Bike Friday+Galfromdownunder in New York 2005

Forbes.com adventure writer Jim Clash interviewed the Galfromdownunder for his Rugged Individualists online column. All because I had the nerve to tell him he should include folks less stratospheric than the Hillary's/Aldrins of the world - like me - to inspire the masses. We traded books and many a "when I was in .."

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Q: WHAT DO YOU DO on a taxicab-yellow Friday in the Big Apple?

A: Get hailed!

After just two days of dodging 5th Avenue buses, cabs, immoveables and tire-eating manholes, I could have made my plane ticket back in fares from pedestrians leaning into my slow lane with a 'Goin'my way?'. Clearly, the Pro Petite yellow powdercoat is a dead ringer for the famous NY cab.

I am pleased to report that biking in NY is reasonably bearable in small doses. Take a ride in the slow lane with me.

Wordstock Portland. This particular trip started in a literary way when BF's Japan Marketing Attache Ruthy Kanagy and I drove to Portland to pedal our books as part of the Willamette Writer's table at Wordstock.

I have to admit than whenever I was away from my post, Ruthy managed to sell a copy of MY book to someone! I was nowhere near as successful selling hers despite looking like *I* was the author of "Living Abroad in Japan".

The famous Explorer's Club. A midnight American Airlines redeye ($235 from Portland - what a deal!) landed me at the famous NY Explorer's Club, home of what I call XP's (Extreme Pursuitists), where for $15, mere UP's (Untrivial Pursuitists) like me can listen to people who plant flags in high places show their latest feat on a big screen. In this case: Dinosaurs of the Gobi Desert. The Sir Edmund H's, John Krakauers and Buzz A's are just a smattering of the XP's carved in the annals of this elite club. (Of course I'd want to be a member of a club that wouldn't have me as a member). Thank you to AMC host Eleanor Sasso for inviting me.

Forbes.com interview. Speaking of XP's, my in-your-facedness to Forbes writer James Clash netted me an interview for his weekly online column, Rugged Individualists. I had suggested he interview mere UP's like me, so that readers might aspire to the attainable rather than genuflect to the stratospheric personas in his column. My insolence got me in front of their web-cams, and if he hasn't had second thoughts, you should be seeing me pushing Bike Friday, women of color, the worthiness of UP vs XP and The Handsomest Man in Cuba all in one sound byte. Stay chooned. Jim Clash is a stratospheric XP himself, having climbed virgin peaks, dived the Titanic, driven at 200 mp/h, and authored a book called "To the Limits" which you see above. He's set his sights on an intergalactic limit for his next book ...

16,000 Feet on a Friday at TimesUp!. BF Club of New York leader Jym Dyer had kindly organized for me to show my Biking the Highest Paved Road DVD movie at the epicenter of NY bicycle advocacy, TimesUp!. The most exciting thing was an older white haired woman in a knitted suit who was keenly interested in the trip and buying a Bike Friday. Meanwhile twenty somethings sloped by outside oblivious to the oxygen-deprived action flickering within ...

Galfromdownunder on PARADE. AMC host and PR "flack" (I'm told that's the word) Fred Iannotti kindly arranged me an interview with the magazine that falls out of everyone's Monday-Sunday paper - PARADE. With a circulation of around 34 million, I can only hope that they feature Bike Friday so that their audience of 40+ women can be like 79 year old Patricia Daniels riding 82 miles at BF Desert Camp last month. I keep telling people: now matter what our route maps say, we're all heading in the one direction.

The Bike Friday Club of New York Roosevelt Island ride. Host #2 David Holowka, a Moulton/Brompton owner and walking encyclopedia of architecture, not only put me up (or rather, put up with me) in his sleek Chelsea studio, he led a rainy club ride to Roosevelt island. Only the hardiest showed up: Jym Dyer, Lye Kok, Dave Holowka, Ben Gutman, and Tom from Corvallis, Oregon, who just dropped by to say hi. This sliver of seaswept turf and pavement between Manhatten and Long islands houses a gothic looking ruin which use to be a quarantine hospital said Dave. Like all BF Club rides this excellent day ended with a brilliant Indian meal of dosi (giant stiffed crepes the size of a muffler) on "curry hill", thanks to Crusoe owner and local foodie Lye Kok.

Lilly and Kenny Lun say at least four of their NY friends have bought Bike Friday tandems. Where were they hiding?

The NY 5-boro ride. On a tip from BF tandem owner and Bike NY big cog Ed Pino, a gaggle of small-wheel stalwarts met by the tarnished testicles of "The Bull", a bronze statue at the foot of Broadway. This was an excellent suggestion, as the 30,000 throng were doing battle with spokes and downtubes just one or two blocks over. An even BETTER suggestion is to meet and the STIR cafe just to the right - despite the chill morning wind and rain, this cafe was totally EMPTY. I just could not understand it. Nor could I understand the insistence of my group to wait shivering and manly in a doorway rather than seeking a hearth.

The four small wheel starters: Ross Gould, Joe Garcia, Dave Holowka, Lynette Chiang

The ride itself winds through a flattish 42 miles of the 5 boros. For this one day a year, the roaring highways are road-rage free. It's something every NY SUV driver should do so they can appreciate the silence, physicality and sheer momentum of one of the world's most elegant and accessible inventions - the bicycle. However, eat a big breakfast and carry food. I had three-year old memories of energy bars and drinks galore by numerous different sponsors. This year it was merely bananas, oranges and Snapple water (an oxymoron); the last stop featured fluorescent orange peanut butter Saltines which I wolfed down in desperation despited their high trans fat content. Somehow, we completely missed the lunch stop along with several others.

See the PHOTO GALLERY of the BF folks we encountered, including Sat R Day owners Rita and Matt Colonell all the way from San Luis Obispo on the other coast ...

Hobnobbing with Serious cyclists part 2 - here's John S Allen, LAB NY/New England Regional Director; BF tandem owner and 5-Boro Big Cog (he started the ride from a cherry picker) Ed Pino, BF host Dave Holowka and The Galfromdownunder.

LAB NY/New England Regional Director John S Allen rode alongside on his handjimmeyed Raleigh Twenty and fixed more than his fair share of flats - that's other people's! Including mine - the Pro Petite decided to sag at the knees on the last stop, and I have to say, Dave Holowka's CO2 cartridges came to the rescue. Two psshhhhts and I was rolling.

Something must have gone awry with the Staten Island ferries. 30,000 people standing waiting for 2 hours. Cold, hungry people started cellphoning the pizza place across the street, which had long since run out of cheese. Sneaky New World Tourist owner Joe Garcia did exactly what you do with a folding bicycle - nipped away from the crowd (by holding his bike aloft) and zipped down to where the foot passengers were loading, folded the bike and phoned me from the boat. Read about his great escape.

Finally, Dave, GNU owner Mike Gould, BF Club of VT leader Becka Roolf and I staggered into the nearest restaurant and ate like there was no next half hour. An interesting note is that Mike, a former cartographer, helped design the insanely popular BF Map jersey.

Daryl Hawk, The Unconventional Traveler. I took a train to CT to lunch with Daryl and Heidi Hawk, who film 'unconventional travelers' for their local cable show. Daryl is a National Geographic standard shooter and you can gawp at his incredible eye for the exotic on his website. Naturally, I hope to have him feature yours truly after he's interviewed his latest coup: Jane Goodall!

Daryl Hawk is the Unconventional Traveler. He shoots unconventional weddings too!

The Gal at the Guggenheim. For me, the Guggenheim was a slight disappointment. A great building, but somehow it felt like a Mall of America with nothing to buy on the shelves. Perhaps it was the night I chose: "entry by donate what you like", hordes of mallrats straggling around. I mistook a scaffolding of mirrors and 1-inch strips of fluorescent green duct tape for building renovations - it was art. There was a worthy and logical point to this, as described eloquently in the brochure, but I have to admit it made better scaffolding. I don't believe art has to 'please' the eye, but it should invoke a reaction of something other than ambivalence. Then again, anything goes in art, Just Do It First. The Hugo Boss prize went to a political statement about ordinary people hijacking local radio wave, expressed by large room featuring a bicycle wheel as an antenna and a chain link fence. It included a thesis somewhat preciously enlarged to Superbowl proportions and printed on all four walls of the giant room.

“The last time I saw a decent show there was 20 years ago” said a local architect friend.

A temporary gallery for the Tim Colbert exhibition made of shipping containers and packing materials on a pier was more intriguing. The actually gallery itself, that is. I felt the shell actually upstaged the Enya-meets-Body Shop photographic exhibition of elephants and dozing beside little Indian boys. I'll really be struck off the NY party lists now ...

A TwinAir for MOMA? When you were a kid, did you find yourself thumbing the same pages in the same volumes of World Book Encyclopedia? (Encyclopedia Britannica was far too scholarly and short on colored piccies for me). In my case, it was a Paintings chapter of volume P. And at MOMA, those glossy thumbnails suddenly came to 10'x8' life. Including this one:

Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel 1913, easily reproduced in the back of any bike shop, but worth $2 rather than $2m or whatever it could fetch now. You don't have to be the best, you just have to be first ...

No, it's not a Moulton bicycle, which happened to be in the downstairs Design Gallery with the groovy toasters, ropey chairs and bendy book cases. I've always said a Bike Friday TwinAir tandem deserves to be in MOMA - at least it's made in America. Perhaps we should try this stunt (thanks to Tom B for this hilarious link).

Dancing with Dinosaurs. After shifting camps to the couch of Pocket Rocket owner Lyn Sarro on the Lower East Side, I visited the Museum of National History to lose myself among the towering dinosaur bones. A TwinAir tandem would not have been out of place here either - a skeletal triceratops captain and pterodactyl stoker ... as long as the artist had a name like Damian Hirst (Untitled).

Remove that interloper! In the Hayden Planetarium, I was ushered out by the scruff the neck as a grand party with limos, men in suits and servers in Japanese kimonos assembled. The event? The passing of the orb and sceptre to the new Canon USA boss. Now I've been meaning to send my 16,000 feet on a Friday DVD movie to someone at Canon, given that it was shot their tiny $299 Digital Elph. As the camera appears to be faltering under such extreme use, I was even hoping that the mighty corp might offer me a replacement to shoot Lon Haldman's Route 66 journey in 2006. How to guarantee my DVD reaches someone relevant rather than the recycle bin? Hand it to the big boss himself?

Wait, before you reel at my gall, I asked some of the men in black who I might send it to. I am pleased to report that contrary to the loftier-than-thou reputation of many giant corps, a man called Tom Webb kindly gave me his card and said he'd get it to the right place. The card read: Transportation Manager, Logistics Division - at least I can hope it'll be transported to the right place ...

My night Off-Broadway. For those who've never been to NY, 'off-Broadway' refers to the many sidestreet theaters off the main drag called Broadway, where supposedly up-and-comers hit the stage and dream of shaking their booty around the corner.

WAIT! I've been corrected by a Steve from Craigslist.org Manhatten who says ... "The difference between a Broadway production and an Off-Broadway production has to do with the number of seats in a theater. Broadway theaters must have 500 or more seats. An Off-Broadway theater must have 100 to 499 seats. An Off-Off-Broadway theater has 99 seats or less. Broadway is actually a street in New York City that cuts through the heart of the theater district. Currently all Broadway theaters are located between 41st Street and 65th Street..." thanks Steve.

The shows are supposed to be cheaper, but they're not - most shows range from $75 a seat and up, with the $25 ones affording a wonderful view of a pillar or the EXIT sign. However, the savvy way to buy is discounted online. After extensive Googling, AMC host Fred Iannotti shouted me a $35 ticket to Slava's Snowshow, a mime-potrait of the uncommon clown direct from Russia. It’s worth it just for the final half hour of audience-participation mayhem alone, where you are 'snowed' with billions of shards of tissue 'snowflakes' before four helium-filled balls the diameter of a small planet descend on the audience for them to play slo-mo volleyball with. Fred's stinging memory of being smacked in the lip by a gummy fish, no doubt snatched by the wind on its way to someone's else's lips before the fake snow hit, made me wonder if anyone's been sued 'off Broadway'.

Snippet: Joe Garcia offered this gem of a suggestion: We went to see NY's longest-running-off-off-Broadway play Saturday night: "Line" by Israel Horowitz. 30 years running. About 5 people waiting in line, they don't know for what, but each of them wants to be first. They resort to intimidation, deception, flattery, physical violence and even sex to get to the front. At the 13th Street Repertory Company, a tiny theater in an early 19th century row house basement. It's been run by a former school teacher from North Dakota, now in her 80's, for many years. She lives in the house and many actors and actresses got their start at that theater. Our girls struck up conversations with some of the actors before the performance...they were waiting in the "lobby" (the front room of the basement, crammed with old chairs and sofas and posters, next to the "box office" which was the size of a very small closet) for the fifth actor to get to the theater.

And it was just $15 a ticket, and $12 for students.

Originally we had been planning to go see "Julius Caesar" with Denzel Washington, or "Pillowman" with Jeff Goldblum, but these tickets are between $90 and $200 each. For $12 the girls got a much more intimate and interesting theatrical experience.

Objects of desire. Architect and host Dave Holowka, the perfect male tour guide in that he actually led me to a chi-chi (NY-speak for ostentatiously stylish) boutique and didn't die of boredom within 5 minutes, took me on a guided tour of the design stores and galleries in his Chelsea neighborhood. I swooned over an Isamu Noguchi sofa, fashioned after two flat river stones. With a price tag of $7,000+, it had me scheming about what I could do with some plywood, a bandsaw, cotton wadding and a DIY-upholstery manual. I mean, take a look at it. Easy, right? The next store was a boutique called Jeffrey, selling $400 T-shirts and the like.

"This store was actually parodied on Saturday Nite Live," said David. "The skit showed normal people coming in and the store staff tearing 'em to shreds (insulting them)."

In such a store you'd think you'd be snubbed by cooler-than-thou failed supermodels and actors. In fact, the staff were quite regular - I was approached by an attendant that the HR consultant for a store like this would probably call 'frumpy'.

"Ah, I think they picked up something from the parody", said David.

Cinco de Mayo schmoozing with the NY set. Somehow I tacked myself onto the end of a happy hour party at the invitation of my Forbes.com interviewer Jim Clash, and found myself outstyled and outblonded by some very chi-chi NY up-and-comers. Certainly no came-and-wenters. Standing there in my Harley D boots, rainbow mini and Ruthy Kanagy knitted poncho, no wonder the doorman stopped me to ask if I was looking for anyone in particular? I had entered the stratospheric world of banking and high finance, inappropriately dressed.

The meal at the cavernous Cuban eaterie Calle Ocho was a case of 'no entrees barred'. Cubans would have fainted at the deluge of food. What a bummer I'd scoffed too many of the complimentary oversized beer-battered shrimp at the bar. Jim Clash had just returned from the Cream Reunion concert in the UK and that was the buzz of the table.

So too, was the buzz around a young artist Brooke Churchill, whose abstract expressionist style could well elbow out her favorite artist, Rothko, given time. I was able to dredge up my World Book Encyclopedia Volume P Chapter Painting knowledge of the only two abstract expressionist artists I know - Kandinsky and Klee, before suitably shutting up lest I be snubbed as an ingenue (too late).

(Speaking of elbows, a few years ago downunder at an exhibition, an elderly woman fell against a Rothko, tearing the canvas. A rock band immediately formed the next day called 'Elbow Through My Rothko.')

Later, Jim Clash, sympathizing with this Rugged Individualist, stuffed some of the plentiful and divine Calle Ocho bread rolls into my bag in case I needed it for supplies later, before bundling me in a cab and sending me on my way ...

Not So 'New' York? . People ask me what I thought of "The Greatest City in the World". After being here a week, and apart from the museums, I have to admit I was not bowled over by the "New" of New York so much as the "Big" of the Big Apple. Put another way, everything's big, but no necessarily new.

"It's about wealth, rather innovation," said a local. "NY is very conservative, establishment. Innovation comes from the west coast, and gradually makes its way across here."

At the risk of sounding parochial, my readers in Sydney who've never been to NY should just imagine a larger, taller, noisier Sydney. No wonder many city Americans like Australia. Sydney's a small NY, with the same smells, architecture, diversity. Just a little more space, and a slightly slower pace to feel you're in a 'roo race, rather than a rat race.

I confess I've not been particularly complimentry about sleepy Eugene Oregon in the past, but a slice of Eugene's Bene margarita pizza with *fresh* basil and tomato upstages the pizza I lined up for in NY (Ray's? John's? Chucks'?). In fact, John and Colette Miller, foodie friends from of Bike Friday who visited Eugene said, "we have nothing this good in Chicago."

All the NY patisseries seem to feature the same well executed Cordon Bleu Cookery school desserts - canoli, tiramisu, creme brulee - you really have to hunt hard for something like like Eugene Sweet Life's signature blueberry vegan cheescake.

I showed a hipper-than-thou store the funky cellphone holder and shawl crocheted for me by BF Japan marketing attache Ruthy Kanagy. They said there was nothing like it in NY. Nor like the ceramic bracelets I picked up in Eugene as gifts. In this city it's almost too risky to try the untrue. Or maybe they were just humoring me, dahlink.

According to Dave, quoting Twain: "In Philadelphia, it's who do you know? In Boston, it's what do you know? In NY, it's how much are you worth? "

It's too risky in the east to make a mistake with a niche product - better wait until you have a 100% guarantee you can make a million.

However, I did gaze in awe at the Cooper Hewitt's Extreme Textiles exhibition where special mega light, mega strong fabrics for constructing edifices like the Twin Towers. If they'd only make a bike lock out of the same material ... every huffy is now chained up with the new, Bic-proof Kryptonite motorcycle-style lock that weighs more than a high-wheeler ...

Well, I fly to Portland Friday to show the Galfromdownunder Film Festival at Cycle Oregon HQ on May 8. See the Bike Friday Events Calendar, www.bikefriday.com/events. Invite your pals, and let's go for an arthouse West Coast slice of pizza!

The NY kiss. It took me a while to learn that the NY style of hi's and bye's is to offer a kiss on the cheek. I ignorantly flung myself bodily at people for a West Coast style hug. I do apologize to all my NY friends for not reading the etiquette manual prior. Thank you to all the Bike Friday customers, friends and aficionados who helped me survive in NYC for 2 weeks: Fred Iannotti, Eleanor Sasso, Dave Holowka, Jym Dyer, Lynn Sarro, Ross Gould, Joe Garcia, Lye Kok, Jim Clash- ... did I miss anyone? A polite peck on the cheek to all of you!

Copyright 2005 Lynette Chiang, www.galfromdownunder.com.

Emailable link to this article: http://www.bikefriday.com/bf/ny2005