Sea And Sun--And More Sun

Yesterday I took another ride out to Point Lookout and back:  120 kilometers out and back.

The ride takes me along through the Rockaways and along the South Shore of Nassau County.  The day was hot and sunny so, even though it was a Tuesday, the beaches were full of sunbathers, swimmers and people just hanging out.  Others were hanging out on the boardwalk, where, interestingly, I saw more families (or, at least adults with kids) cycling together than I can recall from previous rides.  I guess it's not a surprise when not only kids, but their parents (or other adults in their lives) are home.

One way this ride differed, though, was the way I felt at the end of it.  My legs felt pretty good, and the pain in my neck and shoulders is dissipating.  When I got home, however, I felt tired in a different way from the fatigue at the end of my last Point Lookout ride.

I felt woozy and very, very warm.  Within seconds, it seemed, of sitting down, I fell asleep.  About two hours later, I woke, with Marlee in my lap.

Today I realized that not only the heat, but the sun, had worn on me.  Normally, at this time of year, I would be well-acclimated to both.  But my layoff, in the wake of my crash, kept me indoors most of the time.  And, of pedaling next to the ocean for much of my ride only magnified the sun's rays on my skin.  

Just about every year includes a ride like the one I took yesterday.  Usually, it's in mid- or late May, or possibly June.  This spring, however, was (or at least seemed) cooler and cloudier than usual.  I think I missed the first true summer weather when I was in the hospital, or during my time recuperating at home.

Oh, well.  At least I don't have COVID-19.  Not yet, anyway!

A Color Of My Ride

As much as I love riding along the sea, I have to admit that the sight of the waters around here leave me pining for those almost preternaturally azure waves around the Milos and Santorini.  

I don't know whether the waters were, or ever could be, so blue around New York.  But I rather liked what I saw on my Point Lookout ride the other day:

The water reflected the moss on the rocks. Or was it the other way around?

The Tides, Coming and Leaving

Today I did another ride to Point Lookout.  This is the third time in the last four weeks I've done that ride.  So, as you might imagine, I'm starting to feel like my physical condition is returning, and I am therefore gaining some more confidence. 


The ride offers so much that I like:  seaside vistas, a laid-back feel and the opportunity to ride from city to small town and back again.  In that sense, it reminds me a bit of touring in Europe:  Because that continent and its countries are smaller than North America and the United States, city and country are closer to each other in the "Old World" than they are here.  So I could indulge my passions for art and architecture as well as for sunshine and fresh air and food.


In a way, you can say that today I channeled my Inner European in one small way:  the way I made my bike stand when I got to Point Lookout:

Obviously, I'm not doing a track stand.  And there's no kickstand on my bike.   So what's my secret?  It's one of those many tricks I learned in Europe:

If you lean the bike on the left pedal, make sure it's slightly behind the 90 degree position.  Otherwise, the bike will topple--unless, of course, it has  a fixed gear.


I've done this ride at least a hundred times before, and I'll probably do it that many more times, as long as I'm living within a morning's ride of it. According to Bike Snob, I'm in the same league as babies, dogs and designers.  Like them, I can be fascinated by everyday objects, or at least by the everyday.  So, when I got to Point Lookout, I watched the tide going out.  

People who live there can tell you when the tide comes in or leaves.  They remind me, in a way, of a rather old couple I met in Liborune, France.  The town is about 30 kilometres from Bordeaux and is situated at the point at which the Garonne river bends and begins to open to the sea.  I'd cycled from Paris via the Loire Valley and Aquitaine; my intention was to cycle to and along the sea.   It was late in the afternoon; I'd stopped by a riverside grove.  The couple were   taking a walk, as they did every day, he told me.  They'd asked about my ride and what brought me to their part of the world.  "J'aime ces pays," I said.


"D'accord," they replied in unison.  Then, suddenly, the woman tapped me on the shoulder.  "Regardez!  Regardez!"  

I turned to look at the river, which was swelling like a small tide.  The man explained, "Les marees vienent deux fois chaque jour":  The tides come in twice every day.  He took pride, not simply in knowing that fact, but in his intimacy with a place and life he clearly loved, and with a woman who shared his passion.


The tide left, and I did some time later.  Just a little way down the road from that grove, I picked up a bike path that paralleled a route departmentale to Bordeaux city line.


(Note:  I'm looking for a scanner I can use on some of the photos I took during that, and other bike trips.)

Without the Need to Escape

I rode to Point Lookout, again.  At approximately 65 miles round-trip, it's tied with the longest trip I've taken this year, and since my surgery.  


On a day like today, when the sea seems to be the shadow of a preternaturally clear sky--or when the sky is light refracted through a cobalt stained-glass reflection of the sea--it seems as if the water is a sort of light, and that light flows and ripples and undulates like the waves of water.  

And the ripples of water and waves of light become each other's reflections:

Just before I crossed the bridge from which I shot the above photo, I saw one of those things that could you forget that you're in Queens:

The dunes are in Arverne, which is just to the east of Rockaway Beach.   The streets leading to the Arverne stretch of the beach and boardwalk were, not too long ago, filled with bungalows and cottages that served as summer homes for some New Yorkers and permanent residences for some cops and firefighters.  Then most of them were abandoned when housing projects were built in Far Rockaway, the next neighborhood to the east and the last before the Nassau County line.  


I was pedalling into a fairly stiff breeze as I rode past those dunes toward Nassau County and Point Lookout.  That meant, of course, that my ride back was actually easier: enough so that I found myself thinking of a poem by Pablo Neruda:


EL viento es un caballo:
óyelo cómo corre
por el mar, por el cielo.

Quiere llevarme: escucha 
cómo recorre el mundo 
para llevarme lejos.

Actually, those are just the first two stanzas of  a poem from "Los Versos del Capitan."  The selection above translates into something like this:

The wind is a horse:

Hear how it runs

through the sea,

through the sky.

He want to take me away:

Hear how he roams 

through the world

To take me far away.

Please forgive my poor translation:  It's really much better in Spanish.  

Here is my "horse" :

And here is how someone is "riding" Neruda's "horse":

Yes, that white object is a board of some kind.  A man is riding it and the wind is pulling his kite.

Somehow these rides that are directed by the wind and follow the sea are even more innocent--almost to the point of being naive and romantic, as Neruda's poem is--than the ones I took as a teenager and in my early adulthood.  Those now-long-ago rides kept me sane, at least to the degree that I was. 

 On summer days, I would ride down to Long Branch, Asbury Park or beyond.  I learned that around 2:00 every afternoon, the wind would shift along the coast, so the wind I fought on the way down would blow me back up to Sandy Hook, the northernmost part of the Jersey shore.

I remember that long, straight flat stretch of Route 36 along the beaches in Long Branch and Sea Bright.  Some days I would just let the wind do my work, while on others I would spin as fast as I could.  It was my release and escape; now that I no longer am trapped by what I was trying to escape, there is just the ride along the sea.