Keith Snyder's Blog, page 7
September 23, 2012
A Saturday 200K Brevet — Part 3
Part 3
Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Controle: Any of several checkpoints you have to hit during a specified time window on a brevet, often a shop that sells food. If you’re too late, you DNF (Do Not Finish). If you’re too early, they give you cake and a foot rub. So I hear. I’ve never been early.
RBA: Regional Brevet Administrator.
Moving stripe: If you imagine the starting line moves through the course at about 9½ miles per hour, beating it to each controle means you don’t DNF.
WHEN PANICKING TO GET to controle 1,
you’re not on a brevet. That ride is done.
It’s like when something overwhelms your life—
you can’t take care of other things; the knife
shaves thin. The body must be let to wait.
The single organ must excruciate,
find joy in pain, distinction in heroics
so small from the outside that eighteen Stoics,
with Geiger counters of the rarest build,
won’t know—unless you SCREAM; but you’ll have killed
that impulse. Now the body petrifies
around it while the immune system tries
to save the living core—but not alone;
the core must also save itself. New bone
now bifurcates out from it, overtakes
the skeleton, and where it needs to, breaks
the pelvis, cracks the sternum. Heart and lungs
are useless; bone grows through them, meets the rungs
of ribs; it fuses. Muscles climb like vines,
the body’s DNA replaced by lines
of nucleotide code from molecules
transformed within the pain. If this all fools
the body into thinking it’s alive,
that’s fine; we’ll discuss later if the drive
that motivates the monster is the same
identity, or just has the same name,
and whether I’m the house or the address.
Til then, just grit your teeth.
But I digress.
YOU’VE HIT THE FIRST CONTROLE before it closed?
You’re in the game. Excuses, juxtaposed
with self-impressed conceit, are over, done.
The ride’s no longer to be lost or won,
but finished; that’s the point of a brevet—
or can be. Well, depending…
anyway…
… Sometimes it is, and this one is, for me.
The next controle (they call it Controle 3;
there’s no consistent system in these cue sheets)
is tucked into a mall behind these two streets
that form a T, with lots of heavy traffic,
through which one must perform choreographic
pirouettes and careful sprints and hops
and watch out that the car that’s slowing stops.
But first—I ride right into a parade
or festival, or something. It all made
a vague impression through my great concern.
I need not to be stopped. I need to burn,
not toe my way from inch to inch in cleats
through crowds applauding Tae Bo in the streets,
through Girl Scouts, fire fighters, cops, food vendors—
which all would be just fine except it renders
me less able to make sense of the cues,
which already confused me. (I accuse
no one of anything in that regard;
it’s just that reading cues while wiped is hard,
and that’s when you’re not 90 seconds shy
of blowing your whole ride.) (I am.) So I
go calm and scan for signs I need to find.
The streets are clogged with bodies, sidewalks lined
like blocked aortas. Don’t they realize
I’m on a rigid course, can’t improvise?
I keep toeing ahead. Which road is Stage?
And which is Millpond? Men in middle age
should be able to tell which way is which.
I did this ride in 2010. A twitch
within sense memory says to go straight,
but if the twitch is wrong, I’ll be too late.
One minute til a callous God enjoys
a cruel DNF at Bagel Boys.
A street sign to my left, obscured by trees,
says my best guess is off 90°
so is this Stage I’m on? I just can’t tell,
but I’m about to DNF, so hell—
just pick a damn direction and just go.
The throng diffuses up ahead. I know
that once I clear the mob, and sprint as hard
as I can sprint, there is one distant shard
of possibility that I might make it.
The road bends left after the crowd. I take it.
E=mc2, so speed of sound
is all that I can do. Legs and heart pound.
I’m 205, the bike weighs 26,
the saddlebag is 813 (the bricks
might not be worth it, and the stand,
pneumatic tools, spare fairing, and
galoshes might bear reconsidering,
but there are things I simply have to bring:
the stove and tiki torches, the canoe,
the I.V. stand, arc welder, ladder, two
car batteries and cables and a side
of beef are the bare minimum to ride
with anything approaching self-sufficiency.
Bicycling is all about efficiency—
the time I’m apt to lose on a repair
increases if the table saw’s not there.)
And as I bank around the curve and sail
towards the T, I know I’m going to fail,
a certainty that settles in by dint
of going 8 m.p.h. in a dead sprint
when I need 8.00001.
I might as well give up. I can’t outrun
pure mathematics. Distance over speed?
Speed over something something? I don’t need
these numbers! Inner purity of reason
is all I need, to know I’ve blown my season.
But no point being chickenshit. Deny fate
your resignation to its certain checkmate.
Though 8′s damn slow, your sprint is wholly yours.
A randonneur does just one thing: endures.
(And it may possibly be more than 8.
Both time and poetry exaggerate.)
My lungs and legs are heavy, but I can’t
lift one hand off the bars to try and plant
a finger on the MODE pip of my watch.
To try to see the time would be to botch
my chance of trying hard in ignorance,
a precursor, it seems, to providence.
Three riders coming toward me from the T
look rando-ish, I think, quite possibly.
So probably, I’m going the right way.
Before I know for sure, I hear one say,
“It’s just about to close. You better hurry.”
There’s screaming from my legs. My vision’s blurry.
“No kidding,” isn’t the most gracious thing
to say, but I’ve already felt the sting
of failure; this is all a valiant death
for honor’s sake. I’ve got no ready breath
to shout a followup in cordial tone,
and even if I did, now I’m alone.
The T is hard to navigate. The last
remaining time ticks down, and I’m not past
the intersection. Right there is the mall
where I’ll accept that I gave it my all.
And then I’m through—but there’s no doubt my ride
has failed. I sprint to Bagel Boys. Inside,
the RBA sees me roll up and waves,
flips through the papers where she lists the graves
of randonneurs who’ve died on this brevet.
I grab my card, wave back, and on my way
toward the door, look at my watch, which shows:
It’s fourteen-hundred hours on the nose.
“You’ve still got time to go,” the RBA
says, shooting a thumbs-up. “I do?” I say.
“You’ve got til 2:05.” Again: “I do?
The cue sheet says I’ve only got til two.”
“No—” Papers flip again, but either way,
I know what my watch said. There is no gray.
It’s good to feel a chair. I eat some chips,
half-listen to the RBA give tips
to riders I don’t know, get up and wave.
A bagel in my saddlebag to save
for later, I roll back across the T,
behind the moving stripe, onto Leg 3.
Filed under: Bicycling, Bikes, Poetry, Randonneuring, Senseless Acts
September 15, 2012
A Saturday 200K brevet — Part 2
Part 2
Part 1 is here
A key to cue sheet notation:
R or L — Turn right, turn left
TR or TL — T-right, T-left (road ends at a perpendicular street; turn there)
BR or BL — Bear right, bear left
SO — Straight on
TRO — To remain on
SP — Signpost
SS — Stop sign
THERE’S WEAK, AND then there’s just not having legs.
I knew that they were down there, but the dregs
had swirled around and vanished down the drain.
So nothing bad, no weakness and no pain—
just couldn’t push them harder. It was weird.
I wasn’t going to quit, but it appeared
I’d go like snail while time leaked away,
and then the doubt would end: I’d have my day
at home, maybe run errands with the boys,
waste time on Facebook, work, play Wii, fix toys,
then bathtime, dinnertime, chesstime, and bed.
That sounded good. Let’s go do that instead.
I had the drivetrain more or less controlled;
if shifted gingerly, the chain would hold,
though just as when you shift while going uphill,
I had to break the groove: one must instill
into the cadence an
expectancy,
that one may then exploit, attentively,
so as to sneak a link, while nothing’s looking,
onto the next ring up, the next pin hooking
the next oncoming tooth, and then the next,
until enough is sturdily indexed
to keep its grip when you stand up and hammer;
neither shall it slip, nor strip, nor stammer,
but dig into itself, absorb the force
you drive down into it, transform the course
of energy, bend it behind the wheel,
and go. The one criterion that’s real
is does it go? The rest can be worked out.
Leg two’s just seven cues. I know this route.
OUT OF CONTROLE; R ON 9W.
BR where it becomes RT 202.
Then R ON WEST SHORE DRIVE; BR AT STOP,
At WELCOME TO BEAR MOUNTAIN SP, hop
across the highway, downshift, and begin
to stand and dance, or grind, or sit and spin,
up through the park, SO THRU ROTARY,
be careful then to FOLLOW the SP
where it shows you to RT 6W,
R ONTO & UP PERKINS DRIVE, going through
a gate that’s closed to cars part of the year.
NYC riders are known to revere
this Perkins as some do the Alpe-d’Huez,
which none of them can say, since it’s Francaise.
But anyway, before Bear Mountain, you’ll
burn off most of the last half-hour’s fuel:
the highway, as though feeling insecure
that you won’t think it something to endure,
slants skyward, and once you’ve surmounted that
to where it turns and you thought it was flat,
it laughs and hoists again, and up you go.
Something about this stretch that you should know
is all those guys who clog 9W
in summer in their matching pink and blue
aren’t up here. They stop merely 22
miles above great gray GW,
at nice cafés in Piermont or Nyack
and clack around in bike shoes, then ride back,
and drop the distance into conversation,
with pauses you may fill with admiration.
My legs are waaaay down there, speaking of distance.
They feel like pushing string when I need pistons,
which I have not got. I can name the parts
of my drivetrain—but of all mystic arts,
drivetrain repair is second only to
the praxis and grimoire of Cthulhu—
and, like those spells, cannot be overcome
by force of will or pricking of a thumb:
A chain that won’t remain in its driveline
is, if you’re not a dolt, the clearest sign
an apathetic universe can send
that what you thought was START is really END,
which lets me cheat my failure and go home.
I’ll get a blog post from it–or a poem,
which, though it’s not what I set out to do,
well, it is now! I’ll try to write what’s true
of each setback, make each impression clear.
Unfortunately, that could take all year:
Almost as bad as drivetrain work is rhyme,
which hasn’t been in fashion for some time,
and since it pays zip, writing time is scant;
I have a family, and therefore I can’t
give it the time it takes to get it right
(and I can only work on it at night).
So someone else’s bike poem will be faster,
with more expensive parts, like “alabaster,”
which I have always wanted in my verse,
but it cracks under load. And “limn” is worse,
being molded from an etymology
I can’t afford. Even if it were free,
I’d be afraid of trusting it at night
on mountain downhills. I have this dumb fright
of catastrophic failure of the verbs.
They might hit unseen potholes; this disturbs
my sense of my superiority.
To not attain perfection? This can’t be.
However, I can’t spend an hour or two
on polish. I have other things to do,
like help my family through this damn recession.
A verb that doesn’t pay is a possession
of value to no one but Author, and which
does nothing for a boy who wants a sandwich.
So goodbye lyricism, hello story:
beginning, middle, end, not verbal glory.
A paint job with no frame’s nothing but pride.
A frame without a paint job’s still a ride.
A downpour! Doesn’t bother me at all.
I like to ride in rain. My speed’s a crawl,
but that would still be true if it were clear.
I haven’t climbed this pass since late last year,
when I learned to accept its lying ways,
and be content to summit each new phase
of altitude before the whole thing drops
back down to river level and then stops
the nonsense, but by then you’re in the park.
So climb it—with an exclamation mark.
These seven cues—nine miles—take an hour.
INFO CONTROLE AT SUMMIT (ON THE TOWER),
the cue sheet says. That means a little quiz
that I will have to answer. It’s WHAT IS
THE FIFTEENTH WORD ON PLAQUE ABOVE THE DOOR?
I write it on my card, and spend two more
long minutes not quite really getting going.
But heading back downhill, my road speed growing,
(except I brake to take a single pic)
then standing so the wind will dry and wick
(the rain cleared up when I was at the top,
which I don’t take as meaning it will stop)
I know regardless of the whims of fates,
Bear Mountain in a downpour?
Yeah, that rates.
I’m certainly the lanterne rouge, but I’ve
done fine. TR SS SEVEN LAKES DRIVE
takes me to Tiorati Circle and
UP ARDEN VALLEY ROAD, a gorgeous strand
of grades much tougher than Bear Mountain’s worst.
I’m not afraid of it—I have now nursed
my creaky drivetrain up a real climb.
I’m not scared of the chain; I’m scared of time.
Filed under: Bicycling, BikeNYC, Bikes, Poetry, Randonneuring, Senseless Acts
September 10, 2012
A Saturday 200K brevet — Part 1
Part 1
(There may be a Part 2,
but this is not the poem
I’m supposed to be working on.)
This Saturday, September 8, was
the New Jersey Randonneurs’ NYC 200K.
SEVEN A.M., GW bus station:
the kickoff for a randonneur migration
that spun to Jersey over the long bridge,
the Palisades a picket fence, a ridge
of misty treeline on the other side.
This short brevet’s our final summer ride
despite it being technically the fall.
Compared to centuries, our group is small
(200, 300, 600K
will tend to scare the casual away,
on top of which, our questionable sport
requires that all riders “self-support,”
which means we have to buy or carry food
and tools and weather clothing changes. Dude—
we’re not even allowed to have a friend
drive near the route in case we need to mend
a broken spoke or seatpost, or whatever.
If you don’t have the wrench or tire lever,
and you can’t get it squared away and roll,
then you won’t make it to the next controle—
our fancy name for checkpoints—by the time
required on your cue sheet, and well, I’m
quite sorry, but that means you’ve DNF’d
(that’s “Did Not Finish”), so there’s nothing left
but (if the bike is ridable) then biking
to something that’s nearby and to your liking:
hotel, ride start, friend’s house, commuter rail,
or hoping some kind driver might avail
you of a lift to get you on your way.)
So anyhow, our ride this Saturday
was called the NYC 200K,
130 miles of brevet
through all the hills in Harriman State Park,
and Sterling, plus Bear Mountain, Kanawauke
or Kanawaukee—how is it prounounced?
At any rate, my bicycle announced
that it (like you) considered us insane
by noisy failure of its new drivetrain
before we’d even crossed over the bridge,
my water bottles still cold from the fridge.
“I don’t mean to be antisocial…” said
the guy I’d chatted with, pulling ahead.
(I have, myself, prefaced exeunts that way.)
“Later!” I called, and limped out of the fray
at 7:10. The rules give us thirteen
and one-half hours til we must convene
at arrivée (the last controle—it’s French),
but this repair’s way past my means to wrench.
But there’s a bike shop, and although the clock
is ticking, it’s my only chance. The lock
is set; the shop will open up at eight.
There’s nothing to be done but stand and wait,
and watch the other riders gliding by
in twos and threes, conversing, as I try
to know I know time can’t be overcranked,
and not assume I’ve been, just yet, outflanked.
An open basement door invites my knock,
so hoping not to wait til eight o’clock,
I tell the bike mechanic my snafu,
but then he asks his boss, who tells me, “You
are gonna have to wait, because I’ve got
two bikes to finish by eight on the dot.”
“And then at eight—?” “We’ll get you out of here.”
“OK,” I say, and “Thanks,” and stand right near
the glass front door, hoping that if he sees a
guy blatantly holding up a VISA,
perhaps the clock will speed up and the door
will open somewhat sooner than before.
I watch the time count down, and watch the speed
required to make the first controle exceed
the fastest that I’ve ever done this run.
There’s still a narrow chance; quite slim; soon none.
He lets me in at three minutes to eight.
They take a look. It needs new rings. “So—great!
Lets go!” “Looks like we’ve only got a center.”
“That’s fine—I’ll take it.” And so as I enter
my PIN number, downstairs descends my ride.
8:22, I clip back in, outside.
8:23 I’m back out on the route
and pumping North, but seriously doubt
that I can make it to the first controle
in time. I’m very deeply in the hole.
(For me, that is. I’m not a front-of-pack
performer; I ride staunchly near the back,
one eye on how much time cushion I’ve got,
which generally speaking’s not a lot.)
And look at that—the chain drops when I shift
onto the biggest ring. I would be miffed,
except the way I’ve learned to fix a drop
while riding works; it settles back on top.
The big’s iffy, but fixable. The middle–
it’s not great, but it holds. That leaves the little,
and since I might quit now if it won’t climb,
I leave that testing for another time,
Back on the big ring now, I hit the gas.
I’m passed by two for every twelve I pass.
The well-paced rando ride has gone away,
replaced by one long sprint of 50K
which—even if I pedal my whole butt off–
will probably not end before the cutoff.
But there are far worse ways to spend a day,
than throwing yourself onto a brevet.
So “On your left,” and “on your left,” and “On
your left,” and “On your left,” and on and on,
the weekend boys don’t like it when I burn
right past them, and then beat them to the turn
where all of them shoot North, but I go straight.
I wasn’t racing, boys, just running late
by seventy-two minutes. All this booking
is ’cause I’ve got no choice. My quads are cooking,
by which I don’t mean “fast”; I mean they’re frying.
The only way I’ll make it is by dying
on Leg 1 of the course—which means Leg 2,
I’m really not sure what I’m going to do.
But one thing at a time. Step 1: Go hard,
hope all those hill repeats turned enough lard
to muscle that my power beats my weight,
so leave it on the road, man. Flip off fate–
since this would be the third blog entry pining
a failed attempt, with funny silver lining.
Fuck that. I’m tired of writing those. Hell NO.
Just burn the whole damn tank. Use it all.
GO.
Controle 1′s Stony Point. I make it there
with twelve full minutes somehow left to spare,
and give in to a few satisfied smiles,
but next I have to ride 91 miles
and all the climbing starts in just a few,
when “Welcome to Bear Mountain” comes in view.
But one thing at a time, so nice work, dude—
but nothing here should tell you you’re not screwed.
Although it’s true this victory is sweet,
you now will have to climb nine thousand feet
with time constraints. Your plans have come apart.
You’ll have to compensate by being smart,
so give yourself three minutes and remount,
because on a brevet, the rest stops count
against your time, so don’t discard a second,
and do while rolling anything you reckon
you don’t need two hands for, like eating, math
for necessary speed along the path…
and when the road tilts upward, recommit.
This is the real ride about to hit.
Filed under: Bicycling, BikeNYC, Bikes, Poetry, Randonneuring, Senseless Acts
July 29, 2012
Dear 34th Precinct
August 24, 2012:
I’m leaving this up because I wrote it and meant it. However, I’ve learned more since then, so I can’t stand behind it. There may be another blog entry coming—not sure yet.
I’M A RECENT attendee of the Citizens’ Police Academy program and a persistent participant in a couple of attempts at establishing safety patrols in Inwood, including the latest Northern Manhattan Civilian Observation Patrol, which you have an interest in. I’m also a mystery writer (or was, before life veered), a father, and a small business owner.
So when I ask, “What the hell were you thinking,” that’s who’s asking.
You spent how much money on presenters for the Citizens’ Academy? How many man-hours of organization and prep time did it require, and presentation time, and calling in favors, and uniformed officers driving us back and forth in police cars, all in the name of trying to connect better with the community? I have a picture of me shaking hands with Ray Kelly at the graduation ceremony at 1 Police Plaza; clearly you wanted to make a point there.
Or maybe not “shaking hands with,” so much as “having my hand gripped by,” since that’s how he fixed me in place for the grip-and-grin.
Which came after the speech you chose from a few submitted by citizen attendees.
Which was chosen after you gave out examples of what kind of speech you wanted, which praised the program.
Which came before the presentation of the plaque of appreciation you kept hitting us up for money for.
The program was terrific in a lot of ways, and I learned a lot—and that’s no lie—but you guys have a serious problem understanding what your role in a healthy relationship with the community would look like.
IF YOU WANT to be seen as part of a community, don’t do this:
Cops Paint Over Inwood Mural That Depicts NYPD as “Murderers”
PRETTY MUCH EVERY expert you chose to address the Citizens’ Police Academy (and most were truly outstanding) referred repeatedly to the NYPD as “the best of the best.” They painted a picture of a department of such high caliber and uncompromising standards that heads turn when the mere letters “NYPD” are mentioned. Foreign and domestic military commanders, we were informed, know that when they have an NYPD officer under their command, they have at their disposal the best of the best.
But wow. The best of the best really freak out when somebody calls them a mean name.
Putting aside the free speech issue (you guys screwed up on that one, and no gray area, but it’s not where I’m going), what I really want to get across is this:
You do not know how to be good community members.
We were told that if we want better community involvement with the police, try saying hello to the cop on the corner. We were also told that it’s going to take more than just one attempt before that cop starts responding.
Okay, we can do that.
How about you guys get out of your cars once in a while, and don’t stand around texting instead of engaging with people, and, oh, I don’t know—
Don’t throw tantrums?
CLEARLY, SOME OF you do know what community is.
Clearly, they are not in charge.
I KNOW THERE are plenty of lawyers on salary there who can provide lots of reasons your actions were within certain guidelines, and were taken in the interest of the greater good, and probably something in there about defamation, or incendiary language. Or you know what?—probably I’m wrong and they wouldn’t even address the real problem in the first place, just deflect and blow a whole bunch of sunshine up the media’s butt until the only people left who care are locals.
I am not a lawyer. My honest assessment of the men and women who addressed us at the Citizens’ Academy were that they’re a pretty low-BS bunch too. I think they want to make a real difference, and want a true connection, and if it were up to some of them, they’d handle this screwup honestly and in a straightforward way. To quote The Princess Bride:
We are men of action. Lies do not become us.
You screwed up. Not only did you screw the community, but if you didn’t consult your own community relations officers before taking this boneheaded action, you screwed them, too. They’ve been making slow headway; I’m an example. But the department as a whole? I trust you less than I did a week ago, which already wasn’t as much as you’d like. If you’re going to react like an insecure teenager when somebody calls you a name, and sneak around and paint walls and destroy other people’s creations, I’m not going to consider you a trustworthy adult. Thanks for your interest in assisting the local safety patrols, which I’m hoping will result in something better than we could do without you. (Jury’s out; bureaucracy moves slowly.) Thanks also for the Citizens’ Police Academy—which, despite being 19% marketing and 1% Jesus references, was still 80% very interesting stuff that I can take back to my community.
But part of being a community member—a real community member, not just somebody who tries to get others on their side for the furthering of their own agenda—is owning up when you screw up, person to person, without intermediaries, and doing what you can to put things right.
If you can’t do that, you can’t fault anyone who concludes, “To hell with you.”
WHEN I WAS a kid, I completely destroyed a set of croquet mallets, knocking a hole in the cinder block wall that separated our yard from the one next door.
My parents made me go over and apologize, and my dad had to fix the holes.
If the undercover officers who blacked out the mural and the people who authorized that action can’t be bothered to apologize personally to the artist, negotiate the property owner back into a feeling of freedom, and paint a new base coat over the damage they did, to his specification, so he can paint something new, then all the community efforts you’re making right now are nearly meaningless. Unless you show the community that you can do what needs to be done and act like cops instead of like flacks and lawyers, this one act has undone them. Even if completely different officers perpetrated the censorship, it’s the department as a whole that has shown it can’t be trusted—and particularly the 34th, where this occurred. My neighborhood. My precinct.
You want to get respect? Give respect. Act like a grownup. Strive for honor, not legal inculpability. Be standup.
It’s not like we can’t tell the difference.
Filed under: Being a grownup, Civil rights, Community, Inwood, NYPD, Safety
July 21, 2012
From almost nothing
BECAUSE I BOUGHT a Nook Color a month ago, it was lying on the bed.
Because it was lying on the bed, a child picked it up and pushed some buttons.
Because he pushed some buttons, he saw a single-player chess app.
Because they didn’t get bored taking turns with the single-player chess app, I bought them a chess set and a chess book.
Because they requested it, they now get a section from the chess book and a game every night at bedtime, instead of a story.
WE RIDE BIKES.
Because we ride bikes, we get up to Isham for the Inwood greenmarket most Saturdays. It’s .6 miles. We wouldn’t walk it, and the subway or bus would cost $9.
Because the boys have a new travel chess set I got them so they could play on the bus after swim class, they brought it today and set it up where kids run around.
They explained the game to a new opponent and attracted an audience of kibitzers.
BECAUSE THEY’RE SO fixated on chess, and because we ride bikes to the Inwood greenmarket, and because bikes engage you with your surroundings instead of isolating you from them, they zeroed in on two men playing chess while we were riding past on Seaman.
CHESS! CHESS! CHESS! CAN WE PLAY!?
Because Inwood has an active Twitter population, I knew one of the players by reputation.
“You can’t play,” I said, “but you can watch.”
“They can play!” offered the man I’d recognized.
So we braked and walked our bikes over.
The men welcomed them, talked to them, challenged them, and taught them the game of Pawns.
They, in turn, cracked one of the men up when I said, “Hey guys, tell him our name for en passant,” and the boys yelled in unison, WHACK ’IM WHILE HE’S RUNNING!
(“I’m running, I’m running—WHACK!” the man riffed, chuckling.)
After two games of Pawns, the boys played chess, with much better kibitzing than they’d had at the greenmarket, and I learned that Sundays, they set up multiple tables for whoever wants to play and actively help kids with the game. I also learned the man I was talking to had ditched his cigarette as the boys came up. They don’t want to teach that. Just chess.
Because it was all so cool, I forgot to take pictures.
Then because the whiny hungry crabbies had arrived, we said thank-you and rode home.
We ride bikes.
I got a Nook Color.
Therefore life has gone in a completely unforeseeable way.
Children’s chess, Sundays 10am–3pm, Seaman and 207. All are welcome.
Filed under: Bicycling, BikeNYC, Bikes, Chess, Community, Family, Fatherhood, Favorite, Inwood, Kids, Parenting
