I, of all people, should not be fazed by change.
But how do you react when one of your favorite bike rides is about to be altered, possibly beyond recognition?:
I guess I shouldn't be so worried about what's going to happen to Rockaway Beach. This guy looks like he might not survive the changes.
Just for the heck of it, I decided to see how close I could ride to him. How close I got to him surprised me. What disturbed me was the reason why I could:
Not only is his wing broken; he was even more sickly than he looked from a hundred feet away.
I may not be much of a naturalist, much less an orinthologist. But I think it's a pretty safe to say he won't be there come next spring's cycling season. I wonder who else won't--and will--be.
Much of the boardwalk--like many of its counterparts up and down the East Coast--hasn't borne the brunt of this year's storms very well. So it's being rebuilt:
I always wondered what a boardwalk would look like if it were built in the Brutalist style. Well, all right, I never did. But now I know.
My dislike of this boardwalk is not only from an aesthetic point of view. The lines between the slabs are even sharper than the ones between the weathered wooden boards of the old boardwalk. Those slabs are not always perfectly level with each other, and even if they were, the edge of a tire could skid against the edge of one of those slabs and cause a nasty spill.
As much as I dislike them, I can understand why they're being built that way. For one thing, it probably fits in with the row houses that are being built on the streets leading to it. But more important--at least to the builders--it's probably cheaper than rebuilding with wooden boards. It also won't weather and splinter the way wooden boards do, though concrete doesn't always age well in damp places, either.
The latter, by the way, is the reason why builders have gotten away from the Brutalist style. That, and the fact that raw concrete slabs can be unbelievably depressing, especially under the gray skies that one sees about 250 days a year in much of Northern Europe and northeastern North America, where so many of those buidings went up.
My question is: If it's made of concrete, can it still be called a boardwalk?
Anyway, I have to wonder what next spring's--or even this winter's--rides will look like. I hope that some of the old bungalows will remain:
Well, whatever happens, I guess I should be happy if the concrete replacement for the boardwalk remains open to cyclists. I can tolerate almost anything that's by the ocean, so I guess whatever they're building will work, in some way or another, for me.
Still, I can't say I am happy about the prospect of a ride I've done for about 25 years being changed irrevocably. All I can hope is that at least something about it will be for the better for us.
Today seemed chillier than it actually was because of the wind--and a cold and one of those headaches that makes it seem as if a vise was clamping and squeezing at my temples. So I didn't ride. I hope to feel better tomorrow.
Janine's death hasn't helped my mood much. Although she wasn't a cyclist herself, she did a nice series (Click onto "Serie des Cyclistes") of engravings with cyclists as her theme.
One of the wonderful things about cycling in France is eating at the end of a day's ride. If you've ever done a long or hard ride, you know that nothing tastes better than that roast chicken, pasta, ear of corn, salad, wine, pastry, fruit or anything you might consume afterward. That's true even if you're eating in some truck stop off a highway in the middle of some place God seems to have forgotten. So, imagine how good the bird, the grain, the soup are when your day's ride ends next to a chateau by the Loire--or in Paris.
It was even better when that meal in Paris at the end of a day of riding was made by Janine. I've spent enough time in France and eaten enough French cooking not to be impressed by all of it. But I'll rave about Janine's culinary work. So do her French friends, with whom I've shared some meals and other good times.
In recalling her, two words came up repeatedly: genereuse and vitale. As creative and independent as she was, I never had the sense that she was, or felt, alienated from the world in which she lived. Over time, I slowly came to realize how much the "cowboy" notion of creativity as the product of isolated, alienated individuals had crippled me as well as countless other people, particularly in America.
For a long time, I rode because I was, or thought I had no choice but to be, that "cowboy." I don't think Janine ever tried to teach or convince me of anything different. She simply was a light at the end of those journeys--including the one that brought me from Nick to Justine.
Marianela's ready for another commute:
She might be showing her age. But, like girls of any age, she likes new accessories--especially a new bag:
And she especially likes it if the bag is retro: real retro, like the OYB bag I described in an earlier post.
Down my street to start another day:
You can tell there's not much left of autumn. Every day, the wind sweeps more leaves off the branches. It leaves the trees more barren, and sometimes even a bit forlorn-looking. And it exposes them to the expanse of sky: a gray sky:
It's a bit like my morning commute: the road and the world open before me, if only for moments. But some days what unfolds is a Mercator Projection of concrete lines and angles puncuated by windows filled with the ashen sky.
At least, at the end of the days like that, I can ride away from it. That was always the second attraction of cycling for me. The first is to pedal into the open waves, whether they are in front of or within me.
