Club historians of a revisionist stripe, having in mind certain board sniping during the club election, will marvel in wonder at Hal Eskenazi's writing me to ask me yesterday to repair the NYCC-donor "signage" (or signs) on the bike racks at the PIPC office at the end of River Road. You, too, will marvel since all the major networks have done stories on my never riding past early October and never, ever other than on Saturdays.
Nevertheless, being delighted, if surprised, that Hal would call on me and being dutiful and eager to mend electioneering schisms and heal wounds, I did that very thing today.
NYCCer Erica Jacobs and I arrived at the PIPC parking lot. Hal said bring plastic ties and scissors. I brought the former and substituted a razor blade from my 1958 college art school supplies kit for the scissors. As it turned out, it hadn't aged nearly as much as I have.
I brought too few ties for too many signs. Erica, seeing pain etched in my face, sacrificed her twisty that held her helmet mirror in place to the cause. She, a Ph.D., and I discussed procedure for several hours, or five minutes—I can't remember which. We decided she, an attractive woman, just might do better with the cop on duty than I since I think, every workday of their lives, the police have my WANTED poster in front of them. She leaves. She returns. With nothing. I ask what the officer gave her. Answer: Nothing. The officer did better than give her something, a lot better. He called a maintenance man, telling Erica he would come in fifteen minutes. He didn't. He came in four. In a truck. Very equipped. With plastic ties. Scissors. And a wonderful willingness to help. And he did.
Not just in securing our (cheap, flimsy—sorry Bob, if they were your) signs but in moving the two racks back several feet. Why? His idea, his very thoughtful idea: turns out the area where the snow plows dump the snow they haul in trucks is precisely where the racks were. They would be buried. So he, another park worker, and Erica moved the racks back several feet where, the maintenance man assured us, they would be useable during the winter. Oh, you're asking where was I that I didn't lift? Don't be silly. Historians must not insert themselves into history; that alters it.
