Rich Mintz  

Today was one of the most persistently uncomfortable days I’ve had in a long, long time, owing to a line of “weather” across the country that delayed the departure of my flight to Detroit to 3 hours (which I spent in a hot plane, both on the tarmac and returning to the gate for more fuel) and shook us up like dice in a cup most of the way here.

I missed my connection to Grand Rapids, and got rebooked on another flight, which was cancelled but not until 2 hours later, when it was too late for me to make other arrangements. The first flight they could put me on isn’t until midday tomorrow. Meanwhile, owing in part to the uncertainty of my arrival, the business matter that was drawing me to Grand Rapids was postponed to another day, so technically I don’t have to go there at all — except my checked bags are going there, and my itinerary for the rest of the week picks up there, so I might as well.

And so I’m here in the Detroit Airport Westin, waiting for morning, when I’ll rent a car and hurtle across Michigan in yesterday’s underwear to Grand Rapids to pick up my luggage, which will get there a couple hours before I do.

I could easily get quite pissed off, as I heard numerous people do in the airport today, and on the plane, and in the hotel lobby, and on and on. But if this is the worst day I have this year, I’m a very fortunate man. I’m sitting in a perfectly congenial lobby bar in a clean, inoffensive hotel (next to a large stand of lobby bamboo, which I never saw before but which ambiencewise is highly recommended), which I’m staying in on someone else’s dime, sipping a lovely cocktail (which I’m paying for) and listening to Brazilian background music and the resigned but not unhappy voices of my fellow “interrupted travelers.”

Nevermind the misfortune of not having been born American and in the twentieth century; plenty of people who meet those two criteria nevertheless had much worse travel days today than I did, and I’m objectively grateful for the pleasure of sitting in this reasonably comfortable, inoffensively tan contract-furniture armchair, waiting out the evening in peace.

I would prefer not to have been “interrupted,” but weather is weather, and on the whole I’ve been treated quite decently by Delta. (I note without particular animus that I’ve now had two of my last three trips involving a Delta Connection carrier be “interrupted” with an overnight hotel stay, and I’ll probably get in the habit of opting for mainline flights a little more religiously,)

I’m here at Harvard for my 25th college reunion, which runs tomorrow through Sunday. Today there were a couple of pre-events, including a kickoff cocktail party.

The 25th is the big one — I think it may be the most-attended reunion of all, because people are mature enough to be thoughtful and retrospective, but still young enough that for the most part (to be blunt) they’re still alive and in good health and able to come. Also, at, say, the 15th, there are a lot of babies and young children, but by the 25th most (not all, but most) people’s kids are old enough to either come and have their own independent good time, or be left at home, or be all grown up and in college themselves and not give a hoot.

I’m staying in a dorm room, with roommates (people from my class whom I don’t remember), which is the thing you do here. In some sort of cosmic joke (a mild one, it’s a perfectly nice dorm), I’ve been assigned to Claverly Hall, which when I was here 25 years ago was overflow space for Adams and Quincy Houses, not quite a “real” part of either one. I’m pretty sure this 3-room suite with a boarded-up fireplace was originally built for one student and his valet, but there are four beds in here now, and 3 of us “roommates.” (I got here first, so in the traditional manner I took the single room.) There’s a lovely view of the Lowell House tower out the front window.

I’m rather appalled at the condition of the room — “shabby” doesn’t do it justice. I realize that this is normal for a college dorm room — they probably repaint and freshen up on a 3-year cycle, and even so it must look like this for 2 1/2 years at a time — but if a real estate agent showed me an apartment in this condition, I’d fire him on the spot.

At the cocktail party, I saw half a dozen friends, including a couple people I knew in high school; a dozen people I remembered well; 15 or so people I recognized in the “match-faces-to-names” sense whom I had some basis for conversation with, and then a bunch of strangers who I allegedly went to college with.

In addition to friends and semi-friends, I talked at length with a couple of classmates I know only from reunions — people I had no relationship with in college but remember from afterwards — and with half a dozen interesting people I have no memory of ever meeting or hearing of before. (One of them has spent the last 12 years in Uzbekistan.) I also made polite conversation with a few people I couldn’t stand in college and have vaguely disliked in every encounter I’ve had with them since. We like to say that people sort things out and become better at human relations as adults, when they have some perspective, and often this is true, but there are exceptions.

Based on the conversations I had, in general I would say this: people seem a bit softer this time around. I don’t mean physiologically, I mean psychologically. There’s a sense that people have started to make peace with the adults they grew into (certainly I have, as I’ve written about here, so it’s not surprising that it’s happening to others); that they’ve begun to let go of regrets; that they’ve accepted that the lives they’re living now are their actual lives.

People definitely look older now, and fatter, and (to put it bluntly) more damaged. With a few exceptions (and remember, every single person in this group is exactly 46 years old — on average, we are probably older than the parents of the seniors who are graduating tomorrow), the men look rough. There’s definitely a precipitous change between the 15th and 25th reunions — at the 15th, everyone still had that spark of youth, but now we’re all middle-aged enough (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) that we kind of have to suck it up and deal with it.

And as we get older, everyone’s converging toward a discrete list of “types.” Men have aged either in that shabby “don’t give a shit” way or in a “I’m trying, but life is winning” way or, in a few cases, in a “if I dress nice and apply enough spackle, maybe nobody will be able to tell I’m old” way, which in turn comes in a “gay” and a “straight” version. (It doesn’t work.)

Most of the women are better preserved, although they, too, come in flavors — “aging gracefully,” “dress like their mother,” “super-severe,” embracing second childhood,” etc.

I’m not excluding myself from the harsh light of honesty. I’m at peace with how I’m aging, which is obvious from the number of photos of myself I post on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean the aging isn’t happening. (I do, however, have much longer, more voluminous, and healthier-looking hair than the male average, for which I can thank my genetic forebears.)

Just finished reading Second Honeymoon, which is Joanna Trollope’s newest novel (or I think her newest). I’d never read anything by her, and given how popular she is with the book-club set I kind of assumed it would be tripe, but it was a superb extended comedy (in the Aristotelian sense) of adult family life, told with respect and good humor and grace. In fact, I read it basically in one continuous session (and it was a long book) and am hungry for more. So more fool me for having let my preconceptions keep me away from such a good writer up to now.

As you’ve noticed if you follow me on Twitter, after seeing one on the street and arranging to test-ride one around the block, I ordered a FlyKly electric bike, and it arrived last week.

What it is, in essence, is an electric scooter, with a top speed under 25mph and a claimed range of 40 miles, that you can recharge in the house off normal electrical current. (The battery is removable.) It weighs only about 100 pounds (less than half what a gas-powered scooter weighs). While that’s too heavy to carry it up the stairs, it’s light enough that you can easily maneuver it through hallways and in and out of elevators to keep it in, say, an apartment building’s bike room, and (since there’s nothing to drip or leak) there’s no reason not to park it in the living room.

The FlyKly does have functional pedals, like a bicycle, and in fact under federal law it’s classified as a consumer product (like a bicycle), rather than a motor vehicle. In fact, the relevant statute states that electric bikes must be treated by states as consumer products rather than motor vehicles. New York State, however, has ignored this, and all electric bicycles are illegal here and subject to confiscation as unregistered motor vehicles. (You may have noticed the 20,000 electric bicycles on the streets of NYC, piloted by deliverymen and hobbyists; yes, under NYS law they are all illegal to operate, and subject to a $500 fine and impoundment.) However, NYS DMV will not register them. So you may legally buy and own them, but not actually use them.

This is, of course, legal nonsense, and it will be straightened out eventually. (It seems to me that what is needed is the proper kind of plaintiff to sue NYS in federal court — someone who has the time and flexibility to put up with the timetable of litigation, the sense to make the right arguments, and the maturity to present well in front of a judge. If I get a $500 citation that isn’t dismissed, I’ll see whether I have the stomach for it.)

In the meantime, what seems to happen in NYC is that if you are riding responsibly, the police ignore you. When you are at speed, you look like just another Vespa (which are legal if registered), and when you aren’t moving, nobody cares anyway. I had one encounter with a parks cop (who treated me as though I were a Vespa rider, and simply said pleasantly that I had to walk the bike in a crowded pedestrian area), but I don’t think I’ve been noticed otherwise. Last night I (cautiously) rode through the pedestrian shortcut alongside police headquarters (connecting from Madison and St. James through to Frankfort and Gold, under the Brooklyn Bridge), past three NYPD guardhouses, and nobody cared.

I was careful, though, to walk the bike whenever I was passing through an area I might expect to be hassled for riding through on a normal bicycle. And without exception I’ve stopped at every red light, and stayed in traffic in congested areas rather than trying to find a way around. This means that for trips of more than a block or two, traveling by FlyKly is actually marginally slower than riding a normal bicycle in the typical amount of city traffic.

But who cares? In nice weather it’s so much fun to get out and just ride. I’ve been all up and down the lower half of the island, and tomorrow have a couple of errands on the Upper West Side, so I’ll have a chance for a longer ride.

The handling is fine; the 25mph governor is not a problem in the city. (I rarely find myself wanting to go any faster than that.) The bike seems well designed and I keep finding things I like about it. There’s a bag loop, so you can carry one bag of groceries, along with whatever is on your back. (There’s an optional cargo box, but to install it you have to remove the rear rail, and I use that rail to lift the bike when I’m flipping the kickstand, so I’m reluctant.)

The only problem was that I tripped the electric fuse on one of my first rides, and had to let the battery cool down before I could reset it and it would “stick.” (It actually wasn’t a clean test, because during the cooldown I had the bike plugged in, so I’m not absolutely sure that overheating was the issue.)

I investigated motorcycle licensing in NYS, because it seems prudent to have evidence of training in the event that a police officer claims I am “riding unsafely.” It’s actually pretty easy — you pass a written test and get a permit, and then if you take a 3-day riding course, you waive out of the driver’s test. So expect to hear about that in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, zoom zoom! Bike porn below.