Cycling Through The Gates of Autumn

I got up late today.  So my ride took me to a sunset:

The sun has just set behind Jamaica Bay, near the place it meets the Atlantic at Breezy Point.  I stumbled over this view on the Queens side of the Gil Hodges-Marine Park Bridge.  That view led to another bridge:

To get to these views, we crossed another bridge:

The day was chilly and windy, and became more of both after we crossed this bridge from Beach Channel to the Rockaways.  But somehow I didn't feel the cold.  Maybe I was channeling the sky:  Clouds spread like a shawl across a graying sea and houses that still have some of the warmth and light the sun within them.

And the way to these views was a bike ride through the gates of autumn:

Some of us have to carry a lot to get there:

Sometimes the journey is long, or seems that way:

And where does it lead?  Hopefully, to some place like this:

And it continues.  There is no escaping it, though some will try:

b

That's a washed-out stretch of the Greenway, where it parallels Belt Parkway along Brooklyn's South Shore.  I asked someone to take a photo of me, but I didn't like it.  So I took this photo of a couple I saw cycling.  

Where else could they have been riding but through a sunset in the gates of autumn.