Bert's Bicycling Page

I have been bicycling for a long time. I remember learning to ride a 'two-wheeler' on Sparrow Lane in Levittown when I was 5. Someone on the block (I think it was Timmy Nolan, but it could have been Robin DeLusi) called out to me that my training wheels were 'up'. Well, I had my Dad take them off and then I rode about 40 feet, fell, skinned my knee and yet, had learned enough balance to ride. The Finkelsteins lived just down the block from us in Levittown and I am not certain whether it was Barry, Arthur or Ronald who willed me the 20" bike I brought to Queens when we moved in 1961.

When I was 8 or 9, I had my father buy me a 3-speed 'Rudge' at Bellitte and Sons' Bicycle Store on Jamaica Avenue. The rich kid in town, Barry Gidseg, had one, and I was impressed with the 'look and feel'. It was an expensive bike, and my dad thought I was nuts. But, over time, I learned to repair the Sturmey-Archer internal hub myself, and to respoke the wheels. I learned a good deal from taking apart and putting together that bike, and riding all over Queens. Probably my first several bike trips out to Long Island, to Roslyn or to Lake Success, were with that bike. Certainly I remember biking to Cambria Heights and Springfield Gardens to visit my girlfirend in Junior High. And, I can remember biking to Forest Hills (to Ronald Abileah's house in Forest Park Gardens) to learn photography on that bicycle.

When I was in high school, like Ronald Abileah, I joined AYH and after a few day trips around Long Island, realized I needed a better bicycle: It was then that I bought a 10-speed Pugeot at Carl Hart's bike store on Corteyou Road in Brooklyn. Later that summer, I took a week-long trip with the Metro. NY Council to Cape Cod. That trip started in Truro and continued to Hyannis, by ferry to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and back to Woods Hole. With that experience under my belt, on a day trip to Flushing Meadow when I was a high school junior, I met Herbie Hart and decided I wanted to take an exciting bicycle trip. Then, two things happened: 1) Herbie offered me a job working for him in Brooklyn at his bicycle store and 2) I confessed by desire for a bike trip to Ed Keller, my friend's father, who then cajoled Mark into a very exciting experience: Biking with me from Denver to St. Louis. Herbie now has a big bike store on Long Island, which you can visit on the internet, HERE.

The trip from Denver to St. Louis was amazing (although, I discovered that I had had a lifelong allergy to ragweed during that trip, which plagued me until the last five years or so). Mark and I began by sending our bikes air freight to Denver, assembling them at Denver airport; riding into town, and attempting to get up to Boulder that same night. It was just one of many side trips on the way down to Colorado Springs, Pueblo ('get out of Pueblo, boys' one drunk guy told us), and on to US Route 40 for the trip through Kansas. Mark had his many postcards from that trip mounted into a book. I probably still have some of mine.

My ostensible purpose for taking that epic journey was to look at Denver University and Wash. U. as potential places to go to school. Well, we got to see both of these places, alright, and I ended up going to school at Wash. U.

That was the first of many, many bicycle trips; some for a weekend and some for a week or two. My wife and I (Debra Kattler and I got married in 1986), went to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard by bike while we lived in Boston; of course, I used to use a bike to get to Harvard when I was a post-doc there, and we lived in Brookline or in Cambridgeport. And, we did take our bikes when we went to New Zealand in 1989 and to France in 1995.