Now this is what I'm talkin' about.

What's not to love about this?

Foggy Coffey Park

Red Hook was engulfed by fog early yesterday.

Not Like a Baroque Ceiling or Anything

Very occasionally (like this morning) I will ride the train into Manhattan when the weather is just too pernicious and I am just too lazy. When I take the Subway, I usually bring Frank O'Hara's collected along with me for company. This morning, I rediscovered the following:

Fond Sonore

In placing this particular thought
I am taking up the cudgel against indifference
I wish that I might be different but I am
that I am is all I have so what can I do

as the hero of the hour I might have one strange destiny
but it is all mixed up and I have several
I can’t choose between them they are pulling me aloft
which is not to say up like a Baroque ceiling or anything

where is the rain and the lightning to drown or burn us
as there used to be
where are the gods who could abuse and disabuse us often
when am I ever in the country walking along a lane plotting murder

you would think that the best things in life were free
but they’re the worst even the air is dirty
and it’s this "filth of life" that coats us against pain
so where are we back at the same old stand buying bagels

I think that is would be nice to go away
but that’s reserved for TV and who wants to end up in Paradise
it’s not our milieu
we would be lost as a fish is lost when it has to swim

and yet and yet
this place is terrible to see and worse to feel
along with the purple you have contracted for an awful virus
and it is Christmas and the children are growing up

Spoooooook!

Me (to cyclist at the foot of Manhattan Bridge last night): Ahoy there chap!
Fellow Cylist: Yeah?
Me: Say...What sort of Halloween creatures really love bicycle wheels?
Fellow Cyclist (not sure what to make of me): Uh...I don't know.
Me: Why, the SPOOOOOOKY ones, of course.

Mwah ha ha ha ha

My New Commute

So I'm doing freelance work at a local hospital and have a wonderful new 9.2 mile commute to work. After work, I usually take the West Side Greenway back down, making the entire commute a 21 mile loop.

Although 1st Avenue can be dangerously congested in the mornings, I feel pretty at ease with the traffic. In NYC, the cars are usually only going as fast as you are and I tend not to hot foot it to work (I'd rather not show up drenched, you know). The only thing that bugs me are the exhaust fumes and I'm dealing with that by wearing a kerchief--not really my style, but it's a situation where function trumps form. If I were really concerned about form, I'd go find a vendor that sells a wider variety of bandanna than the paisley kind.

Highlights of my commute include biking past the UN building at 44th and 45th Streets. I've noticed this gargantuan bronze equestrian statue that I'm going to take some snapshots of for my friend Bill. He's planning on having an equestrian statue erected over his memorial grave site and I figure he needs to start collecting images of equestrian statuary as soon as possible for ideas.

At 59th Street, I'm often cycling beneath the Roosevelt Island Sky Tram. I love the sky tram and wish there were more of them all over the city. I think they make me nostalgic for that one James Bond film set partly in Rio de Janeiro.

Across the East River at 94th is Randalls Island, home of the Manhattan State Mental Hospital. There's a very cool pedestrian bridge (very minty green, very made-out-of-toothpicks looking) that crosses the narrow channel from Manhattan to Randalls. If you can stand the desolate bike path on the Tri-Boro, this little bridge is the way to get to it.

For the ride home, it's West to Central Park and then south through the park to 72nd Street. At 72nd Street, I head west to the Hudson River Greenway

The Greenway (except for its tendency to be overcroweded with other commuters) is just about the best bike path in the city. I take it all the way to Canal Street and then head east back to the Manhattan Bridge. From there it is "Home again home again jiggity jig."

I'm spending a little more than 90 minutes on my bike each day. Fantastic! Tomorrow, I'll share some photos from the commute.