All I Cared About

 Yesterday I rode to Point Lookout. About an hour in, I chided myself for a late start: Since the end of Daylight Savings Time, it’s been getting dark around 17:00. But I stopped worrying once I saw this:

On my way back, I definitely needed my lights by then time I got to the stretch of Rockaway Boardwalk from about 38th to 52nd Streets:  It was unlit. To my right were undeveloped swaths of shrubs and sea grasses all the way to the elevated tracks;  to my left, the unprotected beach and ocean. 

The first time I went to that part of Queens, just on the other side of the tracks, I was leading creative writing workshops as an artist-in-residence at one of the schools. Teachers and pupils cautioned me against the stretch of boardwalk early last evening: Because of its relative desolation, strollers and joggers were beaten, robbed and worse.  

That was, if I recall correctly, not long after the Central Park jogger incident. You couldn’t escape the fear of crime. While, according to statistics, crime is way down from those days, the stretch might’ve been even more deserted than I’d been warned.  Before passing through that forlorn strip, the Boardwalk skirts an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Far Rockaway. Because the sun had set on Friday, the women in long skirts and flat shoes, the men with tzitzit dangling from their shirts weren’t riding or walking by the sea; they were at home, having lit their candles half an hour or so earlier.

I wasn’t worried; if anything, I felt more peace than I usually feel. Perhaps it was the knowledge that I was keeping up a good pace and, like a younger version of myself, could out-ride almost any danger.  

Some of that confidence may have come from riding my best bike: my custom Mercian Vincitore Special. But I wasn’t thinking about the bike which, some would argue, is a good sign: It fits and runs well.  Perhaps my confidence had to do with the fact that, in a stretch devoid of distractions, I could only ride, and I only wanted to ride. I had no reason to care whether anyone would be impressed (or not) with me or my bike. 

I wonder whether being in Japan and having spent considerable time in Europe, among people who simply ride, has something to do with my attitude. Or, perhaps, I have reached that stage of midlife I’ve heard about: when you stop caring about what other people think. (Hint: Many don’t think, or they’re simply not thinking about you.) Whatever the case may be, I had a great ride.