From An Island To A Memory Of A Street

 

My friend Sam—one of the first people I met when I moved into my current apartment—took an early ride: me, on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear and he, on the aluminum Trek road bike I fixed up for him.  The breeze we felt as we crossed the bridge into City Island and at the end of the island itself would be the last relief we would feel before the sun would turn brick-lined streets— which we followed from Pelham Bay  to Bronx Park—into ovens.

The bricks—faded, cracked and pockmarked like faces who have survived winter, poverty, betrayal and the births of those who have died along those streets—smoldered with their remains and the last buds blown away from cherry blossoms, magnolias, crabapples and early spring flowers like tulips and hyacinths planted around those trees.

The too-early-for-the season heat, which reached 95F (35C), turned their shadows, all of them, into the pores, wrinkles and cracks in bricks and concrete slabs that will endure, perhaps, longer than the street—at least, as I have know it—will.

I walked down a street like it, a couple of blocks from where I lived in Brooklyn, on a day like this, which had followed and preceded another like it, near the end of my fifth grade year.  1969: The world was about to change because of events I would know about as they happened—Woodstock, the Apollo 11 moon landing and protests against the Vietnam War and racial prejudice—and ones I wouldn’t know about until later, like Stonewall.

But, even though summer had not officially begun, it seemed to have always been. The faded, flaked bricks and pinks, purples and yellows turning green felt suspended in the haze of that heat. Just as the world beyond it was changing, I somehow knew that what I was seeing and feeling that day wouldn’t be there forever. Nor would I. The heat was no longer only a meteorological phenomenon: I felt, in a way I couldn’t describe, that it was flaring within me.  And within a year it would change me, as it would change my neighborhood.

On my way home that day, I saw a man who, at the time, seemed ancient to me, sitting on his stoop, as he did nearly every day. I would never see him again.

Sam and promised each other we’ll ride again, perhaps tomorrow morning. The afternoon is forecast to be as hot as today.

(More to come.)

Midlife Climbs

 It’s noon—and 94 degrees F (34.4C) already. I am glad I took an early morning ride to City Island and Orchard Beach after a cup of coffee and before breakfast!

It’s as if nature were reminding us that summer has indeed arrived. Tomorrow’s weather will be similar; I probably will do another early ride.

The weather is such a contrast to what we had a week ago, when I joked with a neighbor that we don’t have to go to London because its chilly mist drifted over to us. 

That day, and on two others last week, I headed for the hills. In Yonkers and other points north of the city, the peaks and escarpments aren’t very high, but the roads and paths leading to them can be steep—enough so that roadside signs tell drivers to shift gears.

I did all of those rides—and today’s—on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear.  At times I berated myself because I was climbing more slowly than in times past—like, say, when I was in my 20s and 30s. But people applauded and shouted encouragement—“You go, girl!”—and I kept on pedaling.  Tosca has always been a joy to ride, however strong or slow I might be.

Sam, my neighbor and sometime riding buddy, reminded me that other people in our building marvel at what I’m doing. “Well, I’m lucky,” I demurred. “I am not in as much pain as they—or you—are.”

His back has been bothering him. He doesn’t want to “hold me back,” but I remind him that I am riding because I can and want to—and I’m willing to “slow down “ for him and his girlfriend, who has expressed interest in riding with us.

So now a question enters my mind: Why am I willing to “wait for” them but not to meet myself at the stage of my life, and riding, where I find myself? I enjoyed every pedal stroke of the rides I took and felt joy at the end. So what if I couldn’t climb a hill as quickly as I did 40 or 30 or even 20 years ago? As long as I simply enjoy riding, whether solo or with others, why do I need to criticize myself—especially in ways I never would criticize anyone who wants to ride with me?

I am not “too old.” I am in midlife as long as I don’t know when or if I must stop riding. So, I believe, is anyone else who, at whatever age, slings a leg over a bike, for whatever reason. And at any speed.

A Ride With A Real Cyclist

 So…What’s it like to ride with the guy next door?

I found out, sort of this past Sunday: I took a spin with a man who lives a few floors below my “penthouse.”

That I have been riding nearly every day hasn’t gone unnoticed by other residents of my senior (don’t tell anybody!) residence. One, whom I’ll call Sam* asked whether we could “just go out and ride, to no place in particular.” Not knowing him, I wasn’t sure of what to make of his proposal. Not knowing any other cyclists—or anyone else—very well, I thought “Why not?”

So, our journey—me, on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike and him, on a Roadmaster ATB he bought on Amazon, began around 9 am. I took him up to Mosholu Parkway, where a bike-pedestrian lane splits the shoestring park that splits the north from the south side of the road. Riding west takes you to Van Cortlandt Park. We went east—not very far—to Southern Boulevard and the Botanical Garden gate. It allowed us to bypass two very busy intersections where traffic enters and exits a highway, and enter the Bronx Park path to Pelham Parkway. 

I took him along what has become one of my early morning rides to City Island. He’d been there before, he said, but not on a bike.

From there, we pedaled back over  the bridge to Pelham Bay Park,which is three times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park. From there, I took him through neighborhoods that line the Hutchinson and Bronx Rivers and Long Island Sound. (One of those neighborhoods is, believe it or not, called “Country Club.”) 

The day grew hotter and the sun bore down on us. He seemed to take the weather better than I did, but he said he was impressed with my riding “on a bike you can’t coast.” 

I must say that I had all the more reason to be impressed:  He simply wanted to keep on riding. Whatever his bike or strength, that told me he is certainly a cyclist at heart.

When we reached SUNY Maritime College, he confessed that he, a lifelong Bronx resident, had never seen it—or, more important, the rather scenic waterfront—before. He also had never been in Country Club, with its huge houses, some of which wouldn’t look out of place in “The Great Gatsby.” After our ride, I realized that while he is a Bronx “lifer,” he rarely, if ever, had seen anything east of the Bruckner Expressway. That made me think of my experience of living in Brooklyn until I was 13: I really didn’t know anything beyond my immediate neighborhood until I returned as an adult. As I once told somebody, I’d crossed the ocean before I’d crossed Ocean Parkway.

A journey takes you to some place where you’ve never been, where it’s on the other side of the world or a part of your home—or yourself—you’ve never seen before. For me, that—and not the number of miles or kilometers or how much time —is cycling. And, I feel that is what I experienced on a ride with a new neighbor.

*—I have given him a pseudonym because I’m not sure of how much he would want me to reveal about him.