Ponte fixed maximus!

In what has become a staple of my Sunday mornings in Rome, I bicycled northward along the Tiber River last Sunday. When I reached the ill-fated bridge over the ravine, what did my wondrous eyes perceive but that the bridge had been repaired, a little less than a month after it was damaged. In Roman terms, that is the blink of an eye. Mira culo!, as we would say. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the freshly repaired bridge.

Most Sundays, my goal is to reach the Ponte Castel Giubileo, which is almost exactly 18 km from the monastery. It isn't easy to see in this photograph, but there is covered bicycle path on the side of this bridge that shelters riders from the elements while giving them a wonderful view of the river valley. While it is true that there are many cities in the world that have a much better infrastructure for bicyclists, it isn't as if Rome has done nothing for us.

Bicycling in Rome II

In an earlier post about bicycling in Rome, I mentioned that a bridge along the Tiber River bike path had been inexplicably closed for four years. It finally opened last March after the Inspector for Aged Oak in the Wooden Plank Committee of the Bridge Inspection Office of the Parks and Recreation Department certified its safety after deciding that he was too tired to go all the way to Tor di Quinto to look at a stupid bridge. As far as I can tell, the only change they made was to paint the railings. I have used that bridge for the last three Sundays while bicycling from the monastery to the Ponte Castel Giubileo and back—about 36 km altogether. It's wonderful! And on Sunday mornings in August, most Italians are on holidays or still in bed so it is relatively free of obstacles. Okay, I know it is sad to think about other people as obstacles, but many Italians on the bike path are out for a leisurely, social experience, while I am there for exercise. Riding a bicycle on Sunday afternoons provides me with many, many opportunities to practice patience and self-restraint!

This morning when I came to the famous bridge it was again barricaded (incompetently, however, so it was easy to by-pass). Some genius had decided to set fire to the grass underneath the bridge, which then spread to the wooden planks covering it. Yeah, wood is flammable Einstein! Based on past experience, I'd guess it will take only ten years to get the ruined planks replaced.

At this point, you are probably asking yourself, "Why doesn't the big whiner just go the other direction on the Tiber River bike path?" Well, I tried that two weeks ago, but that path is blocked by the booths for a summer festival. There are two banks for every river; why do they have to set up the booths on the side that has the bike path when the other side of the river equally suitable? Sigh.

A trip down memory lane

Moving not only provides an opportunity to throw out a lot of junk, but also to discover old treasures. Last week I rescued from the attic the first computer used in the monastery, which I had stored up there over 11 years ago. I was lucky to find it since much of that section of the attic had already been cleared out.

Of course, I should not be attached to earthly things; instead I should be storing up treasures in heaven. Yadda yadda yadda. Despite that, I was really happy to see the old girl. Some forward-thinking brother convinced the authorities in 1984 or 1985 that they should have a computer so they bought an IBM PC 5150 with 640K RAM and a whopping 20MB hard disk. They then invited an American brother to install some useful programs on it—a database program called TIM and the Leading Edge word processing program. After installing the programs, said American brother returned to America. Only one of the brothers in Rome knew how to operate it so it sat idle most of the time. In the hope of getting something useful from their investment, the authorities went searching for a brother who knew something about computers and was willing to live in Rome, and they found me. So this computer, you see, is responsible for getting me out of a teaching job that I hated, for showing me the world outside the U.S., for my learning a second language, for meeting some of my best friends, for discovering good Italian food and even, in a round-about way, for the existence of this blog.

(As an aside, our Order was late to the game; in the early 80's, some larger, more organized Orders spent mega-bucks on DEC mini-computers—systems that were obsolete within a few years. Sometimes it pays to be slow.)

At the time, the higher-ups viewed the computer as an exotic piece of equipment that should be used only for VERY SPECIAL, EXTREMELY IMPORTANT MATTERS OF THE ORDER. I'm not sure what they had in mind; top secret missives to the Holy Father, maybe. I saw it as an expensive tool that was going to waste so I began to use it for ordinary tasks, such as writing letters. A few brothers accused me of being wasteful because I {gasp} used the computer almost daily. Needless to say, there was quite a bit of resistance to my suggestion that computers were meant to substitute typewriters, not complement them. Eventually, however, that is what happened. Our proto-computer was relegated to ever more menial tasks, in the end serving to store the card catalog for our small library.

After carefully bringing it from the attic to my room, I dusted it off, blew the cobwebs off its motherboard, hooked up the monitor and keyboard, then flipped its switch. Lights blinked and the hard disk whirred as it (I imagine) wondered where it was and what year it was. A minute or two later I was greeted with the old, familiar beep and "C:>". Welcome back, old friend!

Bicycling in Rome

When you think of bicycle-friendly cities, you probably don't think of Rome—for good reason, it turns out. The city is, in fact, quite bicycle-inimical. To be fair, it isn't easy to adapt the streets of a two thousand-year-old city to accommodate automobiles, buses, trams and, on top of all that, leave a little room for bicycles. When I returned to Rome in 2006, I was actually surprised to discover just how far the city had come in trying to accommodate the needs/desires of bicyclists. Thanks to continuous pressure from an active group of bicycle enthusiasts, more progress is being made every year.

Here for your viewing pleasure is my Roman bicycle travelogue.

Starting from the monastery, I need to ride only a short distance on city streets to reach the entrance to Villa Borghese, one of Rome's largest parks. Once inside the park, I no longer have to worry about traffic. Instead, I have to worry about baby strollers, roller bladers, other bicyclists and entire Italian families strolling arm-in-arm eight abreast at about 2 km per year. Crossing to the other side of the park, I exit near Rome's modern art museum and the Villa Giulia. Here begins a bicycle path that leads to the Tiber River. The good news is that the bicycle path is clearly marked on the sidewalk. The bad news is that pedestrians still block it, and you have to cross several very busy streets before arriving at the Tiber. I cross over Ponte Risorgimento and turn right on the other side. About one hundred meters along this path I have a choice of two paths to take. I can keep following the Tiber going north until the area called Acqua Acetosa. Actually, the bike path should continue farther, but the bridge over a ravine has been inexplicably closed for the past four years. The other choice is to follow the Tiber River south by descending a ramp on the right.

The ramp takes you down from the street level to the river level. For the first few hundred meters, there is a concrete path; not terribly smooth, but passable. Until recently, the concrete eventually gave way to san pietrini, the small cobblestones favored by Romans for paving their streets and sidewalks. If I had written this post a year ago, I would have advised any male who wished eventually to father a child to avoid this path. I rode on it once in 2006; it was so rough that it took me two days to stop shaking.

In late 2010, the city of Rome finally paved over part of the cobblestones to create a bike path. It is now quite pleasant. I'm not sure how long the path will last, however, because the layer of asphalt is so thin that you can already see the outline of the underlying cobblestones. Although there is now a smooth, clearly marked path along this part of the Tiber, it is not perfect. There are makeshift barricades like the one in this photo blocking the path in various locations. It isn't always clear why the barricade is there; sometimes it is because the wall above the bike path is unstable.

The path continues along the Tiber for several kilometers. There are now only two small sections that are not paved. The one shown in this photo is near the Isola Tiburtina. The cobblestones are only a minor nuisance; the bigger problem is that this area is often very crowded, especially in the summer. This is one of the spots where people board the boats that cruise up and down the Tiber during the summer months. It also seems to be a favorite hangout of young people.

Continuing along another kilometer or two, the path comes to an end at a set of stairs near Rome's old gasometer. Actually, the path continues at the top of the stairs; but we won't go there today. It takes me approximately 30 minutes to reach this point so it is a good place to turn around and head home. The makeshift stairs have received a lot of criticism from the bicycling community. They were installed so that the path could be blocked while a new bridge is built over the Tiber. The bridge will allow the bike path to cross over the river and continue south. So the ends are good, but many wonder why the city could not have installed a temporary ramp instead of stairs. Do they not realize that bicycles and stairs do not mix well?

I hope you enjoyed the tour.