The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

    

 The cast of "Breaking Away" and an advertisement for men's bike shorts.

Breaking Away

I’m a bike rider, strictly of the hyper amateur variety, without a shred of pretence at semi-professional status or aspirations. In fact, the bicycle I own is decidedly on the quasi-fuddy-duddy side of the spectrum. It has tires somewhere in between a mountain bike and a serious racer, meaning they are on the wide side. The bike has a heavily padded seat and shocks and I’m told it possesses 15 or 21 speeds, although, generally, I use just three or four of them depending on the level of incline I encounter while pedaling over our mountainous terrain here.

As is typical of many of my generation, I don’t wear a helmet. I know, it’s stupid, might be life threatening or dangerous but I grew up riding more than I walked and somehow thanks to the good graces of the Almighty, I’ve never had any kind of serious incident in more than 40 years on two wheels. Some think it’s kind of a Hells Angels motorcycle gang type of aversion to helmets, or a reaction to government regulation. Really, it’s that I didn’t wear one when I was 15 and don’t wear one now. Not a James Dean or Brando act of passive rebellion against the myriad powers that be – thumbing my nose at The Nanny State. Just benign neglect and feeling like its 1975 every time I get on a bike.

In my travels across the various back Hewlett villages and the back of Lawrence I encounter many serious riders. They have razor thin high-tech bicycles probably constructed of graphite or aluminum or some NASA-type of material. The bikes must cost an entire mortgage payment. They have water bottles with actual places to put them on the bike frame. They wear helmets and most significantly, they wear the latest in latex or spandex bicycle racing attire.

Now, shoot me, but I think that spandex bike attire looks ridiculous on middle aged guys. It’s one thing if you’re really training for the Tour de France or some bona fide Iron Man triathlon but your average suburban Joe trolling around on Ocean Avenue and maybe even over the Atlantic Beach bridge just looks like a middle aged guy in spandex. What must guy’s wives think of this get-up? Why do some people feel it is either de rigueur or a badge of honor to wedge oneself into the kind of shorts that skinny women even have difficulty breathing in? I’ve heard all about wind resistance and aerodynamics, but to be real, how many people can even break 15-20 mph for long stretches? Me, I wear either shorts or sweats and a t-shirt/sweatshirt depending on the temperature and topped by a baseball hat. Again, no pretences, no affectations. This is just to take in the scenery and get the heart pumping. I will never be Lance Armstrong and don’t need everyone and anyone to think I harbor any aspirations of being confused for the multi Tour de France champion.

Bike garb has become a whole industry and some of my friends and neighbors in the shmatte business probably are seething while reading all this. “What, you want to throw thousands of Chinese slave laborers out of a job?” Not my intention here. The goal is to encourage guys over 35 to reclaim a measure of dignity. Would you wear a Speedo at the pool or beach? Probably not. A major beer company even has a funny commercial spoofing a dude in a Speedo who asks for a generic light beer. The hot female bartender tells the clueless fellow that “American guys don’t wear Speedos.” We wear surfer shorts, preferably just above the knees and definitely not skin tight. The only exceptions are Olympic athletes and surfers in wet suits.

All this bike suit spandex stuff got started in Europe, home of the Speedo. Ever been to a beach full of middle-aged Euro guys? Generally not a very attractive sight. Men, I wouldn’t steer you wrong here. Drop the latex and get into basketball shorts. You’ll be more comfortable and your significant others will thank you – moreover – they might actually again want to be seen in public with you and maybe even would take a bike ride with you. Think also, would you wear spandex to the gym?

Finally, while I’m at it – I’m wagering (this is utterly un-scientific here) that many of the spandex guys also wear briefs. Take it from a newly single guy – boxers make for a more sophisticated presentation while affording a lot more breathing room, something critical during hot summer days and nights.

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

       

The late Allan Sherman R.I.P. and his famous comedic song about camp. Road signs pointing the way to Equinunk and a view of the main campus.

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.

This week The Five Towns has seen a large exodus of our young people. No, they’re thank God not off to war or anything terrible – quite the opposite. All week long, anxious and relieved parents have been trundling their kids off to sleep away camp.

Anxious because for many parents this is their first extended separation from their kids and there is a element of post-partum depression especially for the first child. Anxious also because camp these days costs a fortune, or at least it seems to relative to the old days. Relieved because for many parents they finally get a break from the rigors and stresses of raising good kids and have passed these responsibilities off for a time to the camp professionals. Relieved also because some parents actually get some alone time as a couple to rediscover one another (for better or worse).

Those off to enjoy the fresh mountain air range from five to 21 whether as campers or counselors. My next door neighbor’s teenage son just headed out for four weeks as a lifeguard (I didn’t know he could even swim) and I have a niece who is experiencing her first summer as a C.I.T. and discovered much to her shock, horror and chagrin that working at camp bears no resemblance whatsoever to being a paying camper. But this will probably be good for her character development. A bunch of other family, neighbors and friends’ kids have also been loaded onto buses or were driven up to the Poconos or Catskills.

I freely admit to a case of “camp envy.” I wish I were headed off to camp too. They say that “youth is wasted on the young,” Well, not for me anyway. I really enjoyed being young and very much appreciated the many fun things I got to do including camp.

When I was a kid back in what are now deemed the analog Paleolithic ages of the 60s and 70s, sleep away camp was a whole two month experience, not four or six weeks. We didn’t have access to phones or email. Communication with the parents consisted of the daily three-line letters from my father (where he said next to nothing but wanted me to get a letter every day anyway) and the once or twice a week opuses from my mother, who told me everything often in excruciating detail. There were visiting days where chips, candy and the coveted kosher salamis appeared. We were awash in parental food and it amazes me to this day that raccoons, squirrels and field mice didn’t feast on all these provisions we stuffed into outdoor cubbies.

My lifelong love of sports comes from camp. A lot of kids in our area now go to camps heavy on religious and/or ideological orientations. Some go to specialty or cultural camps. I went to a “jock camp,” meaning camp was all about playing ball, morning, noon and night with some lakefront activities like sailing and waterskiing thrown in. My love of sailing and boating also hail from camp. 

Camp Equinunk in Wayne County, Pennsylvania was where I spent the majority of my camping years. This was (and still is) a place full of Jews, but it wasn’t a Jewish camp. The extent of Jewishness there were the 20 minute Friday night services and the quick prayer over bread before each meal. This was (and still is) a place steeped in traditions that span nearly a century. Extended families of cousins went there and it wasn’t unusual for your bunkmate to be a third generation camper.

Never a “natural athlete” or gifted, I became a solid “B-level” player by virtue of the patient instruction and attention of a lot of great counselors. The two who are foremost in my mind were Jon Kigner and Henny Goldman. Kigner (or “Kig” as we called him) was my counselor for two consecutive summers. All my bunkmates flat out loved him and we expressed this by cheering him on in the mess hall and building a constituency to propel him to color war chief within a few years of his arrival at camp, which was no mean feat as Kig had never been a camper there. Kig taught me how to hit a baseball well, and more significantly, how to place and aim the ball to find the gaps and holes in the field which is a skill I still retain to this day for which I’m most grateful.

Henny was the Head Counselor and had been so for decades before my arrival there in the summer of ’69. He was a high school football coach in Brooklyn and could best be compared to the Burgess Meredith character in “Rocky.” Rough, gruff and tough on the outside he was a sensitive and warm guy on the inside who loved the kids and really cared about them. He was a paradigm of the early 20^th Century guy – a man’s man who brooked no baloney and was all about imparting character to make a man out of you. Legions and generations of kids loved him as well. He always called me (or shouted at me) by my last name (never my first) but you knew it was out of affection.

Aside from being able to decently play just about any sport, camp also taught me about sportsmanship – how to win graciously and how to accept defeat and come back from it; how to treat teammates and opponents and even how to accept authority be it in the form of the umpire or your counselors. You learned how to live apart from your parents and co-exist in a group environment and deep friendships were formed. You learned about group loyalty and fighting for a cause in color war and inter-camp games (and how Luden’s and Dr. Smith’s cough drops could ameliorate a sore throat from all the shouting and cheering) and you learned patriotism at the morning and evening flagpole ceremonies.

The late Alan Sherman had a monster hit on radio in the 60s with his song lampooning sleep away camp called “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” which in the space of just a few minutes hilariously encapsulates the entire gamut of camp experiences and emotions. You can hear it on YouTube. Still as funny as ever. Everything seemed hyper real, hyper new and hyper important as a kid and it are those sensations and emotions that seem so remote all these years later. But on a week when we see so many board the camp buses it brings us back again to those days and engenders wisps of nostalgia for the carefree and privileged childhoods so many of us were afforded by generous parents who surely worked hard and sacrificed greatly to provide us with those treasured experiences and wonderful memories.

The Zeitgeist

Bachmann for President?

On Sunday, three-term Rep. Michele Bachmann declared her candidacy for President of the United States. She is now second in nationwide polls among likely Republican primary voters and tied with Mitt Romney in Iowa. I think she's going to have a very tough time of it, first, because she's a woman and women often have to be twice as smart and twice as good to get just half the respect as men; Second because of some unfavorable comparisons with Sarah Palin in that Bachmann does sometimes have silly slips of the tongue that come from either flat-out mistakes or misinformation; Third, she may not be able to raise enough money to beat Obama and fourth, she may not have positions enough towards the center to attract Independent voters who will certainly swing the general election one way or the other. 

But, I give her a lot of respect for tossing her hat into the ring. It makes the race more interesting and is an advancement for women in politics and government, which is in and of itself a good thing. Problem is that much of the mainstream media derides and attacks most women who are not liberal Democrats, so often GOP women are operating with even bigger hurdles to overcome.

On the issue of Israel, Bachmann is 100 percent rock solid. See her brief Israel video below. With friends like this in Congress, Israelis can sleep a bit more securely at night and that is also a very good thing.