not an expert one. Or maybe a better distinction
is that I'm an experienced rider but not a fully committed cyclist—that is, one of those
people who lives in Bikeland, who proudly declares himself with the ugly spandex ap-
parel, who speaks in the lingo of brand names and component parts. I love bicycles when
I'm on one, not generally otherwise—okay, I'm a dilettante—meaning I can sense when
something is wrong but generally can't fix it. Change a tire, restore a slipped chain, or
tighten a brake cable? Sure. Replace a spoke, true a wheel? Uh-uh. I know what a head-
set and a derailleur are, I think, but I'm not going to risk my credibility by trying to
prove it.
When I decided to give myself the advantage of a custom-built bike for this trip, I put
myself in the hands of the erudite specialists at NYC Velo, a shop located in the East Vil-
lage of Manhattan and also deep in Bikeland. The proprietor, Andrew Crooks, measured
