I am writing from this desk
after eating lunch in this room
with an audience
in this house
All right, I was exaggerating, well, a little. After all, if I were writing and eating in a place like that, I probably wouldn't have gotten there on this
Or maybe I would have. After all, the person who is the reason was known to ride a bicycle, even after the automobile--which he loved--became common in the US. In fact, he loved autos so much that he was a denizen of the "birthplace of speed."
That cradle of velocity is a beach something like this one
in a city that borders the one best known for its race track.
That city, of course, is this one:
and the 'burg on its border is Ormond Beach, home to the "Birthplace of Speed" and the house I visited yesterday.
The house is known colloquially as The Casements. John D. Rockefeller. Contrary to what some people believe, he didn't actually commission it. He did, however, put his unmistakable stamp on it. And, the fact that he lived in it for the last two decades of his life is probably what saved it from the wreckers' ball when it fell into ruin after plans to turn it into a resort hotel never materialized.
Another misconception about the house is that it was the first to be built with casement windows. Actually, the style existed for about two centuries before they were incorporated into Rockefeller's residence. One could argue, however, that the house helped to popularize them in the US, particularly in Florida.
After my date with royalty (or, at least, the closest we come to having it in the US), I rode to Daytona Beach and back up State Route A1A, where I could spend days taking in the views of the ocean and flora and fauna.
After pedaling through Painters Hill (I'm still looking for the hill!), I turned away from A1A and the ocean. After crossing the bridge over the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, I rode the path along Palm Coast Parkway and saw some of the prettier roadside vegetation I've encountered.
All of that, and 120 kilometers of cycling. Not a bad day, I'd say.
This is the way the year ends
Not with a bang but a bike ride.
All right, so that's not how T.S. Eliot ended The Hollow Men. But, the other day I ended 2018 with one of the best rides I've taken in Florida.
The wind pushed against me for the entire 30 miles (50 kilometers) from my parents' house to the Daytona Beach boardwalk. But I didn't mind, even though I was riding a rusty baloon-tire beach bomber: It was a great excuse to bomb onto the beach and into the water.
This is something you definitely wouldn't do in New York on New Year's Eve (unless, perhaps, you are a member of the Polar Bear Club.) I mean, the temperature doesn't reach 82F (28C) on Coney Island Beach on the last day of the year--though it could happen some year, given the effects of climate change. On the other hand, my hometown probably won't have the sky or sunshine I experienced on my ride. (I got sunburned even though I applied sunscreen twice.)
I also wouldn't see anything like this
or this
both of which I encountered on the way back, along Route A1A, between Ormond Beach and Gamble Rogers State Park. Nor would I have seen this
which greeted me in Beverly Beach, near the aptly-named Painters Hill.
Because I took the route through Beverly Beach and Painters Hill, the ride back was longer. But it was also easier, because the wind I pushed against was pushing at my back. So, in all, I rode about 65 miles (105 kilometers) for my last trip of the year.
The following day (yesterday), I started 2019 by riding along A1A in the opposite direction, to St. Augustine. The temperature reached the previous day's levels, and the sun shone brightly, but only a breeze blew at my back on the way up, and into my face on the way back. In all, I covered about the same distance--just over 100 kilometers--I did to end the previous day, and year.
The ride took me over a bridge that spans Matanzas Inlet. Now, if you know more Spanish than I, you know "matanzas" means "slaughters".
Indeed, people were slaughtered there: specifically, French Huguenots who had the temerity to build a refuge for themselves at Fort Caroline, in what is now Jacksonville. The problem was that they didn't fortify or defend their garrison very well. So, when the Spanish attacked, it fell easily. At the same time, a French flotilla sailed from Fort Caroline with the purpose of attacking St. Augustine. It, however, was blown off course by a storm. When some French survivors were found, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the founder of St. Augustine, ordered their execution.
Of course, I'm sure nobody on the beach was thinking about that. I could hardly blame them: The clear skies, warm air and calm sea wouldn't bring slaughter or execution to very many people's minds. And, I admit, for me, the serene littoral vista made for a nearly perfect ride to start a new year.
Another dawn ride in the Sunshine State. Really, given the heat and humidity, it really is the best time to pedal. Plus, my parents live just far enough from the ocean that I can start just before sunrise and, within a few minutes, be treated to scenes like this:
That, from a place called Hammock. And this from, appropriately, Painter's Hill:
At that time of morning, one finds more surfers or fishers than swimmers. (Leave it to me to be, as always, a minority--both as a swimmer and cyclist!) When you're up before most other people and throw yourself at a great expanse that seems like infinity, it's hard not to wonder about the meaning of it all:
As it turns out, the woman in the second photo was watching her daughter:
As my mother is not, and never has been, a cyclist, surfer, swimmer or fisher, we have a different mother-daughter relationship. It was still more than welcome at the end of today's ride, in which I managed to beat the midday heat and afternoon rain.
Yesterday I got back from a few days in Florida. I spent some time with Mom and Dad. As usual, I ate too much: How could I do otherwise when I'm surrounded by Mom's cooking. (At least, it seems like there's food everywhere I turn when I'm there!) How does the saying go? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we can diet. Or something like that.
Of course, we all know that, at this time of year, you go to Florida for the weather. And indeed it was warmer there than it was in New York: 30F (-1C) when my flight landed in the Sunshine State. It was 3F (-16C) that morning in New York.
As for the State's motto: We did get sunshine, yesterday and the day before. The two days before that looked more like this:
Hmm...The Atlantic Ocean at Painter's Hill might actually be even prettier under an overcast sky.
In such conditions, I am not the only one in Flagler Beach contemplating her existence:
We all know that the ocean is really an infinite road, perhaps the one not taken (Sorry, Robert!):
I'll blame the fact that I didn't ride further along this road than I did on the bike: The rear wheel was literally falling apart. I rode back to Mom's house as darkness was approaching. I figured that the next day I could get the bike to the shop. But Dad took me there the following morning. By the time I changed the wheel, the sun was playing tag with the clouds and I followed more of that road--and A1A, along the ocean.
I confess: I was following this procession:
I don't know what, if anything, this has to do with cycling, or anything else. But it's taking up a few of my brain cells, so I thought I'd mention it here.
I'm going to show you two photos. Does either or neither, or do both, express anything that 2012 has meant to you--or that you anticipate for 2013?
There are at least a couple of different ways in which you can experience deja vu during a bike ride.
The most common way, of course, is to see familiar sights during along a route you've ridden before. More often than not, that is a pleasant or at least agreeable situation. After all, you wouldn't be doing the ride again if you don't get some kind of pleasure from it.
Then there is what I will call, for lack of a better term, situational deja vu. Any number of situations or other experiences can repeat themselves during a ride. Among them are weather, road conditions, fatigue, exhiliaration or some emotion or another that you're dealing with.
Yet another kind of deja vu is, paradoxically, the most ephemeral yet the one that affects us most deeply. It's the one in which we recall feelings or memories which may have come to us on rides very different from the one we're on at the moment. Or we have expereinced those emotions during rides we did much earlier in our lives, or in places very different from the one in which we happen to be riding.
There are other ways, I'm sure, in which we can experience deja vu during a bike ride. I've just mentioned three I could think of at this moment. They also happen to be the ways in which I experienced deja vu on today's ride.
Although this is my first visit to, and therefore my first bike ride in, Florida in two years, every inch of today's ride was at least somewhat familiar to me. I had previously ridden every crack and grain of sand my tires tread, though not necessarily in the sequence in which I rode them today. But it seemed that the flow of sense memories was all but seamless.
It began when I crossed the bridge from Palm Coast Parkway to Route A1A:
Hannibal is said to have shouted "Excelsior!" after conquering the Alps. Whatever he was feeling, it has nothing on the sensation I experience as I reach the apex of a bridge that connects the mainland to a strip of land along the sea. At such moments, I feel as if I'm exhaling for the first time, whether the bridge is the one I crossed today, the one that connects Broad Channel to Rockaway Beach, the one I crossed over the estuary of the Dordogne river to the coast near Bordeaux or the one from Highlands to Sandy Hook in New Jersey.
It was over that last bridge that I took my first long rides during my early teen years.
And that bridge led, like the one I crossed today, led to a spit of land that stands, almost defiantly, between the ocean and another body of water. When you ride along Route 36 from Sandy Hook to Long Branch, the ocean is never more than two hundred feet to your left and the Shrewsbury River is no further than that to your right. When you ride A1A from Palm Coast to Flagler Beach, the dunes of Painters Hill (such an apt name!) and Beverly Beach are practically at arm's length on your left, and you're separated by no more than the width of a grove or mobile-home "campground" from the Florida Intercoastal Waterway.
Even though this is Florida, I'll admit that today's ride is more beautiful than the ones in New Jersey or to Rockaway Beach. But in the end, I enjoy it--and, more important, it matters to me for the same reasons as those rides, and the one in the southwest of France. They all are bridges to deja vu.
