Hues Of Exposure

 On the return leg of a North Shore ride, I saw the kind of blue, if a little darker, one normally doesn't see in the waters around New York City, except in postcards--or this:

We haven't had very many days of crystal-clear skies lately.  During the past few days, intervals of non-rain have punctuated downpours accompanied, at times, by wind gusts.  I couldn't keep a cap on when I was walking to the store; it's no wonder the branches can't keep their leaves

and their nudity seems even more stark against dark clouds.

Even the tall steel towers across the bay and river seem to need something to shield them against the impending winter, the way even a big, strong, young person needs a shawl, a cloak or something to cover his or her shoulders and frame against the coming cold. 

The Harvest Begins

The other day felt autumnal.  It wasn't just the cool, crisp air or the fact that I was in Connecticut.  I couldn't pinpoint exactly why I felt the fall had begun, or was well on its way, but I think I now know why.

Today the temperature reached 31C (88F), but the day still seemed autumnal.  Granted, we didn't have the sauna-like humidity we had during an earlier heat wave. But there was something else.  At first I thought it was just a feeling, but I realize now it was as visual as it was visceral.

Before going to work, I managed to ride by the Concrete Plant Park along the Bronx River.  I could swear I saw the first tinges of yellow and orange in a few trees:

And, because there is less daylight every day than there was earlier in the summer, the sun isn't as intense, and the ground and buildings don't have as much time to absorb the heat. So, while the air temperature climbed over 30C, the heat didn't feel as oppressive as it did a few weeks ago.

There's one more signal of Fall, for me.  My rides, whether to Connecticut or the college, seem easier now.  That is one of the things I've always loved about cycling in September and October, at least in years when I've done a decent amount of riding:  I can climb hills in a gear or two higher than I did in, say, April or even June.  Also, on my ride the other day, I was pedaling into a 20-25 KPH wind most of the way to Connecticut and barely noticed it.

Since I have never farmed (and probably never will), the kind of cycling I've experienced this week is probably the closest I will come to a harvest:  I am enjoying the fruits of all of the pedaling I've done over the past few months.

Light Along The Way

I tend to remember scenes, places and situations by the feelings I associate with them.  Those sensations are very much influenced by the light around them.

Although yesterday’s ride took me through places I’ve cycled many times before, I think it will become a Fall Classic, if you will, in my memory.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge always does interesting things to the hues of water, sky, sun and clouds:

and to newly-denuded limbs exposed to the wind that stripped them so that they could only open themselves to late-day sunlight trapped in a cloud.

At the end of the day’s fading light, across the water, a boat

follows the setting sun

Is it headed for a fjord of fire?

With The Light Of This Day

Today the temperature went over 40F.  Yesterday it came close to that.  For the first time this year, we've had consecutive days on which the temperature rose above freezing. 

As a result, all of the ice and much of the snow that had accumulated since Christmas were gone.  So I rode to and from work for the first time this week.  It might be the last time, too, as the temperature is supposed to drop by twenty degrees tomorrow and we're supposed to get another snowstorm.

Last week, one of the office assistants asked how I rode to work.  I had to think fairly hard.  I actually have three or four distinct routes, and a couple of permutations of each one.  I don't think much about which way I'm going;  somehow I just know where to turn.  In a similar fashion, lots of passengers know, without seeing any signs or hearing any announcement, when the train is pulling into their station.  Sometimes the passengers don't even have to see the station, or anything around it.  

What guides them to disembark at the right stop?  Is it some sort of internal clock?  Or some other cue?

To tell you the truth, sometimes I'm just navigating by nothing more than light.  Somehow the glare of signals and the way in which the day's light fades--or grows brighter--is enough for me to know which way to go.  Sometimes.

Sunday Worship, I Mean, Bike Ride

After seeing Saving Private Ryan, someone suggested that I'd make a good chaplain.  I said that it was one of the most ludicrous suggestions anyone ever made to me.  After all, I explained, I'm not religious and don't know how I could be.

"Oh, but you are.   You have more beliefs than you realize.  And you have your rituals, and your form of worship."


"But I haven't been to church in..."


"That's not important.  You have your religion, and your bike rides are your form of worship."

Today--so many years, and almost as many life-changes, later-- I realize she may have been on to something:

Until I take my next trip to Rome, this is probably as close as I'll come to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And, quite frankly, even though Michelangelo is one of the best (and one of my favorite) artists who ever lived, the light I saw in this scene means more to me than the stories that are depicted in that ceiling.  Plus, I didn't have to deal with the crowds in the Chapel.


Here is one stop on the route of my "pilgrimage": 

And then, I try to re-orient myself through signs, er, landmarks:

As the journey continues, there is only light to follow:

Sometimes the journey involves a crossing:

In the end, there is the revelation, in the form of light piercing the darkness:

It leadeth me to the still waters.  Well, all right, maybe they're not so still.  But even if hope and belief are eternal, rituals and liturgy are not. And I will "worship" again next Sunday.

Riding Through Forms Of Light

Ah, Helene really is a romantic after all:

What started out as a late-afternoon/early-evening ride turned into a moonlight cruise by Sheepshead Bay.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Brooklyn (no, Park Slope and North Williamsburg don't count), Sheepshead Bay is an inlet of the sea at the southern end of the borough.  On one side of it are the eponymous neighborhood, a part of which ended up in the above photo.  On the side from which I took the photo is a neighborhood called Manhattan Beach.  The Bay itself is named after a fish that, if I recall correctly, was native only to the bay.


Anyway...the ride down there was one of the more interesting local rides I've done.   Actually, it wasn't so much a ride as it was a light show.

I took this photo looking down a side street from Lee Avenue in one of the non-hipster areas of Williamsburg.  Lee Avenue is probably about as close to a stetl as one can find in this country in 2010.

Many of the stores, like this one, don't have signs in English.  And, I happened to be pedaling down this street on the first full day of Rosh Hashanna,  just as when Hasidic families were leaving shul and walking to their homes, or those of extended family members.  


Although the sky was overcast, the light seemed, well, light.  Perhaps it had to do with the colors of those clouds:  more blue than gray.  That made them seem more like waves in the sea than bearers of storms.  


Somehow, in my imagination, I always imagine preternaturally clear Prussian blue skies of la belle epoque giving way to graying inter-war skies and, finally, to those ominous iron gray curtains of clouds that preceded the long night that settled over the old stetls.


Now, before I start to sound like a really bad cross between Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (Only in Russia after the Berlin Wall fell could he have been chosen to host a talk show!)  and Elie Weisel (whom I both like and respect as a writer and person), I'm going to get back to the topic at hand:  riding, and what and where the ride brings me.

I feel as if riding these last couple of days has been about following light (if not The Light, whatever that is) as it radiates from some unexpected sources.  As thick as the clouds have been, they did not seem heavy and have never threatened rain.  And they have allowed at least a reflection of the hour's light

Or, more precisely, where the light has led me: