A Ride Through Time Before Christmas Eve

 Yesterday, after finishing everything I needed to--and could--get done before the holidays, I went for a much-needed ride.

Why do I need a ride?  Well, for one thing, I'm a lifelong bike rider.  The only other things besides basic bodily functions that I feel I "need" are reading, writing and occasional travel.

Also, even though I know I've done the things that needed to be done, I felt a tinge of guilt that I probably won't get much, if anything, done betwee now and the fourth day of the new year. (New Year's Day, like Christmas, will fall on a Friday.)  But I reminded myself of Congress*, so I don't feel so slothful.

Anyway, I pedaled down to Rockaway Beach, Riis Park and Coney Island.  I saw the sun preparing for its descent in Rockaway:

and exiting in a blaze of glory at Riis Park:

Just as captivating, to me, as the refulgent spectacle were the shifting cloud formations.  I felt as if time were a scrim drifting across the sky and tracing its face on waves of the sea.

By the time I reached Coney Island, the sky and sea were dark.  I didn't take photos because--silly me--I forgot to charge my phone before I went for a ride and it was all but depleted by the time I got to what might be the world's most famous boardwalk.  More people than I'd anticipated were taking walks and rides, men were fishing off the pier and some Puerto Ricans played some traditional music from the islands on their guitars and drums.

There weren't, however, many people on the Verrazano-Narrows promenade, which passes underneath the bridge.  Most of them were fishing.  I think that most of the fishermen I saw were Latinos and their catch might make up their families' Christmas Eve dinners--which, for Catholics includes fish. 

My family ate whatever fish my uncles caught--or, in later years, what looked good to my mother at the market-- and scungilli: deep-fried rings of squid. That memory, sparked by those fishermen, loped through my mind as I continued through Brooklyn on my way home. 

Those memories, like time, drift through my mind like that scrim of time between the sea and sky.

*--Congress took--how long?--to pass a second coronavirus relief bill.  They didn't accomplish much. The President and his buddies, on the other hand, did a lot--none of it to mitigate the COVID crisis and all of it malignant! (That' not an editorial comment:  It's a fact!)

Riding Until The Storm Comes

Many years ago, I read a tale--Japanese, if I recall correctly--about a young boy who is infected with terrible disease that will eventually kill him.  The really cruel part of his fate, however, is that he will grow more beautiful--and seem healthier--the closer he comes to his death.  So, of course, his parents cannot revel in the radiance of his youth, and nobody can understand why they are so sad.

Why was I thinking about that story today?  Well, Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Tropical Cyclone Hermine was supposed to strike some time  this afternoon.  So, after gulping down some green tea, Greek yogurt (from Kesso's , of course) with bananas and almonds, I got out for a ride this morning.  I figured I could get in a couple of hours of spinning, which would be a sort of wind-down from yesterday's ride.

The morning started off partly cloudy/partly sunny, just as the forecast promised.  The temperature was quite agreeable--19C (66F) when I started.  And the wind, while more brisk than what I encountered yesterday, was not an impediment to riding, even though I pedaled into it as I started down my street.

Anyway, I pedaled in the direction of Rockaway Beach, even though the ride I took yesterday included it.  I chose the ride because it's a good, safe bet for two to three hour round trip, depending on what conditions I encounter and how long I want to linger at the beach.  Also, I figured I could see the tides swelling, churned by the storm off the coast.

Well, the tides did grow--or at least seemed to--from yesterday, and during the time I was there today.  Still, some surfers and a few swimmers dared them, the Mayor's warning against rip tides and other dangerous conditions be damned.  I must admit, I was tempted to run into the water,  if only for a moment.  

It was easy to understand why people were in the water, on the beach and strolling, cycling and skating along the boardwalk:  The sun threw off its shackles (some of them, anyway) and shone ever more brightly through the morning.  Even as the sea grew more turbulent, it reflected the luminosity of the orb that seemed to fill more and more of the sky.

So, I continued along the boardwalk and Rockaway Boulevard to Riis Park and Fort Tilden, the tides rising higher and the sun shining brighter along the way.  I could even forget that at this spot

a dune once stood, until Superstorm Sandy swept it away four years ago.

After crossing the Gil Hodges/Veterans Memorial Bridge, I took a turn I didn't take yesterday, through Floyd Bennett Field and onto the path to Canarsie Pier. I wasn't at all surprised to see it ringed with men, most of them from the Caribbean, fishing.  I haven't cast a line in years, but I recall that some of the best fishing comes right before a storm.

Then I retraced my steps (tire tracks?) along that path back to Flatbush Avenue, where I crossed and continued along the Greenway that winds along the South Shore of Brooklyn to Sheepshead Bay, then to Coney Island.

And the day grew brighter and more beautiful.  I kept on riding but couldn't help but to wonder about the storm. Maybe it won't come this way after all, I thought. Or maybe it will strike later.  If it does, will it unleash even more power and fury than it otherwise would have?

By the time I wheeled my bike into my apartment, the sky was completely blue--or, at least, as clear as we can see it in New York. The sun glinted off my windows.  I turned on the radio, just in time for another weather forecast:  Hermine will come tomorrow.  Maybe.  Until then, we can expect clear skies.

Where Was Everybody? I'm Not Complaining!

I swore that I wouldn't ride to any beach areas on weekends this summer.   Well, I broke that promise. It was just so hot and humid I couldn't think of anywhere else I wanted to ride--or go by any other means.

Actually, I didn't ride just to one beach.  First, I heeded the Ramone's advice and rode to--where else?--Rockaway Beach.  I worried when I encountered a lot of traffic on the streets near my apartment--at least some of which seemed headed toward Rockaway.

But, as soon as I passed Forest Park, traffic started to thin out.  By the time I crossed the bridge from Howard Beach to Beach Channel, the streets started to look like county roads in upper New England or routes departmentales in the French countryside--at least traffic-wise, anyway.  And, oddly, there seemed to be less traffic the closer I got to the Rockaways. I thought that, perhaps, whoever had planned to be on the beach today was already there.

What I found when I got to Rockaway Beach invalidated that hypothesis.  Although temperatures reached or neared 100F (38C) in much of Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan--and humidity hovered around 90 percent--there actually was space to stretch out on the beach!  I've seen days where people were literally at arm's length, or even less from each other.  That's what I expected to, but didn't, see today.

I didn't see this. (Apologies to Francisco Goya.)

What's more, I could ride in more or less straight lines along the boardwalk:  I didn't have to swerve or dodge skateboarders, or families with men and boys in shorts and tank tops, women in bathing suits and cover-ups and little girls in frilly dresses--or dogs on leashes that seem to span the length of the boardwalk.

After soaking up sun, surf and sand (perhaps not in that order), I ate some of the salsa I made and tortilla chips from a local Mexican bakery.   Thus fortified, I decided to ride some more.  

Along Beach Channel Drive, I encountered even less traffic than I did on the way to Rockaway Beach.  There were even empty parking spaces along the street, all the way to Jacob Riis Park.  The beach there was slightly more crowded than Rockaway, but still nothing like what I expected.  The streets from there to the Marine Parkway Bridge were all but deserted, and the bridge itself--which spans an inlet of Jamaica Bay and ends on Flatbush Avenue, one of Brooklyn's major streets (it's really more like a six-lane highway at that point)--looked more like a display of Matchbox cars than a major thoroughfare. 

Stranger still, I saw only two other cyclists on the lane that parallels Flatbush, and none on the path that rims the bay along the South Shore of Brooklyn to the Sheepshead Bay docks.  From there, I encountered one other cyclist on the way to Coney Island--a bicycle patrolman!



Surely, I thought, I'd see throngs of strollers, sunbathers and swimmers at Coney Island.  Throngs, no.  People, yes--but, again, not as many as I expected.  

I didn't complain.  I finished the salsa and chips.  They were really good, if I do say so myself.

Cycling After The Tide

This sign should have given me some idea of what I was getting myself into:

From 91st Street in Howard Beach--where I saw the inverted sign--I took the bridge into Broad Channel and the Rockaways.  

Broad Channel is a bit like the Louisiana, with colder weather.  It's only a three to four blocks wide, with Jamaica Bay on either side.  Some of the houses are built on stilts; many of the people who live there have never been to Manhattan.  In Broad Channel, it seems, there are as many boats as there are cars or trucks.  Some of them were torn from their moorings and were "beached" in the middle of streets, or in front of houses:

But, not surprisingly, there was more to come.  The retaining wall that separates the bay from the entrance ramp for cyclists and pedestrians of the Cross Bay Bridge was gone.  So was most of a restaurant that stood beside it.

When you arrive in Rockaway Beach, you come to a McDonald's.  You know how powerful the storm was, and how much desperation there is, when you see this:

But the contents of that restaurant weren't the only things gone from Rockaway Beach:

This sandy lot was, just four weeks ago, a community garden and flea market.  But something that had been a part of Rockaway Beach for much longer was also gone:

There was a boardwalk here. It extended from Far Rockaway, near the border with Nassau County, to Belle Harbor, about five miles  along the beach.  Gone, all of it, gone:

Much of Riis Park was cordoned off.  But the part that was still open felt utterly desolate:

There were dunes along this stretch of beach.  I don't know how long those dunes stood, but given the force of the storm, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they were destroyed in an instant.  

At Riis Park, I met another cyclist. Together we rode to a beach club to which he'd once belonged.  Its parking lot was full of sand, and doors of cabanas were pulled off their hinges.  

He had to go home to his sick wife, but I continued toward Breezy Point.  In normal times, it's a sort of gated community:  One enters it through a kind of tollbooth where security guards stand watch.  Normally, when I ride my bike, they barely notice me at all.  Today, though, a female NYPD officer was checking people who entered.  "Ma'am do you live here," she intoned.  I probably could have lied that I did, or said that I was a volunteer who was meeting other volunteers.  But that didn't seem right:  I could only imagine how residents might have felt about an interloper like me.  

What I had seen up to that point was worse than what I'd seen in the news accounts.  I'm sure it was even worse in Breezy Point; for now, that assumption will have to suffice.

I'll close this post with an observation:  It was, or at least seemed, much colder than I expected.  Of course, that would be par for the course in an area, especially on a day as windy as today was.  However, I also realized that many of the houses and other buildings were empty and still had no electricity or heat.  Perhaps it really was colder due to the loss of ambient heat that normally radiates from buildings.  (It's one of the reasons why, on summer days, central city areas are usually hotter than the "ring" neighborhoods or suburbs.)  So it's not hard to understand why people who are sleeping in tents or in the open air are coming down with frostbite and other ailments.

I hope they can all go home soon.

Cycling Through The Gates of Autumn

I got up late today.  So my ride took me to a sunset:

The sun has just set behind Jamaica Bay, near the place it meets the Atlantic at Breezy Point.  I stumbled over this view on the Queens side of the Gil Hodges-Marine Park Bridge.  That view led to another bridge:

To get to these views, we crossed another bridge:

The day was chilly and windy, and became more of both after we crossed this bridge from Beach Channel to the Rockaways.  But somehow I didn't feel the cold.  Maybe I was channeling the sky:  Clouds spread like a shawl across a graying sea and houses that still have some of the warmth and light the sun within them.

And the way to these views was a bike ride through the gates of autumn:

Some of us have to carry a lot to get there:

Sometimes the journey is long, or seems that way:

And where does it lead?  Hopefully, to some place like this:

And it continues.  There is no escaping it, though some will try:

b

That's a washed-out stretch of the Greenway, where it parallels Belt Parkway along Brooklyn's South Shore.  I asked someone to take a photo of me, but I didn't like it.  So I took this photo of a couple I saw cycling.  

Where else could they have been riding but through a sunset in the gates of autumn.