Spreading A Shawl Of Autumn

I love roses and sunshine and rainbows as much as the next person.  I mean, really, who doesn't.  Still, the kinds of light that really touch the core of my being are what one sees on an overcast day at the seashore, or on just about any kind of coast. (I love the sea and whatever borders it, though I don't consider myself a beach lover.  I never understood the point of lying on sand and frying myself. But I digress.)  I also love the soft, diffuse light one sees on overcast days in much of France and in parts of neighboring lands.  

I love just as much the shawl of clouds the November sky spreads over windows that lose their guile as they gain the depth of their own clarity, surrounded by splintered frames, bubbled paint and stone that is worn but not broken.  A long sleep, if not a dream, awaits.

Well, yesterday's ride offered me two of those three kinds of light.  I didn't get to France.  (How is it that the cheapest way to get to Paris from New York is by way of Moscow or Istanbul?)  But I was treated to the fine gravity of an autumnal littoral sky.

I encountered that scene in Laurence Harbor, NJ.  I hadn't really intended to ride to that particular spot, though it is more or less along the way of the ride I'd planned on taking, and the one I actually took.  And, as you can see, I got there late in the afternoon, not long before sunset.

Before I set out, I left enough food to last Max and Marley through the night.  I knew what sort of ride I needed to take; there were a few things I needed to sort out in my head.  I knew that I wanted to head out to the part of the New Jersey coast I cycled so often in my youth, when it seemed that riding was one of the few things I understood.  (Sometimes I think I don't understand a whole lot more all of these years later!)  I considered the possibility of riding late and checking into a motel or, better yet, a bed-and-breakfast, if one was open.  

Well, I started a bit later than I should have.  And, along the way, I found roads and bridges closed, some still damaged from Sandy.  So I found myself wandering through parts of Newark and Union County I know hardly, if at all, and, just before I entered Monmouth County, a road that, I thought, paralleled Route 35, until it didn't.  Then I wended through some county roads and residential streets in areas where suburban sprawl gave way to tightly-kept blue-collar areas where many homes have fishing boats in their driveways or yards.  None of the drivers honked their horns at me; women who were walking to and from neighbors' houses and stores, and men to and from VFW halls, waved and greeted me with "Howya doin"" and "Hopeyer having'a good weekend." I smiled back.

I did, finally, find myself pedaling along boardwalks and quiet streets where the lazy waves of the bay lapped against rocks, then sand, then rocks again.  I got as far as Ideal Beach in North Middletown, which was known as East Keansburg when I was a teenager. (Apparently, someone realized that having "Middletown" in a community's name was better for property values than "Keansburg" in that part of New Jersey.)  It's actually cleaner--if a bit more self-consciously "beachy"-- than I remember it from the days when we snuck there when we were cutting classes or otherwise looking over our shoulders, or simply didn't have any money.

Because I got lost (I can admit that now:  I'm a woman!), it took me nearly two hours longer to get there than I'd planned.  Oh, and I was riding into 20-40KPH winds all the way down.  Really.  So I knew I wasn't going to get to Long Branch before drinkers and drunks started pouring into and out of the bars and their cars.  Plus, I figured that if I would encounter even more damaged or destroyed roads, paths or bridges--and therefore need to take more detours--than I already had.  In fact, I might not be able to get to some areas at all.

So, sadly, I turned around and started riding back.  I figured I'd ride to the nearest train station--or at least the first I found.  That's how I found myself in Laurence Harbor. comforted by the November sky.

Oh, and my favorite flowers are lilacs.  Nothing against roses, mind you.  Just my preference.  Some might say that it's the flower that looks best under such a sky.

This Manual Comes With An Invitation To The Undertaker

How many of you had bicycle safety classes--or were given safety manuals--when you were a kid?

I wasn't.  Perhaps it had something to do with being in Catholic school, and being in Brooklyn, until I was thirteen years old.  Then again, in suburban New Jersey--where my family moved--I didn't see such things.  Nor did my two youngest brothers, who were in early grades of elementary school.

Not encountering a bicycle safety class, manual or film seems all the more striking when I realize that my family moved just as the '70's Bike Boom started. It seemed that every kid in our neighborhood got a new ten-speed bike the first year I was there.  Some of those kids' parents also bought bikes for themselves.  (Those bikes may still be gathering dust in the same garages in which they were hung after said parents decided they were too old, out-of-shape or simply unmotivated to ride.)  I bought my first derailleur-equipped bicycle--a Schwinn Continental--a year after we moved.

But it seems that there were attempts to inculcate young people with notions (however misguided some were) about bicycle safety.  It also seems that the style of those attempts--or, at least, of the manual I'm going to show--hadn't changed in about 15 or 20 years.

These illustrations come from a 1969 manual:

Fifty Years, And Still No Bike Lane

"Are we there yet?"

Just about every kid who's ever gone anywhere with an adult has whined that line.  I include yours truly.

"Is it done yet?"

Just about every kid has moaned that one when his or her mother or grandmother (or the equivalent in the kid's life) was cooking or baking something.  As adults, we intone it when we're waiting for a repair, a project, or something else to be finished.

(Asking that question is also the easiest way to annoy an artist--or to reveal yourself as a philistine to the artist.)

The first time I uttered the question the way an adult would was in my childhood. (Was I a precocious child?)  In my early years, I witnessed the building  of what I still consider to be one of the most beautiful--and exasperating-- manmade structures in the world.  

It opened to the public fifty years ago today.  By now, you might have figured out that I'm talking about a bridge. I am:  specifically, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which opened to traffic fifty years ago today.

The span, photographed by the Wurts Brothers when it opened fifty years ago today.  (From the collection of the Museum of the City of New York,)

At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It's still in the top ten, I think.  It's so long that engineers actually had to take the curvature of the Earth into account in designing it.

Please indulge me for a moment if I sound like a sexist male.  (Some things aren't cured even with years of hormone therapy and surgery!)  I have long thought its towers looked like long, elegant goddesses rising from the waves of the inlet of the Atlantic Ocean for which the bridge is named.  The lady is serene on days when sunshine refracted through high cirrus clouds glints on waves; she is looks dramatic, even stern, but still beautiful as clouds gather and storms brew in those waves.

All right:  Some of you are might think I'm more guilty of bad poetry than sexism in that passage. Fair enough. My talents, such as they are, can only accomplish so much.

Anyway, I have pedaled (and, on occasion, walked) under the bridge any number of times and have never grown jaded to its majesty.  Monsieur Verrazano (He was Fiorentino but sailed for le Roi Francois I.) would be honored to have the bridge, and the body of water it spans, named for him.  But the fact that I'm always pedaling underneath the bridge is precisely what exasperates me about it.

You see, the bridge has never had a bike or pedestrian lane.  In a way, it's not surprising, given that the bridge was the last major work of Robert Moses, whose mistakes have been replicated by urban planners all over the world for decades.  Through most of his career, he showed a complete disdain for anything that didn't have an internal combustion engine.  It's especially odd when you consider that he built the Kissena Velodrome near the World's Fair site just a few thousand pedal spins from my apartment--and that he himself never had a driver's license. 

There has been a movement (in which I am playing a small role) to have a bicycle-pedestrian lane added to the bridge.  Many people say it would encourage them to use their bicycles to commute or simply travel between Brooklyn and Staten Island, and would link a number of already-existing bike routes in the two boroughs, which in turn would make parts of New Jersey more accessible to cyclists in the Big Apple.

I would like to have the same thrill I knew as a child when I saw the bridge under construction.  I would also like to experience the same thrill I had when I rode across the bridge the only times it was possible:  during the Five Boro Bike Tour, when the lower deck of the Verrazano is closed to traffic. 

Note:  The "Verrazano Narrows Bridge" link in my seventh  paragraph will take you to an excellent article on The Bowery Boys, one of my favorite non-bike blogs.