Yesterday I wrote about my participation in a memorial ride for Alex Pretti, the intensive care unit nurse—and cyclist—murdered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis.
Say what you will about my mental state, but I have a difficult time using the word “ice,” even in reference to a frozen liquid: the way it’s been used for its entire history in the English language.
But today I will break the ice (pun intended) and talk about what I’ve seeing during the (admittedly little) cycling I’ve done during the past two weeks: the longest spell of below-freezing temperatures we’ve had in a long time. I don’t mind the cold so much, but the freeze also included a snowstorm last week and plowing of streets has been, shall we say, episodic. And snow has turned to ice, especially in the bike lanes.
Anyway, on Monday I noticed something I hadn’t seen in years:
Technically, the Hudson River isn’t a river where it separates Manhattan from New Jersey: the water is brackish, in contrast to the fresh flow further upstream. So the Hudson’s New York City stretch, like the misnamed East River, which is really an inlet of the ocean, rarely glazes over (unlike many of my students’ eyes).
On the other hand, I suspect this body of water freezes more frequently:
Paine Lake stands next to the Paine House, where the author of “Common Sense,” an inspirational for American Revolutionaries, lived. How we need him now, when the political climate is even more inhospitable than this winter’s weather!
