One thing about air shows: You don't have to be at the venue in which they're held in order to see them. You can see them for miles around.
I should have remembered that when I decided to head for Point Lookout yesterday. When I got there, I wondered why it was so crowded (well, at least in comparison to the way it usually is). Jones Beach, where the the Bethpage Air Show was held, is only the length of a football (soccer, I mean) field from the rocks at Point Lookout where I usually lunch and/or meditate in the middle of my ride. So, of course, the spectators at Point Lookout had as good a vantage point as the folks at Jones Beach or Bethpage.
In a way, that turned out just as well. I took Tosca--my Mercian fixed gear--along a sandy path to a more remote area of the beach. The tide was out, so there was a lot of beach. (In places like Jones Inlet, what's good for bathers or beach loungers is not good for boaters: The fact that the tide was out also meant that sandbars were exposed.) She didn't mind that I pushed her along the sand: I pedaled into the wind most of the way out there, so I was pushing pretty hard on the pedals.
Of course, that meant I had the wind at my back for most of my way back. Interestingly, even though there was a crowd at Point Lookout, I didn't see much traffic anywhere along my ride--not even along the strips of bars and restaurants in Long Beach and Rockaway Beach.
They were still watching the air show, I think, when I got home.
I should have remembered that when I decided to head for Point Lookout yesterday. When I got there, I wondered why it was so crowded (well, at least in comparison to the way it usually is). Jones Beach, where the the Bethpage Air Show was held, is only the length of a football (soccer, I mean) field from the rocks at Point Lookout where I usually lunch and/or meditate in the middle of my ride. So, of course, the spectators at Point Lookout had as good a vantage point as the folks at Jones Beach or Bethpage.
In a way, that turned out just as well. I took Tosca--my Mercian fixed gear--along a sandy path to a more remote area of the beach. The tide was out, so there was a lot of beach. (In places like Jones Inlet, what's good for bathers or beach loungers is not good for boaters: The fact that the tide was out also meant that sandbars were exposed.) She didn't mind that I pushed her along the sand: I pedaled into the wind most of the way out there, so I was pushing pretty hard on the pedals.
Of course, that meant I had the wind at my back for most of my way back. Interestingly, even though there was a crowd at Point Lookout, I didn't see much traffic anywhere along my ride--not even along the strips of bars and restaurants in Long Beach and Rockaway Beach.
They were still watching the air show, I think, when I got home.
