An American in Madrid
I leave the piso just before 7.30 tonight to cycle to yoga, all suited up with my reflective gear. But wait—bici’s not there, where I left her half an hour earlier locked to a tree two floors below our balcony. What?! My mind reels. Did I forget to scramble the combo? Did I lock her to the post next to the tree? And my gaze lands on a tightly wound coil just below the curb. The lock. It’s cut, cleanly. Must’ve taken all of five seconds.
A little bit of press for the new neighborhood.
Nearly three weeks ago I fell while hiking in my favorite spot in Madrid, La Pedriza. We were busy exploring the far reaches of La Pedriza posterior when I stupidly tripped forward and felt a yank on my left arm as I hit the ground hard. When I brushed myself off, my shoulder was conspicuously lower than it normally is. Six hours later, after an intense thunderstorm and a careful three-hour descent in a makeshift sling, the shoulder had been returned to its rightful place by an ornery emergency room doctor.
And thus, with my left arm completely immobilized in a sling, I began a three-week stint as a persona discapacitada in Madrid. I’ve been commuting to work and more or less living my life as normal, to the extent that a one-armed person can. I have grown used to people staring and, especially, to the majority of people who don’t budge to give me a seat on any of the various modes of public transport I use daily.
There are always exceptions, though. Today, as I was riding on a city bus, one woman was especially solicitous, looking concernedly at me even after I declined the offer of her seat. As I approached the door to leave, she offered to help me off the bus (I had a small suitcase in tow) and, when I demurred, she leaned over and confided that her daughter currently has both arms in casts and she, to put it lightly, knows how it is. I, too, can say I’ll never look at physical incapacities the same way again.
It’s mid-September and life, even in Spain, is resuming its more strenuous post-summer pace. Excuse my absence. It was a nice long summer bookended by a move out and a move in and now, new house, new job, and a dislocated shoulder later, things are still in flux but heading towards a more settled state.
Last Thursday night around 8 p.m. I navigated my way through crazy Madrid evening traffic towards Cibeles and the monthly gathering of bicycle-minded people called Bici Crítica. On the Castellana just north of Colón, my chain started doing funky things and I pulled onto the sidewalk to investigate. As I’m a rather inexperienced cyclist, I had no real idea of how to remedy the problem and so grabbed the chain and tried to put it in its place. But lo and behold I heard someone shouting instructions to me (in Spanish) from the neighboring lanes of traffic: “Just pedal and the gear will catch!” I turned to see who was advising me; it was none other than a municipal bus driver leaning out the window of his big red bus. I pedaled with my hand and, of course, the gear caught.
The ride, when we got started, was great. K and I commented on how liberating it is to ride on streets overtaken by bicycles. And so silent! Some drivers were pretty aggravated (the taxistas are specialists in this), but there were plenty of well wishers along our two-hour route all the way up Calle Alcalá to García Noblejas, where the Madrid government is building bike lanes on the sidewalk, to the dismay of many pedestrians. Towards the end of the ride I had a brief conversation with two women standing out on their 8th-floor balcony and cheering for us:
Me: Mejor que coches, no? (Better than cars, right?)
Them: Mucho mejor! (Much better!)
And at the end of the night, after a picnic on the other side of town, K and I started to make our way, somewhat uncertainly, back to our barrio. We came across another cyclist at a traffic light at Avenida de América and asked if he knew the best way to go. He asked if we’d been with the Bici Crítica and said that though he’s been riding to work daily for a year, he’s never been able to make the monthly event. And then, though it wasn’t on his way, he led us to a street that would take us basically straight home and avoid the worst of the traffic. In 15 minutes we were home.
What do you think of changing your baby on the metro? Good idea? The other afternoon I witnessed a young mother changing her rather large baby’s very dirty diaper in a row of three seats on line 10. I boarded the train when the operation was already in progress, but, judging by the splatter, it seemed that it might have been some sort of shit explosion necessitating immediate nappy changing. I felt sort of a mix of revulsion and empathy toward this woman, but I have to say that she was not attending to the matter in a very neat fashion. When she left the train, there was definitely still shit on the seat.
And how about clipping your nails? Great idea! The metro is the perfect place for that. This afternoon I had the privilege of listening to the clip clip clip of a woman’s nail clippers as she took care of some of her personal grooming underground on line 6. What a treat!
19 May 2007
This year the second of May saw an uprising in Madrid of a different kind. La Criticona was Spain’s biggest Critical Mass event, a huge gathering of cyclists determined to show the city that cycling is a means of transport. The organizers at Bici Crítica say there were 2,546 riders who filled Madrid’s streets with chants*, the dinging of bike bells, music blasted from rear-wheel-rigged stereos, tall bikes, dogs in bike baskets, and lots of smiling faces on a warm Saturday afternoon.
The group got more separated than the organizers would have liked, and there were plenty of irate drivers waiting as we all passed, but, as the post-Criticona debate has expressed, the idea is to think that any driver could be a future cyclist—to educate rather than aggravate. Hence the cyclists seen bent over car windows chatting with drivers about what we were doing. Not everyone was very receptive (the fact that there was a football match about to begin didn’t help matters), but the people who stood on the sidewalks applauding and snapping photos as we passed made me think that the event surely would leave an impact on the minds of some madrileños. Naturally, among the cyclists there was a real sense of goodwill and camaraderie as well as the sustained hope that each day more bikes will ride the city’s car-congested asphalt.
*Among the chants:
—No es un deporte, es mi medio de transporte! (It’s not a sport, it’s my means of transport!)
—Yo pedaleo y no me cabreo! (I pedal and don’t get pissed!)
—No contamina, no gasta gasolina! (Doesn’t pollute, doesn’t use gas!)
—Si tu coche te quema, quema tu coche! (If your car burns you, burn your car!)
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