Spanning The Seasons

Last week, daylight savings time began.  That means more daylight at the end of the day.  And, as the days are getting longer, I can now take a late-day ride before it gets dark.

Yesterday's jaunt took me through Queens and Brooklyn to Coney Island and the Verrazzano Narrrows.

I approached a great bridge, one that spans a strait of the Atlantic Ocean separating Brooklyn from Staten Island.  The Spring equinox arrives tomorrow.  Perhaps I am riding toward a bridge between two seasons.  

A Clash Between My Senses

In most of the Northern Hemisphere, the most unpredictable, or at least the most variable, weather comes in April.

I was reminded of that last week, when the contrast between my afternoon ride on Wednesday and the longer ride I took on Friday--which included Wednesday's route--could not have been more stark.  And Saturday's ride went from the almost summer-like warmth I experienced on Friday to the near-winter conditions of my Wednesday ride--all within the space of an hour.

Within the warmth and sunshine of Friday and early Saturday, though, there was an even more striking disparity--between my senses.

The warmth I was feeling against my skin (Shorts!  Short-sleeved top!) in no way reflected much of what I saw around me.

The trees hadn't yet begun to bud in the Greenwich Common, where I rode on Friday

nor along the Verrazano Narrows promenade or Owl's Head Park, where I rode with Bill and Cindy the following day.

The funniest part, though, is that after Cindy had to leave for another commitment, Bill and I rode through some of the Brooklyn backstreets of my childhood and youth (and, I must add, to the Rimini Bakery on Bay Parkway, where I introduced him to sfogliatelle, my favorite pastry).  The temperature dropped during that part of the ride.  After I put on layers I'd brought with me, we saw this:

the first budding tree--a cherry blossom. It's late this year.  I can forgive it:  Whenever I see it, I'm happy--even if it isn't in harmony with the cold wind against my skin!

Fifty Years, And Still No Bike Lane

"Are we there yet?"

Just about every kid who's ever gone anywhere with an adult has whined that line.  I include yours truly.

"Is it done yet?"

Just about every kid has moaned that one when his or her mother or grandmother (or the equivalent in the kid's life) was cooking or baking something.  As adults, we intone it when we're waiting for a repair, a project, or something else to be finished.

(Asking that question is also the easiest way to annoy an artist--or to reveal yourself as a philistine to the artist.)

The first time I uttered the question the way an adult would was in my childhood. (Was I a precocious child?)  In my early years, I witnessed the building  of what I still consider to be one of the most beautiful--and exasperating-- manmade structures in the world.  

It opened to the public fifty years ago today.  By now, you might have figured out that I'm talking about a bridge. I am:  specifically, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which opened to traffic fifty years ago today.

The span, photographed by the Wurts Brothers when it opened fifty years ago today.  (From the collection of the Museum of the City of New York,)

At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It's still in the top ten, I think.  It's so long that engineers actually had to take the curvature of the Earth into account in designing it.

Please indulge me for a moment if I sound like a sexist male.  (Some things aren't cured even with years of hormone therapy and surgery!)  I have long thought its towers looked like long, elegant goddesses rising from the waves of the inlet of the Atlantic Ocean for which the bridge is named.  The lady is serene on days when sunshine refracted through high cirrus clouds glints on waves; she is looks dramatic, even stern, but still beautiful as clouds gather and storms brew in those waves.

All right:  Some of you are might think I'm more guilty of bad poetry than sexism in that passage. Fair enough. My talents, such as they are, can only accomplish so much.

Anyway, I have pedaled (and, on occasion, walked) under the bridge any number of times and have never grown jaded to its majesty.  Monsieur Verrazano (He was Fiorentino but sailed for le Roi Francois I.) would be honored to have the bridge, and the body of water it spans, named for him.  But the fact that I'm always pedaling underneath the bridge is precisely what exasperates me about it.

You see, the bridge has never had a bike or pedestrian lane.  In a way, it's not surprising, given that the bridge was the last major work of Robert Moses, whose mistakes have been replicated by urban planners all over the world for decades.  Through most of his career, he showed a complete disdain for anything that didn't have an internal combustion engine.  It's especially odd when you consider that he built the Kissena Velodrome near the World's Fair site just a few thousand pedal spins from my apartment--and that he himself never had a driver's license. 

There has been a movement (in which I am playing a small role) to have a bicycle-pedestrian lane added to the bridge.  Many people say it would encourage them to use their bicycles to commute or simply travel between Brooklyn and Staten Island, and would link a number of already-existing bike routes in the two boroughs, which in turn would make parts of New Jersey more accessible to cyclists in the Big Apple.

I would like to have the same thrill I knew as a child when I saw the bridge under construction.  I would also like to experience the same thrill I had when I rode across the bridge the only times it was possible:  during the Five Boro Bike Tour, when the lower deck of the Verrazano is closed to traffic. 

Note:  The "Verrazano Narrows Bridge" link in my seventh  paragraph will take you to an excellent article on The Bowery Boys, one of my favorite non-bike blogs.

Reflections Cycling

All of my kidding aside, I really am a rather reflective and contemplative woman.  I've had to be.  Maybe that's why I sometimes, while riding, I see images of cyclists I might have been, or appeared to be:

Was this man riding to exhale?  Or would he be inspired?  Or some of both?  Actually, those questions apply to just about every cyclist one might encounter as a Saturday afternoon turns to dusk behind a curtain of high clouds.  For that matter, those questions could apply to pretty much anyone who cycled, walked, skated, skateboarded, fished from, or sat on the benches lining, the promenade that passes under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.


But what of two people on a tandem on the Coney Island boardwalk?

One doesn't see tandems very often in New York.  I'm guessing that the riders are a father and son or, perhaps, an uncle and nephew. 


When I was growing up, there still weren't very many adults who cycled.  None in my family did.  Even the owners and operators of most bike shops weren't riders:  They, like most adults, saw bicycles as the means of transportation people used only until they got their driver's licenses.  


The few adult cyclists one saw were almost invariably male.   And now I realize that, even today, the vast majority of adults I see riding are male.  Perhaps that is the reason why I see those images of who I was, or might have been.

Now I remember cycling along the ocean in New Jersey as a teenager.  From Sandy Hook south to Sea Bright, the wind and tides exhaled through shells and bones on the other side of the sea wall that separated the ocean from Route 36; south of Sea Bright, they sluiced through mounds and valleys of sand that stretched even farther than I could have cycled on any day I cycled, or the one after it, or the one after it.  How far, exactly, would it go?  To Key West?  At least I knew that if I were to cross the ocean--which, of course, I couldn't do on my bike--I'd end up in Portugal, in Spain, in France.   


Nobody I knew then had been to any of those places.  And they hadn't been to the places where they wanted me to go:  the colleges, Annapolis, West Point or any of the other Armed Forces academies.  Or, for that matter, the offices  they hoped I would occupy, or even the schools in which I would study and teach.


None of those schools existed, at least for me, when I was riding along the ocean so many years ago.  And nobody followed me:  nobody, that is, except for a middle-aged woman who told me to inhale deeply and exhale completely, and that everything would be all right because she was going to be there for me, no matter where I rode. 


And I was present today, as I always was, for that teenaged boy who spent sunny days and overcast afternoons cycling the Jersey Shore.  Perhaps I saw the person he might have been, too.