For The New Year

 Happy New Year!

I couldn’t resist posting this image from Cicloposse because, well, I like it.  

The image was used to herald 2021 which, nearly everyone hoped, would be much better than 2020. Or at least people hoped—or even assumed—that it couldn’t be worse.

I hold onto similar hope for 2024. Some have said that it might include this nation’s last democratic (with a small “d”) election, especially if you-know-who is elected. But many people who took up cycling during the pandemic have kept with it and there does seem to be some awareness, at least among some officials, that urban and transportation planning can’t begin and end with moving as many motor vehicles as possible from point A to point B, as it has since at least the building of the Interstate highway system. 

I hope that the increased consciousness and good work I’ve described isn’t undone by energy and economic policies that include only fossil fuel-powered vehicles and deems nuclear power and natural gas to be the only “green” alternatives. I mean, if President Ronald Reagan could declare, with a straight face, that “trees cause pollution,” what could a Trump administration say about any kind of alternative transportation?

Even as I think about such possibilities, I still hold on to hope. A new year has begun, after all, and it looks like a good day for a ride.

What wishes do you have, dear readers, for the New Year?

He Never Looked So Good

 When I was a child, I had a fever.

All right, I won’t sing the best-known Pink Floyd song. For that matter, I won’t sing: I don’t want to risk arrest for disturbing the peace!

So…when I was a child, there was a very popular toy.  It was also popular in my parents’ time. So, playing with it might have been the last time I could enjoy such a thing without thinking, “I’ve become my mother/father*”

Mr. Potato Head, I’ve recently learned, was the first toy advertised on television. It’s still in production today and, perhaps not surprisingly, featured in Toy Story.

As I remember, there were all kinds of accessories available—including a little bicycle for him to ride.  I don’t recall him, however, looking so stylish

unless, perhaps, there was a fin-de-siécle edition of Monsieur Pomme de Terre for the Burgundy countryside.

*—Early in my gender affirmation process, my mother had just heard a “great new singer:” Lady Gaga.

“She is great,” I affirmed. “She’s one of my new favorites.”

A pause.

“Omigod! I’ve become my mother.” We laughed.

When I Could See Clearly

 Rain, interrupted by showers, fell pretty constantly from Wednesday until early yesterday morning. I ventured out for “quickies” along the waterfronts of Long Island City and Greenpoint. Late yesterday afternoon, I took a slightly longer, and definitely familiar, to Fort Totten.

I don’t mind riding in the rain as long as it isn’t cold. (I also don’t mind the cold as long as it’s not wet.) Since Christmas, the high temperatures have clustered around 10c (50F), which is mild for this time of year. 

But the best meteorological feature of yesterday afternoon, at least to my eyes, was the clouds. I love seeing such a heavy, thick and even dark mounds when I know they’re not going to drop any more rain. I especially like the way they move, but don’t move away, enough for the sun to poke through, and how those rays are refracted through clouds and onto rippling waves.

Two of my favorite songs are the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun” and Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now.” Who couldn’t feel good about hearing the best Fab Four song (aside, possibly, from “Something”) not written by John or Paul?  The point of that song isn’t the sun itself; rather, it’s that hope and clarity are on the way. And the most popular reggae tune that nobody thinks of as a reggae tune is about, I believe, the moment after.

Somehow I felt I could see more clearly in yesterday’s late-afternoon winter light by the water, than I could under a cloudless summer sky. That might be the best reason to ride at this time of year, at that time of year, after two days of rain punctuated by showers.