Two years have gone by and I was thinking today how great it would be to have a dog again, one too large to put in a basket.
Tag: Bicycling
Summer Streets Selection
Memorial Day Dog
This critter, locked in the camera since Memorial Day, seen riding northbound on the Hudson Greenway, a stretch of car-free passage that takes you all the way from Battery Park past the George Washington Bridge.
The hamster wheel
I’ve been thinking about the loop in Central Park lately…how it’s just a big hamster wheel for us humans, our contraptions and our mostly canine companions.
She was riding clockwise against the flow and you get the idea pretty quickly that the park loop is designed to go counterclockwise. The entrances all send you – cars when those demons are allowed – and bikes, skaters, surfers, rollers, sliders, runners counterclockwise. It just works that way. A few go the other direction.
Central Park exists for those of us who live here and for those of us who are tourists. It’s not for the nearby suburban because they have theirs and who would drive to a city just to sit under a tree? When you walk or ride you hear all the accented voices from faraway places: The British Isles, Europe, Russia, the Baltics, the Middle East, the Asia Pacific, the Caribbean. And sometimes Kentucky or Arkansas.
I stayed and watched too long these two playing a food game and some fetch. I took a longer time to walk around and lingered a lot. You see, we’re moving out – not too far away. Just 25 minutes by train and the time will be here soon enough that I won’t just bumble into the park for a walk. I’ll have to go out of my way and it won’t happen much because there will be trees and park a little bit fresher air where we’re going.
JFC, people take their dogs on carriage rides!
And, hey, get this – fencing with foils amid the frisbees.
This man takes his old Sheltie in a stroller. He left him out for a few shaky steps, then back to the cart. They both seemed OK with the arrangement.
I will miss the crowds I curse when I want a quick spin around the loop but everyone’s chaos and not interested, not at all even aware. I’ll miss these scenes too:
The history of dogs in bike baskets
Taken this afternoon in Central Park.
Inspired perhaps by this famous Audrey Hepburn in 1959 or French cyclists of days long gone, an irresistible thought, “I shall put Fluffy in the basket and take him for a spin around the park today.”
What is the oldest photo of a basket mounted dog? Who got the idea first? And whoever he or she was, is not humanity all the better for it?
Lounging in Lincoln Center…
Earlier this morning, a woman totes her dog in front of harsh backlighting.
There is something wrong with this photo. Can you find it?
Critical Can Opener… and that’s all the help you’re getting. It’s not the doglessness, though on first glance it seems that way. In the uncropped original image, you would see the reflection of what is either a dog or a discarded stuffed animal. Behind the dad figure on the bike a woman passes in the opposite direction looking back over her shoulder. The light changes, an impatient horn honks, a girl now fully grown, remembers the events of the day years from now.
In Central Park today
These things happened today in the space of less than two hours.
A dog pins a woman to the ground.
A dog chases a man on a bike.
A woman gives a dog a bike ride.
A man totes a dog through the park.
Other things, like these:
Running dogs
International Take Your Dog for a Bike Ride Day
French Bulldog traveling northbound near Chelsea Piers, a love story
A moment taken to explore a possibility, a flirtation perhaps? She was all business and offered nothing more than a business card and a free sample. He thought she was ruthlessly opportunistic, preying on transporters of basketed dogs. “You are a dreamer,” she said. “People have to make a living.”
With more than a dozen miles of bikeway to the George Washington Bridge, he’d have plenty of time to wonder where in their 20 second conversation he went wrong. She expanded operations into seven cities and married well, each time for love, not money.
Dogs and Bikes 