Updates

 

A few quick updates:

My friend Carrie has been making slow progress, but progress nonetheless, on her bike. She’s up to riding a mile. While that may not seem like much, remember that she is only a few years younger than I am and hadn’t ridden in (by her reckoning) at least 25 years.

The trailer that nearly impaled the young man I encountered yesterday is still parked in the same spot, next to the Fordham University campus. I now realize that it’s been there for some time. 

As for the young man: I haven’t heard from him. I hope he’s OK.

Not Even In The Middle Of A Ride

Less than a kilometer from my apartment, I saw a young man sitting hunched-over on the curb. His bike lay beside him. Blood spurted from his left leg.

I stopped and propped my bike against a wall. Fortunately for him, two other women had already stopped to help him. One called for an ambulance; the other gave him a bottle of water and tissues she’d been carrying in her purse. I asked what, I now realize, one or both of those women probably had already asked: How did it happen? Can you move your leg? Did you hit your head? 

Fortunately for him, he answered the last question “no:” He hadn’t worn a helmet. But, he said, after his leg hit something that protruded from a parked construction trailer—and he couldn’t avoid because drivers drove so close—he fell on his side, shoulder-first. He didn’t, however, feel any pain there, and I saw no bruises or scrapes:  just strands of muscle and bone.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he lifts weights.

The woman who called the ambulance was on her way to a meeting and the one with the water and tissues had to pick up her kid.  So I stayed with the young man until the ambulance arrived, and after: I offered words of encouragement as the paramedics checked his legs, took his blood pressure and pulse and did all of those things paramedics do in the situation.  I asked him whether he wanted or needed anything else:  Can I contact someone for him? Could I bring his bike to his place? He said no, and thanked me. So did the paramedics.  But he gave me his number, and I texted him.

Midlife Rock Stars?

On this date in 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The following day, Neil Armstrong and “Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

I was a kid, so those days were not like any others I had ever known.  It was the first time that I could recall when, it seemed, the world stopped: regularly-scheduled television programs, baseball games and other events were paused, postponed, canceled or rescheduled. There was nothing else on TV because, really, not many people would have wanted to watch anything else.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Aldrin and Armstrong—and Michael Collins, who remained in orbit around the moon and, arguably, was the most important person in Apollo 11’s success— were given a hero’s welcome. I would go as far as to say the that they attained a status in people’s minds that no one else has before or since.

In one sense, they were like rock stars: They seemed larger than life and so many young people wanted to be like them—or, at least, the image they held of those men. And that image includes one of youth: The fame, fortune and glamor of being a rock star seems attainable because some achieve it in their 20s or even earlier: They aren’t much older than siblings, cousins or, in some cases, aunts or uncles. And in one sense, the astronauts seemed young because they were fit and energetic (and, depending on your perspective, handsome) and represented the future.

The image, of course, differs from the reality. Just almost no young person has any idea of just how much hard work it takes to become a successful musical performer, even if you have Jimi Hendrix’s talent, they don’t know how much intensive training someone has to undergo—sometimes at the cost of marriages and other things in life—to become an astronaut.

Oh, and the astronauts weren’t as young as they might have seemed. Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins were born within a few months of each other in 1930. That would have made them nearly 40 by the time of Apollo 11. While that is not old, I think some would say they were middle-aged. Given Armstrong lived to be 82 and Collins to 90–and that Aldrin is 96–they could all be said to have been, literally, in the middle of their lives when they took that historic flight.

Did that make them midlife rock stars?