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found myself wondering what New York City would be like if you could actually get on
your bike and travel safely away from traffic to Lincoln Center and Yankee Stadium.
I hadn't seen or heard from Rick since he got married and moved away from New
York twenty-five years or so ago. But he wrote to me while I was in North Dakota and
offered to put me up for a couple of days if I came through town. I had my own basement
room with a television set and a stereo system in a comfy suburban house. Rick and his
wife, Cheryl, made sure I ate big meals three times a day; they even lent me their car to
get my iPhone repaired at the downtown Apple store and to meet another friend, Glenn
Shambroom, who lives in Massachusetts but just happened to be in Minneapolis to visit
his brother. All in all, I felt like your average twenty-year-old home from college for the
weekend. For a solitary traveler it was an embarrassment of riches.
A handful of news items.
First, Mr. Scorpion is no more. His last post went over the line in disparagement
mode—“Stupid is as stupid does” was the line that did it for me—and I called the paper
to ask for his actual email address. Here's the note I composed to him:
Hey dude, I get it. You don't like me. You don't like the bike trip thing. Write all you
want about why, but I can't let you call me names on my own blog. One more ad homin-
em attack and I'll ask the blog guardians to cut you off.
Your pal, Bruce Weber.
I was too late. The guardians had already nixed him. Bye, old friend.
Next, my ass is finally wearing an accommodating groove in my seat with the yellow
stripes, and the discomfort I was living with daily has been reduced considerably. No
more numbed netherparts and tender sit bones. I'm back to the bearable and familiar-to-
all-cyclists package of afflictions like muscle weariness and chafing.
Also, I bought a plane ticket from Pittsburgh to New Orleans for October 7, four
weeks from tomorrow, and from there I'll fly to New Orleans for this wedding of the son
of one of Jan's college friends. We spend maybe thirty-six hours in New Orleans, then
get on a plane at 5:00 a.m. to fly back to Pittsburgh together, with a layover in Atlanta,
where I'll introduce Jan to my brother, who is going to meet us at the airport for break-
fast.
Our plan is preposterous, of the so-crazy-it-just-might-work variety. Jan has just
bought a collapsible bike that she's going to bring with her. She's going to fly to New
