12 January 2017

Out Of Season, Again

Earlier today, I wrote about a "winter" ride in a place that doesn't have winter--at least, not in any way people in my part of the world--let alone places like Minnesota and Canada and Scotland and Finland--experience it.  In other words, I was writing about a warm-weather ride in January.

Well, I had the opportunity to experience such a thing.  If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might have guessed where I am.  




Yes, that is the ocean on the horizon.  Of course, there are places not far from my apartment where I can ride up the slope of a bridge and, at its apex, gaze out into an expanse of sea and sky:  the Veterans' Memorial Bridge from Broad Channel to Rockaway Beach, for example.  But yesterday I rode in a place where I could do it in shorts, sans jacket.

Here is another clue to where I am:




They don't sell fishing equipment in the Key Food or Stop & Shop supermarkets in Rockaway Beach--or, to my knowledge,anyplace else in New York.  For that matter, you can't buy a hunting rifle--or any other kind of firearm--from the Walmart in the Green Acres Shopping Mall, just over the city line in Nassau County. But you can get them in the "Wally World" about two kilometers from where I am now.

Yes, I am in Florida, for my more-or-less annual visit with my parents.  I got here this morning.  After the snow that turned to wind and rain during the past week, it is almost surreal to ride in bright sunlight and into a warm breeze that would later blow at my back as I spun and glided up Route A1A, beside dunes covered with sea oats and cacti that rippled and echoed the rustling hiss of the roiling tides.

Then again, it might be just as strange, or even stranger, to encounter unseasonably warm weather when I return to New York!

3 comments:

  1. Has this cheered me up, I woke to a white world? I always find returning to cold quite depressing after a couple of weeks in the sunshine...

    At least you can remind us that warm rides are ahead of us.

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  2. Coline--I try to bring joy wherever I can!

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