Summer Wanderings

Today's adventure was a visit to the Cloisters.  I decided to bike there, which entailed a certain amount of anxiety because I didn't know precisely how to get there or how long it would take, and I was meeting a friend who would be arriving via subway.  But it worked out okay: I biked on the Greenway to 181st St., stopping to walk up a few of the steeper GW Bridge ascents (I've become much less bold on the bike since my spill in Ireland a couple years ago... I would prefer to keep all remaining teeth intact, thank you very much, as well as all other body parts).  Then I was a bit confused about where to go, so I fired up the old Google Maps, which told me I was in exactly the right place to exit the park, and I made it the rest of the way on feel.  That last bit, after I exited the park, was the trickiest - it had gotten very warm, and my legs were a bit tired (the total trip is around 8.5 miles, which is hardly a massive bike trip, but I have nubbly mountain-bike tires and don't actually bike much) and the whole biking-on-streets thing is unusual for me.  We do seem to have a lot of new bike lanes, but once I got away from the park nobody was using them.

The draw at the Cloisters was an exhibit about unicorns.  Apparently they have been around (ficticiously) for much longer than I'd thought.  We also walked around the other exhibits and gardens... possibly the most interesting thing we saw was eight nuns in white habits, opaque nude hose, and identical black sneakers.  Then we found a shady spot in the grass and chatted.  I saw a woman who works in my office and met an adorable orange-red poodle puppy who climbed all over me and licked my face.  On the way out, we stopped at the ice cream truck for sprinkly cones.

I felt shaky at the start of the ride home - I'd had a lot of sun, and the ice cream cone hadn't kicked in yet.  I had a harder time finding the Greenway than I'd thought I would - every road seemed to be one way in the wrong direction, and there were giant buses and people parked randomly in the middle of the street and kids on too-small bikes cutting me off.  Finally I found the road to the park entrance, a steepish hill that I'd ridden up with only moderate effort earlier in the afternoon, and halfway down my fear of flipping over the handlebars or losing control of the bike overwhelmed my desire to not look like an idiot, and I dismounted to walk.  The rest of the trip back was filled with similar bumps - a twenty-block party around the 160's featuring small children playing in the middle of the bike path; an accelerating wind that made the Hudson choppy and meant I had to pedal furiously even though I was going downhill - but I got back safely, surprisingly tired and rather dehydrated.

Before even heading out on my adventure, I had a breakfast picnic at my spot in Riverside Park.  My spot, where I've spent many summer afternoons and the occasional weekday evening over the past few years, is a grassy hillside in Riverside Park.  It's a five-minute walk from my apartment; rarely empty but never loud; and there is sun and shade and often puppies.  And now going there is a little bit sad, because I am about to move away from it.

Not far away from it.  I am moving a grand total of 0.7 miles, in the direction directly away from it.  My new apartment will be very close to Central Park, so I can find a new spot.  My new apartment is also about five time the size of my old apartment, has many more bathrooms and bedrooms (my current apartment has 0 bedrooms so this isn't hard) and a superior kitchen, and I will be acquiring a roommate of whom I am already fond*.  So, in addition to being a geographically trivial move it is a good one, but I am still full of nostalgia for my tiny, semi-infested apartment, my West End haunts, my dwindling bachelorettehood.

* My future roommate is the man who for the last two years has occupied the post of Gentleman Caller.  Since he will obviously not be calling on me any longer when we occupy the same residence, I am retiring that position and creating a new one for him, that of Fellow Traveler.