No, I didn't go to any of the "Black Friday" sales today. To me, they're like New Year's Eve in Times Square: something to be done once, to say that you've done it. Yes, I've done both. No, I don't intend to do either again.
The simple explanation is that I don't like being among the BF or NYETS crowds. Actually, I don't like being among crowds generally. So what am I doing living in New York, you ask. Well, I live in the Big Apple precisely because I don't like great masses of people, just as I became a writer and teacher because I was, and in some ways still am, shy. No, I'm not being cute, contrarian or Zen. Actually, I never have been any of those things, and Zen is the only one of them I have even the remotest chance of becoming. But I digress.
It goes something like this: the more I like people--well, some individual people, anyway--the more I dislike being among masses of them. And the more I live with and by my shyness, the more I find to say and the more I have the need to say it. Likewise, the more I enjoy shopping, the less I like to be part of the throngs who are hunting bargains.
All of this has to do with what led me to a lifelong passion for cycling. When I first started to take long rides and realized that I would benefit from a bike with gears, pedaling while astride two wheels when you were old enough to step on a gas pedal and accelerate four wheels was still something of an act of rebellion, at least in the US. Also, counterculturism and consumerism were still seen as antithetical to each other: Birkenstocks weren't yet a brand, or at least a consumer tag. I still believe that good consumer choices might save you money, but they're not going to save the planet. I also realize what a position of privilege it is to be able to make choices according to a company's "carbon footprint" or to be a locivore. Maybe that's the reason I never was a liberal and never will be a hipster.
Anyway, I have my own bragging rights. I once moved myself from one apartment to another entirely on my bicycle. Black Friday shoppers, including the one in the photo, had nothing on me(!):
I heard it was going to rain today. So I tried to sneak in an early ride: just a few miles on Tosca. It felt about ten degrees colder than it was when I pedaled home last night after teaching in the technical institute. And yesterday was at least that much colder than the day before. At least, it seemed that way, for the wind blew hard enough to strip nearly all of the remaining leaves from wizening branches.
One of the things that amazes me about cycling is that, even after all of these years, I can ride down some street I've pedaled dozens of times before and a moment, an image, will imprint itself in my mind. Just south of LaGuardia Airport, in East Elmhurst, an elderly black woman stepped, with dignity if not grace, from behind a door on which dark green paint bubbled and the wood splintered and cracked into ashen hues like the ones on her coat, which she expects, or at least hopes, wil get her through another winter.
She is probably thankful for even that. You might say that I am, too, for being able to ride by and see that, and to be able to ride home, then to Millie's house for Thanksgiving dinner.
I hope yours was at least as good as mine.
OK. So yesterday I embellished things just a bit when I said I rode off into the sunset.
Well, this morning, my commute took me into the sunrise.
I always thought it was kind of strange that when the guy got the girl, he rode off into the sunset with her. I mean, if they're starting a relationship, wouldn't a sunrise be more appropriate?
And what about when the girl gets the guy? Or when the girl gets the girl?
For any of those scenarios: Should the guy-who-gets-girl, girl-who-gets-guy or whomever-gets-whomever ride tandems? Or should they ride solo bikes abreast of each other? Or single file--and who should lead?
If these questions are academic, well, I guess that's appropriate. After all, I am riding off to teach in a college.
Into the sunrise. In Queens, yet!
