Showing posts with label World’s Fair Marina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World’s Fair Marina. Show all posts

30 December 2021

Rest And The Path Ahead




 I wanted to ride this afternoon, but I wasn’t feeling adventurous.  Perhaps it has to do with the year ending:  Starting new journeys seems more appropriate for a new year.

So I rode to the Flushing Bay Promenade, recently renamed the Malcolm X Promenade.  He lived in nearby East Elmhurst, along with other luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.

The ride is pleasant enough, sort of like comfort food for me and my bikes.  I rode up and down the promenade a few times, in part to get into a physical and mental “groove,” but also because of two men.

Short and squat but broad-shouldered and thick-fingered, they looked like the sort of Central American immigrants who wait at strategic but discreet intersections in residential neighborhoods where contractors, landscapers and other small business people hire people like them as day laborers.  

Such people work and sleep hard, wherever they can. So it’s unusual to see men like them dozing on park benches.  

But were they sleeping ?

Their faces, which probably would have been colored like terra cota or the earth from which they came, instead looked as if they’d been worn to reflect the gray sky and water. One man’s hand drooped in front of him, his fingers frozen in a grip of something no longer there.  

The other man’s head was cocked to his side, as if he stopped himself from resting it on the other man’s shoulders—or a pillow he realized wasn’t there.

A mobile phone propped between them played bouncy conga drum and stringed music.  But it could just as well have emitted “elevator music,” for all of the effect it had on them.

Finally, when I rode by them for the sixth time, I think, the man with the cocked head stirred. 

“¿Estás bien?” I shouted. He nodded.

“¿Necesitas algo?” He moved his head slowly from side to  side.

“¿Estás seguro?” Another nod.

“OK. Feliz año nuevo.” Even if they’re OK, I hope the path ahead is easier and clearer for them in the coming year.

At least the ride back was, for me.



24 December 2021

Flights Of (Holiday) Fancy

 Christmas Eve.  The sun chased the morning rain, but not the cold. Still, the weather was good enough for a late afternoon ride to Fort Totten.

On the way out and back, I wended along the Flushing Bay promenade, past the World’s Fair Marina—and within arm’s length, or so it seemed, of the new LaGuardia Airport terminals.

Few things are driven more by technology, and less by aesthetics, or at least visual displays, for their own sake than the design of aviation facilities.  Still, for a moment, one could believe the new terminal was decorated for Christmas:




25 August 2021

A Lowe-Case Letter And A Crossing

 What do you do when wake up and can’t get back to sleep?  Take a bike ride, of course.

I hopped on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, for a spin.

Into the sun



rising over the World’s Fair Marina



I know it’s not Antibes or Nice, but I thought it was pretty nice nonetheless.  From there, I spun along the North Shore to Bayside and a couple of blocks into a Nassau County before descending through Flushing Meadow-Corona Park (and the (Unisphere) before heading back to my apartment. 

Along the way, I was treated to the cutest pedestrian crossing I’ve seen in a long time.  When I stopped for the red light at 83rd Street and 34th Avenue, the hands of a young Asian (Korean, I think) woman danced together as she bowed her head with a coquettish smile. A female driver stopped at the same light gave both of us a thumbs-up.

I really enjoyed my bagel and yogurt when I got home! 


10 August 2021

Resigned To Haze?

Last week’s weather resembled that of May or June, which I didn’t mind.  Today, it seems, August has returned.  So has the haze from distant wildfires.




Some time during today’s ride, Governor Cuomo resigned.  It’s not related to my ride or the weather. At least, I don’t think it is.

Whatever I can or can’t affect, I don’t feel resigned to anything when I ride.