I didn’t create this Instagram reel. But I was in the vicinity—near the World Trade Center—on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike.
Someone confirmed what I suspected: Many of the people were students or teachers at a nearby high school and college. What could be more educational than seeing a solar eclipse, even if we were about four hundred kilometers away from the path of totality.
Yesterday I rode—on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear— for the first time since my move. It was a short trip, past the Garden and Zoo, but it felt good to do something not move- or work-related.
Although I’d previously done some cycling in this area, as Anniebikes says in her comment, there’s more to explore. Even after 21 years of living in Astoria, I found new rides and variations on familiar ones.
My new apartment has nice views and is much lighter and airier than my old place. I wonder: Will the sun steaming in my window energize me to ride more?Will the fog creeping by lure me into winding down the bike lane by the gardens?
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.
Last night, I took my Winter Solstice ride. Although I didn’t plan anything about it—except for one thing, which I’ll mention—I more or less knew I wouldn’t ride a lot of miles or climb. So I rode Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike.
The one planned part of my ride took me to a house about a kilometer from my apartment:
The residents of that house, on 23rd Street near the RFK Bridge, turn their porch into a kind of miniature Christmas village every year. The electric trains actually run on their tracks; the Ferris wheel turns and some of the figures walk, dance and even sing.
A few minutes later, I came upon another display that, while not as dynamic, filled the street with its lights and colors.
I continued to ride. I’m not sure of which motivated me more: those lights and colors, the crisp cold air or the complete absence of traffic.
About the latter: It was a proverbial “calm before the storm.” Not surprisingly, the holiday rush began this morning: A seemingly endless stream of cars crawled and honked down my street and, it seemed, everywhere: When I took a ride out to the Malcolm X Promenade today, it seemed like everyone in the world was entering or exiting LaGuardia Airport, the Grand Central Parkway or any street leading to them.
As I rode today, I couldn’t help but to think about last night’s ride—and a man who sold fruits and vegetables from a stand in Jackson Heights. I stopped and bought a bunch of red Swiss chard, a string of tomatoes and a small bag of cherries because they looked good—and out of respect to that man who, like me, was outside on the longest night of the year.
Has something ever stopped you in your tire tracks?
While commuting, touring, day-tripping or doing just about every other kind of riding except racing, I have stopped when I’ve seen something unusual or interesting. I more or less expect to make such stops when I’m somewhere I’ve never been before: Whether I was seeing the chateau at Amboise or an elephant in the wild for the first time, I knew that such sights—or a marketplace that only the locals know—is as much a reason for my ride as, well, pedaling on unfamiliar terrain.
Perhaps nothing is quite as surprising, however, as pedaling through a part of my neighborhood I hadn’t seen in months and encountering something that not only differs from its immediate surroundings, but would stand out almost anywhere.
While spinning the pedals on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bike, along 36th Avenue, I couldn’t have missed a house with such a paint job. I know it had to have been built recently because, while the stoop and other fittings seemed to match those of adjacent houses—at least at first glance—they didn’t have the nooks and crannies (like Thomas’s English Muffins) of bricks that have weathered seasons and been painted over.
I saw a name plate by the front door. Looking it up, however, was fruitless because it’s a name common to the Indian-Bengali community in that part of the neighborhood. My guess is that it’s the name of the person or family who built it. Whoever they are, they’re probably rich and eccentric.
At first glance, it reminded me of a Buddhist temple. Perhaps the nearby spice shop and Punjab restaurant and bakery had something to do with that. (I know: Punjabi people are as likely to be Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims or even Christians. My Eurocentricity is showing!) Then, for a moment, I thought of San Francisco about 35 years ago, before tech money remade it: Victorian houses were painted in colors you never would see on similarly-styled houses in Brooklyn, Boston or Montréal.
I believe that if I’d seen that house anywhere, it would have stopped me in my tire tracks.
The past few days have been hectic. It’s “crunch time” at work and I’ve had to attend to a few things that might lead to a change in my life. Whether that will be good or bad, or just change, I don’t know.
I did manage to squeeze in a late-afternoon ride to and from Fort Totten the other day. I rode Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear, as I often do on short rides. On my way home, I stopped to enjoy the end-of-day light from the Malcolm X Promenade, which rims mFlushing Bay from LaGuardia Airport.
As much as I enjoyed the spectacle, upon looking at a photo I took, I can’t help but to wonder whether it portends what will come from the change, should it come to pass.
Some of you would cringe if I quote a Carpenters’ song. I wouldn’t blame you. But I’m going to cite one of their tunes anyway: “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.”
Today is a very rainy Monday. I don’t mind: Yesterday, Saturday and Friday afternoon comprised one of the most glorious weekends for cycling I’ve had in this part of the world. The skies ranged from clear azure to swirly silver and blue with the sun piercing through—and temperatures from 15 to 25c (60 to 77F).
Friday afternoon was a ramble along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts between my apartment and the Williamsburg Bridge, and out to the Hispanic and Hasidic neighborhoods of the non-gentrified areas of Williamsburg and East Williamsburg.
Saturday was ideal for a trek to Greenwich, Connecticut: I pedaled into the wind through the Bronx, Westchester County and over the ridge into the Nutmeg State. That meant I rode the wind home.
I had the same kind of luck with the wind yesterday, when I pushed my way out to Point Lookout and glided home. The wind seemed to have blown out of the south-southeast: I had to put more effort into the first stretch, going mostly south from my apartment to Rockaway Beach, than I did on the mostly-eastward section from Rockaway to the Point.
I didn’t take any photos on Friday or Saturday because, as beautiful as those experiences were, they are rides I’ve done many times and I didn’t see anything unusual. That will probably change soon enough, at least on the Connecticut ride, when Fall begins to paint the trees and foliage from its pallette.
On yesterday’s ride, though, a vista from the western end of the Long Beach boardwalk reflected the way this weekend’s rides felt:
(In case you were wondering, I rode Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear on Friday. Saturday, Dee-Lilah, my Mercian Vincitore Special, took me to Connecticut. And yesterday La-Vande, my King of Mercia, brought me to the beaches.)
The other day, before I wrote my 9/11 commemorative piece, I took a ride: a ramble through Queens and Brooklyn on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear.
My ride included some familiar streets and sights. But I also took in some streets--or, more precisely, segments of them--I hadn't ridden before.
One of those thoroughfares, Carroll Street, spans the breadth of Brooklyn in two sections. The first begins at Hoyt Street, near the borough's downtown hub and cuts through the brownstone neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens and Park Slope on its way to Prospect Park. On the other side of the Park, Carroll continues along through neighborhoods less known to tourists: Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Crown Heights and Ocean Hill-Brownsville. It was along that second section, in Crown Heights, that I chanced upon these houses:
They combine the brownstone facades one sees on the other side of the park with Victorian-style cornices--and rounded, almost turret-like fronts I've seen only in Ridgewood and a couple of other Queens neighborhoods. That block of Carroll--between Kingston and Albany Avenues--lies in the heart of the Hasidic neighborhood of the Heights.
After I took the photos, I walked Tosca (Carroll is a one-way street) to check out a store where I didn't think I'd buy anything but I wanted to see because it's unlike any in my neighborhood of Astoria, or in most other places.
Turns out, the place moved around the corner, to Kingston Avenue. I peeked in; the young man working in it knew full well that I wasn't from the community and therefore wouldn't buy the mezuzahs (Star of David medallions found on the doorways of homes), prayer shawls or other items ultra-Orthodox Jews use in their daily lives and worship. But he didn't seem to mind my being there and we exchanged greetings of "shalom" on my way in and out.
As I turned to my left, I noticed an alleyway in the middle of the block.
The first painting, closest to the street, seems like a conventional representation of a Torah lesson--until you look closely. But the sky-blue background gives the scene an almost ethereal feel and the rabbi's expression makes him seem, simultaneously, like a relative and an ancestor, as if the kids might be in a room with him or that he might have come to them in a dream or vision.
To their left were two other murals. Is the girl--woman?--in awe or fear? I couldn't help but to think about Edvard Munch's "The Scream"--which, I'm sure, the artist intended. But is it a scream of ecstasy or terror, or something else? I might've asked the same questions about the man in the other mural which, of course, evokes Van Gogh's "Starry Night."
Even though the compositions echo (pun intended) Munch and Van Gogh, I felt that the artist's real inspiration may have been one of the greatest Jewish modern artists: Marc Chagall. At least, the colors--themselves and the way they play off, with and against each other--reminded me of his paintings and the stained-glass windows he created for the cathedral of Reims, France, to replace the ones blown out during World War II. In fact, in walking past the murals with Tosca, I felt as if I were in an open-air temple or synagogue.
On the other side of Kingston is another alley, with this portrait by the same artist:
I thought it was interesting how that artist used blue differently from the way it's used in the painting of the Torah lesson. Here, it makes the man--whom I assume to be, if not a rabbi, then at least some sort of elder in the community.
It never ceases to amaze me how taking a random turn during a ride in my city can take me on a journey!
In previous posts, I discusses races and other organized rides held on this holiday as well as the roles bicycles and bicycling have played in the labor movement and workers’ lives. Today, however, I want to talk about something I saw during my ride this morning.
Knowing that a hot, humid afternoon was forecast, I took a pre-breakfast/brunch spin to Fort Totten (about 40 km round-trip) on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear. This ride includes, as it usually does, the Malcolm X Promenade, which rims Flushing Bay (where the East River and Long Island Sound meet) from LaGuardia Airport to the Northern Boulevard Bridge to Flushing.
There are park benches along the Promenade so, not surprisingly, it serves as a lover’s lane, spot for impromptu small parties and simply a place for people to hang out and enjoy views of the water, airport and Manhattan skyline.
I have also seen the unhoused there. If J they catch my attention, or they catch mine and I am carrying anything edible, I offer it, They invariably thank me and sometimes eat it as I am pedaling away. Are they testing it, or do they somehow know that I didn’t spike it with chemicals or ground glass?
Anyway, I have also noticed people—almost always Hispanic men—sleeping or hanging out on benches. I know they are not among the unhoused because they are not flanked or propped by bags or carts full of possessions.
They are most likely like a man who sometimes sits in the doorways of apartment buildings or on the stoops of houses on my block. He always greets me; he “knows” me because he works in a store I sometimes frequent. I see him from late afternoon or early evening to around midnight.
What might he have in common with at least one of the people I saw along the Malcolm X Promenade? Well, for one thing, he works a job that doesn’t pay well. For another, he lives in a room in “shifts.”
He’s in those doorways or on those stoops during the hours when his “roommate“—who probably is in a situation like his—is there. They share the room, and the rent, with another man who is most likely in similar circumstances.
I am mentioning them—and the people I saw during my ride this morning—because they are often forgotten on this day. I am happy that unions are regaining some of the power they’ve lost since the Air Traffic Controllers’ strike of 1981. But for every union member who’s regained some of the rights, benefits and pay they lost, there are many more like the man on my block or the ones I saw during my ride this morning: the ones who don’t have unions, knowledge of the system or fluency in English to advocate for themselves, let alone anyone else.
Two months ago, Canadian wildfires singed the sky orange in my hometown of New York City. At times, you could actually smell—and see—smoke from the burning trees.
Such sights and smells didn’t enshroud the ride I took yesterday. I pedaled Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear, along familiar streets from my neighborhood to Brooklyn. While my nose didn’t detect the scent of incinerated wood and my eyes didn’t pick up ash or unusual hues on the horizon, I could sense the aftermath of a fire before I literally encountered it.
On Sunday, a fire destroyed a row of stores at the intersection of Lee Avenue and Hooper Street, by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Most of the stores were closed, which is probably the reason why no one was hurt even as the stores and their contents were destroyed.
Still, such a disaster is particularly devastating for the Hasidic enclave of South Williamsburg. For one thing, the stores and the spaces they occupied were owned by members of the community, who were also nearly all of those establishments’ customers. For another, some of those stores sold the clothing and supplies kids will need as they return to school, But most important, those stores catered to the specific needs and religious mandates of the community, particularly in food and clothing. (As an example, Halakhic law forbids the mixing of fabrics.) Those needs and requirements are sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to meet in other stores.
Anyway, I continued my ride. Sometimes it’s seemed as if I’ve been pedaling through smoke all summer.
Ah, the joys of an early morning ride.
You can almost hear the overture from Sprach Zarathustra in the background
or, perhaps one of those early Infiniti TV ads.
Believe it or not, I chanced upon this scene along the Malcolm X Promenade—about half a kilometer from LaGuardia Airport,
From there, I pedaled out to Fort Totten and back—40 kilometers on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear. I’d say it’s a respectable “beat the heat” early morning ride.
On Monday morning and early afternoon, I took Dee-Lilah, my Mercian Vincitore Special, for a spin out to Point Lookout and back: 120 kilometers (about 75!mikes). Yesterday morning I took Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear, for a shorter ride—about 40 kilometers (25 miles) to Fort Totten and back.
What did these rides have in common, besides the fact that I enjoyed them? Well, both bikes are purple, though in different shades. Also, I timed both rides to, as best I could, finish before the most intense heat—and worst air quality (those Canadian wildfires, again!) of the day.
Both rides also have something in common with every other ride I’ve taken in my life: I rode without headphones, eat buds or any other audio device. Sometimes I feel I’m the only person who still rides that way.
I think I’ll always ride that way. For one thing, I don’t want to impede my ability to hear traffic or other ambient sounds—including bird sings and ocean tides. But I also believe don’t need devices to hear music, if only inside my own mind.
Back in the day, the term “ear worm” didn’t exist. (At least, I hadn’t heard it.) I would,!however, find myself riding to a tune playing through my head—usually, somethings I’d heard not long before.
I first noticed myself riding to a tune I was carrying with me during a ride when I was, probably, fifteen years old. I’d been pedaling a long, flat stretch of New Jersey Route 36 from Sandy Hook to Long Branch. The ocean stretched thousands of miles to my left—it years would pass before I saw the other side. The sky stretched even further above and beyond me. And, even though I knew the road ended—or, more precisely changed direction—in Long Branch and I was gliding toward it on a combination of youthful energy and the wind at my back, I saw myself pedaling forward, forced, even further than that road could take, or my own vision could guide, me.
That ride’s ear worn before there were ear worms? The long guitar riff of Black Sabbath’s “Rat Salad.” It’s trippy yet hard-driving and expansive: the way I was pedaling on that long-ago ride.
And what did I hear as I pedaled, with a light breeze at my back, along the long,f flat—and surprisingly deserted—Rockaway Boardwalk? You guessed it: Rat Salad. As Kurt Vonnegut would have said, I was woozy with deja vu.
Oh, and during yesterday’s ride, my “ear worm” was an overture from Debussy’s “La Mer”: one of the first pieces of classical music I came to truly love—and an “ear worm” on another long-ago ride.
Given what I’ve described, you might think I was a strange kid. I wouldn’t try to disabuse you of such a notion. Of course, you may think I’m an even stranger adult—one in mid-life—because I’ve never ridden, and intend never to ride, with headphones, ear buds or any other audio device.
About two kilometers into my ride today, I had this view of the Manhattan skyline:
Everywhere I rode, the sort of heavy gray haze you normally see before a summer thunderstorm enveloped the sky. But there is no rain in the weather forecast until, perhaps, late tonight.
As I rode, however, I convinced myself that it "wasn't as bad" as what we had earlier this month: those blood-orange skies you saw in news images of this city. I asked myself, "How bad could it be?" if I could see this so clearly:
at Schenectady and East New York Avenues in Crown Heights. The mural depicts a the three main communities in the neighborhood: Hasidim, Blacks (Caribbean and American) and hipsters/gentrifiers.
I rode happily with such a belief or in such ignorance, depending on your point of view, to the Canarsie Pier where, not surprisingly, I saw about half as many people fishing, picnicking or simply hanging out as Tone would normally encounter at this time of year.
Still, "It isn't so bad," I told myself.
Then, as I pedaled away from the pier and was trying to decide whether to continue along the shore, west to Coney Island or east to Howard Beach, or to ride north in a more direct route home, I started to think, "something's not right."
I stopped at a Key Food supermarket for a bottle of water. When I stepped back outside and mounted Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear (which was doing better than I was!), I felt my eyes stinging, even though I'd worn my wraparound glasses. It occurred to me that whatever got to my eyes had to be in the air and smaller than a mosquito, gnat or other insect.
I splashed some water into my eyes and on my face and waited a couple of minutes. Another block of riding, and the stinging returned. I heard, from a radio of a passing car, that the health authorities declared the air quality "unhealthy." I didn't think it would "pass" like an afternoon thundershower, so I pedaled a couple of more blocks to the Rockaway Parkway station of the L train.
During the ride, I thought about the young man a police officer shot in Nanterre, just west of Paris. Not surprisingly, people protested, sometimes violently, in the City of Light and other French cities. In places like Nanterre, groups of people seemingly as disparate an the ones depicted in the mural I saw. I won't say there's more or less unity in one city or country than in another, but there always needs to be more.
If there was any good news in my taking the train home, it might be this: For about half of my ride, I was the only white person--and the only person with a bicycle. No one seemed to care except a little girl with whom we exchanged wide eyes and funny faces. Her mother smiled on my way out: She looked tired and, I think, was happy that someone relieved her, for a few moments, from having to keep her kid occupied. I guess taking the train home wasn't such a bad thing for somebody!
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?
Yesterday afternoon, I hopped onto Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bicycle, and pedaled with no particular destination in mind. I simply wanted to spend an hour or two riding before the rain came and I had to get back to work.
After zigging, zagging and looping through "Hipster Hook" and eastward to the closest thing this city has to a stetl--the Hasidic enclave in Williamsburg--I found myself riding down the unprotected bike lane on the left side of Tompkins Avenue, a one-way southbound street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Although the lane is nothing more than lines painted on pavement, I'd had no issues during previous rides along its length. In fact, I rather enjoyed it because it passes a park and some of the most colorfully-decorated stores and cafes you'll see in this city.
Note my use of the past tense. It doesn't mean I'll never go back; it means only that the string of pleasurable rides was broken.
Between Madison Street and Putnam Avenue, a USPS truck parked in the lane, on the left side of Tompkins, probably to make a delivery. Those trucks often take up more than the width of a lane so, perhaps not surprisingly, there was a traffic "bottleneck." In that queue was another USPS truck, just a couple of vehicles behind me to my right. The driver seemed to lean on her horn as she shouted out the window--at me, it turned out, even though I waited behind the parked truck so she could pass.
Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. She veered her truck toward me and yelled racist, "Fuckin' white tranny bitch!" (Hey, she scored a trifecta: racism, sexism and transphobia, all in one!) At the next intersection--Jefferson Avenue--she pulled over to retrieve mail from a box. I stopped and yelled, "What was that all about?"
"Mind your own fuckin' business."
"I am. When someone tries to kill me, it's my business."
"Fuck you, white tranny bitch!".
Since USPS trucks don't have license plates, I snapped this photo of the truck number. Then I took a photo of her, from the side, as she came out of the truck. Proud of herself, she posed for me.
I have filed complaints with the USPS and the local NYPD Precinct.
I didn't stop for this:
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But I did stop for this:
I can't recall seeing cherry blossoms bloom so early in any year before this one. These trees in Greenpoint, Brooklyn aren't at "peak" yet, but they will be very soon.
Normally, the cherry blossoms here in New York bud and flower a week or two later than the more famous ones in Washington, DC, which put on their show in late March and early April. I am not a scientist, but something tells me that what I'm seeing isn't just a symptom of a mild winter: This has hardly been the first in recent years. I can't help but to think that it's a harbinger of more fundamental changes.
Don't get me wrong: I am always happy to see the cherry blossoms, whenever they blossom. But even if the weather was still cold, those lovely pink flowers were a sure sign that Spring had indeed arrived. So...Does this mean that Spring is indeed arriving earlier? Or will they become another precursor, like snowdrops and winter jasmine, of a season that is on its way, but has not quite arrived?
I went looking for answers. Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike, led me to this:
A psychic reader under new management? Does that mean readings will be less vague and more detailed? That they'll be done faster? Or that you get your money back if what the reader predicts doesn't come true?
At least my trip to the reader's storefront--which was closed--took me through some interesting vistas. The block leading to it, (66th Street from Cooper to Myrtle Avenues) looked like a valley of "Ridgewood Yellow:"
Not surprisingly, I saw a couple of pro-police banners. Not so long ago, Ridgewood was home to many officers. I'll bet that some worked here:
The former headquarters of the eight-three (police parlance for the 83rd Precinct) is now a command station for that precinct, and several others in Brooklyn. That doesn't surprise me, though on first glance, I would've thought it was an armory.
A desk officer saw me wandering around and came to the door. "Can I help you?" I explained that I simply had to stop and look at the building. He then explained its history to me and told me the part of the building in which he was posted had been a horse stable.
I tried to imagine it when the neighborhood--Bushwick--was home to German and Italian immigrants who probably would've been dressed in their "Sunday best" for church. Apparently, the young woman with pink hair and they young man in a long yellow paisley coat had no such thought: It was just another building they passed on their way to the Cal-Mex cafe.
I guess pink and yellow, wherever they're seen under a gray sky, are signs that the season--whatever it is-- is here, or on its way.
