It Wasn't Hiroshima, But....

Seventy-five years ago today, American soldiers dropped the world's first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

I will not try to debate whether the bombing, or the one in Nagaski three days later, was necessary or ethical.  The effect of those blasts was, I believe, best summed up two millenia earlier in a Calgacus speech, as recalled by Tacitus:  Ubi solitudenum facient, pacem appelant (They make a wasteland and call it peace.)

I have seen the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and of various natural disaster.  I cannot, however, pretend to have ever seen devastation resembling anything wrought by those weapons. 

Even what I saw yesterday pales in comparison.

On the day after a not-quite-hurricane struck this area, I went for a ride in the direction of Connecticut.  Along the Pelham Bay Park trail, I had to detour around downed limbs and other parts of trees.  Still, my ride was going relatively smoothly until I crossed into Westchester County:

Less than a mile north of the city/county line, this tree toppled onto Mount Tom Road in Pelham.  So I backed up a bit and took a right, figuring that the road would take me, if in a more roundabout way, the direction of my ride.

Didn't get very far.

On that road, a couple of guys were sitting in their car.  "Be careful out there," the driver yelled.  He explained that his friend had just been out cycling and encountered broken power lines as well as downed trees.

At his suggestion, I cut through the golf course into a residential area of Pelham Manor.  I knew that I would end up at or near Boston Post Road, a.k.a. US 1, where I could re-orient myself.  At worst, I figured, I could ride US 1 for a bit, as it has a decent shoulder--and, I thought, was less likely to contain obstacles and hazards like the ones I'd encountered and been warned about:

So much for that idea, right?  I turned down another road blocked by a tree.  For a moment, I thought perhaps the storm was some cosmic conspiracy that threw down those trees as a "wall" to keep riff-raff like me out of the upper reaches of Westchester County and Connecticut.

Of course, that thought was no more rational than any comparison between what I was seeing and what the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki carried with them. 

What My Recovery Is Telling Me.

"Recovery tells you what it needs."

Madelyn, a social worker/addiction counselor uttered those words of wisdom years ago.  I worked with her, for a time, when I was conducting writing workshops for kids whose family members were in, or recovering from, addictions.

Her words are making a lot of sense to me now. To her pearl of wisdom, I would add that a recovery tells you what you're ready to do.   I want to ride as much, and at the same pace, as I did before my accident.  If I'd crashed back when I was working with her, it might have been possible.  Actually, I believe that it will be.  It's just taking longer than it might've in my youth.

Still, Madelyn probably would have told me--even then--that I was doing well.  (She wasn't a cyclist, but I think she spent some time in a gym.)  The other day, I did another ride to Point Lookout:  120 km round-trip.  Two days before that, I took my first ride to Connecticut since my crash.

My trek to the Nutmeg State was particularly gratifying, not only because it was longer (140 km) and hillier.  When I got home, I feel as if I'd finished the trip I took the day I crashed, when my ride back from Greenwich ended in New Rochelle, about 30 kilometers from my apartment.

I was happy to have done both of those rides, but they further enhanced the meaning of my old collaborator's words:  I was more tired at the end of the Connecticut ride than I'd been the last time I completed it. Oh, and even though I slathered my skin with sunscreen, my skin took on quite the lobster hue.  Whenever my skin absorbs a lot sun, I get sleepy.

I got what I needed before, during and after I rode.   Madelyn knew what she was talking about.

The Same Sky?

Today Isais blew through town.

To be fair, it wasn't quite as bad as I expected it to be.  Yes, we had a lot of rain this morning and early this afternoon. The wind broke a few twigs off trees and cardboard signs off stores.  

Worse was predicted.  The Weather Service even issued a tornado watch for this city, and a warning for Monmouth County, NJ (where I went to high school) and Suffolk County, about 50 kilometers from here.

As clouds thickened, the sky darkened, so the watch/warning was in my mind. So was this cloud formation I saw the other day:

It's hard to believe I was looking at the same sky today.