A Long And Restful Sleep

I didn't post last night because I got home dead-tired and fell asleep not long after walking through the door.


Thursday is my longest day of the week, work-wise.  And I did it on about half as much sleep as I'd planned.  Plus, it seemed, everyone--and I'm not talking only about my students--had some pressing issue, question or need.   Sometimes there are just days like that.


Riding from home to my main job, to my second job and home again, I felt surprisingly fluid.  Yes, I felt as if my legs were just flowing through each pedal stroke.  And I felt even more surprisingly strong, considering how little riding I've done since Christmas.  So what made me feel so tired when I got home?


Perhaps it had to do, at least in part, that I rode a bit more than I'd planned.  On my way home, I decided to ride a bike/pedestrian path along the southern edge of Kissena Park.  Close as it is to my commute, and other rides I do, I hadn't ridden there in a very long time.    So my memory of it was faulty, to say the least.  As I result, I made a wrong turn coming out of it.  Then I made another wrong turn. And another. 


My errance (Is that the noun form of "errant?") took me, among other places, around the perimeter of a cemetery.  And it was dark.  That, of course, is not an aid to someone who is a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus and inherited his navigational skills.  Well, OK, I may not be the great-great-great-great-whatever of CC.  But you get the idea.


One thing I wasn't going to do was to sleep in that cemetery.    For starters, it was very cold and windy.  More to the point, nobody ever plans to do such a thing.  At least, I didn't the one time I did it.


It happened back in the days before my first ATM card.  I didn't have any credit cards then, either.  I didn't buy traveler's checks, as I had done for my first European tour a couple of years earlier.  So all I had was cash.  And I was almost out of it the night I rested under the stars in a graveyard.


I knew that I was in New York State, somewhere near the point where its borders with Massachusetts and Connecticut meet.  I knew that because I crossed, during the course of that day's ride, from Massachusetts into Connecticut before seeing a sign that read "Welcome to the Empire State," or something like that.  


It was, as I recall, the fourth day of a ride I took from Montreal to New Jersey.  I'd carried a sleeping bag with me, which I didn't use until that night.  The day was hot, though not humid, which is unusual in most of the Eastern United States. I was tired: As young as I was, riding more than 80 miles with a load (small as it was) through a hilly area was a lot for one day.  


Most people's navigational skills decrease as they grow weary.  When your skills are like mine, they shrink into non-existence at times like that night.  If someone had told me there was a hostel or some other place fifteen feet in a straight line in front of me, I probably wouldn't have found it. 


Tired, broke (almost, anyway) and lost.  What did I do?  I rolled out my sleeping bag.  At least the night was clear and full of stars, with absolutely no threat of rain.  And it was quiet.  Very quiet.  But I was too tired to be disconcerted by anything, so I fell asleep almost as soon as I got into my bag.


I had a very long and restful sleep, as I had last night.

Crossing Another State Line From Memory

Is Arielle inspiring wanderlust in me?  Or does she have it all on her own, and does she merely take me along for the ride?

Today we crossed another state line.  So that makes two-- Pennsylvania two weeks ago, when I rode to the Delaware Water Gap, and Connecticut today—since my surgery.

Going to New Jersey doesn’t count.  Not really.  Or does it?  We New Yorkers sometimes say that Jersey is a foreign country.  I wonder whether the Brits say that about the eponymous island in the English Channel.  Although it’s a semi-independent part of Great Britain, it’s actually much closer to France and has a language--Jerriais-- that bears more resemblance to French than it does to English.

Then again, lots of people would like to think of anyplace where Snooki would live as a country different from their own. Otherwise, they’d start campaigns to deport her.

Anyway, I started my ride by crossing the RFK Memorial (nee Triboro) Bridge to Randall’s Island and the Bronx, through neighborhoods where women don’t ride bikes.  I made a wrong turn somewhere north of Fordham Road and ended up on a highway and riding a square around the perimeter of the Botanical Gardens.  From there, I managed to find my way to Westchester County.

For someone who lives in New York, I really don’t spend much time in Westchester County.  Occasionally a ride will take me to Yonkers or Mount Vernon, both of which are just over the city line from the Bronx.  But I never have felt much inclination to explore the rest of the county.

Part of the reason might be that my first experience of cycling in Westchester County came the year after I came back from living in France.  That in itself can make Westchester, and lots of places, seem like a comedown.  (I think now of the time I ate a particularly bad take-out dinner the day after returning from a cycling trip through the Pyrenees and the Loire Valley!) But I first entered Westchester County on a bike near the end of a cycling trip from Montreal to New Jersey, where I was living at the time.  I had cycled through some nice Quebec countryside, the Vermont shore of Lake Champlain and the Berkshires before entering New York State near the point where it borders on Massachusetts and Connecticut. 

That night, I slept in a cemetery that was in or near the town of Austerlitz, NY.  It was a clear, moonlit and pleasantly cool evening.  I had no idea (and wouldn’t find out until the next day) where I was, and I had almost no money left.  So I simply rolled out my sleeping bag.   I slept fine:  There was absolutely nothing to disturb me.  And I guess I was a good neighbor.

After all that, Westchester County seemed like just a place with lots of big houses and lawns and a bunch of golf courses.  It wasn’t bad; it was just a bit of a letdown, I guess.

Later, Westchester would become the place where friends of Eva, Elizabeth and Tammy lived.  And all of those friends didn’t like me, or so it seemed.  Going to their homes felt a bit like going to the in-laws’ or to a relative of one of your parents—and that relative didn’t like your other parent, and saw you as his/her child.

Fortunately, I didn’t think about any of those things today.  I didn’t see as many houses that seemed like ostentatious versions of houses the owners saw on their European trips as I recall seeing in previous treks through the county.  And, when I stopped in a gas station/convenience store for a bottle of iced tea, I saw the friendliest and most polite attendant I have seen in a long time.  He’s from Liberia.

I hadn’t started out with the intention of going to Connecticut.  But after stopping at the gas station/convenience store, I realized that I wasn’t far from the Mamaroneck harbor.  So I rode there, along a fairly meandering road where two drivers pulled over to ask me whether I knew how to get to the Westchester Mall.  It’s funny:  People assume that because you’re on a bike, you live nearby and are familiar with the area.

From Mamaroneck, I took another road that zigged and zagged toward and away from the shore of Long Island Sound to Rye.  There, I knew that I wasn’t far from Connecticut, so I continued along the road to Port Chester, the last town before the border.

I only took a few photos, and none of them came out well.  But that part of the ride was pleasant, even charming at times.  Then, after crossing the state line, I ventured up the road into downtown Greenwich.  I’d have gone further, but I started later than I intended to and didn’t particularly want to ride the last few miles of my trip in the dark.  I’m not adverse to night riding; I just didn’t feel like doing it tonight.

In Greenwich, about half a mile from the state line, there’s an Acura dealer.  Just up the road from it is an Aston Martin/Bentley dealer, and a bit further up the road are a BMW, then a Mercedes, dealership.  So, I’m guessing that the annual per-capita income of that town is probably not much less than I’ve made in my entire life.

On my way back, I rode down Huguenot Avenue.  It’s in Little Rock.  Actually, it’s in  New Rochelle, a town founded by the people for whom the avenue is named. (The town is named for La Rochelle, the French port from which most of them sailed.  “Rochelle” means “little rock.”)  If any of you recall The Dick Van Dyke show, which featured a young Mary Tyler Moore, you’re old.  Seriously, you might remember that the show took place in New Rochelle.  The town has changed a bit since then, as you can see from new structures like this:

It connects the local Trump Tower (How many of those things are there?) with another building on the other side of the Avenue.  I wonder whether cyclists are allowed to ride in it.