It's funny how a bit of travel can make you see a familiar bike ride in a new way.
So, for that matter, can doing the ride with new partners--or with partners if you'd previously done it solo.
That's how I found myself seeing the roads and trails of the Palisades when I pedaled them with Bill and Cindy the other day.
It's also the first time I've ridden with either of them in a while: They've been spending their weekends in a secret hideaway they told me about.
Seeing this plant--a giant fern, a small tree or something else--made me visualize, if for a moment, some of the flora and fauna I saw while riding in Cambodia.
And this sheer rock face made me forget--even though I've seen it before--that it's just across the river from the Cloisters--which, in turn, can make you forget that you're in Upper Manhattan.
The further you ride into the trails, and the closer you get to the river, the easier it is to feel you're not within a few kilometers of the George Washington Bridge.
But something one of them said really made me see this old familiar ride in a new way: "You can almost imagine what it was like when the native people lived here."
Yes, sheer rock faces and colorful plants seem like eons as well as worlds away from the West Side Highway. It almost seems possible to remember that whatever structures were in the area weren't made of steel or glass--or even brick.
As we were imagining people who are long gone and vistas changed, I found myself thinking back to Cambodia, where most of the population are Khmers, the people who have lived on that land for milennia. Much of their landscape hasn't changed in centuries, whether in jungles that haven't been touched or the Angkor Wat and other temples, which were standing for centuries before the land we rode yesterday was called "New Jersey" and the other side of the river was named "New York", or even "New Amsterdam."
Those temples still stand today, seemingly as much a part of the land as the rock face we saw.
Note: The penultimate photo was not, of course, taken on the New Jersey Palisades. The others, however, were.
The Angkor Wat photo, as well as the first two in this post and the "blueberry" photo near the end, were taken by me. Bill took the others.
You come back from a trip like none you took before. You wish you were still on it. So what do you do?
Well, heading back to Cambodia and Laos right now isn't very feasible, at least not at this moment. I am determined, however, to return.
So what to do in the meantime? Well, I can take other shorter, less exotic journeys. That's an especially good strategy when you go to someplace that, though near, you've never visited before.
That's what I did yesterday, with Bill and his girlfriend Cindy. We went to Croton Gorge Park, about 75 kilometers from my apartment.
Now, you don't go to a place like that for cultural experiences, or exotic architecture or natural scenery. You go for the same reason city folk like us were there on a nearly-perfect summer day: It's a pleasant way to spend a weekend day.
From the main parking lot, you can ride a dirt-and-gravel trail up the hill to the aqueduct. A lot of people think you "need" a mountain bike, but I had no trouble with it while pedaling Arielle, my Mercian Audax, shod with 700 X 28C Continental Gatorskin tires. Bill didn't have any problem, either, on his Trek road bike. Cindy rode a Fuji Sagres with Pasela 700 X 28 tires; she slowed down in a couple of spots only because of her inexperience in riding in such conditions.
At the aqueduct, there is a beautiful road--which, at times, turns into a wide hard-packed trail--that more or less follows the shoreline of the "lake". Part of the road has "lake" in its name; indeed, many people refer to the reservoir as a lake because it's easy to forget that it's a manmade body of water.
The "falls" under the aqueduct were designed to stream the water, by gravity, to Manhattan. Built between 1837 and 1842, it's believed to be the first municipal water system of its type in the United States. At that time, most New Yorkers got their water from wells and springs, almost all of which have been filled in. (Chances are, if a New York street name has "Brook", "River" or some other body of water in its name, it probably was just that.) By the time the Croton system was being built, most of those water sources were already tainted, and people made the water palatable--if not safe--by adding spirits to it. (An early emphasis of the temperance movement was the provision of fresh water to the poor.) Not surprisingly, New York had rates of cholera and other water-borne diseases on par with those of places like Bombay (Mumbai).
Anyway, a short ride along New York State Road 129 took us to something called the North Country Trail, of which we rode part. We weren't surprised to see many other cyclists, as well as hikers, along the way.
We've made plans to go back. I'd really like to ride the area in the fall.
(Bill took the photos of me and Cindy; I took the others.)
Sometimes I joke about "going through the Gate of Hell to get to work every day." The truth is, I ride over Hell Gate and by the Hell Gate Bridge when I cross the RFK Memorial (a.k.a. Triborough) Bridge every morning.
On Sunday I took Bill and Cindy by it. If that was supposed to scare them into living on the straight and narrow, it wasn't very effective. Then again, how could I scare, or persuade, anybody or anything into being straight?
But I digress. We were riding to Van Cortland Park. They wanted to take the Greenway along the Hudson River (and the West Side Highway.) While I like the views and that it's so close to the water, I knew that on a sunny Sunday, half of the cyclists, 70 percent of the skateboarders and 99 percent of the people with dogs or baby strollers would be on that path. Pedaling through the Port Morris industrial area--deserted on Sunday--and Bronx side streets would be bucolic by comparison.
So, after taking Bill and Cindy through, or by, the Gates of Hell, we descended (literally) to Randall's Island where we rode underneath the Amtrak viaduct. After the Gate, these arches were rather impressive. Funny thing is, I don't normally see them that way: They are, after all, part of my commute.
So are these houses on Alexander Avenue in the Bronx:
Not far away are these houses. Save for the graffiti next to the "fish" building, almost nobody expects to see them in the South Bronx:
They're diagonally across from each other on the Grand Concourse. The mansion is the Freedman House, built in the 1920s for formerly-wealthy people who had fallen on hard times. Now it contains an event space, art studio and bed-and-breakfast. It's almost jarring to see such a classically Florentine house across the Concourse from the Art Deco building with its mosaic.
Anyway, Cindy had an appointment and had to leave us before we reached Van Cortlandt Park. Back when I lived on the Upper West Side and in Washington Heights, I used to take quick spins to the park, where I would check out whatever was on display in the Manor or watch the Irish rugby and soccer players. Time marches on, and now there are different folks playing a different game.
The clouds thickened, but never threatened rain. But they didn't portend anything like Spring, either. Rolling across the hills of Riverdale, they broke against the shore of Spuyten Duyvil, another place almost nobody expects to find in the Bronx:
In most of the Northern Hemisphere, the most unpredictable, or at least the most variable, weather comes in April.
I was reminded of that last week, when the contrast between my afternoon ride on Wednesday and the longer ride I took on Friday--which included Wednesday's route--could not have been more stark. And Saturday's ride went from the almost summer-like warmth I experienced on Friday to the near-winter conditions of my Wednesday ride--all within the space of an hour.
Within the warmth and sunshine of Friday and early Saturday, though, there was an even more striking disparity--between my senses.
The warmth I was feeling against my skin (Shorts! Short-sleeved top!) in no way reflected much of what I saw around me.
The trees hadn't yet begun to bud in the Greenwich Common, where I rode on Friday
nor along the Verrazano Narrows promenade or Owl's Head Park, where I rode with Bill and Cindy the following day.
The funniest part, though, is that after Cindy had to leave for another commitment, Bill and I rode through some of the Brooklyn backstreets of my childhood and youth (and, I must add, to the Rimini Bakery on Bay Parkway, where I introduced him to sfogliatelle, my favorite pastry). The temperature dropped during that part of the ride. After I put on layers I'd brought with me, we saw this:
the first budding tree--a cherry blossom. It's late this year. I can forgive it: Whenever I see it, I'm happy--even if it isn't in harmony with the cold wind against my skin!
On Sunday, Bill, Cindy and I took the ferry from the Brooklyn Army Terminal, about a mile from Bill's apartment, to Rockaway Beach. Perhaps I "read" the choppiness of the water into everything I experienced on the ride, from the wind skittering over sand and marsh grasses to the clouds scattered through the sky.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed the ride. It wasn't long, but the company and the vistas were pleasant, and sometimes interesting.
Saying that someone lives in "a house by the water" probably conjures, for most people, an image of its inhabitants gazing over expanses of sea and sky from an open-air balcony or glass-enclosed solarium. But, really, it can mean much else, such as this
or this
The first photo probably is a better reflections of most people (at least those who've never lived in such places) have of living "in a beach house" or "by the ocean". There is one difference, of course: more color. If anything, it might look more like South Beach, Miami than the South Shore of Long Island.
The other photo is probably closer to the reality of most waterside residents. If you think you've seen it before, you probably have: A couple of weeks ago, we rode by it when the tide was out and mud and other detritus oozed (where murky water would lap around when the tide is in) between those islands of marsh grass and houses.
We are still trying to figure out what the geared wheel is. My theory is that there was a boat dock there at some point--perhaps as recently as in the days just before Sandy--and that wheel was part of some mechanism that towed boats in. Now that I think of it, I recall seeing boats in the area before Sandy.
Anyway, on the way back to Bill's place, we rode through Sunset Park. Many, many years ago, my grandparents took me to the top of this hill
in the park. The view doesn't seem to change much. Or maybe there is more change than I realize, and I just don't see it because I always look out, toward the harbor and Statue, from that hill. It's as if some law of physics applies only in that spot: My eyes cannot turn in any other direction.
But at least that view is different from any other maritime or littoral vista I have encountered. It has to be, even if someone builds houses of the blue and green and terra cotta tiles--or gnarled bark-- between me and the expanse of harbor: the one I saw with my grandparents more than half a century ago, and with Bill and Cindy the other day.
When I first learned about Western Civilization (yes, with a capital C and capital W!*), I was taught about a period called the Dark Ages, which was in turn followed by the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Everyone seemed to agree that the Dark Ages began when the Roman Empire fell (in the 5th Century C.E.) and ended more or less with the millenium, but there was more debate about the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Anyway, I grew up with an image of the Dark Ages as a defoliated, barren landscape broken up by patches of mud and huts from wattles made. And in the late part of the Middle Ages, the brightening but still austere light of winter-turning-into-spring made the landscape all the more stark.
Years later, when I would first read The Canterbury Tales, I somehow pictured Chaucer writing in such an environment, just as the first buds of irises and crocuses and lilacs were peeking out of sinewy vines and weary earth.
That landscape of my imagination came to life, more or less, on Saturday, when I went for a ride with Bill and his friend Cindy. Not that the landscape was a bad thing: When I ride, it's all good. And they were fun to ride with.
Our spin took us, ultimately, to the ocean. Along the way, just after we crossed over the Belt Parkway between the Queens neighborhoods of Ozone Park and Howard Beach, we encountered this entirely appropriate (for the season, but unlikely for the location) sign of the season:
I've ridden horses only a couple of times in my life. I would ride one again. Even if I don't, though, I'm glad to see them--although I'm sure they'd rather not be fenced in. Everything about them--their beauty, their movements and the aura they have--reminds me of what I love about cycling. In fact, they embody, they are, the freedom I feel when I'm in the saddle, with two pedals at my feet and two wheels between me and the street (or ground).
They can skip with the wind. We can glide with it. They gallop over reeds and fields. We pedal by them. And we and they can trod or slosh through mud--or not. Our reasons, of course, are different. We didn't ride through this mud because, well, it wasn't all mud:
It was odd to see such a vista just within the limits of New York City, just before the Atlantic Beach Bridge. Even when it's full of water, when the tide comes in, it seems almost out of place. But exposed or submerged, wet or dry, with the tide in or out, it was exactly right for a day like Saturday.
Anyway, these very-early-spring days full of sun and wind--especially when they include rides to the sea--always seem like beginnings. So, perhaps, it's appropriate that I was riding with a new friend in Bill and I may have made another in Cindy.
And, like the ride I took two weeks ago, I introduced a new bike. Well, all right, Dee-Lilah, my Mercian Vincitore Special, is indeed a brand-new bike. But on Saturday, I rode another Mercian that looks brand-new.
I am talking about Tosca, my fixed-gear bike. A while back, I sent her to Mercian for repairs and refinishing. She finally got to see the light of an American day again.
She may have a new look. But she rides like an old friend, only better! I'll write more about her soon.
N.B. All of the photos in this post--except for the one of me and Bill--were taken by Bill. That photo came from Cindy.
