A Short Ride On The Longest Night—And The Day After

Last night, I took my Winter Solstice ride.  Although I didn’t plan anything about it—except for one thing, which I’ll mention—I more or less knew I wouldn’t ride a lot of miles or climb. So I rode Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike.

The one planned part of my ride took me to a house about a kilometer from my apartment:

The residents of that house, on 23rd Street near the RFK Bridge, turn their porch into a kind of miniature Christmas village every year. The electric trains actually run on their tracks; the Ferris wheel turns and some of the figures walk, dance and even sing.

A few minutes later, I came upon another display that, while not as dynamic, filled the street with its lights and colors. 

I continued to ride. I’m not sure of which motivated me more: those lights and colors, the crisp cold air or the complete absence of traffic. 

About the latter: It was a proverbial “calm before the storm.” Not surprisingly, the holiday rush began this morning: A seemingly endless stream of cars crawled and honked down my street and, it seemed, everywhere: When I took a ride out to the Malcolm X Promenade today, it seemed like everyone in the world was entering or exiting LaGuardia Airport, the Grand Central Parkway or any street leading to them.

As I rode today, I couldn’t help but to think about last night’s ride—and a man who sold fruits and vegetables from a stand in Jackson Heights. I stopped and bought a bunch of red Swiss chard, a string of tomatoes and a small bag of cherries because they looked good—and out of respect to that man who, like me, was outside on the longest night of the year.

Before Auld Lang Syne

 The Winter Solstice came yesterday, just after sunset. 

  

Robert Burns is best known for "Auld Lang Syne," traditionally sung at the stroke of midnight in the Anglophone world.  Here the Scottish poet beautifully conveys the mood at the beginning of this season:

Winter:  A Dirge

The wintry west extends his blast,
   And hail and rain does blaw;
Or, the stormy north sends driving forth
   The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
   And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
   And pass the heartless day.

“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”
   The joyless winter-day
Let others fear, to me more dear
   Than all the pride of May:
The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,
   My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
   Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Power Supreme whose mighty scheme
   These woes of mine fulfil,
Here, firm, I rest; they must be best,
   Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want—O do Thou grant
   This one request of mine.—
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
   Assist me to resign.

This poem is in the public domain. 

The Weather Or The Season?

This area has just experienced what might have been one of the warmest January weekends in its history.  Temperatures reached 21C (70F).  Saturday I pedaled to Connecticut; yesterday I took a shorter trek through Queens and Brooklyn.  I did both rides in shorts.  I saw a few other similarly-attired cyclists.

There were, however signs that it is still winter.

Even so, other cyclists as well as runners, couples with strollers, single people walking their dogs and others simply walking ambled by.

Some were dressed for the weather, others for the season.

My Personal Track

It was cold ,at least compared to the weather we've had.  It was windy.  

So what did I do today?  I went for a bike ride.

That is not, in itself, so unusual (at least for me).  For one thing, the cold and wind were balanced out by the bright sunshine.

So, perhaps, you can understand why I rode along the bay and the ocean:  to Howard and Rockaway Beaches, then to Breezy Point (which certainly lived up to its name!) and Coney Island, from which I pedaled along the Verrrazano Narrows and under the bridge named for it.

The funny thing about the beach areas, at least around here, is that they are usually a couple of degrees warmer than the areas only a couple of miles inland.  The wind, however, makes it feel colder, which is why I had long stretches of shore, beach and boardwalk almost entirely to myself.

Even on Coney Island, where I often find couples, young and old, strolling in the shadow of the Parachute Jump and and men fishing from the pier, I felt as if the boardwalk was my own personal track.

Speaking of which:  I rode Tosca.  Yes, my Mercian fixed-gear.  Pedaling into the wind on a fixie is good training, to say the least.  But riding with it--especially on such a flat ride--feels almost like cheating! 

A Monument To This Season

With all of the snow and ice we've had this winter, it seems as if some bikes will be frozen in place forever, for some future archaeologist (extraterretrial, perhaps?) to find like one of those ants they sometimes find encased in amber.

The ones that aren't fully or partially buried seem like public statues. Snow layers them in much the same way that it drapes the outstretched arms and wings, and the impassive faces, of those figures of metal and stone.

(I must admit that, during the past few weeks, my bikes haven't moved much more than the ones I've been describing. Or so it seems.)

Last night, I saw an example of a velocipedic monument to this season on Manhattan's West 57th Street, just east of Columbus Circle:

 

Yesterday's Ride, Today's Storm

I am so glad I took my ride yesterday.  I thought I’d sneak in a short ride this morning.  But the snow started earlier than had been forecast:  When I woke up, just before 8 am, the wind was already driving needles of cotton against my window and the faces of people ploughing ahead on their way to work or school.  They weren’t supposed to encounter such weather conditions until the time most of them would have been going home.  Not surprisingly, some of them returned early to the warmth and comfort of their hot cocoa and friends, lovers, pets, books, TV shows and videos.

Pedaling as soft, puffy flakes eddy onto my shoulders would not have been bad.  But the conditions I saw this morning would are the sort you envision in a Dickens story or, perhaps, a Bergmann film. I have mentioned, in previous posts, other meteorological “lines in the sand” I’ve drawn.  For example, I am sometimes willing to ride in the snow or rain, but not when both are falling—or when they’re accompanied by sleet.  I also generally don’t ride if I can barely see out my window or if the morning commute looks like the Battle of Stalingrad.  

Well, I don’t know what the Battle of Stalingrad looked like.  For that matter, I don’t know, exactly, what a Dickensian morning looks like, though his writing and my imagination create a vivid image.  But I have seen morning in a Bergmann film.  Anyway, you know what I mean.

Days like today aren’t for riding, at least for me.  But I can bask in the glow of yesterday’s ride.