Yes, the road bike thing, I've loved the ride for decades. Once, while I still lived in Manhattan, it was the 60-mile round-trip to Nyack, NY on a Saturday or Sunday morning, with 9W's serious climbs and wide-awake descents, followed by a hearty breakfast once I hit Nyack, often chatting with other cyclists (some having arrived from farther North), then taking a more-leisurely ride back to the city. Now, as a Brooklyn expat, the big ride is out to Fort Tilden in the Rockaways, through Gateway National Park (and past Floyd Bennett Field...had to put in an aviation reference, since so many others here have 🙂), and over the Gil Hodges Bridge. Tilden is a real beach with dunes, sparse crowds, and stories. I've been alone with my thoughts there, and close to galfriend there. The ride's the thing, but the destination resonates in a different way altogether. There is both invigoration and deep calming in the entire experience.
Then the ride home, the delicious feel of a deep stretch, an enveloping hot shower, that first sip of wine (or, failing that, a good craft brew), and the sound of a solo instrument working its way through the 'fi: Rachel Podger digging into Bach, Christina Ortiz tackling Villa-Lobos, Keith Jarrett stretching himself via his own compositions (quite literally: I'm thinking of his works for clavichord specifically), among many others. Staying away from the computers just long enough to get through a few old New Yorker pieces I've meant to read. Or, if it's just the right kind of quiet, keeping everything turned off and being deliciously still, alone or together.
It's all really about being in the moment, and relishing it.
- Barrett
