"You Rode All The Way Here?"

We're in the grip of another heat wave.  According to the weather forecasters, yesterday was the hottest day so far:  96F, or 35.6C.  The humidity, though, is what makes it so oppressive:  As soon as you step out, you feel as if you're wearing the air.

So, once again, I'm taking early rides on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear.  Yesterday I rode out to Red Hook, where an almost preternaturally blue (for that area, anyway) sea and sky provided a visual, if not visceral, relief. 

And they allowed me to fantasize about traveling to exotic, faraway places--even if I know, thanks to family members who worked the docks, how un-romantic it actually is to travel the world by working on ships.

Anyway, today's ride had an interesting twist:  I crossed a pedestrian bridge over Hamilton Avenue, which is more like a highway than a city street.  A construction crew was installing new guardrails.  The foreman or supervisor, a fellow named Wallace who's a few years older than me, had to fill out some sort of report or form but didn't have a pen.  I overheard him, stopped and said, "I'm pretty sure I have one."  Which I did, and he was grateful.  We talked for a while; he asked where I was coming from. "Astoria."  

"Really?  All the way from there?"

I nodded.  

"You have a nice bike."  He picked it up and accidentally kicked the pedal.  "You rode a fixed gear all the way from Astoria?"

I said that, for me, it's not a really long ride and if he started riding, he probably could do it after a couple of months or so.  He demurred.  We got to talking about a lot of things--music, what life was like when we were teens, the state of the city and favorite foods.  But he just couldn't get over the fact that I'd ridden from my place--about 17 kilometers--on my fixie, and that I would continue to the Red Hook waterfront and head home--about 40 kilometers, in all, before the worst of the day's heat and humidity.

Confessions

I have a confession.

I took a ride the other day--to Connecticut.

You're probably wondering why that's a "confession".  Well, you see, it's like this...um...well...

All right, I took a "mental health day" from work.

You know that's just another way of saying I played hooky.  But I rationalized it to myself because I had to go into work on a day when I normally wouldn't have.  Also, I suspected that my students are tired.

(When you were a kid, did your parents send you to bed when they were tired?  I was operating on the same sort of logic, or at least rationale.)

The ride to Connecticut was great.  Arielle, my Mercian Audax, knows it well.  And, for a change, it actually looked like Spring:

except that it felt more like summer when I started home.  The temperature had reached 34C (92F) and, after I crossed the state line, I could swear I was pedaling into a wind I didn't feel at my back on my way up.  

In addition to the wind, I was pedaling in continuous sunlight.  And, for the first time this year, I rode in shorts and a short-sleeved top.  So, while I was probably getting a month's worth of Vitamin D, I probably got as much in ultra-violet rays, even though I was re-applying sunscreen hourly. Also, even after drinking a full bottle each of plain water, Poland Spring and Gatorade, I didn't have to pee.  That meant, of course, that the sun, wind and heat were drawing the moisture out of me almost as soon as I replaced it.

In most years, by the time I did my first ride in such heat, I had done several others in gradually-increasing temperatures.  But on Sunday, when I rode with Bill and Cindy, the mercury barely reached 10C (50F).  Also, most of that ride was under partly cloudy skies, and just about all of the riding I've done so far this year has been under varying amounts of cloud cover.

After a cold, wet April, May opened with the kind of weather we might see in late July or early August.  That has people in this part of the world wondering, aloud, "Where did Spring go?"

My skin was probably wondering the same thing.  Even though this is the sixth ride I've taken to Connecticut this year, this one was the most difficult.  It was so difficult, in fact, that...I bailed with about 20km (12 miles) left in a 140 km (85 mile) ride.  Just after I crossed the bridge from the Pelham Bay Park trail to Co-op City, I started to feel lightheaded. At Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, I saw a hot dog stand by the station for the #5 subway.  I bought another bottle of Poland Spring and got on the train.

So...Which is the bigger confession:  that I played hooky or I bailed out on a ride?

Where Was Everybody? I'm Not Complaining!

I swore that I wouldn't ride to any beach areas on weekends this summer.   Well, I broke that promise. It was just so hot and humid I couldn't think of anywhere else I wanted to ride--or go by any other means.

Actually, I didn't ride just to one beach.  First, I heeded the Ramone's advice and rode to--where else?--Rockaway Beach.  I worried when I encountered a lot of traffic on the streets near my apartment--at least some of which seemed headed toward Rockaway.

But, as soon as I passed Forest Park, traffic started to thin out.  By the time I crossed the bridge from Howard Beach to Beach Channel, the streets started to look like county roads in upper New England or routes departmentales in the French countryside--at least traffic-wise, anyway.  And, oddly, there seemed to be less traffic the closer I got to the Rockaways. I thought that, perhaps, whoever had planned to be on the beach today was already there.

What I found when I got to Rockaway Beach invalidated that hypothesis.  Although temperatures reached or neared 100F (38C) in much of Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan--and humidity hovered around 90 percent--there actually was space to stretch out on the beach!  I've seen days where people were literally at arm's length, or even less from each other.  That's what I expected to, but didn't, see today.

I didn't see this. (Apologies to Francisco Goya.)

What's more, I could ride in more or less straight lines along the boardwalk:  I didn't have to swerve or dodge skateboarders, or families with men and boys in shorts and tank tops, women in bathing suits and cover-ups and little girls in frilly dresses--or dogs on leashes that seem to span the length of the boardwalk.

After soaking up sun, surf and sand (perhaps not in that order), I ate some of the salsa I made and tortilla chips from a local Mexican bakery.   Thus fortified, I decided to ride some more.  

Along Beach Channel Drive, I encountered even less traffic than I did on the way to Rockaway Beach.  There were even empty parking spaces along the street, all the way to Jacob Riis Park.  The beach there was slightly more crowded than Rockaway, but still nothing like what I expected.  The streets from there to the Marine Parkway Bridge were all but deserted, and the bridge itself--which spans an inlet of Jamaica Bay and ends on Flatbush Avenue, one of Brooklyn's major streets (it's really more like a six-lane highway at that point)--looked more like a display of Matchbox cars than a major thoroughfare. 

Stranger still, I saw only two other cyclists on the lane that parallels Flatbush, and none on the path that rims the bay along the South Shore of Brooklyn to the Sheepshead Bay docks.  From there, I encountered one other cyclist on the way to Coney Island--a bicycle patrolman!



Surely, I thought, I'd see throngs of strollers, sunbathers and swimmers at Coney Island.  Throngs, no.  People, yes--but, again, not as many as I expected.  

I didn't complain.  I finished the salsa and chips.  They were really good, if I do say so myself.

Riding In Dry Heat To The Sea--And An Old "Friend"

In my youth, one of the things I did when I was trying to figure out--or, perhaps, avoid--whatever it was I was supposed to be doing was to teach English in a language institute near the UN.  

In every lesson, I would give students at least one tip on "how to sound like an American".  One--as I've mentioned in another post--is never to call the largest city in California "Los Angeles".  To us 'Murikuns, it's "L.A."

Another one of my tips was to talk about the weather.  Americans are always talking about it, I'd tell them, and that's one of the easiest ways to talk with an American--and learn everyday English.

In that vein, I'm going to say something about the weather, as I did yesterday.  It was hot today, though not quite as oppressive as the last couple of days.  But there was a huge difference:  very low humidity.  Those of you who live and ride in places like "L.A." or Arizona are probably accustomed to such conditions.  But here in the NYC Metro Area--indeed, on most of the East Coast--heat=humidity, at least most of the time.

It's weird, at least for me, to ride in 90 degree F (32C) weather without sweating. I take that back:  the body sweats, but it doesn't drip.  Rather, the beads of sweat evaporate before you can see or feel them on the surface of your skin.  Meantime, you're sucking down water or your favorite color of Gatorade or whatever your preferred libation is for bike riding.

In some way, I guess it makes sense that I'd ride to the ocean on a day like this. Specifically, I pedaled to Point Lookout:  into the wind to Rockaway Beach, balancing the wind on my right side to the Point and on my left side back to Rockaway and, finally, with the wind at my back from Rockaway Beach.

The tide was in, so the sandbars and many of the rocks I've seen on previous rides were submerged.  However, I did get a glimpse of an old friend:


He's at the center of the photo.  Look closely and you can see--no, not Jaws

but the Point Lookout Orca!

I hadn't seen him in a while. Whatever he (somehow I think he's male) is, he deserves the same respect accorded other mysterious aquatic and amphibious creatures like the Loch Ness Monster.  I think he prefers that to being compared to Pac-Man:

Hmm...Could the inventor of that iconic video game have been working from some Jungian archetype?  Could that person have had the Point Lookout Orca in his or her subconscious without realizing it?

Whatever Point Lookout Orca is, he's never chased me.  I guess I'm not as tasty as the crustaceans and bivalves he can find in those waters.  After all, who ever paid $100 for a plate of me?  Orca, on the other hand, gets to eat what's served in the city's most expensive restaurants--for free.

And I get to have a great ride without breaking a sweat.  It all works out sometimes.

Just Ahead Of The Storm

From Traveling Two

This morning I managed to get in a ride just ahead of one of the worst storms we've had in a while.

Just after I got home, I could hear the raindrops pinging like BB's against the awning.  We may have had hail, as some other parts of the NYC Metro area did.

Whatever the precip was, a sudden, fierce wind drove it.  Some people on Long Island said they saw a funnel cloud; I know that a lot of trees came down.

When I'd finished riding, the temperature was near 100 F (39C).  The one good thing about the storm was that it dropped the temperature by about 20 degrees F within an hour.  But I could just barely see out my window, so I didn't go for another ride.

But, as brief as my morning ride was, it gave me a pretty good workout.  And I felt a sense of victory, however small, over having beaten that storm!