Typical Commute--And Commuter?

Sometimes I'm happy to have an early a.m. class.  Those sometimes are almost always on days when I pedal to work.  Now I'm on my bike just before sunrise; soon I will be getting in the saddle in the dark.  Until then, I can enjoy sights like this:

I saw tree from the corner of my eye as I turned from the cinderblock sprawl of Lefrak City onto a side street in Corona.  Yes, as in "the Queen of Corona," which Paul Simon immortalized in "Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard."

A student told me that the ride to work brings out my "glow."  Another student--who's not in one of my classes now--captured me as I was ready to start riding home:

The parked bike is the Pinarello cyclo-cross bike I've mentioned in a previous post.  I've seen it every time I've ridden to my second job.  

It has Mavic Cosmic wheels, Paul cantilever brakes and an XTR crankset and derailleurs:  not what one normally sees in a college's bike rack.


Then again, some would argue that I'm not the typical commuter who parks in a rack like that one.

November Cycling

Today's the first of November.


This is the month that separates the committed cyclists from the rest.  People who pedal once or twice around the park every other weekend usually call it a season about now.  At least, that's what they seem to do in Northern Hemisphere locales that have four discernible seasons.


Yesterday I noticed there were fewer cyclists on the roads and Greenway than there've been on most Sundays during the past few months.  That isn't too surprising:  It was a chilly, windy day, though it was lovely, if in a rather austere way.


Although it was Halloween--the last day of October--in cycling terms, it was more of a November day.  That, for me was part of what I enjoyed about cycling yesterday.


Of course, no month is more beautiful than October.  Perhaps May or June could be said to be as lovely, if in entirely different ways from the month that just passed.  Cycling--or doing nearly anything else outdoors--in  October is a feast for the senses.


On the other hand, November grows grayer and more wizened as it proceeds.  Colors fade into shades of ashes and as trees are stripped of their leaves, their branches grow darker and splinter.  Somehow, though, they endure like the coats the old and the poor wear through another season.


Someone who continues cycling this week, this month, will probably continue to some time just before Christmas.  And anyone who continues cycling after that will probably still be on his or her bike in February.


By then, even they--we-- will be ready for another season, having cycled forward from the light of the gray November tableau.  

Cycling Through The Gates of Autumn

I got up late today.  So my ride took me to a sunset:

The sun has just set behind Jamaica Bay, near the place it meets the Atlantic at Breezy Point.  I stumbled over this view on the Queens side of the Gil Hodges-Marine Park Bridge.  That view led to another bridge:

To get to these views, we crossed another bridge:

The day was chilly and windy, and became more of both after we crossed this bridge from Beach Channel to the Rockaways.  But somehow I didn't feel the cold.  Maybe I was channeling the sky:  Clouds spread like a shawl across a graying sea and houses that still have some of the warmth and light the sun within them.

And the way to these views was a bike ride through the gates of autumn:

Some of us have to carry a lot to get there:

Sometimes the journey is long, or seems that way:

And where does it lead?  Hopefully, to some place like this:

And it continues.  There is no escaping it, though some will try:

b

That's a washed-out stretch of the Greenway, where it parallels Belt Parkway along Brooklyn's South Shore.  I asked someone to take a photo of me, but I didn't like it.  So I took this photo of a couple I saw cycling.  

Where else could they have been riding but through a sunset in the gates of autumn.