Important announcement: If you enjoy reading this blog, you should make a donation to the Livestrong Foundation, for which I will be riding my bike 100 miles in Pennsylvania on August 21 as part of Livestrong Challenge Philly. Your generosity will improve the lives of people with cancer.
On this especially beautiful Saturday, I rode my bike 72 miles out onto Long Island and back. Out there, I cruised around the north shore villages of Great Neck and Port Washington. There’s a very specific reason I chose these two destinations, which I will explain in a future post. Regular readers of this blog can probably guess what it is.
This evening I saw for the first time the MTA subway train which Target paid to have wrapped in ads, promoting a new store in Manhattan. This is the first time the MTA has covered an entire 10-car train with ads. The train is running on the 6 line.
How much? The reported cost of the ad is $250,000, though that might not be accurate. (It sounds high to me.) At any rate, the campaign is supposed to last 6 weeks and has been generally well-received by New Yorkers, who want the MTA to have more money and who find Target tolerable.
Today I rode from Brooklyn, up the West Side bike path, over the George Washington Bridge, and up through the Palisades (pictured) to Alpine, New Jersey. On the way back I took surface streets through Manhattan; I had to dodge a street fair (annoying!) on Bleeker Street.
My goal of this ride was to rack up some mileage on a hot day in practice for my Livestrong Challenge Ride next month in Pennsylvania. (P.S. – Donations welcome!) Round trip: 51.9 miles. Average speed 11 including breaks. Top speed of 32 achieved twice on downhills in the Palisades. High temperature in Central Park: 96. Bottles of water/gatorade consumed: 6.
“It’s as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots.”
— Gene Weingarten, writing about web comments in the Washington Post.
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Yahoo News is one of the mostpopular news web sites in the world. It has a problem, though. Every major story comes with a generous helping of the most vile hate speech you’ve ever seen.
Country radio stations recently started spinning a song called “Way Out Here” by Josh Thompson.
At first listen, it’s a celebration of the nobility of the American small town. On the second listen, it’s a rallying cry supporting God and guns, criticizing government welfare, and boasting that people from small towns are more likely to serve in the military. “If it was up to me I’d love to see this country run like it used to be,” Thompson sings.
So it’s a Republican political song. That’s fair. At least, until the chorus comes around, which goes like this:
“We’re about John Wayne, Johnny Cash and John Deere, way out here.”
Special “heat advisory” edition. I need practice on hills, so today I rode over four bridges, in order: 1. Manhattan, 2. Queensboro, 3. Williamsburg, 4. Brooklyn. Not a perfect ride—I had to dodge some street fairs and got caught in Chinatown traffic trying to get from Delancey to Broadway during the last swing through Manhattan. Top speed: 31, achieved on the Queensboro bridge. Average speed: 10. Temperature in Central Park: 93. Map is below.
I’m posting this video not because I think it deserves to be seen, but because it’s a reminder that naked bigotry is still alive in America. Brace yourself:
I’ve spent 6 months deciding whether to write this post. That’s how long it’s taken me to be sure the bedbugs are gone. Not that you’re ever really sure.
“I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”
“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.”
Do they still teach “The Great Gatsby” in schools? They did in Maryland in the 1990s, when I read the book for the first time. At that time (9th grade maybe?) I had never been to New York City, had a girlfriend, or attended a party thrown by a wealthy strangers. The narrator, Nick Carraway, seemed unattainably cool and wise as he cruised through the high-society jumble of Manhattan and Long Island. The book was a fantasy.
Now when I read “Gatsby,” I feel like I’ve lived entire chapters of it. (Minus, you know, the tragedy.) I’ve come to appreciate it as arguably the all-time best New York City summer story. This year, as I was re-reading it for probably the 5th time, I was shocked to realize I am now the same age as Nick, the cool narrator who once seemed so out of reach.
