Filling The Gap

 About three weeks ago, I left for the last time. I’d been working at the college for just over four years.  I started there after going a year without teaching for the first time in nearly three decades, having lost my old job in the pandemic.

For the first five and a half semesters I worked there, I lived in Astoria.  My commute included crossing the Williamsburg Bridge.  I really enjoyed it—well, most of it anyway.

Until the Brooklyn Bridge opened its dedicated bike lane a couple of years ago, the Williamsburg’s bike lane was easily the best among New York City’s major crossings: It’s wide and has better sight lines than the Manhattan, RFK/Triboro, Queensborough/59th Street or George Washington Bridges.  And I loved that, like Manhattan’s lane, it runs alongside subway tracks. You could tell which passengers were tourists:  They were gazing at the urban panoramas that unfolded before them.  Some waved to me and other cyclists; a few even blew kisses my way. 

As with any major bridge crossing, you climb until you reach the apex.  That means, of course, you descend on the other side.Whee! 

Well, it’s fun until you reach Delancey Street on the Manhattan side.  You’re barreling down at about 40 or 50 MPH (65 to 80 KPH) when you encounter a passage not much wider than you, even if you’re young and skinny. Concrete blocks about your height flank it on either side.

Oh, and right before that strait, the surface drops about half a meter—as if you’re going off a high curb.  At 40-50 MPH (65-80 KPH).

Photo by Lloyd Mitchell

And you have to navigate all of that as people are crossing Delancey, a busy commercial thoroughfare.

Well, say what you will about our new mayor, but Zohran Mamdani, himself a cyclist, did what previous mayors didn’t:  He had the gap filled.  Better yet, he doesn’t plan to stop there:  He’s proposed a rebuild.

Five Years— Or Five Minutes—Ago?i

 Time flies.  How often have you heard—or said—that?

The hours, the years seem to go by more quickly as we reach midlife.  Years ago, I came across a simple explanation: A day, a decade or any other amount of time seems to pass faster because it’s a smaller portion of our lives than it was when we were younger. When you’re four, next Christmas feels like a lifetime away; when you’re forty, last Christmas could have been yesterday—on Christmas Eve.

I’ve heard and read people saying that the pandemic further compressed the time that’s elapsed since. “I think something happened two weeks ago, then I realize it was in 2022,” one commenter related.  That remark particularly resonated with me when I returned from a late afternoon ride. I felt a sense of déjá vu, but it had nothing to do with my familiarity with the route I’d taken to Randall’s Island and back.  Rather, some part of my psyche was replaying an emotion I’d felt at the end of some other episode ride.  After dinner—Taco Tuesday from Webster Diner and Café—I remembered which ride etched the emotion that reflected in my mind’s eye this evening.

From the Astoria apartment where I lived, I pedaled briskly but aimlessly through Queens and Brooklyn  streets.  When I got home, I got the news everyone was hearing: A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, believing they could overturn the election that denied their guy four more years in the White House—for four years, anyway.

Photo by Ben Stirton

That was five years ago today.  But, to borrow a cliché, it feels like five days ago, if that, even if this country— and the world—and so many of our lives—seem to have five centuries of change. But I have no idea of when any of it, including my life will end. So I am still in the middle, in midlife, with more—of what?—to come, five minutes or five decades from now.

Saturday Solitude

 How does one find peace and solitude without going to a retreat in the mountains?

That’s what I did yesterday.  What’s more, I did it without leaving New York City, at least not technically.

Fort Totten, near the border with Nassau County, is further from Times Square—or my apartment in  Bedford Park. Nestled by Long Island Sound on the eastern edge of Queens, it the former military base offers expansive vistas and has long been one of my favorite ride destinations.

After pedaling out there, I didn’t see a single visitor. That’s unusual for a Saturday, even if the weather was on the cool side for this time of year. Perhaps even more striking was how little traffic I encountered along the way.  

But what struck me even more, though, was the absence of bicycles, e-bikes or even motorized bikes anywhere I rode, from my apartment through the Bronx River Greenway, Randall’s Island and Queens neighborhoods from Astoria to Bayside. Not only did I not see bicyclists on training or simply “fun” rides; I didn’t encounter anyone on an e-bike or motorized bikes:  not even delivery workers.

On one hand, I enjoyed having Fort Totten, Randall’s Island and the Bronx River trail to myself.  On the other, it was a little weird to be the only one on the road or trail in New York City.

In a way, it reminded me, in my midlife, of some rides I took when I first moved back to New York City. In the mid-1980s, I could pedal from Manhattan, where I was living, to working- and middle-class Brooklyn neighborhoods like the one in which I grew up (some of which have “gentrified” or changed in other ways) without encountering another adult cyclist.

Hmm…am I “cycling back” in midlife? I used to enjoy the solitude in those days, especially when I knew it would precede a night out.   But I didn’t go out last night: I spent time with Marlee and “Cora,” the girlfriend of “Sam,” my neighbor and sometime cycling buddy.