Why I Rode

 This, on a Friday afternoon, in one of winter’s last moments:

I mounted Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike for a ride I needed to do for no other reason that I needed to do it.  Perhaps it had to do with the changing season: My ride took me to, among other places, a spot I reached in May, on the same bike:

I took that photo from a somewhat different angle,  but from the same street, the aptly named Cliffside Drive in Yonkers.

Then, in the middle of Spring, the lush trees and fog made for a lovely sight. On the other hand, those (mostly) same trees wove a wizened fractal pattern against the kind of blue sky and dark scrim of clouds on the horizon one sees only after a long, cold season.

So, since I am a self-indulgent writer, you, dear reader, may be forgiven for thinking that I “read” something about my life into seeing what I saw the other day, especially in comparison to what I saw last Spring.

Well, there hasn’t been a life-changing event recently—at least since my Japan trip— but I feel that this not-quite-finished winter has highlighted the passing of time, at least for me.  As far as I know, I am still in Midlife because I don’t know when my life will end. 

So what brought on thoughts of future becoming past? The seemingly endless, brutal (at least by the standards of this part of the world) Winter certainly has had something to do with it.  But something else—a dream about someone I hadn’t thought about in decades brought me to Google and an “In Memoriam” page for my high school class’s upcoming round-number-year reunion.

I looked up that classmate, whom I didn’t know well, but whom I could count as a friendly acquaintance. I couldn’t find an obituary or any other information about her death—or life since we graduated—because she had an extremely common name. She might’ve married and taken her spouse’s name, but I couldn’t even find any such account.

Was she recently claimed by one of those diseases that takes increasing numbers of people as they age? Or did she die, like another classmate, not long after we graduated in a motor vehicle crash? I hope someone, whether a jealous ex or some random stranger—whether in gang colors or another country’s uniform—didn’t kill her over so some conflict that would or could not be resolved.

You might think she’s the girlfriend I wish I’d had.  You would be at least partially right. Had I been less socially inhibited than I was, I might’ve known her better. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was what someone I knew would’ve called “presentable “:  in good shape (she was a basketball player) and always (as I remember) well put-together.  Most importantly, at least for me, she was (or seemed to be) the most intelligent kid in my school and had a sense of herself that I completely lacked at the time.

Perhaps I was riding for her.

Following An Old Ramble

 I haven't done as much cycling as I'd planned or hoped to do this week.  One reason, I guess, is that I am recuperating from the cold (At least, that's what I think and hope it was) I was denying I had.  

But today I took a decent ride.  Although I slept fairly late, I managed to get a 40 mile (65 km) ride in, with a few short but fairly steep climbs.

I took a rather circuitous route to a place I used to cycle through and to regularly when I was living in Washington Heights.  Back in those days, Yonkers--at least the part west of the Thruway (a.k.a. I-87) was the sort of place for which, it seemed, the word "depressed" had been coined. Nearly all of it was as poor--and, not surprisingly, black--as some parts of the neighboring Bronx.   But, unlike some of the Big Apple's poverty pockets, it seemed utterly listless--as if there wasn't even enough energy to be angry, let alone get into a fight.  

So why did I ride there?  As I mentioned, it was close by and had a few decent climbs.  Also, there used to be a bakery that made fresh pita. (There was, and is, a Middle Eastern community.)  Depending on how much time I had (or how much I wanted) to ride, I could continue further into Westchester County, to Sleepy Hollow country.  Best of all, the city skirts the Hudson River and offers some fantastic views up- or down-stream:

Downstream.  The George Washington Bridge is in the distance.

Across:  The Palisades

Part of the purpose of my trek was a test ride.  More about it, and some other things I've used lately, later.