Can You Beat These Guys?

How fast can you change a flat?

What I Woke For

 People in Miami are as unaccustomed to snow as Harpo Marx was to public speaking.

Likewise, most New Yorkers aren’t used to earthquakes.  In a way, ground-shakes are even stranger for us: When white flakes fluttered down to the sands and palm trees of the Sunshine State, folks knew what they were looking at.  On the other hand, most people here in the Big Apple thought the rumbles came from a truck or subway train. Or, like me, they slept through it—even though the epicenter was just a few blocks from my apartment.

I am sure that countless Californians have slept through much stronger shocks. Still, it’s hard not to wonder whether an earthquake—in a city that experiences them about as often as the Jets or the Knicks win championships—on the second morning of the new year is a harbinger of what awaits us.

What finally woke me up? The helicopters that circled over the neighborhood.  Marlee ducked behind the couch. I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep. So I got dressed, hopped on Tosca—my Mercian fixie—and pedaled into this:

I hope that’s more of a foretelling of the year to come.

After pedaling out to Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, I stopped at Lots ‘O’ Bagels for two whole wheat bagels. In my apartment, I enjoyed them with some English Blue Stilton cheese. Some might say that no true New Yorker would eat a bagel that way but I like the way EBC’s creamy texture complements both the cheese’s pungency and the bagel’s chewiness. I can, however, still claim to be a true New Yorker because I’m not accustomed to earthquakes but got through one, however minor it was. And I started my day with a bike ride. 

A New Year’s Eve Voyage

 The other day—New Year’s Eve—I took yet another ride to Point Lookout. I don’t know whether I was burning residual calories from Christmas week or waging a pre-emotive strike against the evening’s indulgences.

Whatever it was, I got what might have been the best treat of all, at least to my eyes. 

That softly glowing band between the sea and sky made the ship—and the few people I saw on the boardwalks of the Rockaways and Long Beach—seem solitary but not isolated, alone but not lonely. That, of course, is how I felt while riding Dee-Lilah, my Mercian Vincitore Special, under a sky that was muted gray but not gloomy .

Some of us need that light, and to move in or occupy it like that ship, because this season encourages, and sometimes forces, extroversion, camaraderie and bright lights. Some of  need times of solitude, and solo bike rides, to navigate, let alone enjoy, holiday gatherings of any size.