I hadn’t pedaled up to the Great Gray Bridge for a couple months, and today turned out to be an ideal day for it. Blue sky, puffy clouds, abundant sunshine. Perfect. Click here to see all photos in this post.
Enjoyed a great urban amenity this aft: NYC's Sheltering Arms public pool, Amsterdam&128th St. Clean, empty, lovely. pic.twitter.com/GloPoIheiQ
— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) August 13, 2013
This week has turned out to be a blend of some work combined with a supremely enjoyable Manhattan stay-cation. Yesterday, my wife and I got to swim at a neighborhood pool we’d never been to before, as the tweet above shows. Then today, with the temps in the mid-70s, we rode our bikes up along the Hudson to our favorite beauty spot, Hudson Beach, and then a few blocks further up-river to the Little Red Lighthouse, which nestles under the Great Gray Bridge, aka the George Washington Bridge. 
Like other great rivers such as the Chesapeake and the Columbia, the Hudson is a tidal body, flowing in to and out of the vast harbor of New York and what’s known as the Upper Bay. The tides make the Hudson ever-changing, one of the reasons it’s never boring to ride along its shore or study its contours. In moments of low tide, the shoreline will be exposed, leaving artifacts of NYC’s maritime past visible to the eye. Thus, times of low tide have made for very special rides in recent days and weeks. However, our ride today came at a time of high tide, as the pictures below will show. Moments of high tide make for a well-nigh overwhelming feeling of fullness, almost as if the river were in your lap as you gaze at it from the shore. High tide also brings a sense of the river’s prodigious power, as if one could practically be swept up in to it and borne away by its swells. That was the feeling we had today, almost as if we had made a visit to an ocean beach. Add to that feeling the fact that we rode more than nine miles in moderate temps under full sunshine amid brisk winds. The result was one of the best days of the whole summer 2013. Please click here to view all photos.
Sunny THURS bike ride in upper Manhattan, heading up the Hudson to the Great Gray Bridge. Placid river, little wind. twitter.com/philipsturner/…
— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) May 2, 2013
Readers of this blog may have seen a post I put up last Monday, after the front fork of my bicycle failed and I luckily averted a spill and injury. At my bike shop, Champion Bicycles on Amsterdam Avenue, I consulted with owner Marcos and mechanic Teddy and checked all the other welds that could possibly give way on my old Trek bike. They all appeared quite sturdy, with the original steel (not aluminum) tubing and double-lugging solid throughout. As I could see on examining the broken fork closely, it takes the most stress and pounding, without benefit of nearby supporting joints, as is true everywhere else on the frame. So, I asked them to order a new fork. With the holiday last week it took several days, but it did come in before the week ended. I had them install it and also replace the front brake. This incident has made me begin seriously thinking about the time when I do finally get a new bike. But given the fact we live in a Manhattan apartment, once I replace the old Trek–a bike I bought as a gift to myself in 1982, the day after I’d buried my dear old black Labrador, Noah–I’ll probably also have to let it go completely and quit even housing it here.
My wheels had been unavailable for almost a week, and despite the cold I would’ve been riding given the opportunity. Upon picking up the bike Saturday, I took my favorite ride up the Cherry Walk along the Hudson, and here a couple of pictures shot during my jaunt. Thanks to many friends on Facebook who gave me good counsel on why suffering a broken fork needn’t signal the end of a bike’s useful life, even while other friends suggested it could be a sign from the bike gods that it’s time for a new set of wheels.
I shared a couple of these photos on Instagram earlier, but here are two others. They were all taken on a break during a very windy bike ride this past Saturday. Standing on a bluff above the Hudson River as as an intense, dramatic sunset glowed across the whole skyline, I am in upper Manhattan at about 165th Street, looking south down the river back toward the city. Though I’ve often ridden in strong wind along the Hudson, the gusts usually come from one direction. Saturday, they swirled and came from all points of the compass.
This tweet by prolific travel essayist Taras Grescoe caught my eye.
I followed the link to a website for what turns out to be a forthcoming book titled Roads Were Not Built for Cars, by Carlton Reid. At the site I found an interior spread with a cover and author info.
I had not really thought about it much before, but what I’ve read here reveals the author’s revisionist thesis that while Henry Ford and his ilk were eager to claim credit for the advent of paved roads in the 1920s, there had actually been a “Good Roads” movement harking as far back as the 1880s, when bicyclists began advocating for better riding surfaces. The writing and publication of the book has evidently been sponsored by bicycle makers in the UK and North America; with this underwriting it’s going to be a free, no-charge ebook download. I find what I’ve read in the spreads at the website reveals a fascinating, heretofore hidden aspect of modern transportation history–the development of decent roads not only made travel more enjoyable 
for individuals in all kinds of wheeled vehicles, it also enabled farmers and tradespeople to bring their goods to more readily bring their goods to market, spurring economic growth. If you’re interested in reading more on this topic I urge you to go to the book’s website and leave your email address so you can be notified when the book is ready.
Now that I think more about this, I’m reminded of a historical point raised in Alex Shoumatoff’s superb book, The Mountain of Names–a history of kinship that I had a chance to republish in paperback in 1995–which reported that the appearance of the bicycle in rural villages of Europe in the 19th century overnight extended the “courtship range” of male suitors to a great many more miles than had ever previously been the case. I’ve previously blogged about Shoumatoff’s book in relation to the Mormons’ practice of posthumous baptism, which the late Christopher Hitchens tartly dubbed “a crass attempt at mass identity theft from the deceased.”