The Road--And Season--Ahead

In cycling, any given time of year provides its own trials and pleasures.  In this part of the world, it is early in the Spring.  So far, riding has been a bit arduous but very exhilarating.  I think both have to do with how little riding I did this winter.

The ice and mounds of snow and slush are gone.  Some trees, bushes and other plants are budding now.  They fill me with hope, but do not yet distract me from the ones that are still bare, the ground that is barren from now and the buildings and other structures that bear the patina and show the wear and scars of the season we experienced so recently.  

 

So I am not surprised to see a kind of tentative energy in the steps and body language of people, some of whom I had not seen in months. I guess I ride that way, at least some of the time:  Even though the signs of a new season are around us, something in my body--and mind--still has not quite attuned to its rhythms. At least not yet.  It's almost as if I--and, perhaps, the people I see--still need to be convinced that it is indeed Spring, and we're not going back.

As long as we're moving forward, I guess it doesn't really matter whether we're pushing through mud or promenading along a path lined with cherry blossoms--or pedaling around potholes in the streets.  There is a ride, a season, ahead.

I Ride When He Lets Me Go

It's been mild, but windy, ever since I got back from Florida.  As far as I'm concerned, those are fine riding conditions, if not anything like what I encountered in the Sunshine State.

I've managed to do a bit of riding. But it hasn't been easy. Every time I try to go out, I have to get past the gatekeeper:

I mean, wouldn't you have trouble getting past that intimidating stare?

Yeah, I'm talkin' to you!

The Lives The Wind Gave Us

In previous posts, I've mentioned the Navajo creation song that begins, "It was the wind that gave them life."

It was running through my mind, again, as I pedaled into 30-35KPH gusts to the Rockaways and let the same winds blow me home.  And that chant grew even stronger, for me, when I saw the people who'd ventured outside on a chilly, windy but almost hauntingly clear day.

It didn't matter whether those people were families who lived there or were visiting--or whether they were the gnarled old men who seemed to have been deposited there by the tides and abandoned by the currents of time.  They all looked as if the wind had somehow shaped them, had somehow given them life:  the fact that they were alive and the lives they were living, whether in one of the clapboard houses or amongst the remnants of the boardwalk.   

 

The wind brushed the long fine strands and curls of childrens' hair around their faces, which made them seem even younger and dewier than they were.  That same wind turned those children's expressions and words from moments to memories for the parents and grandparents of those children.  And the wind stuttered the echo of old men shuffling through sand, across boards and concrete and asphalt broken by the very tides that returned to that very same wind.

And the wind defined my trip, my journey.  That is the life it gave me, gave them.

A Tale Of Two Beaches--And Rides

Compare and contrast Rockaway and Flagler Beaches.

Comparison #1:  I rode to both of them within the past few days.  Rockaway is a bit further from my apartment than Flagler is from my parents’ house.  But while neither are particularly long rides, I feel a sense of satisfaction, if not accomplishment, from either.

Contrast #1:  This one is obvious:  Flagler is in Florida, Rockaway is in New York—the borough and county of Queens, to be exact.  Flagler, on the other hand, shares its name with that of the county.

Comparison #2:  You have to cross a bridge to get into either one.  The SR 100 Bridge arches over the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, while the Veterans Memorial Bridge spans Jamaica Bay.  After crossing either bridge, you find yourself on an isthmus that separates the body of water spanned by the bridge from the Atlantic Ocean.

Contrast#2:  Almost everyone who crosses the bridge to the Rockaways lives in Queens or one of the other boroughs of New York City.  You are as likely to encounter someone from just about any state in the US—or Quebec or Ontario—as a Floridian on the bridge as well as Route A1A, the road on the other side of the bridge.

Comparison #3:  You’re likely to encounter cyclists while crossing either bridge or riding along the roads that parallel the beaches.  Said cyclists could be riding anything from an old beach cruiser rescued from someone’s basement to the latest and most exclusive road and mountain bikes.

Contrast #3:  People riding high-quality bikes to or in Rockaway Beach are almost invariably residents of Queens—though not of Rockaway Beach or any other part of the Rockaway Peninsula—or Brooklyn or Manhattan.  If someone’s riding a really good bike to or in Flagler Beach, he or she is most likely from someplace else,  or lives in the area part-time.  Also, a high-end bike in Flagler is usually a Specialized, Cannondale or Trek and has a carbon-fiber or aluminum frame, while one in Rockaway could be one of those or could just as easily be a classic steel road or mountain bike.

Comparison #4:  You’re likely to pedal into or with the wind while riding to or from either place.  If you’re  lucky, you ride into the wind while going and with it while coming back.

Contrast #4:  The temperature might drop a degree or two when you cross the bridge into Flagler Beach.  The temperature could drop a bit more while crossing into the Rockaways, especially early in Spring, when the water temperature in Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic is around 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (40 to 45 F).   On the other hand, the temperature of the Atlantic where it meets Flagler Beach is around 15 C (60 F) at this time of year.

Why is there so much more rust on the right side of this handlebar than on the left?

Comparison #5:  Both beaches have their wizened, grizzled characters who live on the streets or beach, or who “couch surf”.  

Contrast #5:  Surprisingly, Rockaway has more such characters.  I say “surprisingly” because they are usually more common in larger beach communities where the weather is warm, or at least mild, all year round.  What that means, of course, is that more of those characters are living such a lifestyle by choice in Flagler (or Daytona Beach) .  In the Rockaways, there are now more of those characters than there were three years ago.  Many of them are living as they are as a result of Superstorm Sandy, where much of the devastation still hasn’t been repaired.  Seeing such people in the Rockaways makes me think of the film Atlantic City, in which the "busted valises", as Ring Lardner used to call them, were abandoned by another kind of tide that ravaged, then turned away from, them.

One final contrast:  Whenever I‘ve ridden to Flagler, it’s been on someone else’s bike.  I’ve never ridden to or through Rockaway Beach on any bike that’s not my own.  That includes today, when I took Tosca, my fixed-gear Mercian, out for the first time since the snowstorms buried and iced us in January.  She’s looking—and feeling—better than ever, if I do say so myself. 

In The Time It Takes To Go To Paris, I Made It Home!

Today dawned fair and excellent:  bright, clear and cool.

Now, most of you found at least one problem with the previous sentence.   Some of you might have known that I didn’t come up with “fair and excellent” all on my own.  The credit for that, of course, goes to Emily Dickinson.

The rest of you, if you’ve been reading my blogs, probably know that I don’t normally use “dawn” as a verb.  I have nothing against it:  In fact, it’s one of those near-anachronisms that I like.  It’s one of those locutions I really wish I could use without sounding self-conscious, sentimental or, worse, pretentious.  I know I can be pretty literary (Is that possible?) but I ain’t that literary.

It reminds me of the time Tommy James used the word “yonder” in one of his songs.  I don’t know the man personally, but somehow I doubt that he’s ever uttered that word in his life. As with the verb form of “dawn”, I love it.  However,iIt’s not the sort of thing one drops into normal conversations in this culture and time; one isn’t likely to hear it much outside of church hymns and Christmas carols.  

Anyway…back to the opening sentence of this post.  What’s wrong with it—as some of you might have suspected—I didn’t see anything “dawn.”  I slept through it because I didn’t get home until 1:40 this morning.  That’s about three and a half hours later than I’d planned.  

If you live in the central part of the United States, you might have experienced some wicked weather.  Well, when you guys (Those of us raised in blue-collar neighborhoods in northeastern US are wont to use “guys” as if it were a gender-neutral  term!) in Kentucky and Illinois and other place were experiencing hail and even tornadoes, much of the southeast and mid-Atlantic region were drenched and shaken by storms that flashed through the skies.  

Those storms hadn’t begun yet when I was waiting to board my flight at Daytona Beach.  But, as you know, when  Atlanta sneezes, almost every other air terminal in the region gets at least a cold.  And the Hartsfield was experiencing convulsions and seizures.  Hence the delays in Daytona and other depots.

At first, I didn’t mind. They way my flights were originally scheduled, I had a layover of nearly two and a half hours in Atlanta.  So, a half-hour or even an hour’s delay would still leave me with plenty of time to catch my flight to JFK, even in a terminal as sprawling as Hartsfield.  Then again, I figured, my connecting flight would probably be delayed as well, I mused to myself.

That’s probably the biggest understatement I’ve made to myself in ages!  It had rained in Atlanta, all right.  But an even bigger cloudburst was on the way.  After the other passengers and I boarded the plane, the skies opened up so much that we could barely see outside the window.  So we couldn’t take off.  Nor could many other flights scheduled just before and after ours.  And, as it turned out, there were more of such flights than usual because of the Augusta golf tournament.  Plus, students (and faculty members) were returning from spring recess.  So, all of those flights were completely booked, which meant that the terminal was packed with people waiting to board the flights after ours.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 17:58.  But it didn’t take off until 21:20.  Yes, you read that right.  And we landed in JFK at 23:00.  But, according to the captain, there weren’t any airport staff members to guide the plane into the gate.  So he did everything he could to summon them.  Finally, we started to exit the plane fifteen minutes before midnight.  By then, almost all of the concessions in the airport were closed.  I didn’t need them, but I’m sure others could have used a cup of coffee or a drink or something.  Even more important, they were connecting to other flights.  The guy sitting next to me was going to Dubai.  That flight was also delayed, but even so, he had only a few minutes to get to it after we finally got off our plane.

I got off at a part of the airport that was unfamiliar to me.  I don’t know whether it was my fatigue or a lack of signage, but it seemed to take almost as long for me to get out of there as it did to get to it! Oh, if only I’d had my bike with me!

The flight from Atlanta to any NYC airport normally takes a bit less than two hours. But when I finally got off the Air Train and into the subway, I realized that from the time of the scheduled departure until the time I got off the plane, nearly six hours had elapsed.  That’s how long it takes, on a typical day, to fly from JFK to CDG.  I’m sure someone on my flight was going there.  I hope that person caught his or her flight!

Maybe I’ll ride my bike down to my parents’ next time I go.  Of course, I’ll need a longer recess for that.  As for today, I slept late and was still tired, so I didn’t ride.  I hope I will tomorrow.