Henry James Had Two Words For This

Summer afternoon--summer afternoon; to me, those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

So wrote Henry James in An International Eposiode.

I have a confession:  For a semester in college, I couldn't decide which I hated more:  James' The Wings of the Dove or the professor who assigned it.  Or maybe I hated Henry James even more because, well, at that time I had to hate (or, at least, make some gesture of rebelling against) something.  It was easy to rationalize a distaste for his work:  the sentences were long and the stories seemed to be about a bunch of upper-class twits.  I mean, to a kid from a working-class Italian-American family in Brooklyn and New Jersey, it seemed that those folks--and, perhaps James himself--simply had too much time on their hands.

Of course, you know that if you hate something enough when you're young, at some point later on, you'll go straight for it.  For me, it actually didn't take very long to change my opinion about James:  a few months later, I found myself reading some essays, and still later novels, by James Baldwin.  He grew up poor in Harlem, so it was easy for me to feel sympathy for him.  The funny thing is that, in style, no American writer is more similar to James.  And, I had to admit to myself that it was exactly what I liked about his writing.  Then, wonder of wonders, I came across a Baldwin essays in which he cited James as an influence. 

So, to my way of thinking at that time, if Henry James was good enough for James Baldwin, he would suit me just fine.

Besides:  How could I hate a writer who could come up with a sentence like the one at the beginning of this post?  

During yesterday's ride--to Connecticut--I could see what he meant.  Blue sky, full trees and flowers, all so serene.  Who couldn't find beauty in that.  And, the sound of the two words echoes the feeling very well.

Who wouldn't ride to the sight--or sound--of a summer afternoon?  Sometimes I think Arielle, my Mercian Audax, responds to such things as much as I do!

Another Day In The Good Life

Sometimes the weather forecasters like to scare us.  Or so it seems.  Today, they gave us dire warnings of "possible" or "likely" thunderstorms this afternoon.

Whatever they were trying to accomplish, their admonitions worked for me.  I got out nice and early for a ride today--on Arielle.  She seemed as happy as I was:  Even when I pedaled into the wind--as I did for about half of my 125-kilometer ride--she just kept on going.  And I felt that I could, too.

In fact, when a very light rain sprinkled the streets, sand and stones of Point Lookout, I wanted to ride even more.  Rain on a warm day can sometimes has that effect on me.  The precipitation, though, didn't last as long as the cup of coffee I drank at the Point.

The clouds looked more ominous than they actually are--at least to me, or anyone else who is familiar with the weather patterns.  The tides swelled, but the clouds were moving south and east--in other words, out to the sea whose waves were growing.

In contrast to yesterday's ride to Connecticut, the trek to the Point is flat, which may be a reason why it seemed so easy.  In fact, my round-trip didn't took four hours, and I wasn't even trying to "make time"--and I took a slightly longer-than-normal route from Forest Park back to my apartment.

By the time I got home, though, I did make time for a nice long European-style lunch:  a cod fillet I poached with  mushrooms and onions I sauteed, along with a simple salad of Boston lettuce, sliced carrots and beets pickled with dill in Balsmic vinegar.  I washed it all down with  a small wedge of Mimolette: a reddish-orange French cheese that looks and tastes oddly, though pleasantly, like butterscotch.  If that doesn't make it a dessert cheese, I don't know what does.

Yes, Max and Marlee got small pieces of cod, too.  I'm not cruel enough to make them watch me while I eat food they'd love without sharing some with them.  Of course, I held the onions, mushrooms and everything else!

I didn't have to go to work today.  I got to ride and have a nice meal, if I do say so myself.  I had the company of two cats.  And I'm going to do some more writing after I finish this post.  Am I privileged, or what?

(I apologize for the photos, which I took with my cheapo cell phone!)

I Rode From It As Fast As I Could!

Yesterday morning, before I went out to ride, I was listening to the radio while I sipped on green tea and ate some Greek yougurt (from Kesso) with almonds and a banana, which I washed  down with an orange.  

While enjoying my breakfast, I was listening to an interview an NPR host conducted with a fellow in Inverness, Scotland who maintains the official website that records sightings of the Loch Ness Monster.  The interviewer is clearly skeptical, to put it mildly, about the existence of "Nessie" and other mythical creatures like Bigfoot.  

Now, because I'm the sort of person who takes a lot of things--even stuff that's more credible than, say, most of what Trump says in his speeches and tweets--with more than a few grains of salt,you might not expect me to be a believer.  But how can I be anything else?  I know for a fact that the Randall's Island Salamander and Point Lookout Orca exist.  I can't not believe.  After all, I made them up saw them and even photographed them, however crudely.

About the latter:  I didn't see him (I think I decided he's male because he reminds me of a Pac Man!) yesterday even though I rode to Point Lookout.  But could there be something else lurking in the waters by "the Point"?


It looks ready to take over the bay, the ocean and even the land:

A clever creature it is:  It showed up in the same part of all of that photos I took.  I guess it's trying to make me believe that it was dirt or some malfunction in my camera rather than a sea creature.

A tech-savvy monster?  Should we be scared?  Does the Point Lookout Orca stand a chance against it?

Oh, no:  It's following those folks home.  And their little dogs, too!

Looking Out At My Great Luck

Every traffic report I heard said, in essence, that traffic would not be heavy today, as most people who planned on traveling this weekend had left yesterday, or even earlier.

Those reports turned out to be true--even for going to the beach.  I decided to take a chance in riding again to Rockaway Beach, but continuing to Point Lookout because today was just as hot as yesterday.  And, as with yesterday, I was pedaling into the wind on my way to Rockaway Beach, though it wasn't quite as stiff as what I experienced yesterday.  Or, perhaps, it didn't seem as difficult because I was riding Arielle, my Mercian Audax, which has gears.  In contrast, yesterday, I was riding Tosca, my Mercian fixie.

Perhaps it's strange to antrhopomorphosize a bicycle, but sometimes I swear Arielle is just excited to be outside on a beautiful day.  She may not be the lightest machine--she is steel, after all, as are all of my bikes--but she's hardly porky.  To me, she's proof that design--specifically, design by and for cyclists--is more important than exotic materials. Though, I must say, people in much of the world would probably think Reynolds 631 is pretty exotic compared to whatever bikes they have available--if indeed they have bikes available!

But back to Arielle's sprightliness:  Sometimes I think she's like that because she knows the sun brings out her colors!

Anyway, the ride--both to Point Lookout and back--actually was faster than I thought it was.  That, or my watch slowed down, which seems unlikely as it was, at the end of my ride, still in sync with my cell phone and every other time-keeping device I saw.

Even after my decades of riding, there are some things I haven't figured out.  What I experienced today is one of them:  To wit, I have done considerably less cycling during the past month than I would normally do at this time of year.  Yet my time today on a ride I have taken many, many times before was about the same, give or take two to five minutes (over a 105 kilometer ride) as it was at my peak during last year's riding season.  Yet there have been times when I was in better shape (and younger!) and thought I was pedaling like Eddy Mercx or Jeanne Longo, but my ride took a lot longer than I expected.  Not that I care so much about time, except when I'm "sneaking away" or "playing hooky" and have to be somewhere (e.g. work or a date) at a specific time after my ride.

Oh well.  Perhaps I should also mention that I didn't stick around long at Point Lookout. (I don't count the time I stay at my destination in my ride time.)  A lot of people were there, but none in the water, there or anywhere else along the coast.  As I mentioned yesteday, the water is still fairly chilly (at least for most people).  Also, at Point Lookout, most of the people were there to see the air show at Jones Beach, directly across the inlet.  The show wasn't scheduled to start for another couple of hours, but as I understand, the beach would be as packed as if it were the Fourth of July, with weather like we had today.  I couldn't, however, bring myself to stay for it--in part, because I wanted to continue riding, but also because one of the planes scheduled to fly in the show crash-landed in the Hudson River, killing its pilot.  I don't know how I would have felt while watching the stunts after seeing footage of poor Bill Gordon saving everybody but himself after his plane's engine failed.

Today I was luckier indeed.  And I am grateful for that:  I had to do nothing but enjoy my ride. 

I Thought I'd Caught Her Flip-Flopping

Today was an absolutely glorious day, weather-wise, and I didn't have to worry about spectacles of animal exploitation clogging area roadways.  In fact, given that it was Sunday, there was scarcely a cloud in the sky and little humidity, and the temperature reached 24C (75F), I was surprised to see as little traffic as I did anywhere I rode.

Even the beach areas were pretty quiet.  I rode down to the Rockaways, flipped a quarter and continued to Point Lookout. Some people were walking about on the beach and the boardwalks in the Rockaways and Atlantic Beach.  But they didn't seem to linger, surprisingly enough. The water is still a bit cooler than some people like for swimming.  That might be a reason why there weren't as many people as I expected.  Also, there didn't seem to be many events as there were last weekend or the weekend before, which included Memorial Day.

Of course I didn't mind.  I just rode and took a couple of self-indulgent shots of Tosca, my fixed-gear Mercian:

Actually, I took the photos because in the light of that beach, and the angle from which I was looking when I sat down, I could see the "flip-flop" quality of the finish:  It actually looked purple and green at the same time.  I don't think it came through in these photos.  Oh well.

I had a great ride with Tosca.  That's what matters.