Two Views As The Fall Turns

Here in the New York Metro area, we've just had a weekend of warmer-than-normal fall weather, punctuated by showers late in the morning and early in the afternoon on Sunday.  I did a fair, but not unusual (for me, anyway) amount of riding.  

Saturday brought me and Dee-Lilah, my Mercian Vincitore Special, to Point Lookout.  In previous rides to the Point, instead of "the rocks," I've made another beach area, known mainly to residents, my turn-around point.  While it doesn't have as commanding a view as "the rocks" (where there are now large mounds of sand), the quality of light--a scrim of sea mist across a screen where blue meets blue--is serene.  It reminds me that when I'm cycling (or reading or writing) alone, I feel further from loneliness than I've felt in some of my relationships and in social situations.

I rode into the wind just about all the way to the Point--which meant, of course, that I had the wind at my back on my way home for my last ride before the end of Daylight Savings Time.

Yesterday I got out later than I'd planned.  Since I figured (correctly, it turned out) on taking a shorter ride, I hopped on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bike.  I had no particular destination in mind.  My ride turned mainly into a series of dodges around the street closures and crowds gathered for the New York City Marathon.

On my way back, I pedaled up the Vernon Boulevard bike lane, which detours through Queensbridge and Rainey Parks.  Just past Rainey is an ersatz "beach" and kayak launch site below street level--where, less than a mile across the river from the Manhattan skyline, an autumnal vista more reminiscent of the New England seashore presented itself.

The weekend marked, to me, the end of one part of Fall.  Now another begins.  The light will be different, I am sure, but still beautiful.

Into The Sleepy Hollow Sunset

Last week, I said this year's foliage seemed less colorful than that of previous years.   Well, it seems that I picked the wrong week to complain.  I saw some more color during a ride I took--to Connecticut--on Thursday, and even more about 50 kilometers north of the city.

Bill and I rode along the South County Trail, which begins in Van Cortlandt Park, near the Bronx-Westchester border, and continues parallel to the Hudson River.  Parts of it follow the Saw Mill River.  In some places, it looks more like a drainage canal than a river; in other spots, it's a turbid pool.  But, believe it or not, there are rapids and falls--and, even better, scenes like thesw.

Most of the trail is paved or hard-packed dirt.  But the part in Van Cortlandt seems to have been mud since the beginning of time.  There was a time when I would have said that getting myself muddied up, or sweaty, made me "deserving" of the beauty I saw around me.  But, the other day, the mud was simply another part of the picture, if you will.

Because of the marathon, we started later than we'd planned:  So many streets were closed that we had trouble navigating our way to our meeting point.  The part of Queens where I live was effectively cut off from Brooklyn, and the bridges and streets where people were allowed to circulate freely were full.  

Not only did we start late, we had less daylight to work with because Daylight Savings Time ended.  The day ended early, but at least, in Sleepy Hollow (a.k.a. Tarrytown), we saw this: