Red And Gray

It’s been a while since I last posted. The past two weeks have been busy. I finally did a long ride yesterday, to Point Lookout, Coney Island and into Manhattan via the Manhattan Bridge before hopping onto the D train at Grand Street, in Manhattan’s Chinatown. In all, I covered about 150 kilometers, or just over 90 miles.  It actually 130 km ride I did the previous Saturday because I had the wind at my back or side all the way from Point Lookout to Manhattan, whereas I was pedaling into the wind on my way home from the previous ride.

The weather has been strange, even for this time of year. On Wednesday and Thursday, the temperature reached 90F (32.2 C), which would have been the beginning of a heat wave in July or August.  While the weather had cooled down (70F/21C) by yesterday, it felt even cooler along the ocean. And although the sun didn’t feel intense—in fact, skies had grown overcast—I still managed to get sunburned,  (Use sunscreen even if you don’t think you need it!).

How is it that my limbs and face burned tomato red, yet steel gray cables and towers (in this case, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge) were bathed in the even grayer mist and clouds?  The mysteries!

Enjoying A Ride Isn’t Such A Mist-ery

 My brother and I are experiencing different kinds of heat waves.

He, in California, is dealing with temperatures over 100F (37.8C). Our high temperatures in New York have been a few degrees cooler. My brother, however, said that as much as he doesn’t like the heat, “I don’t miss East Coast humidity.”

He has a point. Even though we in New York rarely have to cope with 100F, almost every year includes a few days when the mercury rises above 90F (32.2C). But that heat is almost always accompanied by relative humidity of at least 7O percent.

The good news, for me anyway, is that I have been waking up early enough to get a decent number of kilometers/miles—and, more importantly, quality time—on my bikes.  Those jaunts have taken me to and along bodies of water, where I have witnessed something associated more with chilly London.

Seeing mist ride along the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge, by itself, made yesterday’s ride (which brought me down to Coney Island) worthwhile. 

Likewise, I felt rewarded in seeing “fog” at the end of the Rockaway boardwalk this morning.

Some of the best things in life are shrouded in mist-ery.

Daring Elsa

Yesterday wasn't quite as hot as Wednesday was, but the humidity was even more oppressive.  That's one reason why I took another morning ride which, I hoped, would bring me home before the early afternoon heat.

That part of my "mission," if you will was accomplished, even though I continued in one direction when another would have taken me home for, oh, a couple of hours.  

The weather forecast was dire:  Tropical Storm Elsa was bearing up the East Coast of the United States.  Sometimes I "play chicken" with the rain:  I ride as if I'm daring the rain to start falling on me before I finish my trip.  Yesterday, the stakes were higher:  The rain would cascade from those heavy gray clouds moving across Staten Island and New Jersey on their way to Brooklyn and Queens.  

Those clouds might have moved even faster than the traffic across the Verrazano Narrows:  They don't have to pay the toll on the bridge!

Seriously, though, I reverted to a youthful delusion:  That I could actually hold bad weather at bay becasue, well, I was pedaling.  Even when the sky and the waters of New York Bay all but matched the steel and glass hues of the Manhattan skyline, I was not ready to turn around.  After all, the brownstones and blue-collar brick row houses of Sunset Park hadn't been consumed by the the gray colussus.

On 31st Drive, one block from my Astoria apartment, rain began to fall.  It cascaded into a torrent just as I wheeled Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear, into the door.