In earlier posts, I've written about "playing chicken with the rain". On days when precipitation the clouds look ready to drop buckets, I might for a ride, all the while daring the sky to deal me a deluge. I feel I've "won" the "game", if you will, when I arrive home (or wherever I'm going) just as the first drops plop against my skin.
Today there was absolutely no risk of rain. It was one of those perfect fall days, with the kind of sunlight that feels as if it's trickling through leaves even though the sky is blue. And the wind and the waves echo a softly crackling flame. At least, they seem as if they should.
The waves...Yes, I took an afternoon ride to the Rockaways. Although the water is still warm enough (at least for someone like me) to swim, the air was cool enough that nobody tried. In fact, the only people in the water were a few surfers.
But I was playing chicken. You see, I started in the middle of the afternoon and lingered on the boardwalk (actually, it's concrete now) at Rockaway Park. A month or two ago, I could have lingered--or ridden--even longer than I did. Well, actually, I could have done that today, too. But I was also thinking about the time of day--or, more precisely, the time at which the day would end.
After lingering, I rode some more along the boardwalk and, after crossing the Veterans Memorial Bridge into Beach Channel and Howard Beach, took a circuitous route through streets of wood-frame houses--some with boats in their driveways--away from the ocean and bay and up the gradual climb to Forest Park, right in the middle of Queens. From Forest, I rode streets I've ridden dozens, if not hundreds of times before as the sun began its descent just beyond the railroad tracks and the East River.
Yes, I got back to my apartment just as the twilight began to deepen into evening and the street lamps were lighting. I had lights with me-- I always keep them in my under-seat bag--but I didn't have to use them.
In other words, I played chicken with the sunset. And "won"!
Every city's mass transit system has its own rules about bringing bicycles onto trains, buses and other vehicles within the system. Here in the New York Metropolitan area, each part of the system seems to have its own regulations. For example, on PATH trains, bikes are allowed only in certain cars on the train, while on Long Island Rail Road and Metro North and New Jersey Transit trains, bikes are allowed during certain hours and in certain areas of each car.
On the other hand, in New York City subways, there don't seem to be any rules at all. At least, I haven't found any, aside from a prohibition against locking a bicycle to any part of a station, such as a gate. But there is a certain unwritten etiquette which, from what I've seen, nearly every cyclist follows. Mostly, it's common courtesy: Don't block doorways or get in people's way, and try to keep your grimy bike away from passengers' clean clothes. And try not to bring your bike on the train during rush hours!
I try not to bring my bike onto the subway at all, not out of fear, but mostly out of pride. I prefer to ride the entire length of my route whenever I can; I'd rather be riding my bike on even the busiest streets than wheeling or holding it in a crowded subway car. If I've had a mechanical breakdown or some other problem (thankfully, these things have been rare for me) and have no other way of getting to a bike shop, home, work or wherever else I have to be, I'll get on the train. Also, if I stay out later than I'd planned and I don't have lights with me, or if it's a cold day and it starts to rain heavily, I'll get on the train for safety and health reasons. But I try, at all costs, to avoid "bailing out" because of tiredness. That, to me, is an admission of defeat. I can't remember the last time I did that, but I can recall one or two occasions when I got on the train because I just didn't feel like riding anymore.
I wonder what this guy was thinking and feeling when he got on the train:
Some have called last night's debate "depressing".
I was too much in shock to be depressed. The last time I felt that way about an event in which I was not personally involved was on 11 September 2001.
Like many other people here in New York, I was stunned for days, for weeks, afterward. Then came grief, a sense of loss: Even though I didn't lose anyone I knew in the events of that day, I felt a sense of loss. When a complete stranger cried on my shoulder, I held her until she got off the bus we were riding. We didn't speak and I never saw her again. Each of us understood, I believe, and gave each other what we needed in that moment.
I had not thought about that encounter in years, until now. Some have seen that time as a kind of Fall, when this country lost its collective innocence. The days and weeks that followed--which, as I recall, were unusually warm for the time of year--did not feel autumnal.
The holidays, like the days that preceded and followed them, passed through a kind of gray storm in which needles of ice rained down even on the clearest of days. Those first glacial spears stung; the ones that followed stunned; after that, I was too numb to feel the rest, for a long time.
There may have been a Fall that year. But the season that followed did not feel Autumnal: that October and November felt just like the following January and February, in no small part because those months were--up to that time--the warmest winter months this city had experienced.
Today, in contrast, felt exactly the way some of us might have, at some time in our lives, expected a day from this time of year to feel. Today began overcast but turned, rather quickly, into an afternoon with a blue sky lit by intense sunlight that hinted at the sunset that would tinge the horizon a few hours later. The morning's chill had, by that time, turned into a nip.
In other words, it felt like the Fall day it is. It was that day when one realizes that the season is well underway: It's no longer possible to say that summer has just passed, but winter, though everyone knows it will come, does not yet seem imminent.
Fewer cars and taxis and buses plied the street on which I live, or the avenue around the corner or the other streets that branched from it, than one sees on a typical Monday. The reason, of course, is that today is a holiday (as I like to say, for a guy who got lost): the one that always seems, to me, the one that signals that it is indeed Fall.
On this holiday last year, I was in Montreal, where--ironically--it was warmer, more like a September day here in New York and the leaves of the iconic maple trees that line the city's streets blazed in the sun. Montrealers, like other Canadians, don't celebrate Columbus Day. Rather, the second Monday of October is, for them, Thanksgiving Day. I certainly was thankful for having such a wonderful day to ride and interesting places to explore.
I had those things, today, too. So of course I went for a ride. I didn't plan anything, not even which of my bikes I rode. As it turned out, I took Tosca, my fixed gear Mercian, for a spin. Perhaps I chose her because, somehow, I knew--my body knew--that I needed to keep my feet spinning. But I was not riding for escape: In fact, it was quite the opposite.
Where did I go? I know I pedaled through various parts of Brooklyn and Queens; I think I even popped into Nassau County, briefly, and back again into the borough I now call home, into the one I called home The Day The Towers Fell, and back home.
That ride gave me exactly what I needed, for I did what I needed to do. And I am satisfied now.
(Note: I didn't take any photos during my ride. The image you see was made by Matt Hyde.)
