Carfree Sundays

"And then to the rarest treasure, Golden Gate Park on a car-free
Sunday morning, the air wet and clean, the meadows green with the
promise of spring. Not a single automobile: The silence is deafening,
you can actually hear the branches dripping moisture, squirrels
scrambling through the underbrush -- and the birds! Hundreds of
redbreasted robins bobbing across the lawns, now that there are no
cars to frighten them. On Stanyan, the families are renting bikes and
heading into the winding trails.
"Slowly it dawns on them that they can use the main drive and the
roads. For once the world does not belong to the automobile. The
bicycle is king again and the rider may go where fancy dictates
without looking nervously over his shoulder. You are even allowed, for
a few unrealistic minutes, to reflect on how pleasant life would be if
the car were banned from San Francisco."
Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/28/73

wrote in message
ps.com...
"And then to the rarest treasure, Golden Gate Park on a car-free
Sunday morning, the air wet and clean, the meadows green with the
promise of spring. Not a single automobile: The silence is deafening,
you can actually hear the branches dripping moisture, squirrels
scrambling through the underbrush -- and the birds! Hundreds of
redbreasted robins bobbing across the lawns, now that there are no
cars to frighten them. On Stanyan, the families are renting bikes and
heading into the winding trails.
"Slowly it dawns on them that they can use the main drive and the
roads. For once the world does not belong to the automobile. The
bicycle is king again and the rider may go where fancy dictates
without looking nervously over his shoulder. You are even allowed, for
a few unrealistic minutes, to reflect on how pleasant life would be if
the car were banned from San Francisco."
Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/28/73


Such an idyll. Chicago has a carfree day on Lake Shore Drive. The city shuts
off motorized traffic from 5:30 am to about 10:00 am. Thousands of cyclists
who have ponied up $40.00 for the privelage get to ride on LSD for a few
hours on a either a 15 or 30 mile loop. Some fast riders do a few loops.
Racers slice past families. Kids on tiny bikes and adults on klunkers join a
boil of athletes of different abilities. There are clusters and currents of
mixed speeds. People gawk at the skyline on one side and the great lake on
the other. Early morning sun glints off of construction cranes as new
building rise in the forest of glass and steel and concrete. The lawn around
the rest stop is cluttered with hundreds of bikes and people mill around
eating muffins and bagels. Everyone seems in good spirits in the morning
chill, many using legs still not used to long miles of riding after a long
winter of couch driving.

It's a day of the bike. Tall bikes made by weldiing frames together making
people wonder how the riders get on and off their mobile sculptures, penny
farthings darting about on their nineteenth century wheels as low black
carbon fibre land missiles cut through the crowd of diamond frame bikes.
Recumbents mix in, tricycles and lowracers join tandems, fast and slow flow
together, and then in a blink the Drive is clear of bikes and the noise and
stench of cars return and the magic of a morning ride becomes another Sunday
traffic jam.



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Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Mar 25, 7:16 am, "gotbent" wrote:

....
Such an idyll. Chicago has a carfree day on Lake Shore Drive. The city shuts
off motorized traffic from 5:30 am to about 10:00 am. Thousands of cyclists
who have ponied up $40.00 for the privelage get to ride on LSD for a few
hours on a either a 15 or 30 mile loop. Some fast riders do a few loops.
Racers slice past families. Kids on tiny bikes and adults on klunkers join a
boil of athletes of different abilities. There are clusters and currents of
mixed speeds....

And someone reminiscent of juniper berries drafts the CPD lead cruiser
at 60 kph!

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful