Miles, Sounding Off The Miles

As I've mentioned in other posts, tatoos aren't my thing.  Sometimes I enjoy seeing other people's "tats", but I have never had any inclination to "get inked" myself.

Perhaps I still hold, on some level, the attitudes I was inculcated with:  that only sailors, Harley riders and other rough-and-tumble characters get themselves tatooed.  If so, I don't know whether, let alone how or when, I'll change.  

But if I were going to use a part of my body as a "canvas", if you will, I might consider this:

This image, etched and painted in the King of Ink tatoo studio of Ankara, Turkey, depicts the late, great Miles Davis as the denizens of then-Bohemian Greenwich Village remember him:  astride his bicycle, peering through his huge spectacles.  Even if he didn't wear such distinctive outfits (never the same one more than once, according to people who recall him), he would have been a memorable sight on his bike.

Still, it's hard to imagine that the sight of him was more memorable than his music!

What The Tide Left

I had luck with the wind again today.  I was glad because it was stronger than it was yesterday.  Or, perhaps, it just seemed that way because most of today's ride took me along shorelines.  Also, the sky was even clearer than it was yesterday, and large bodies of water magnify the sun's rays. Sometimes I think long exposure to direct sunlight tires me out even more than the wind, or anything else.

Anyway, I rode to Point Lookout today.  It's not as long as the ride to Connecticut, and it's almost entirely flat.  There is one fairly long gradual incline up Woodhaven Boulevard from Jamaica Avenue to Forest Park.  Even though it's near the end of my ride, it isn't very arduous.

Best of all, the wind was at my back, as it was from the time I turned on to the Veterans Memorial Bridge from Rockaway Beach.  That meant, of course, that I pedaled into the wind on my way out, and that it blew from the Atlantic onto my right side on my way to the Point, and onto my left on my way back.

The thing that struck me most about today's ride, though, was at Point Lookout.  The tide was out--and I mean really out.  There were no boats in the water.  Most telling, though, was this:

A family picnic on the sandbar!  I've never seen it so long or wide.  It was like a boardwalk, with all of the people walking their dogs and toddlers toddling on it.  Naturally, no one was fishing.

Now, I am no climate scientist.  In fact, I can't claim to be a scientist of any sort.  So perhaps I am revealing my ignorance in describing the observation you are about to read and the question I will pose from it.

As I understand it, the extreme blizzards so many places experienced during the past few winters are actually a result of global warming:  Increasing temperatures, especially in the oceans, are causing the atmospheric instability that leads to all kinds of storms, including blizzards and ice storms as well as hurricanes and tornadoes.  

So I wonder whether tides that are receding further out (I've noticed this in other places besides Point Lookout) are a result of the rising sea level.  Just as the tides are higher and stronger, could the pull-back also be stronger--enough to pull the tides further from the shoreline when they recede?

Again, I emphasize that I am not a scientist:  What I am saying and asking is based entirely on observation and logic.  Also, I know it doesn't directly relate to cycling.  But what I see in the oceans, on the shorelines, in the hills or anyplace else is part of my rides.  I can't help but to wonder what I will and won't see on future rides!

This Branch Did Not Break (Apologies to James Wright)

Today I rode Arielle, my Mercian Audax, to Greenwich, Connecticut.

I am so lucky:  I had the day this day off, and conditions were perfect, by almost anybody's definition:  It wasn't too warm and on the way up, I rode into a breeze that flickered shadows of leaves and waves of light.  And I sailed home, or so it seemed!

I had no great epiphanies or revelations, just a good time.  And I really didn't want much more. 

But I did notice something that somehow escaped me on previous rides.  Greenwich Commons--the site of the war memorial and some lovely gardens--also has a few big, beautiful old trees.  One of them towers over the gate.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this:

Oh, no!  I cried out loud.  I thought the tree, which has stood for, probably, longer than anything else in the area, had a branch snapped off in a storm.  I couldn't, however, recall any wind or rain we'd had recently that would have been strong enough to do such a thing--unless, of course, one of the storms that missed us in Astoria struck Connecticut.

Turns out, there was no break, no fracture, no rupture.  The branch simply curved downward, possibly from its own weight.  Whether it can remain that way, I don't know.  Whatever happens, I hope it stands long enough for me to see it on another ride, and another, and another...