A Journey Blossoms

 What would my younger self have thought?

My younger self was not only, well, younger, but also stronger, skinnier and perhaps sillier: Even after I’d given up on racing, I prided myself on riding like a racer.  Some of that may have had to do with living as male and riding, if not solo, then mostly in the company of male riders who were racers, ex-racers or wannabes.

Now I’m going to make a confession: While I sometimes rode just as hard and fast during my solo rides, on other solo rides—and only on solo rides, I’d stop to look at buildings, trees or flowers.

Which is what I’ve been doing lately.  In this part of the world, we are entering the peak of cherry blossom season and I’m becoming a blossom rider—or a cherry chaser?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that few things make me happier, if for a moment, than those pink blooms.  (Lilacs, which should be showing up soon, are another.) 

It’s not just their prettiness that moves me.  I must say that I never understood haiku or Japanese art (or why it so inspired Monet and other Impressionist artists) until I paid attention to cherry blossoms.

You see, haiku isn’t just about the syllable count and Japanese painting isn’t only a style.  Both are about experiencing the beauty and intensity of something in a moment but appreciating that moment’s ephemerality. And that, I believe, is the reason why there’s so much respect for elders and ancestors in Japanese culture.

So…while my recent rides have been sensual and aesthetic experiences—which my younger self would have secretly embraced—they have also been lessons which, possibly, my younger self could not’ve understood.

Regressing, Repeating Or Regenerating?

 This Spring, so far, has been strange in all sorts of ways.  For one, people are, in some ways, acting as if the COVID-19 pandemic is over:  They're not wearing masks; they're going to restaurants and movies and taking trips.  On another, sometimes I encounter people I haven't seen since the disease struck, or have seen only in passing, and I don't feel as if I am looking at, or talking to, the same person I knew.  Perhaps I, too, am no longer the person people once knew.  And strangers are even more anonymous, and even automotonic than they were before:  They seem even more walled-off from their surroundings, and other people, than they were three and a half years ago..

The weather has been strange, too.  Temperatures haven't been unusually warm--except for yesterday, when it reached 21C (70F)--but there have been combinations of wind and rain, rain and hail, wind and sun and even sun and rain we don't normally see.  There were even tornadoes in Delaware and South Jersey.

But one part of the weirdness of this season appeared to me the other day, during a late-afternoon ride.  That I saw cherry blossoms budding, or beginning to bloom--which always gladdens my heart--along Woodside Avenue wasn't, in itself, out of the ordinary for this part of the world in the first week of April.  But seeing them in that same act of their show as I saw in trees just a few miles away (and, I assume, at more or less the same latitude) three weeks ago made me wonder what's going on.

Not that I'm complaining about seeing what I saw the other day.  Of course, few trees are more beautiful in full bloom than the cherry blossoms.  But something about seeing those early blooms against the sky, in all of their fragility and ephemerality, gives me the strength of my vulnerability.

Riding Among Pink And Yellow Under A Gray Sky

 I didn't stop for this:

But I did stop for this:

I can't recall seeing cherry blossoms bloom so early in any year before this one.  These trees in Greenpoint, Brooklyn aren't at "peak" yet, but they will be very soon.

Normally, the cherry blossoms here in New York bud and flower a week or two later than the more famous ones in Washington, DC, which put on their show in late March and early April.  I am not a scientist, but something tells me that what I'm seeing isn't just a symptom of a mild winter:  This has hardly been the first in recent years.  I can't help but to think that it's a harbinger of more fundamental changes.

Don't get me wrong:  I am always happy to see the cherry blossoms, whenever they blossom.  But even if the weather was still cold, those lovely pink flowers were a sure sign that Spring had indeed arrived.  So...Does this mean that Spring is indeed arriving earlier?  Or will they become another precursor, like snowdrops and winter jasmine, of a season that is on its way, but has not quite arrived?

I went looking for answers.  Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike, led me to this:

A psychic reader under new management?  Does that mean readings will be less vague and more detailed?  That they'll be done faster?  Or that you get your money back if what the reader predicts doesn't come true?

At least my trip to the reader's storefront--which was closed--took me through some interesting vistas.  The block leading to it, (66th Street from Cooper to Myrtle Avenues) looked like a valley of "Ridgewood Yellow:"

Not surprisingly, I saw a couple of pro-police banners.  Not so long ago, Ridgewood was home to many officers.  I'll bet that some worked here:

The former headquarters of the eight-three (police parlance for the 83rd Precinct) is now a command station for that precinct, and several others in Brooklyn.  That doesn't surprise me, though on first glance, I would've thought it was an armory.

A desk officer saw me wandering around and came to the door.  "Can I help you?"  I explained that I simply had to stop and look at the building.  He then explained its history to me and told me the part of the building in which he was posted had been a horse stable.  

I tried to imagine it when the neighborhood--Bushwick--was home to German and Italian immigrants who probably would've been dressed in their "Sunday best" for church.  Apparently, the  young woman with pink hair and they young man in a long yellow paisley coat had no such thought:  It was just another building they passed on their way to the Cal-Mex cafe.

I guess pink and yellow, wherever they're seen under a gray sky, are signs that the season--whatever it is-- is here, or on its way.

After Work, Under A Cherry Blossom Canopy

Yesterday’s commute from work was a bit different from the usual.  For one thing, instead of my “beater,” I took Tosca, my fixed-gear Mercian, as I had little to carry and had left a change of clothes (a skirt, blouse and pair of low-heel pumps) in the office last week.

I left them yesterday.  So I rode home in a pair of bike knickers and a long-sleeved top, on Tosca.  Although the wind was a bit nippy, the spring afternoon called me to ride. My reward:

A canopy of cherry blossoms along the river, late in the afternoon, early in the Spring.  What more can I ask for an after-work ride?

From Men In Black To The World In Pink

For me, Flushing Meadow-Corona Park brings back memories of the World's Fair, which I visited with my family when I was about six years old.

For you, it might be associated with one of the most popular movies of all time:  Men In Black.  I saw and enjoyed it, too, but those early memories and associations never leave us, or so it seems.

Nonetheless, I will grant that I think of MIB, especially with the 25th anniversary of its release imminent. In the movie,  the mothership crashes through the Unisphere, the large globe sculpture that has become an emblem of Queens, "the world's borough."  (It's said to be the most linguistically and culturally diverse county in the U.S.)  

I would bet that the Men In Black never envisioned a World In Pink.

I stopped by the park the other day, during a ride out to Nassau County, down to the South Shore and up to the North.  A couple of years ago, on that very same piece of land, I saw a bloom of cherry blossoms that rivals any other I've seen.  If I recall correctly, it was around the third week, or possibly near the end of, this month.  Still, when I saw the trees the other day, their buds had bloomed enough to color the world in a way that, I believe, even the Men In Black would appreciate.

Late Afternoon Ride, Early Spring

Bare branches veil

late afternoon windows

before they open

 

early Spring 

red buds 

pink blossoms

my ride ahead

opens

late afternoon 

early Spring.

Cycling Under A Pink Cloud

Yesterday we had a deluge.  Today it was cloudy, breezy and chilly.  Still, I saw unmistakable signs of spring during my ride this afternoon.

Whether or not a garden is artfully arranged, flowers lift my spirits.  To paraphrase Will Rogers, I've never met a flower I didn't like.

Am I sentimental?  Perhaps.  I will admit to being a romantic, even a hopeless one.  My newest dream is a bike lane under a canopy of cherry blossoms.

Some people talk about being on a "pink cloud."  I think I got a glimpse of what it might be like to live under one.  It would be very nice.  At least it was, for the brief moment I spent under it.

Walnut Avenue, Cherry Blossoms and Hyacinths

After doing the work I needed to do, I took a ride.  Since I wanted to head out of the city, even if for a little bit, I cycled north and followed, coincidentally or not, part of my normal commute.

Well, more or less.  I pedaled up Walnut Avenue, which parallels Willow Avenue, the street with the bike lane I normally ride up to 138th Street.  I chose Walnut because it goes all the way to 141st, where I can make the turn underneath the Bruckner Expressway and pick up Southern Boulevard.  

Both Avenues lace the heart of the Port Morris industrial district in the Bronx.  Normally, when I ride along Willow--even as early as 6 am--I see trucks and vans pulling in and out of the factories, warehouses and luncheonettes.  Walnut also teems with activity--on a normal day, that is.

No day during the past two weeks or so has been "normal."  Of course, that's nice for cyclists:   The scene I rolled through looked more an early hour of Sunday morning than just after noon on a weekday.  

I must say, though, that the few people I saw were friendly:  They waved and smiled.  More important, I detected a kind of recognition--like what I sense from people I see by the ocean in the middle of winter.  Just behind me, on Randall's Island, cherry blossoms were pulsing their pink flowers and purple, blue and white hyacinths colored plots fenced in the fields and perfumed the air.  

All of that color, and those scents, felt like beautiful acts of defiance in a world forced into silence.  My bike ride felt something like that, though I did it for my own pleasure--and health, mental as well as physical.

Cherry Blossoms Bloom In The Bronx

I have been at my current job for almost three months.  Most days, I have ridden my bike there and home.  It seems that I have settled into a basic route with a few minor variations.  But, whichever way I go, I seem to notice something new or different, if not every day, then at least very often.

It shouldn't be too surprising, I suppose to see a lot of trees growing in the Bronx, especially given that one grows in Brooklyn.  (By the way, I am not endorsing the book or any movie made from it.  The title is catchy, though.)  Today, it seemed, I saw them in places where I never expected.  Did they grow overnight?

Best of all, some of those trees--more than I expected--are cherry blossoms, just starting to bloom.

 

Cherry Blossoms Bloom In The Bronx.  How's that for a book (or something) about bike commuting in New York?

 

Bike Season Budding Under Cherry Blossoms

Today's rain felt more like it was driven from November than something that fell from a late April sky.  And the temeperature reached only 8C (45F).

But the cold gray dampness might have made the cherry blossoms, which finally began to bloom during the past few days, all the more vibrant.  Their fresh pink flowers are always a sign, at least for me, that it really is spring.  And that, of course, usually means a nice atmosphere as well as backdrop for cycling.

And wouldn't you know it?  I came across this:

From Elm City Commuter

And this:

In an eBay listing

I hope that, in spite of the fact that I've done so much less cycling this year than I'd done by this time in other years, this cycle season, and I, are about to bloom.

Que votre route soit couverte de petales de fleurs de cerisier.

Cherry Blossoms Bloom; I Exhale

Very few things in this world make me as happy as I am when I see cherry blossoms in bloom.

This year, they seem especially full and vibrant.  Perhaps it's because they opened their flowers a bit later than they normally do (or so it seems).  Or, they may seem so bright because Spring came late and the winter, though not exceptionally cold or snowy, seemed interminably gray.

Anyway, I didn't have my regular camera with me when I rode to work today.  So, I used my cell phone to capture the radiance of these cherry blossoms:

  

Into A Cherry Blossom Sunset

Somehow I get the feeling I might've better appreciated today's weather had I been English.  Then again, upon realizing how much of the Empire consisted of warm climes, one could just as easily conclude that some English people weren't so crazy about their own meteorological conditions after all.


The day remained overcast.  I thought I felt a few drops on my way home.  I kept my fingers crossed:  I received a very important document in the mail at my second job.  And I was bringing it home in a tote bag with an open top that I carried in one of my bike baskets.  Perhaps if the rain had gotten heavier, I could have stopped in some store and asked for a plastic bag.


But the sprinkle seemed to end not much after it started.  While the sky didn't clear, I was treated to an interesting "sunset" as I pedaled through Flushing Meadow Park.

Now, even if you absolutely detest pink, how can you not love a cherry blossom "sunset?"