“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to hit on you or anything. I really just want to know how to get over to the east side.”
Her smile vanished as she scowled, “Why don’t just jump on the highway and play in traffic?”
Apparently, I’m not real good at reading body language.
I was once again out looking for the real New York on a beautiful, sunny day. Spreading happiness and joy as I pedaled along the river with song in my heart (where, as you will see, some people wished it would stay).
Having no real itinerary today other than to see something new, I hopped on the ferry to Manhattan and headed north towards the George Washington Bridge. Which, come to think of it, really wasn’t anything new since I’d been up there two weeks ago. That was on the Jersey side anyway and there was an incident with law enforcement and national security issues so let’s just wipe that slate clean.
The George Washington Bridge, known as the GWB to locals, looked surprisingly small to me today. I don’t like big bridges but small ones are fine so I thought it just might be possible to bike across it and return down the New Jersey side.
A half hour later, the bridge still looked small and it didn’t seem to be getting closer either. I think it was all the joggers passing me that slowed me down.
I stopped looking at the bridge and everything else as well and focused on the strange red hot burning sensation in my legs. Who put these hills out here? Don’t we have bulldozers or something to flatten things out a bit?
Just as I was sure I was about to die from exertion, I decided to stop for lunch. No sense leaving this earthly life with an empty belly. Unfortunately, I then came upon a building that had an uncanny resemblance to the processing facility in the movie Soylent Green.
Soylent Green is … well, I don’t want to ruin the movie but let’s just say it ain’t chicken. I decided to forego lunch in that particular neighborhood.
I rode in the blessed shade under the highway for awhile. Up until this point, the path along the river had been part of a very nice park, full of people. Everything neat as a pin too. Very un-New York. As I rode under the highway, I noticed everything getting a little scruffier. However, I smelled woodsmoke and some wonderful cooking so I earnestly rode towards lunch.
I rounded a corner to find another park just as full of people but with a few differences. First, every group was cooking and it smelled GREAT. Second, everyone who wasn’t cooking was playing sports. Basketball, football, soccer and baseball.
Ah, this felt like home! Not my home but a home I sort of adopted, briefly, quite a few years ago. Not a home really, more like a family. I was flat broke and living in Chicago after college graduation. One day I was riding my bike through Lincoln Park and came upon a similar scene, Back then, I was young and in shape. Not a good shape but at least not my current shape. In any case, I was living under the illusion that I could play soccer. I figured there were dozens of people at this one particular family picnic and it was unlikely that everyone knew everyone else so I sort of joined the family and just started playing, figuring that I would get a free meal in return for my spectacular athleticism.
Let the record show that I did, in fact, get a free meal or at least half of a meal that day. I thought I blended in quite well but not well enough apparently because the patriarch of the family came up to me and said something that to this day I do not understand. Partly because it was in Spanish and partly because I took off running with a taco in hand when one of the sons appeared, backed by his brothers, and asked, “Whose bastard are you?” You just got to know when to make your exit.
So here I was, older, wiser but still hungry and the food smelled great. I figured I would just sort of blend in and grab some victuals. Nothing like home cooking and I hadn’t had any of that in a long time.
All the happy family noise suddenly stopped.
CLICK!
I looked around. My blending plan didn’t seem to be going well.
CLICK! CLICK!
A lot of people seemed to be looking at me.
CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!
Ok, everyone was looking at me. So I looked back. I saw a nice cross section of New Yorkers like you see everyplace. Young, old, fat, thin. It’s a diverse city and I love that. This particular park had people representing every conceivable color of the rainbow with the exception of one. Ultra bright white. Which just happens to be my persistent hue.
Ok. No problem. Just passing through. I looked over my shoulder as I turned to continue along the path and immediately ran into a mountain.
The Largest Man I Have Ever Seen.
Surprisingly, even at that size, he hadn’t an ounce of body fat. I could tell that because my eyes were level with his bare chest. Which I had just bumped into and bounced off of.
CLICK!
I looked up and saw he had sunglasses on like everyone else.
CLACK! He took them off.
“Ow!” he shouted.
CLICK! Sunglasses back on.
“Hey YOU!”
I think he was talking to me so I didn’t bother to look around.
“Yes?” I bellowed. Or maybe squeaked, a little anyway. Had something in my throat you know.
“Listen!”
I was, quite closely.
“You either get a tan or put on some pants. Those fleshy white things coming out of your shoes are hurtin’ our eyes!”
“My sculpted steel calves?”
“Your what????”
Now I’ve been to many a heavy metal concert and sat way too close to the speakers but I have never heard anything like that giant bellowing with laughter. It about blew me right out of the park and into the river.
“Thank you for your suggestion, sir. I’ll work on that tan,” I promised as I mounted my bike.
“Go with the pants would be my suggestion,” he advised.
CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!
The sunglasses came off as my shining whiteness rode on.
This little cultural encounter had done nothing to sate my hunger so I, perhaps unwisely, decided to try to blend in again. Fortunately, I saw my opportunity under the bridge in a place that just makes me feel comfortable. A field of athletic endeavor. Or, in this case, court rather than field.
Oh yeah, I got game. I can put it in the hoop. I dismounted and prepared to join my fellow athletes. I started stretching and bouncing around a little, waiting to be called onto the court.
Then I looked down.
Ahhhhh, darn it! I had my lightweight running shoes on. I can’t play ball in those. No way I could pivot on the asphalt without some sidewall support.
Hoop dreams die hard. Not my dreams of course. Those are still vivid. Those poor young men on the court though, I feel for them. They never had the chance to see my moves and maybe learn a thing or too to help them take their game to the next level. Here I was all ready to show them the famous Parrent Hook as passed down from my father. It’s a crying shame they had to miss that.
With a combination of decreasing speed and increasing pain, I pedaled on towards the bridge. I was looking forward to finally riding across a suspension bridge and banishing my fear of heights, swaying bridges and certain, screaming death. I came out from under the trees and suddenly there it was – my nemesis, my enemy, my … God!
I ain’t going over that bridge.
No way. Never.
So I went under it. And bumped into a lighthouse. A lighthouse? Who needs a lighthouse when you have this MONSTER bridge all lit up and flaming cars and screaming people tumbling off of it?
Apparently, they built the lighthouse before the bridge in order to warn mariners of Treacherous Waters. Not a particular rock or sandbar or anything. Just Treacherous Waters.
“Hey navigator, what do the sailing directions say about that lighthouse?” the captain asks.
“Treacherous Waters, sir.”
“Aye. Very well. Prepare the men for death.”
And to think I was considering sailing through this very section of the river tomorrow. Good thing there’s a lighthouse to warn me off.
On the upstream side of the bridge lies beautiful upstate New York. Wilderness. Mountains. Lakes. Adventure. Unparalleled beauty.
But there was no bike path, so I turned around.
Having been foiled in my plan to transit the Hudson by way of the no longer small GWB, I must have been off my game a little. That’s the only explanation I can conjure up to explain my apparent social awkwardness with the comely lass under the tree.
What to do next? New Jersey was out of the question given the Death Bridge over Treacherous Waters. My alternate plan to cross Manhattan at tis northern end was untenable give the complete lack of useful directions from the young lady.
I hadn’t brightened enough people’s day yet so I decided to head for Central Park where New Yorkers gather in the hopes that someone entertaining, like me, will happen along.
Riding back through the West Harlem park, I waved at my mountainous friend and deeply inhaled the aroma of food that I would never eat. I’m still trying to figure out why I can’t blend in.
One of the nice things about the Hudson River park is the looming cliff just inland. Noisy Manhattan sits up there somewhere and the river park is left quiet and peaceful. One of the not so nice things is that looming cliff. I should get a guide book because I just could not find the elevators. I was left to ascend the heights in the old fashioned way – low gears, screaming pain and crying like a baby. It got me there.
The bike path abruptly ended where the park spilled into the city. I rode on the sidewalks for a bit until old ladies starting swatting me with umbrellas. I then returned to my proper environment – the Streets of Manhattan. No problem, I’d done this before. For a couple of blocks. Downtown where that’s not so much traffic. On flat streets. Oh boy. A long ride through the heart of the city, uphill, against traffic in places (sorry, officer!) with a rumbling belly and useless calves of sculpted steel.
I made it.
While the river had been nice, Central Park was spectacular. The wide, smooth, shaded road through the park is closed to vehicular traffic on the weekends and, because I had entered at the north end, most of it is downhill. Bliss! Except for those traffic lights every few hundred yards. While I can claim ignorance as a newcomer, I don’t know what everyone else is thinking. If you stop for a red light so pedestrians can cross, you are rear ended by Lance Armstrong (and there’s a lot of him). If you zip through a light, some unreasonable mother will start screaming at you just because her baby carriage tipped over. Wear a helmet, child!
I chose the perfectly reasonable compromise of stopping at every other light and blasting through the others. That way, everybody was equally, um, happy. Yeah.
When you’ve had a good day, sometimes you should just go home. After all, I hadn’t been beaten to mush by Mountain of a Man. I hadn’t been slapped by Comely Lass (you need better hand speed lady). I hadn’t fallen screaming to my death from the GWB. Time to pack it in and go sit on the couch.
Nahhhhhhh.
Time to entertain some folks.
What happened next started off perfectly innocently – as it always does. And then … yeah, as it always does.
Riding along, leaving a perfectly acceptable amount of carnage in my wake, I heard the dulcet tones of a songster. Sweet serendipity! I had considered finding musical entertainment this weekend but neither the Sick Puppies nor Papa Roach were in town. I pulled over for a listen.
The musician, the view, the crowd – all perfect.
The singer, David Ippolito (www.thatguitarman.com) had a nice voice, an easy manner and an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music. If the crowd had even read a volume or two of that encyclopedia, what happened next could have been avoided.
After listening for an hour and a half to this impromptu concert, I was feeling pretty groovy. I was in sync with the music. I was …
Ok, there was this musical incident several years ago in Greensboro, NC at a Theory of a Deadman concert that I don’t really like to talk about. Technically, I have not been banned from Greensboro but they haven’t exactly offered me the keys to the city either. I try and find shortcuts around the town now.
I should have learned from that incident. Now, I don’t know much about grammar and I can’t name different tenses and conjugations and voices and all that but I can tell you that “should have learned” is not the same as “learned.”
So David is entertaining us and pauses for a few minutes because there is a wedding ceremony going on just around the corner in the park. After we hear the matrimonial applause, he asks us to get things moving again by singing along with him.
“Sing it loud folks! Sing it so loud that they can hear you at the wedding. Sing it loud enough so they can hear you on 5th Avenue!”
I really wish people knew more popular music lyrics so that I would not have to always carry the tune by myself. They heard me at the wedding. They heard me on 5th Avenue. I think they heard me in the West Harlem park.
I am a man of the world. I’ve done my share of traveling so I understand the subtle cultural differences amongst people better than most folks do. Even so, I am not quite sure which culture shows their approval and joy with a certain slack jawed, wide eyed look combined with complete and utter silence. But I can tell you that wherever those people are from, their bus must have just let them all out at that particular spot in the park. I think the singer was from that tribe too based on his reaction. One of the bridesmaids also, who happened to come running around the corner as I finished.
I took their adulation in stride, mounted my bike and rode away.
Another perfect day in New York City.
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