Burlaki on the Hudson

In many European cities (not so much in London, though) bicycle riders are provided with enough dedicated riding space to make it appear to a fascinated visitor that practically everyone in the city rides a bike instead of a motorized vehicle. Amsterdam is an obvious and well-known example, but, say, Munich would also surprise you with the volume of its bicycle traffic. It is all enabled by plenty of bicycle-only lanes and a certain amount of preferential treatment given to cyclists at crossings and intersections.

New York City does not have many bicycle lanes in Midtown. Those that do exist are more often than not blocked by illegally parked cars or walking pedestrians.

Yeah, let’s not forget every New Yorker’s near-constitutional right to walk wherever they please: Sidewalks, grass, driving lanes, biking lanes…

One of the cycling lanes goes by the Port Authority Bus Terminal along 8th Avenue. I almost never see it used by any cyclists. But, at the end of the workday, with thousands of people simultaneously walking towards the terminal to catch their commuter buses home, it is always a well-traveled walking lane, used by anyone who is keen to avoid the unpleasant navigation of the sidewalk. Yours truly, admittedly, is one of such people.

Imagine a middle-aged woman, in a full biking get-up, complete with a small rear-view mirror attached to her helmet, pedaling along the 8th Avenue. She can’t stay in the bike line, on account of all of the pedestrians, but she tries to stay as close to its boundary as possible.

When she crosses 42nd Street, she is now going directly against the human stream. Most of these pedestrians keep to the outer edge of the bike lane, not because they are considerate of the practically non-existent cyclists, but because they are wary of very much existent cars that are jousting for free space themselves. But an occasional pedestrian would dare the motorized traffic to go around him, by walking pretty much in the outer car lane.

So here is this big fifty-something guy, purposefully walking towards the terminal. He is clearly not going to tolerate the stop-and-go-and-dodge of the sidewalk – or even bike lane. He is passing the slower walkers on the divide between the bike lane and the car lane.

The cyclist going in the opposite direction, trying to squeeze herself between a passing car and this guy cannot avoid brushing against him. He continues walking as if nothing happened. She almost loses her balance and nearly veers into the next car’s path.

She recovers. Turns around. And hollers. “You a@#$%le! What the f#&% are you doing walking in the bike lane!?”

He acknowledges her by half-turning and hollering back, “F#&% You! Watch where are you going!” And continues to his destination.

The rest of the bus-terminal-bound crowd pauses for a split of a second, smirks, and keeps going as well.

Gotta love New York!

New York City & Environs

On balance, having a pool in your backyard is probably worth it.

It costs ridiculous money – the exact total expense will be tallied later in the budget year, but I can already venture a fairly educated guess.

It takes plenty of effort to maintain – hiring a pool guy sounded too expensive when we had considered it last spring, but I am so exasperated by my unending fight against debris that it might be a wise choice next year.

We can only use it for about 5 months a year, from late April to late September – it is heated, but when the air temperatures consistently stay below a certain threshold it is obviously a disincentive for outdoor swimming.

And yet, on a reasonably warm day in the second half of September, after an intense work day, splashing in the warmed-up pool with kids is as close to heaven as I can imagine.

Suburbia

When family with children is going to visit relatives who live about an hour’s drive away, Dad’s responsibilities do not really start until around the time of departure. Prior to that, Dad might indicate several times that he is annoyed at being the only person who is ready. But only when the same level of readiness is exhibited by all members of the traveling party, will Dad spring to action. He will check the doors and the appliances. He will put the necessities into the trunk. He will carry the baby in the car-seat and make sure it is most securely attached to the base. He will, after all, do the driving.

Mom, on the other hand, will get ready for departure by feeding and dressing the baby, helping the older kids with outfits, hairdos and snacks, packing the diaper bag and the breast pump, keeping track of things that need to be brought along or undertaken along the way. She won’t be ready until everybody else in the house is ready. And her “ready” does not really include getting ready herself.

Only when the driving starts and the baby is strapped in, Mom has a chance to relax… and get ready.

She will finally do her own hair, put on some make-up, eat a yogurt or a banana that pass for her breakfast. In other words, she’ll do all of those things that are not really pre-requisites for leaving home in the family minivan.

Being a passenger in that minivan is the only time Mom can spend on herself.

Or so I hear.

Children

Each of our babysitters has her own technique for keeping the baby sister content. One lulls her with YouTube videos and then lets her sleep. The other carries the little person around in the kangaroo contraption.
 

Chronicles, Photography

My first ever live NFL game turned out to be surprisingly more enjoyable than I expected.

I am enough of a fan of the American football to enjoy the games in general. However, I fully recognize the static nature of the sport, where each subsequent play is separated from the previous one by long periods of standing around. On TV, that time is mostly filled with replays from different angles, so the action feels somewhat more continuous. Sitting in a stadium, I was worried that I would not be able to remain attentive enough in between the snaps. (I was right to a degree – I did end up missing a couple of key plays simply because I let my attention wander during clock run-downs.)

With the average game lasting roughly 190 minutes and having roughly 125 snaps, each play taking on average 8 seconds, the actual play time comes to about 17 minutes out of those 190. Spaced more or less evenly across those 3+ hours. Hard to stay involved, I thought.

Turns out it’s all about the company you keep.

I went to the preseason game between the Giants and the Patriots at the New Meadowlands Stadium with two of my best and oldest friends. I probably qualify as an “NFL expert” in our group, but only one of us has been to an NFL game before. No matter. We had a beer each, some junk food, talked endlessly about things old friends normally talk about, engaged in light-hearted banter with fellow spectators (most of whom wanted to know what language we were speaking – something my friends and I can never get away from when we are in a public venue). We had fun.

It was also about good seats. We sat in a field-level section on the 30-yard line. I’ve heard in the past that from the stands it is not always easy to follow a given play that does not include a long throw, because you don’t always get who has the ball until the defenders pile up on top of the rusher. That may be true for seats on the upper levels. We had no problem following the ball.

The game itself was not very good, as one could expect from a preseason contest. Star players left after a couple of series, and most of the game was played out by backups. Some of whom were sloppy enough that I would not be surprised if they were released by the teams this morning. But in the fourth quarter, the lead changed hands a couple of times following good long runs after catches by either team. It was not boring.

I am not sure I’ll do that again anytime soon, but at least I can say that I finally experienced an NFL game live.

Next, competitive chess. Andres Cantor makes it look more exciting than I seem to recall in those Geico commercials.

Sports

A few determined individuals who have been following this blog since its humble beginnings would recognize this diagram.
 

 
This used to be the picture greeting visitors on the original front page of this website, when it was not blog-centric yet. It charted the major places we resided at in our life. Which aren’t that many, obviously.

My good friend Sergey suggested back then that the picture would be more intriguing if it had an additional arrow into the unknown (represented by a symbolic question mark), suggesting to the viewer that future holds more moves to exciting locales. I did not go for that, mainly of account of just having moved to London. I did not want to think about future moves.

As anyone can now surmise, Sergey was right on the “future holds additional moves” count, but he was overly optimistic on the “exciting” part.

I caught up with the idea that a static front page was not a good approach to website-building within a couple of months of starting the website. The “old front page” was relegated to a curiosity link on my blog’s menu bar. When I recently moved the site to a new host provider, I completely discarded that page among the few cosmetic changes.

But when I did that, I figured that the old picture diagram needed updating.

So, here we go.
 

 
This is a very precise diagram, by the way, since for all senses and purposes we live in the same area that we left for London. If you imagine yourself looking southward, this diagram well approximates the distance we moved from our previous house.

It is also a bit confusing. Do we now keep going back and forth between London and New Jersey? I don’t think so.

Anyway.

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