February 8, 2004
I recently came across a collection of New Yorker covers with a cycling theme and it always makes me think of the races I've done at the crack of dawn in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. There's nothing quite like riding your bike to the park literally as the Sun rises. The city's calm, eerily quiet, and devoid of people or traffic. Time permitting, I'd head over to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade afterwards for some people watching and Brooklyn Bridge watching before taking a nap and enjoying a full day of NYC. Today, I was cooped up inside doing school work, out of the glorious sunshine, and this cover picture made me wish I was riding my bike to the Promenade to daydream.I came across this organization last night while web surfing, and I do believe I've found my life's calling. Hopefully, when I've received my library science master's degree in 1 year's time, I can find some kind of archival profession where I get to lord over and coddle torrents of ephemera. I've amassed a small collection of bicycle racing programs from late 19th/early 20th century 6-day races plus regular track races in the U.S. and Canada as well as an assortment of tobacco cards with racing cyclists from the same time period. Thanks to newspaper databases with full text searching (particularly the New York Times), I've also located race results from my great-great (?, never know how many greats are necessary) uncle John J. Gillen who was a professional cyclist in the late 1890s New York metropolitan area. I think there's a book waiting to be written about cycling in this time period...Maybe one of these years I'll gather my thoughts, visit Somerville, NJ's Bicycling Hall of Fame and Bainbridge Island, WA's Classic Cycle shop's collection of Pop Brennan material, and put pen to paper.
