What Would They Have Seen?

In the Hollywood version of the immigrant's story, a poor young person emerges--his coat, but not his spirit, tattered--from the dark, dank steerage section of a ship to a deck, just as the sun breaks through clouds over the Statue of Liberty.

I can't help but to wonder how many actually had snow swirling around them, or were soaked in a downpour or struck by sleet, as they gazed out onto the harbor.  Or, perhaps, their first glimpse of Lady Liberty was shrouded in mist.

For a couple of days, we had an early taste of summer:  the temperature reached 33C (91F) in Central Park on Friday.  Then the clouds rolled in and and fog enveloped the city--especially the waterfront--late on Saturday and Sunday, interrupted by rain on Sunday morning.

I pedaled through a bunch of Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, from my western Queens abode to East New York, and zig-zagged along the waterfront.  I stopped for a mini-picnic (some pistachios and Lindt's 85 percent dark chocolate) in Red Hook. 

I have ridden to the Hook a number of times and still can't get over the irony of my riding--or people from all over the city, and from outside it--to it for pleasure.  I mean, what would the relatives of mine who worked on the docks or the nearby factories have thought of people whose "Sunday best" are airbrushed, more expensive versions of the clothes my relatives wore to work. Or of the three young men munching on matching artisan chocolate-coated Key Lime ice cream pops as they sauntered along the pier.  Or, for that matter, of the fancy wedding taking place inside a warehouse turned into an "event space."

 

My relatives walked and took streetcars to those piers and never went anywhere near them after they clocked out, let alone on Sunday.  And, of course, the folks who arrived from further away--as my relatives or, at least, their parents--came by boat.  What would they have thought of someone like me arriving by bike--Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, to be exact--on her day off, just because she could?

Or, for that matter, that I am a she?  What could they have seen through the mist?

It’s Just A Number. Really!

 “What’s the fastest you’ve ever ridden?”

That question invariably comes from non-cyclists.  They don’t want to know when I’ve kept pace with, or passed, vehicles or outrun storms.  Rather, they want the answer expressed as a number.  For them, I offer this:

It Didn't Stop Them. It Won't Stop Him.

In the 1980s, two celebrities--Muhammad Ali and Michael J. Fox--used their own struggles with Parkinson's Disease to raise awareness of the affliction.  Moreover, they helped people to realize that Parkinson's wasn't an "old people's disease"--Ali's diagnosis came in his early 40s and Fox's before he turned 30--and that people can live more or less normal lives after a diagnosis and treatment. 

Somehow I don't think Brue Closser's life is more or less normal--or less of anything.  

The 78-year-old resident of Marquette County, on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, has been cycling since the 1970s.  There has been one ride on his "bucket list," he says, and it will commence on 5 May.  On that day, he plans to get on his bike in Yorktown, Virginia and pedal to Astoria, Oregon--in other words, across the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.

I give "props" to anyone who undertakes such a ride. But the journey Closser has planned is especially notable for two other reasons.  One is that he is riding from east to west:  the opposite direction from that taken by most transcontinental cyclists.  The reason for that is that while there are local and daily variations, the prevailing wind is from west to east.  (That's why a flight from New York to Paris is about an hour shorter than one in the other direction.)  But, perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of his trip will be that when he completes it, he will be, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest cyclist to complete such a trip.

But the record isn't the reason he's taking the trip, he says.  "I learned a long time ago, don't put off your dreams, because I think I can do it this year, but who knows what next year will bring."  

Whatever it brings, I doubt Parkinson's Disease will stop him.