Amsterdam

I stole away to Amsterdam this past weekend to meet a good friend from when we lived in Paris. The streets and interlocking canals, the architecture, the light, the cosy views into the winter windows (because, there, it is definitely winter). We were both also so charmed by the people - beautiful people with such smiles and open expressions, ready for a conversation or a welcoming gesture. I felt a lot of respect for the culture: from the friendly disposition, to the proliferation of bicycles, to the continual accommodation of kids in public spaces. I hadn't really been anyplace like it. What a town. If you go - one restaurant recommendation: Wink (Govert Flinckstraat 326HS).








Bicycles omnipresent. Whole streets just for bikes. More bikes than cars. Kids on bikes, parents with two kids on one bike, old people on bikes - a whole city pedaling on two wheels. Maybe the most compelling part of the town for me.











A place for kids everywhere


And bicycle parking.

Bully's gone.

When I ride my bike in the city, I realize that I am always searching for spaces of freedom. Weaving in and out of traffic is a space like that. Ironic, because the cars/pedestrians swell and swarm all around, but in between the front bumper of a bus and the taillights of a car, I find what feel like vast chasms and in those I spread myself out. I’ve been biking from Harlem to mid-town Manhattan for a few years now. Biking in a city where most people do not commute that way is liberating – it makes me feel like the life where I work in a big building at a desk in a financial firm isn’t permanent or an entrapment – just a stop along the way.

The path is great: along the parks of Harlem – St. Nicholas to Morningside Park straight into Central Park, all the way to mid-town where the dance with the taxis begins. I glide into the parking garage at the base of the 44-story building where I work on 50th and Park Avenue, where I meet some of my friends – the parking attendant guys. At the beginning, they used to greet my rougy cheeked (infused from the park air and cross-town fight) grin with a non-plussed shrug. Slowly, I warmed them up though. After a few weeks of arriving with my fresh grin, they started to grin back. Soon our daily hellos grew into longer exchanges and then they were my friends. They watched my belly grow twice (I kept riding in pregnant up to a certain point) and glowed congratulations when they saw me back on the bike when I returned a few months later.

About a year ago, though, I had a run in with one of them. I was walking my bike in the garage amidst the BMWs, Porsches and Mercedes back to the tiny bike cove and one guy was backing up a large SUV in my path. I kept walking because although he seemed pressed, there was enough room for me to weave around him and another car. He contorted out the window and screamed at me, telling me this was no place for bikes and I better stop walking in the way of the cars they need to park. I was probably a bit sensitive because I was just newly pregnant, but I immediately choked on a sob and continued crying as I left the garage. I didn’t realize the other attendants had witnessed this until yesterday morning (a full year later) when a Jaguar pulled up next to me as I was going to park my bike in the cove. One of the attendants smiled up at me and proclaimed, “Bully’s gone!”, belted out a big laugh with a thumbs up sign and zoomed down the lane of the garage in front of me.

Picture book.

I've written before about riding a bike to work, but this morning my fervor for the activity was totally revived. I left my house around 6:30am. I was dreading the dark and the cold and I was totally beat from a difficult night with little lady Colette (she is a funny baby - goes from sleeping straight through the night to waking up every two hours randomly). I have an early morning meeting on Mondays and so I can't dilly-dally if I do ride my bike. I dragged my bike (the killer bike Xavier recently found me to replace a stolen one) out of the house and started down the hill of our street. The air streamed through my nostrils and by the time I had made those wheels turn ten times I was reconverted. Totally awake, happy, full of life. The sun was coming up and I actually took off my gloves, the air felt so balmy (New York City is 60 degrees today!). I rode all the way through Harlem - down St. Nicholas and then turned the corner on Fifth Avenue and 110th Street - the northeast corner of Central Park. I slammed on the brakes when I looked to my right. This is what I saw. Straight out of some story book. My story book of New York City.

But wait...

Before I go - or went - at this point I am mid-travel, there was this. This is the Conservatory Garden in Central Park (at 106th Street and Fifth Avenue). You must go now. The blossoming will not last. I was furiously riding my bike from work to get home in order to race to the airport and in passing, I couldn't not stop. These gates open onto the most delightful garden - transport you out of New York to European gardens. I could only stop fleetingly and now I'm pining to return, thinking of the path of pink petals and the rest of the gardens (it is pretty extensive) that I didn't get to witness.








(Ignore the lady on the bench's little sneer).

Pedal.

Want to change your life? Bike to work. It's easily done. It makes you breathe big deep breaths before you spend a day taking way too shallow breaths (or even holding it for rather long spells). In the afternoon, big-wide stretchy yawns don't even surface. I swear, it is like the blood starts whistling in my veins with the rotation of the wheels and its tune makes me so much happier, even when I arrive with a sweaty back. I don't care because I get to ride through the park. (I know my dad agrees - he regularly rode 25 miles to and from work).

Relay.

Midnight. I start outside the southern perimeter - the edge/maker of Paris: the péripherique. Over the bridge - the cars swarm below. Then the city swallows me. Light flooding everywhere heedless of the time. Soft, yellow light, reflecting off the stone surfaces of the buildings. I ride and I ride.

It is always a race and I usually win, even at this time with the clear roads; the stop lights give me the advantage. The cars sit and idle, puttering their impatience. I fly past - the red is only meant for them. Some of the lights are necessary - big intersections where the traffic flows heavy, forming a barrier in front of me. Here, the white lines of the pedestrian crossing become a starting line and even at midnight there are many competitors. Most of us are on the communal bikes, the vélibs. Others, the top competitors, sport their own bikes and often ride with their hands in their pockets and their heads higher in the air, like the streets are somehow more theirs than ours with our borrowed wheels and bulky frames.


(googlemaps)

Then we are off, across Pont Michel. Notre Dame is hovering bright in the night to the right. Down Boulevard du Palais and breaking free again on Pont au Change. Paris sprawls out and extends in both directions here, splayed along the water. The buildings lean over to gaze in the water. And I am ahead because I am a Johnson and competition is thrilling and it pushes me and the French boys regard me with disdain. I can feel their gazes and hear their heavy breath behind me in a desperate attempt to pedal ahead of this irreverent girl who cut them off, swerves in between the cars and rides in a skirt.

All about us cars are rushing by - like swimming in the ocean facing the shore and the rhythm of the water is faster than your body - they flow by unaware that they share the road with those of us who pedal our way. The buses are more aware because they have to be; we share their lane. Buses are like the wild things who gnash their terrible teeth and roar their terrible roars, and I am Max on my bike. I tame them and they sound their bell - the bell that sounds like a charm - and they ride with me and then I send them off on their way. They don't frighten me.

The other bikers are on my tail and I have to stop in front of Tour St. Jacques for the flow in front of me. They pull up and we look at each other in the eyes - a direct challenge. I watch the light and take off before the green has appeared - in the gap between the red and the green and I surge ahead feeling very spry.