Into The Corners Of The Evening

Tonight I took a slightly different route home from the ones I normally take.  Part of the reason I did that was to avoid a very snarled intersection I pedaled through on my way in.  (Why do they call them "construction" projects when they're tearing things apart?)  Also, I wanted a bit of variety to shake myself out of my doldrums, as I've been a bit "under the weather" for the past couple of days.

So, from being under a blanket of flannel, I pedaled into a developing blanket of fog.  

Plenty of cyclists, including yours truly, have talked and written about cycling in rain, snow and any number of other weather conditions.  But I can't recall the last time I heard or read any mention of fog.  I guess there isn't much in particular you can do about it.  You don't really need your foul-weather gear, but lights and other high-visibility accessories are a good idea.  

I rather enjoy cycling in fog, especially when it builds, as it did on my way home tonight. And, no, I'm not phased by cemeteries:  I'm respectful of the dead, and they haven't done anything terrible to me. On two different bike tours I actually slept in cemeteries.  I cleaned up after myself before leaving, which may be another reason why I have good karma, or whatever you want to call it, in necropoli.  But I digress...

What's interesting about fog is that it develops more subtly than other kinds of weather.  Stopping to watch it won't let you see how it gathers or creeps across the land.  At some point, you just notice it, like some image that's developed on a screen before your eyes, but at the same time hidden in plain sight.  In fact, sometimes you feel the moisture against your face before you see anything.  Or, you feel, as I did, what seems to be a drop in the temperature.  It felt about ten degrees colder by the time I got home than it did when I started although, according to weather reports, the temperature remained constant at 54F (12C), which is rather mild for this time of year.

Most of the drivers were also going home.  Some of their cars turned their lights on automatically, so I wonder just how much, if at all, they noticed the fog developing.  

 Now I'll leave you with my favorite literary depiction of fog, from one of my favorite poems:


The yellow fog that rubs its back on the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.


(From "The Love Song Of J.Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot)

Not Fooled, But Snowed Under, Again

Just when I thought we were going to have clear roads and the last of the sooty snow residue was gone, we got a couple more inches.  It was pretty wet, dense stuff, so it didn't stay for very long. But we're supposed to get more snow tonight and tomorrow.  So what will that mean for my commute?


Well, if I do ride tomorrow, it will probably mean that in at least one of my schools, I won't be able to use the bike rack.  

Now I'm really wondering what the Ground Hog saw almost three weeks ago. Do we really have only three remaining weeks of winter?

Potholes and Ice

Yesterday was cold, but clear.  And it seemed that the streets were finally clear of ice and snow.  So I rode to work.  It felt suprisingly normal, and good, considering how little riding I've done this winter.  The ride to my main job, and from there to my part-time job, were actually pretty routine.  


And so was the ride home.  I know that, bit by bit, we're getting closer to spring because it wasn't dark when I got on my bike at the end of my workday.  Rather, I started pedaling around the time the sun was beginning to set.


As I often do, I cut across Flushing Meadow-Corona Park.  It's kind of odd to say "cut," as going through the park actually lengthens my ride.  But I don't mind, as riding through the park is usually pleasant in and of itself, and it allows me to bypass the worst traffic between my home and work:  the area around Main Street in Flushing where, it seems, a whole continent's worth of cars--and driving skills--swerves, squeezes and wedges into four lanes of traffic.  

Some night when I don't have any pressing appointments, I plan to actually stop by the Main Street area.  It may have the widest and best selection of Asian food available in the US, with the possible exception of what's found in a couple of cities in California.


Anyway...My ride home hit a bit of a snag right in the middle of the park:  

OK, so Marianela's not the Titanic and the Park isn't the far North Atlantic.  But at times like that, I really wish that ice would remain in little paper cups, where it belongs, with lemon or cherry flavoring.


The ice spread around the Unisphere to the other end of the park.  So what to do?  Option A was to backtrack and ride up to Main Street. I had scarcely enough time for that.  Option B wast to walk across.  But I figured I had just as much chance of slipping and falling if I were on my feet as I'd have on my bike.  That left me with Option C.  That involved riding through the parts of the path where the ice was rutted with patches of exposed asphalt.  


This may have been the only time in my life I chose to ride through anything resembling potholes.  Maybe the near-constant vibration kept me from thinking about the ice and other hazards.  Whatever the reason, I made it out to the other side of the park.  And the rest of my ride home was as unremarkable as the segment before the park.

With The Light Of This Day

Today the temperature went over 40F.  Yesterday it came close to that.  For the first time this year, we've had consecutive days on which the temperature rose above freezing. 

As a result, all of the ice and much of the snow that had accumulated since Christmas were gone.  So I rode to and from work for the first time this week.  It might be the last time, too, as the temperature is supposed to drop by twenty degrees tomorrow and we're supposed to get another snowstorm.

Last week, one of the office assistants asked how I rode to work.  I had to think fairly hard.  I actually have three or four distinct routes, and a couple of permutations of each one.  I don't think much about which way I'm going;  somehow I just know where to turn.  In a similar fashion, lots of passengers know, without seeing any signs or hearing any announcement, when the train is pulling into their station.  Sometimes the passengers don't even have to see the station, or anything around it.  

What guides them to disembark at the right stop?  Is it some sort of internal clock?  Or some other cue?

To tell you the truth, sometimes I'm just navigating by nothing more than light.  Somehow the glare of signals and the way in which the day's light fades--or grows brighter--is enough for me to know which way to go.  Sometimes.

Monet, On The Other Side

No, I'm not taking a cycling trip in France with a stop in Giverny. (I did that once, though!)  This is a good bit closer to home and family.  And I am in a place whose name begins with an "F." 

And, much to my delight, I've found one of the best walking/cycling trails I've seen in a while.  Perhaps even more gratifyingly, it was built within the past two years, in a place with a terribly depressed economy.

Think of the places in the US that have been left on the verge of asphyxiation since the housing bubble burst.  I'm in one of them right now:  a county with an official unemployment rate of 18 percent.  That's where I'm going to be this week. 

Yes, I am in Florida.  The weather was warm today, and I overdressed a bit when I rode.  I guess I was expecting a repeat of yesterday's weather, which was cooler.  Before I came here, Mom and Dad relayed some details of the coldest December this area has experienced in the time they've been living here, and for many years before that.  As an example, my mother said, oranges fell off the tree in their yard because they'd frozen.

Well, whatever it's been here, it's still not Bedford Falls.  Last night, I watched It's A Wonderful Life with Mom and Dad.  It's the first time in many years that I've seen the movie.  It's actually a rather good movie; it is cloying and sentimental, which, I suppose, a holiday movie should be, at least if its makers want to have a large audience.  And it does make a timely and timeless point about the human condition.  However, even though it was worth seeing again, I can't honestly say that I saw anyone or anything in it differently than I did when I last saw it.  Then again, maybe I'm not supposed to.  After all, we're not talking about Othello, from which I learned a few new things when I taught it this semester.

About the bike riding here:  There are actually a pretty fair number of dedicated cycling/pedestrian paths that are set off from the main roads. In fact, one starts just down the road from my parents' house.  The problem with them, as in so many other places, is that they begin and end abruptly, and pick up in other places.  Such has been the case since I first came here seventeen years ago. 

It is perhaps the most frustrating in my favorite place to ride around here.  Route A-1A skirts the ocean from Marineland to Daytona Beach. (It may go further in either direction; I know only about the stretch I've mentioned--and cycled.)  It's as beautiful a ride as one can find anywhere, but it's narrow and full of turns.  And some drivers see cyclists as obstacles--to what, I don't know--even when we're nowhere near them.  Of course, that's no different from the situation in so many other places.  But it's frustrating, and even dangerous, to be cycling along a dedicated path that ends abruptly and to have to pedal out onto a roadway where drivers aren't anticipating you.

I guess the situation I've described is a result of two things.  One is that most of the drivers don't use that road on a daily basis, so they have no way of knowing what to expect.  The other has to do with the fact that almost no one here cycles for transportation.  I've seen a pretty fair number of cyclists in the times I've visited, but they were all riding for recreation.  Of course, I'm not knocking that:  After all, that's what I was doing, too. But, having spent most of my life in urban areas, and much of that time in communities where significant numbers of people pedal to work, shop, go to school, visit museums and to other daily activites, I am convinced that unless there is a critical mass, if you will, of cyclo-commuters, non-cyclists will treat cyclists out of ignorance or with disrespect, or even hostility. Lycra-clad racers and wannabes, of which I was both for long periods of my life, do nothing to change motorists' attitudes about cycling and cyclists.

Now I realize I've stumbled over one of the great paradoxes of cycling in America.  The places where people would most want to ride are the ones with the least (or non-existent) cycling culture.  On the other hand, the places where there are the largest numbers of people who use their bikes for transportation are the most congested and polluted, not to mention the sorts of places where people wouldn't choose to take a cycling trip.

Then again, Monet and other artists often had to get away from the art world in order to create their best work.  Would he have come here?  With his bike or on it?