Mid-Day, Late Season

  Although this Fall has been warmer and drier than any other I can remember, my rides reveal sure signs that winter, whatever it might bring , isn’t far in the future.

Somehow the preternaturally clear sky and blue water at Fort Totten—where the (misnamed) East River meets the Long Island Sound, and the destination of my midday ride—only highlighted the imminent seasonal change.

Then again, some places and trees are holding onto what’s left of the season.

Voyage En Rose

 In  2000, I did a bike tour through the Pyrenees, from France into Spain and back.  I started in Toulouse, where I spent four days.  To this day, it's one of my favorite large cities.  The people are friendly and it has all of the other things to love about French cities and towns:  great food, beautiful public spaces and interesting art.  But the thing that leaves me with a warm glow (please indulge me in this analogy/pun) is the light at the end of the day.  So much of the city softly blazes as the sun sets among brick buildings.  For that, Toulouse is often called la ville rose.

So why did I think about that while riding yesterday?  (Well, why wouldn't I?)  As we near the winter solstice, the days are growing shorter.  So any given ride has a greater chance of ending, or even continuing, into the sunset, under twilight.  After riding to the Rockaways and Coney Island, I passed through Clinton Hill--a neighborhood just east of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Atlantic Center.  

The area is probably best known for its old stone churches, brownstones and the Pratt Institute.  Nestled among them is a smaller but well-respected university:  St. Joseph's.  As a longtime presence, it--not surprisingly--shares the neighborhood's architectural and other visual delights.  

Those buildings, on Clinton Avenue, are adjacent to St. Joseph's and share many characteristics with its other buildings.  They are not, however, part of the university.  The exteriors have been almost unchanged since they were built in 1905, in part because the block is one of the city's first designated historic districts.

Whoever lives in those buildings comes home to a maison rose at the end of the day.  That might be reason enough to live in them, as so many other parts of this city have less rose and look more and more like they're built with neutral-tone Lego blocks. 

Late In The Day, Late In The Season

I'm still limited to short rides.  But my time in the saddle has given me no end of visual delight:

Saturday I rode to Roosevelt Island again and, from there, down the waterfront. November sunsets are so vivid--and bike rides so fulfilling--because of the darkness, the cold, that is ready to descend, just as trees are their most colorful at the moment before the wind strips them bare to the long, dark nights ahead.

 

Yesterday I took another, slightly longer ride.  I didn't take any photos, but I'll have something to say about it tomorrow.

Ride Before The Storm

It's here.  

I'm talking about the snow.  Ever since the middle of the week, the weather forecasters said we'd get the white stuff this weekend.  Well, they were right on target:  Flurries that fluttered down early this morning have turned into big, puffy flakes.  I don't know how much will accumulate, or stay, but everything looks like someone opened up a big box of confectioner's sugar and sprinkled it.

Good thing I went for a ride yesterday--specifically, the ride I took.  Although you could have guessed that snow was coming even if you hadn't heard the forecasts, there was no threat of it yesterday. Nor was there a hint of sun:  The overcast sky spread a blanket of that particular kind of gray seen just when late autumn is turning into winter--and the pyres of fallen leaves are flickering their last embers of color.

I tried to get those colors and that light without becoming a road pancake.  Oh well.  At least I managed to capture, I think, the you-wouldn't-know-it-was-the-Bronx-unless-you-were-there feel of that scene.

Anyway, at that point I was about a quarter of the way to what would be my destination:  

You guessed it--Greenwich, Connecticut.  That's the Town Hall, across from where I sat and consumed some dark chocolate and nuts.

Trusty Arielle, my Mercian Audax, got me there and back.  She seemed particularly quick and comfortable today.  Perhaps I was simply enjoying my last-chance-before-the-storm ride.  

So what am I doing today (besides writing this post)?  Reading some students' papers, and making some beet soup.  And enjoying yesterday's ride.

A Reunion, A Ride Into The Sunset--And Congee

So, it looks like my "meeting in Kool Orange" might be turning into a friendship.  Or, at least, a cycle-buddy relationship.

Yes, Bill and I went for a ride the other day.  He was on his Kool Orange Schwinn Sports Tourer from 1971, and I pedaled my 1981 Trek 412.  

I know:  I have to post a photo of it on my sidebar, with my other bikes.  I've had it almost a year now.  It's still a work in progress, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep it--even after I get the Mercian Vincitore Special I've ordered!

Anyway, Bill--who said he'd been feeling a bit under the weather--was moving at a rather sprightly pace through the backstreets of industrial Brooklyn when we chanced upon a shop in Bushwick.

"Can I help you."

"No, just want to take a look. Any shop with two Bob Jacksons looks promising."

Those bikes were, as it turned out, an entree, an appetizer or whatever you want to call it.  Haven Cycles has quite the selection of vintage bikes:  I noticed, among other bikes, a classic Raleigh Competition, a Schwinn Paramount track bike and a Serotta track bike equipped with Shimano's 10-pitch gearing and gold-anodized Super Champion Arc en Ciel tubular rims.  There was even a Raleigh ten-speed made for the British market (it had the lamp holder brazed to the front fork) and the usual selection of ten- and twelve-speed bikes converted to single-speed city machines--including a lovely metallic lavender Motobecane.

I was especially taken with the Bob Jackson of Robin, the co-owner, who outfitted the bike with Surly's best rear rack, a White Industries triple crankset, Phil Wood hubs and, of course, a Chris King headset.  The frame was intended for loaded touring, and that's how Robin equipped it.

Anyway, she left a comment on my post from the other day, describing an incident later that day that bore too much similarity to the ones I described in that post.  She and co-owner Jon were, fortunately, able to re-unite a stolen bike with its rightful owner a year after it went missing.

After our visit, Bill and I continued riding through back streets of Brooklyn and Queens on a chilly but beautiful late fall-verging-into-early winter day.  He--a photographer--commented that the day's light, as lovely as it was, looked more like early winter.  I agreed and couldn't help but to notice that the day definitely felt like winter once we started crossing the bridges over Jamaica Bay into the Rockaways and back into Brooklyn, near Floyd Bennett Field.

Yes, we rode into the sunset.  Please don't read too much into that:  We rode into the sunset, but not off into the sunset!

Anyway, after that, we rode to his place and he introduced me to King's Kitchen, one of the many Chinese restaurants in his neighborhood: in Sunset Park, right next to the namesake park and a few blocks from Maimonidies Hospital and a point where Asian, Hispanic and Hasidic communities converge.

Few things warm the bones after a cold ride like a bowl of congee!  In all, it was a day of happy endings, wouldn't you say?