A Season Ends With A Stranger In The Wind

The other day was unusually warm for this time of year:  The temperature reached 69F (20C) and there were wispy high clouds. I don't think we'll see another day like that until April or, perhaps, March.  I was fortunate enough to get home early and take Arielle for a spin.


I rode out to Rockaway Beach.  The ride seemed strangely arduous for one that is almost entirely flat. Have I gained more weight?, I wondered.  Is something out of adjustment? (A quick glance told me the answer was "no.")  Or should I have eaten something besides oatmeal cookies for lunch?


Well, I got my answer at the Rockaway boardwalk.  Another cyclist and I were playing tag along the long straightaways and bridges from Howard Beach into Broad Channel and Rockaway Beach.  I learned his name: Devon.  "Good workout riding into the wind, isn't it?"

He was indeed right:  The wind whipped flags like whitecaps.  I could feel it as I was riding, but somehow I didn't think of it as the reason I was (or seemed to be) riding slowly.  Perhaps I didn't think about it because, as bracing as it was, it was not a cold wind, as it came directly off the ocean to the south of us.  While the water temperature has dropped since August, it's still about twenty degrees warmer than it will be in February.  


As we rode back, I realized that we'd actually been keeping a fairly good pace.  Even in that wind, the ride down to Rockaway Beach didn't take much longer than it normally would; now, on our way back, we were practically flying.


It may be a while in coming, but I'm sure there will be another day, and another ride, like what I experienced the other day.  And perhaps I will run into Devon again.

Another Voyage of Discovery

I realize now that I've been cycling for so many years because it's always been a window of sorts. Sometimes I see interesting things across my handlebars; other times, I have interesting experiences when I get to wherever my bike--on today's ride, Arielle--takes me.

Sometimes I think she has an even better eye than mine for form. It seems that rides with her lead me to pictures like this:

I don't feel that I've "captured" the bird or the fisherman as much as Arielle brought me to them. Even when I take a ride to some place I've been many times before (in this case, the Canarsie Pier), a scene like this is a discovery. That makes the ride an exploration. Now you know why I keep on cycling.

Crossing Bridges After Work

Today I did something I often did when I was young and unattached:  I took a ride after work.  I'm not just talking about the commute home:  I rode through the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening--fifty miles after work.


The best part is that today's ride, like the ones I used to do, was spontaneous.  I took a route I've ridden a number of times before, but it was unplanned.  I did one part of it; then, feeling good, I simply continued.


From 34th Street in Manhattan, where I've been teaching a Saturday class for a technical college, I pedaled up the greenway that skirts the Hudson River.  Because I'm trying to make this story fit all of those cheesy narratives I've ever heard, I'm going to tell you that I was guided by a light.

If you've ever ridden, walked, run, skateboarded (Is that a verb?) or rollerbladed over the Greenway, you've probably seen The Little Red Lighthouse.  Actually, it's called the Jeffrey's Hook Light, but most people refer to it by the name I used, which is also the title of a children's book inspired by the structure.  It hasn't functioned as a lighthouse in decades:  It stands under the George Washington Bridge, which spurred development on both sides of the river, which in turn lit up that treacherous stretch of the Hudson even better than any lighthouse could.  

It was at the lighthouse that I decided to continue riding. So, naturally, I crossed the bridge and rolled along the edge of the Palisades through Bergen and Hudson counties to the Jersey City waterfront.

From there, I continued down through Jersey City and Bayonne to another bridge, which I took to Staten Island and the Ferry named for it.

After I got off the boat, I cycled past Wall Street, the South Street Seaport and up the East Side to one of those bridges, which took me home. 

Giving Thanks

I know I'll have to drop whatever pretense I have of being a hipster who's full of post-modern irony.  But I do indeed have reasons to give thanks.  Not least among them is that I didn't have to travel yesterday or today, and that I still got to share a Thanksgiving dinner with people I love.  And I got to ride a bit before going there--on a really nice bike.  I know there's more, but those are certainly ample reasons for giving thanks!

Up The Col Du Galibier: The Day Before Thanksgiving

In the last moment of my life, I saw the day before Thanksgiving...

I'd just pedaled a few strokes around the virage; a bed of wildflowers turned, in an instant, into a glacial field.  The sun was so bright it turned into the kind of liquid haze through which dreams skip and float along with the words that make sense only in those dreams.

It was noon.  We were all lined up--the boys on one side, the girls on the other--to leave school for the day, the next day, and the three days that would follow.  For some reason, when I was a kid, that was always my favorite moment of the year.  Even the seemingly-capricious discipline of the Carmelite nuns who taught in our school could not make that moment less happy.   They could cast a pall over the day before Christmas Eve, over Holy Thursday.  Whether or not they loaded us down with homework, they left us in such a mood that Christmas, even if we got the gifts we hoped for, seemed more like a truce, and Easter was just too holy of a day to really consider as a vacation, even if we were home for the week that followed.  

But noon on the day before Thanksgiving always seemed like the most carefree moment of the year.  In most years, it began the last interlude of Fall; the lights of Christmas only accented the darkness that consumed ever-larger parts of the days that would follow.  In that moment, on the day before Thanksgiving, one could still see the last flickerings of the autumnal blaze that burned green leaves into the colors of the sunset.  Somewhere along the way, they turned as yellow and, for a few days, as bright as the sunlight that filled the air around the mountain I was climbing on my bike.

It was just about noon; I would soon be at the peak of le Col du Galibier, one of the most famous climbs on the Tour de France.  From there, I would have a long effortless ride to the valley.  In the meantime, each pedal stroke would become more arduous.  I'd been pedaling all morning, but even more important was the altitude:  I was more than a mile and a half above sea level.  The air is thinner, and even though my breath steamed as I puffed up that mountain on that July morning, the sun burned through the layers of sun screen I'd lathered on my arms and face.  

Bells rang.  Dismissal?  Or the cows in the herd down the mountain?  I stopped for a drink and one of the crepes I'd packed into my bag.  I took a bite and a gulp.  

You're free.  I wasn't sure of whether I was hearing that.  Perhaps I was giddy from the thin mountain air.  Yes, you're free.  But I wasn't hearing it:  It was being told--or, more precisely, communicated--to that child who was being dismissed from school on the day before Thanksgiving.  You can go now.  What are they talking about?  Who's "they"?

You don't have to do this again.  I'd never heard that before, certainly not in those days.  What did that mean?  What won't I have to do again?  Climb this mountain?  Go to school?

Down the Col du Galibier, through the Val de Maurienne, as the eternal winter of that mountaintop turned into the hottest day of summer in the valley, my mind echoed.  What, exactly, wouldn't I have to do again?

Near the end of that day, I reached St. Jean de Maurienne, just a few kilometers from Italy.  There, I would see the stranger who, inadvertently, caused me to see that I could follow no other course but the one that my life has taken since then.  A year later, I would move out of the apartment I'd been sharing with Tammy; about a year after that, I would change my name and begin my treatments.