Hands During A Ride

 No, they’re Michelangelo’s hands of God and Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Nor are they Albrecht Dūrer’s Praying Hands

or Auguste Rodin’s Cathedrale.

Nor is it the work of any other dead white guy whose work I love.

Rather, it’s from a woman who, old and white as she is, very much lives among us.

I saw Sassona Walter’s “Touch” yesterday in front of the old Greenwich Town Hall. I pedaled Negrosa, my vintage Mercian Olympic on an all-but-perfect first-Sunday-in-August morning. 

The ride home was pleasantly uneventful until almost the end.  On the Randall’s Island-to-Queens span of the RFK Bridge, a young guy on a motor scooter just missed my elbow.  

Something seemed strange about the encounter.  A moment later, I realized I hadn’t cursed the guy out, even to myself. Was I becoming more of a lady—or simply more accustomed to such things?

Well, a couple of moments later, he took a tumble about ten meters in front of me.  I stopped, and a guy on a motorized bike pulled up.

Turns out, the guy on the scooter jammed his brake when he hit a bump. He had a few scrapes but, fortunately, didn’t hit his head. 

The guy on the motorized bike and I offered him water, which he turned down. But when we reached our hands to his, he let us lift him up. Then, on discovering that the brake mechanism had broken, we walked with him the rest of the way across the bridge.

Not Paved With Gold: Lined With It

We've had some insanely nice weather the past few days.  That's going to end late this afternoon or tonight, according to weather forecasts.  Rain will fall, but it won't be anything like what folks in Texas and Florida have experienced.  And it won't be accompanied by wind.

This morning's commute, though, was a treat:

Hell Gate doesn't seem so Hellish when the sun rises amidst the columns of morning.

From the dawn horizon, I rode the Randall's Island path underneath the Amtrak trestle (a.k.a. the Hell Gate Bridge) to the Randall's Island Connector.

Randall's Island Connector: The Bronx's new car-free link to Manhattan from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

Legend has it that people emigrated to the US after hearing that streets in America were "paved with gold."  Believe it or not, such stories still circulate and entice the poor, the hungry and the ambitious to come here.

Of course we all know the streets aren't "paved with gold".  But, for a moment, it seemed as if the Randall's Island Connector was lined with it:

A good day has followed.

Tonight, St. Nick Might Have Another Chance To Use Rudolph As A "Blinky"

I am a heartless b***h.  Una puta.  Une putaine.

At least, some of my students are saying such things about me.  I can understand: After all, they just got their grades. 

But animal-rights activists might also be saying such things about me after what I said about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  Actually, they should direct their ire toward that guy with a white beard in the red costume.  After all, he's the one using a poor, innocent rangifer tarandus  as a Planet Bike Superflash--and further endangering him by putting him at the front instead of the rear, where he belongs.

Well, Ain't, I mean Saint, Nick might get a chance to perpetuate his misdeed tonight:

Even if he imposes unfair burdens on his beasts, I don't want him to crash into the Empire State Building--which, believe it or not, is in that fog, somewhere behind the "cross" on the RFK Bridge.
 

The Mysterious Syntax Of A Road Sign

Some people seem to believe that writing or speaking grammatically is elitist or simply fussy.  Then there are those who are convinced that those of us who do are conspiring against them in some way or another.

Now, I don't pretend to speak (or write) with perfect grammar all of the time. I think I do it often enough to be understood, at least most of the time. If nothing else, I know how poorly constructed sentences with unclear phrasing can lead to misunderstandings--and keep lawyers busy.

Hey, proper punctuation can save a person's life. If you don't believe me, look at this:

Rescind order to execute prisoner.

Now, tell me:  Does the prisoner live or die in that sentence?

If we add a comma, the intent is clearer:

Rescind order, to execute prisoner.

If that sentence was in the governor's memo, the inmate in question would be choosing his or her last meal.  However, another kind of punctuation, placed in another part of the sentence, gives us an entirely different outcome:

Rescind:  Order to execute prisoner.

Now, there aren't such drastic examples (to my knowledge, anyway) in the world of cycling. However, in an earlier post, I showed how a poorly-phrased sign can say something different from--even the exact opposite of--what was intended.

Today I saw another sign--on the RFK/Triborough Bridge--that doesn't convey what I believe the Department of Transportation is trying to tell us:

So, the graphic part of the sign is saying that graffiti isn't allowed.  Then the first four words of the text say it's a crime.  So far, it makes sense.

But what does "camera enforced" mean?  Is crime "camera enforced"?  Perhaps the person who wrote the sign speaks another language and, while composing the sign, his or her brain flipped from English to whatever, causing a change in syntax. A "camera enforced crime" would be a "crime camera enforced" in French, Spanish, Italian or a lot of other languages.

Hmm...Maybe the city didn't want to spend the money to print the sign in both English and Spanish.  

Or is the sign trying to tell us that graffiti is camera enforced?  Now that would be interesting, if in an Orwellian sort of way. 
 

The Day Begins; It Is Dawn--For Whom?

This semester, I've been teaching early morning classes.  When the term began, I was pedaling in bright, often shadowless, pre-dawn light.  But as the season deepened into fall, I was seeing sunset and, after Daylight Savings Time ended, I was getting to work just as the sun was rising.  

All of that has meant seeing what people don't.  You've seen some examples in some of my earlier posts.  Some of the sights were just lovely; others had their own grittier kinds of poetry.  This morning I saw an example of both:

Speaking of gritty poetry:  As I took this photo--with my cell phone, on Randall's Island near the Bronx spur of the RFK/Triboro Bridge--some verses streamed through my mind:

La aurora de Nueva York gime
por las inmensas escaleras 
buscando entre las aristas
nardos de anguista dibujada.

It's the second stanza of Federico Garcia Lorca's "La Aurora" ("The Dawn") and can be translated something like this:

The dawn in New York grieves
along immense stairways
seeking among the groins
spikenards of fine-drawn anguish.

Perhaps recalling those verses was a harbinger of what I would see as I descended the ramps on the Bronx side of the spur:

I've seen him before.  Actually, I've never seen him:  I've only seen the blanket and recognize the way he swaddles himself in it.  Once, I got a glimpse of his face poking out of his bundle.  I don't think he knows:  He was still sleeping, as he was today.


Usually, he's in the corner, curled up as if he were in the womb, his first--and, perhaps, only--home.  I had never seen him unfurled until this morning.  And, even though he was less than a meter from his usual spot, it was startling to see him there.  I can't blame him for moving there:  It rained heavily a couple of hours after midnight, and spot is probably the driest place he could find outside of a building that wouldn't allow him in.  

At least it wasn't difficult to see him.  So, I was able to stop, dismount, lift my bike and tiptoe around him.  I did not want to wake him, let alone rend one of the few shreds of dignity he has left.

Unfortunately, he's far from the only homeless person I see during my commutes.  He's just the one I've seen most often, I think.

The Day Begins At Hell Gate

This morning I rode through the Gates of Hell.

At least, some people thought they were:  They were driving to do things they had to do. On the other hand, I was cycling to something I had to do.  I reckon, though, that the thing I had to do was less onerous than the things some of those drivers were going to spend their day doing.

It's probably a good thing they couldn't, or didn't, see what was below and beside them, in Hell Gate.

I could not see the water, either.  I could not see the cables of the RFK Bridge, except for the ones nearest to me.  All I could see were the lights of cars and trucks. They were only reflections of the moment, repeated again and again.

All I could do was to move through them, through time, across the bridge over Hell Gate.

Scraping The Sky, Or Brushed By Fog

Late yesterday morning and the afternoons were just interludes between rainstorms.  Or so it seemed.  And it rained even harder, from what I can tell, last night.

I crossed the Queens-Randall's Island spur of the Triborough (RFK Memorial) Bridge just before the window closed or the clouds opened, depending on your point of view:

Don't Cross Here

We've had the strangest weather over the past couple of days.  Last night, a storm blew into this area.  It was supposed to bury everything between Pittsburgh and Montreal in snow; however, we experienced a deluge in New York, along with gale-force winds.  Through it all, the temperature actually rose overnight, from the mid-30s to around 60F (2 to 15 C).  Then, this afternoon, the temperature dropped again.

Somewhere in all of that I sneaked in a few of miles on Tosca. After descending the ramp from the Queens spur of the RFK Bridge, I wended my way along the path that rims the East River until I reached the Bronx Kill.  No, it's not a dance or crime; it's a strait that separates the borough for which it's named from the Island.  ("Kill" comes from "kille", a Dutch word for "creek".)  Underneath the ramp to the Bronx spur of the RFK, I espied this:

How I missed it in all of the years I've been riding there is beyond me.  As we say in the old country, "What's wrong with this picture?"

Perhaps I need to get out more, but I don't recall seeing, anywhere else, a railroad crossing sign on the bank of a creek, river or stream.  Who are they trying to keep off the tracks?  The Randall's Island Salamander?

To be fair, when the tide recedes (The East River is actually an estuary of the ocean.), the water level in Bronx Kill drops so much that you can walk across the abandoned car and body parts on the bottom.  Still, I don't know why anyone would try to cross the tracks--or jump on a train--from there.

 

Views After My Commute

After I rode home from work, Vera and I were ready for a little more action and some visual stimulation.

So we climbed the stairs to the walkway/bike lane of the RFK/Triborough Bridge.  We could not have had a better view of Upper Astoria clothed in fall colors:

It's a New York view most people never see.  But, when I turned around, I encountered the sort of vista almost everyone expects late on a mid-autumn afternoon in the Big Apple:

Even the Hell Gate railroad trestle took on the hues of foliage reflected in the late-day sun:

Vera was being modest about helping to make this mini-revelry possible:

 

Autumn Morning Mist In New York

So far, this has been quite a mild Fall, at least here in New York.  While the weather has been great for riding, there's one thing I'm not crazy about:  The days are getting shorter.

Here is a view from the RFK-Triborough Bridge, looking toward Manhattan, just before seven this morning:

I enjoy the mist, especially the way it's pulled across the pillars and posts of steel and and slabs of concrete, as some are trying to get a few more moments of sleep.

But, of course, if you're trying to get a few more moments of sleep, you won't.  So it is morning for you, even if the light hasn't caught up, and won't for a few more months.l