Spoooooook!

Me (to cyclist at the foot of Manhattan Bridge last night): Ahoy there chap!
Fellow Cylist: Yeah?
Me: Say...What sort of Halloween creatures really love bicycle wheels?
Fellow Cyclist (not sure what to make of me): Uh...I don't know.
Me: Why, the SPOOOOOOKY ones, of course.

Mwah ha ha ha ha

My New Commute

So I'm doing freelance work at a local hospital and have a wonderful new 9.2 mile commute to work. After work, I usually take the West Side Greenway back down, making the entire commute a 21 mile loop.

Although 1st Avenue can be dangerously congested in the mornings, I feel pretty at ease with the traffic. In NYC, the cars are usually only going as fast as you are and I tend not to hot foot it to work (I'd rather not show up drenched, you know). The only thing that bugs me are the exhaust fumes and I'm dealing with that by wearing a kerchief--not really my style, but it's a situation where function trumps form. If I were really concerned about form, I'd go find a vendor that sells a wider variety of bandanna than the paisley kind.

Highlights of my commute include biking past the UN building at 44th and 45th Streets. I've noticed this gargantuan bronze equestrian statue that I'm going to take some snapshots of for my friend Bill. He's planning on having an equestrian statue erected over his memorial grave site and I figure he needs to start collecting images of equestrian statuary as soon as possible for ideas.

At 59th Street, I'm often cycling beneath the Roosevelt Island Sky Tram. I love the sky tram and wish there were more of them all over the city. I think they make me nostalgic for that one James Bond film set partly in Rio de Janeiro.

Across the East River at 94th is Randalls Island, home of the Manhattan State Mental Hospital. There's a very cool pedestrian bridge (very minty green, very made-out-of-toothpicks looking) that crosses the narrow channel from Manhattan to Randalls. If you can stand the desolate bike path on the Tri-Boro, this little bridge is the way to get to it.

For the ride home, it's West to Central Park and then south through the park to 72nd Street. At 72nd Street, I head west to the Hudson River Greenway

The Greenway (except for its tendency to be overcroweded with other commuters) is just about the best bike path in the city. I take it all the way to Canal Street and then head east back to the Manhattan Bridge. From there it is "Home again home again jiggity jig."

I'm spending a little more than 90 minutes on my bike each day. Fantastic! Tomorrow, I'll share some photos from the commute.

About One Year Ago

This here is the text of an email I sent last year on October 18th. It recounts an incident I witnessed on the Manhattan Bridge. This morning I remembered this incident and decided to share it. The moral: Wear your helmet!

From: Ethan Fugate [mailto:ejfugate@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 1:43 PM
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Always wear your helmet

So...I'm on my way to work this morning. Beautiful, warm, morning. I'm having a nice ride...except I notice that here and there, the surface is a little slippery--wet leaves on Clinton, metal plates all over the place--I'm thinking, be careful not to slide under a truck or something, Fugate. I get to the downhill Manhattan side of the Manhattan Bridge, which is always a nice part of the ride. You relax a little and let gravity do its work. I notice that about 100 yards in front of me is a familiar figure. It's the little old lady I see most mornings on my commute. She rides this tiny kids' bike with a bananna seat and is quite slow. I always enjoy seeing her. She's Chinese I think. You go, little old Chinese lady!

The Manhattan Bridge has two bike paths--one on the north side of the bridge and one on the south. The north path is supposed to be the bike path and the south side is the foot path. Earlier this month, they closed the north path for repairs and have redirected bikes to share the south path with pedsestrians. The south path has these metal connecting plates (I think they're connecting plates) which are curved and create a slight bump in the path. They aren't pleasant to ride over at high speeds. And this morning, one of them turned out to be treacherous for little old Chinese lady.

I'm catching up with her on the downhill and am about 30 feet behind her when she goes over one of the metal bump connectors. And then it was like watching one of those extreme video clips in slo mo. Her front tire gets out of control and turns 90 degrees, she goes over the handlebar like a rag doll, slams into the railing. I see her head head the concrete (no helmet) and then she ends up limp on the bike path. A pedestrian heading our way from about 40 feet from where we are drops her mouth and freezes.

I'm off my bike and next to her in what seems like an instant. She's face up and obviously in some kind of distress. I attempt to make a verbal assessment and ask "Are you okay? Are you okay?" The pedestrian has unfroze and starts to walk up to us. She's also of Asian descent. The old lady's eyes flutter open and then closed and then she makes this weird gurgling sound. I go to my saddle bag and get my phone to dial 911. I'm back next to the old lady and telling her she's going to be okay and trying to explain to the 911 dispatcher that no, we're not on the Brooklyn Bridge, we're on the Manhattan Bridge! about 5 times. As I'm talking to the dispatcher, I'm looking at grandma and suddenly this pool of blood starts to spread out from under her head--just like in the movies. "She's bleeding, man!" I yell into the phone and they tell me the EMTs are on the way and that I should try and stop the blood with a clean cloth.

I try to ask the pedestrian, who has stopped to gawk, whether she has any clean cloth, but she doesn't understand so...off with my outer shirt and I started applying pressure. There is so much blood. Meanwhile another cyclist stops and asks to help. I explain that I've called 911. He says "I saw a cop on the other side of the birdge. I'll go get him." and off he rides.

I'm holding the ladies hand and trying to keep her from getting up (which she does a couple of times) and trying to figure out the best way to staunch a head wound. The pool of blood is getting pretty big and I'm a little freaked out. The way that the blood had clotted in her hair made it feel like a huge flap of her scalp had been peeled off and egads it was freaky. Grandma touches my hand, which is covered in blood and then there's this point where she looks at her fingers, now covered in blood and realizes that she's bleeding. This look of terror fills her eyes and it's like her and me and I'm thinking "please don't die. please don't die little chinese lady."

A trio of joggers comes up and one of them all bossy like is "What happened?" She explains that she's a nurse practicioner and takes over. The bike cop that the cyclist went after finally arrives and now there are two folk who are more prepared for this kind of thing than me. Her two friends jog back down to the Manhattan side of the bridge to wait for the EMTs.

Nurse lady takes over. I've gotten my shirt under grandmas head as well as to apply pressure and she's like, no--don't elevate head wounds. She asks the cop for some gloves and he produces a pair of sterile gloves for her and she proceeds to examine the wound. Meanwhile, I'm still holding onto grandmas hand and trying to reassure her.

The cop takes my name and asks if I want gloves too and I hold up my bloody hands as if to say, doesn't really matter now. After what was about 5 more minutes, but something that seemed like more like an hour I spot the EMTs...fat, and casually walking up the path toward us. I mean they couldn't have walked any slower. Nurse explains to the EMTs when they finally got there. that it looks like an abrasion and that grandma's color is still good and she's responsive. I was glad to hear this. While the EMTs are wrapping up grandma's head, Nurse tells me, "Yeah. It really looked a lot worse than it is. Scalp wounds always bleed more than other wounds. It was a good thing you were here though." "But I was terrified. I thought she was dying." "Well she probably has a concussion, but you helped keep her calm. Blah blah blah." The EMTs get her on the gurney and I wave goodbye to grandma (she waves back) and then I proceed to finish my commute to work.

Moral of this story. Always wear a helmet.

Monty Python: Bicycle repairman!

Zinc Bar Reading

This past Sunday, I rode into the city to see one of my very best good friends, Jen, read with two other excellent poets at the Zinc Bar Reading Series. It was October 1 and 78 degrees in Brooklyn. Beautiful but strange weather for this time of year.

Jen read with two other poets, Chris Martin and MacGreggor Card. Hosted by poetry impressario, Jim Behrle, the Zinc Bar readings are usually quite good and often entertaining to boot.

Jen's poetry always climbs inside my head and tries to drive me around like I'm a giant robot and her poetry is the driver. This night, she made me want to go home and get writing. It was a good time. Here is an animation of one of the poems she read that night. It's about Pluto and is speedy so listen fast!

The Manhattan Bridge is still under some kind of renovation. Unbeknownst to me, it looks as though the north bike path has re-opened. This is good news. Excellent news. Super special candy coated news. Less congestion on the bridge and hopefully less pedestrian traffic since the southern side is more photogenic. As I was crossing Sunday night on the south side, all of the floor plates were flipped up and workers were crawling around in the wiring high above the East River. I kept getting flags in my face to slow down. I suppose it wouldn't be good to bike into one of those open holes. I'm so glad to hear the north path is open again.

Not-So Panasonic Sport Deluxe

Coltrane and I came upon this wreck during an extended morning walk. She looks like a perfect candidate for my bike portrait series. This bike is chained to a street sign near the corner of Beard and Dwight Street, right across the way from what used to be Lillie's Bar. Come to think of it, I seem to recall seeing this very same corpse of a bike every time I visited that wonderful place. It sure looks like it's been there for a long time. I reckon the businesses moving into this part of RH won't brook bike corpses littering the land so I doubt it'll be there much longer. Anyway, we're looking at a Panasonic Sport Deluxe. The frame is a "woman's" frame, whatever that means. Here's a picture of what it might have looked like in its heyday. I get why the seat post and pedals are missing, but where, oh where did the tires go? Did they rot off or something?

Judging from the wear on chainstay, it looks at least as though this bike enjoyed a lot of use.

Inertia and a Transporter Malfunction

So I’ve been back in NYC for over 2 months and haven’t been updating the blog at all, the reason for which will be explained shortly. Yesterday, my copy of the Poetry Project Newsletter came in the mail and it turns out there’s a little blurb about me and my trip and directing folks here to see what I’ve been up to. Guess I’d better get crackin’…

I’ve been up to just about but not quite absolutely nothing is what. I went from extreme momentum to extreme inertia in the matter of days after completing my trip and haven’t quite gotten up to normal speed yet. Or, if you’ll allow me to geek out for a paragraph or so…

Of all the possible twists and turns in the upscale and kooky sci-fi world of Gene Rodenberry, the most stressful possible plot point of an episode of Star Trek, in any of the franchises, is that moment when there is some sort of transporter malfunction. I'm not talking about the kind of malfunction when the poor redshirt being transported ends up a pile of goo on the tranporter platform floor, I'm talking about the kind that usually results from alien interference, a temporal anomaly, a feedback loop, or any other deus ex machina where-in the transportee is stuck in mid transport, his or her molecules unable to coalesce back into solid form. This phenomenon is usually portrayed on screen in the transporter room. Onlookers gape in horror as the ghosts of their crewmates appear on the transporter platform but do not completely appear and are unable to be resolved into whole beings again. The transporter hiccup moment is a moment that occurs at least once I think in each of the franchises and I've just recently realized, are moments that disturb me on a very basic level. Oh...it is a very stressful situation but is almost always resolved when the engineer performs some sort of "just in time" fine tuning but still...

Okay Poindexter, time to pull it together…which is what I’m doing. I’m pulling together a manuscript based on the trip and will hopefully get to showing it to folk w/in the next month or so.

Also, today’s the day I restart the blog. There’ll be regular entries and hey, we’re still about $1,500 bucks short of the cancer research goal. I really want to hit that goal by Novemeber. I’m also gonner start a bike portrait of the week entry. I’ve been thinking about how the personality of a bike exists even when and sometimes especially when it doesn’t have a rider. My neighborhood has its share of bikes locked up and I’ve been “taking portraits” of them. We’ll see. You’ll see. Everyone will see.