Heyday

The summer before I shipped out to Russia for sabbatical (or in other, earthlier words, junior year abroad), I commuted to work on a bicycle. I lived then with my family in Glendale, Queens, and worked, of course, at the Harriman Institute. Round-trip was 25 miles.

In the beginning, I would take the M train from Fresh Pond Road to Chambers Street and ride up the Hudson to Columbia. Starting near Stuyvesant, the citadel of my youth, in the mornings, and finishing there in the evenings, was compositionally sound for me. Then I started getting off the M train at Marcy Avenue, the last stop in Brooklyn, and riding over the Williamsburg Bridge. I would fight my way through the thick of lower Manhattan and take the familiar Hudson. I revelled in the glint of the river.

For several weeks, I stalled. I could not settle on a route through Queens to the Queensborough Bridge. More importantly, I did not want to relinquish the Hudson path. It was the spine of Manhattan and I lived to trace it daily. Later, of course, I acquired the same affinity for the greenth of Central Park. I considered it my personal estate, and cast an approving eye over the shrubbery as I swept through the Park twice a day.

About two weeks into the summer, the Greek, who used to be a taxi driver in Queens, saw me studying a map in the Arena. ("Part of a work-study job is study," Frank said.) The Greek tackled the problem. He reassured me that Queens has more dead people than live ones. So we drafted a route. (And that is how the Greek redeemed himself, but that's another story.)

That height-of-summer commute has been my greatest feat thus far in my fledgling career. I learned the power of my will and body, and I learned about sustainable and not-so-sustainable habits. On average, it took me an hour and fifteen minutes in one direction. I arrived in the Arena spent, so that I ate constantly throughout the day, often exhausting the stores I'd brought with me, so that I had to buy something to eat around 4 P.M., to tide me over. When I got home, my face was covered in grime from the traffic and the smog. I showered, dined, and slept. If I hadn't slept, I wouldn't have ridden the next morning.

People told me the physical exercise was countered by all the dirt I breathed in when I was surrounded by cars. I agreed, but I needed to know that I moved by dint of my own pedalling.

In retrospect, I see how the experience radicalized me. The ride was a reverse video game, in which I tried not to hit anyone. I got angry at Manhattan pedestrians, who stood in the street and not on the curb. I got angry at drivers who flung their arms out the window to flick the ashes from their cigarettes. I got angry at drivers and passengers who opened their doors without looking. I got angry at all cars. I got angry at the City's poor infrastructure: there wasn't a proper cyclist's entrance to the Queensborough Bridge on the Manhattan side, and the path itself was often jammed up with construction vehicles. It wasn't a bicycle path, it was a service lane.

If I screamed at jaywalkers or flippant drivers, they screamed back, "I'm not the one on the bike!" At every turn, the City conveyed that it is a crime to ride a bicycle.