Today began with so much ambition, and maybe half of the plans were accomplished. (More for tomorrow, then!) I blame the super late night, last night. But, hey, all of the professional tasks were achieved. Emails answered, questions asked, and so on. Dishes were also done. Some laundry was completed. It wasn’t all bad. Take that, super late night.
Oh yeah, I wrote something yesterday for the work Substack. No one has called to complain yet, so there’s that. Here it is.
This is terrible and senseless. And the extended Gaudreau family, who are experiencing a hurt that’s hard to express and impossible to heal, are by no means alone.
The National Safety Council has it that the number of preventable deaths from bike crashes rose 10% in 2022 and have increased 47% in the last 10 years (from 925 in 2013 to 1,360 in 2022). The League of American Bicyclists notes that 2022 was the deadliest year ever for cyclists. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 2022 records show more cyclists were killed by motor vehicles than any year since they began charting the data in 1975.
Talk to a cyclist, any sort of cyclist that rides on roads, and you’ll quickly hear themes emerging. The infrastructure is insufficient. Drivers don’t see cyclists. Drivers are distracted, or inconsiderate, or worse. Vehicles have gotten much, much larger.
Every cyclist you talk to has a story about a dangerous moment, a scary encounter, or a truly life-changing experience they’ve had on the open road. A place where they also belong, by the way (go here to see the specific laws for your state). It goes beyond a random heckle or a dated Lance Armstrong reference.
Each cyclist has their own reason for being there. They love it. This is how they commute. This is their exercise. Their childlike freedom. Their community. Their only means of transportation. Whether they are carefully calculating their watts, carefully balancing their groceries, or they are teaching their kids how to ride, no matter why they find themselves on two wheels, their experiences with motorists are common, profoundly troubling and they penetrate deep into the psyche.
We’re seeing that in a survey we’ve conducted in the light of the killing of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. The Center for Sports Communication and Social Impact is asking cyclists in South Jersey a series of questions, has immediately received more than 500 responses, and the responses continue to roll in.
I was asked about this at 1:09 p.m. yesterday, 37 minutes later I had the first 770 words down.
And then I thought about it during most of the two hours I spent on my bike this evening.
My shadow went hunting for historical markers. Between the two of us, my shadow and me, we found quite a few, starting with the cheapie you’ll see below.
And this is the long straight road, the flat part of it, heading back home. I was halfway to a great ride. The bike felt smooth, in that way we spent all our time hoping to feel.
You get just a few experiences of la volupte, if you’re lucky. It’s so rare, maybe, that you can mistake a tailwind and a stellar ride for the sensation, la volupte.
La Volupte translates roughly to “voluptuousness”, and while the first thing the mind goes to is a sexual definition, my favorite is, “the property of being lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses.” In a sport where pain is worn like a badge of honor, those times when cycling is lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses are what makes us want to climb onto our bikes again tomorrow.
Today wasn’t that. But it was something, an experience I have noticed before. Some days everything just feels sure, steady, at your command. My problem is that when I’m always going slow when I have that experience. I was not flying today, but, also I was not going slow. I had three Strava PRs, including a two-plus mile drag at the end of the ride. While my legs were not carrying me especially quickly, they had the decency to keep turning over without needing to stop, which was nice.
We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, wherein I am tracking down the county’s historical markers via bike rides. By my count, this is the 46th installment, and the 78th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is, in fact, barely a marker.
In the 17th century, this was a place focused on trade and shipbuilding. One of the first ports, 1682, around here was near where this photograph was taken. There were British customs houses here. There’s still a local port authority nearby. It was an important center of trade until the Revolutionary War. The founder, John Fenwick, who we’ve learned about on two different Wednesdays (here and here) laid out this street for commerce and traffic.
Wharf Street was 90-feet wide, lined by houses and shops going all of the way to the docks and water. The people here here saw wheat, corn, beef, pelts and lumber come and go. Fishing was popular in the bay, oystering was a booming pursuit into the 20th century. Growth and overfishing killed the sturgeon and caviar business. Crabbing survived. The railroad, which came in 1876, was here by then, and so was the second industrial revolution, which was about glass around here, owing to the special sand that everyone was walking on, the sand that Wharf Street was built on, the street that was here for all of it.
Two genealogy site suggested Wharf Street was renamed for a prominent settler, Edward Bradway, a Londoner who landed in 1677 and built a fine house down by the water. Later, the town fathers updated the name again to Broadway. There are still Bradways in that town.
The next several weeks of markers are down that road. Some are really great; you’ll want to keep coming back. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.
