Yesterday I pedaled out to the Brooklyn Army Terminal, better known today as a terminal for the ferries to downtown Manhattan and the Rockaways.
BAT has also been a vaccination site--which is the reason I rode there. I got my second jab; the first went well, so I figured I wouldn't have any problem riding there or back.
I didn't. I did, however, enjoy a beautiful early Spring afternoon. I still find it ironic to be riding a bike for enjoyment in a place where men like my uncles and grandfather did difficult and often dangerous work.
And they weren't going there to look at the Statue of Liberty, the passing boats or the lower Manhattan skyline. The latter looked very different in those days--which included my early childhood. The Twin Towers that came tumbling down after the 9.11 attacks had yet to be built. They may not have even been conceived, any more than the promenade or cafes were--or the notion that the piers would ever be used for anything other than unloading loading and unloading the ships that came and went, and the flatbed railroad cars that connected them to the factories were still other men (and some women) did other kinds of hard and dangerous work.
And to think--getting jabbed with a needle was the most pain I experienced on this waterfront, where so many others endured so much more, and ocean waves lapped against ships with cabins soaked within by their sweat, the blood of some and the tears of others.
I rode, my wheels seemingly lofted by the sun and wind.
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