36th street bridge song

There’s something to be said for early Monday mornings, out on the streets.  In a car it’s a singular quiet focus. But on the bike, it’s as if you’re waking up with a familiar stranger. In the fall, just after the imposing of daylight savings time, you can glide into a city that is wide open and nearly deserted. At once ethereal, and eerie, streets lay empty, but open. Lights change on timer. Left over night club advertisements litter the ground: large, colorful with scantily-clad women and promises of cheap drinks. At the cusp of full day, the streets appear almost apocalyptic, oddly devoid of cars, or people. It’s some b-horror movie, only no half digested human slogs out of an alley: only a morning jogger, or a tiny dog pulling at full strength a half-pajama, half-sweatshirt owner clasping a cup of coffee, squinting into a yet unfamiliar day.

This could be my favorite time to ride. Enough light to see imperfections in the road, traffic nil to non-existent, and I can ride in the middle of the lane, as if I own it. Sitting up on the seat, arms crossed, taking deep breaths, there is a feeling, one that can’t really be placed into context, quantified with words, but it’s seeing a city bare and revealed. My city. Places that are usually passed in a hurry, watching for green and white taxies, errant tourist and attempting to get in time with green lights, now I can see graffiti, the stickers on store windows, notes left on light poles, cracked door panels, dirty side walks, and back alleyways. I could cut my time by a quarter, but the ride in takes about the same as the ride home; sitting up, looking around, taking my time.

Taking my time. It is one of those intangibles you forget to tell people when they ask “why do you ride back and forth to work.” The assumption that I’m trying to save the environment (not my goal, but an ancillary benefit), or the jump that because I ride a bike to work that I’m a vegetarian (only when someone offers liver), all things to be countered when trying to explain to someone that while, yes, driving a car is easier, it’s not actually better. I try to put it in words that when I get home, though my clothes are either soaked in sweat or stained with salt, I’m happier. The ride home unwinds my day. Instead of coming home with knots of undone work in my head, tangles of conflict and a quickly jumbled ball of stress, somehow the whole day is unwound, neatly rolled up. Getting home, I’m free of having been boxed in, thinking only about the day or bad radio DJs.

But it’s the moments you can’t forget that are hardest to explain. Like catching the timing right at Imperial and 36th. There’s a place there you can stop when the sun is rising and see a spectacular sight. The sky is dark, the horizon dark, but the buildings catch a fleeting touch of the morning sun and shine in silver reflection. Look exactly opposite, and in a 45 second period the sky will go from morning grey to fiery red explosion and back. Blink, and you’ll miss it. There are some mornings I’ll stop there just past the cemetery, drop the bike down on the sidewalk and sit back on the curb to wait for this show.

People drive by in a hurry, incredulous at the sight of me. Mostly I don’t pay attention, sometimes, it’s a little like someone is peering into my own private spot. Others, I’m distracted by the fact they miss out on this spectacular show.

Ten minutes from this spot, I’m in early morning East Village. Coffee shops are brewing the first batch, in the distance a truck rumbles to life. It’s all mine for the taking. Pictures, probably a couple hundred by now, never seem to capture it. On Broadway, the buses roll nearly empty. The homeless are stirring, getting up before the police arrive. At the harbor, the water like glass.

There seems to be almost no effort to a morning ride. Occasionally, I get caught off guard, and find a sweat spot under my bag, or my helmet a little sweaty, gloves soaked. But it’s never an out-of-breath, never a heart beating 3 times a second, never a feeling of exhaustion. It’s just like waking up, me, and the city.