I drop the wrench with a clang, wipe the sweat from my brow and take a long pull from my can of beer. American beer. I glance over and wink at my girl, who’s polishing her nails and smoking a cigarette, while chewing extravagantly on a wad of gum. Producing an impressive pink bubble, she looks appreciatively at my grease stained muscles as I casually crush the beer can against my forehead. A gang of guys from the neighbourhood crowd around and admire my handiwork, awed by my almost instinctive mechanical expertise. Wiping the crankshaft oil from my hands onto my dungarees, I snap my fingers, and the sea of admirers parts to reveal: the cute new basket on my pushbike. Sit on it, Potsie! (Don’t actually sit on it– it’s a snap-on.)
Ah how I used to jet around the globe, zipping between continents without a second thought. I’ve taken a train through the Swiss Alps, a hair-raising tuk-tuk ride through the streets of Bangkok, an overnight ferry from Spain to mystical Morocco. Now I ride my bike to the local park. It’s not the same, but for the foreseeable future, my touring is pedal powered.
I’m lucky to live only a mile from New Jersey’s splendid Liberty State Park– hectares of wide open space, protected marshland, wildlife habitat, all nuzzling up to New York Harbour. Most days when the weather cooperates I take a ride, telling myself it’s good exercise, but really I have to keep the pace down so I don’t spill my martini. When I first started coming here, reaching the park meant picking my way around the syringes and dead bodies, and when I made it inside, I more or less had the place to myself. Now I’m ushered in via a charming little footbridge, and once inside it’s manicured lawns and hundreds of painfully fit people in lycra having a horrible time. Within the cyclists, I find myself about in the middle of the pack– somewhere between the couples in jeans spluttering as they trundle along on their rented Citibikes; and the hardcore racing bikers with tight faces and Vaseline’d nipples (I’m sure they have other attributes, but to me that defines them).
I coast easily along the smoothly paved pathway, a rolling meadow on my right, Audrey Zapp Drive on the left (Audrey Zapp was New Jersey’s only superhero. Her super power was kicking people in the ribs when they were already on the ground.) Sunlight dapples through the locust trees, and flocks of fat geese pick through the grass, making my mouth water. Surely they wouldn’t miss one… I drive the delicious thought from my mind and take a right at the old train yards. These are brilliant. Left virtually untouched, they go back to the late 1800s and connected cargo and passengers from across the country to Manhattan-bound ferries; and when the Ellis Island Immigration Station opened up, the huddled masses would disembark and be herded onto trains to be dispersed throughout their weird new home. Not much is made of the significance of these ancient ruins, but I think they’re fascinating; and best of all, there’s a den of red foxes in there. The girl and I saw one trot in front of us the other day– she was so surprised she dropped her switchblade.
From here I swing around onto the absurdly named Liberty Walkway for the most energetic portion of the outing. They love an abstract noun in these parts– you can gaze across the river at Freedom Tower from your spot in the Perseverance Parking Lot. Anyway, stupid name, lovely walkway. It curves elegantly along the water’s edge, wide and welcoming, wooden benches and stately lampposts on both sides, and a railing the perfect height for leaning. I try to build up some steam here, the riding is flat and easy, and it feels good to get the sludge in my veins moving. Seagulls wheel overhead, confident in their place in the sky; but every now and then a mighty red-tailed hawk ascends to float majestically on the spring zephyr and the gulls scramble desperately to exit stage left. The theatre becomes his, and it’s impossible not to stop and stare.
I push past the saltmarsh– protected habitat for migrating birds which I admire but couldn’t identify if you paid me. On the harbour side, fishermen nurse their rods while they chat and drink, and presumably hope they forgot to bait their hooks. The waters of New York harbour are infinitely cleaner than they used to be, but there are a lot of belching tankers out there– I’m not sure I’d be eating what I caught. I coast past the Ellis Island bridge, and hit the final stretch; swamps give way to parkland, and dead ahead, the always pause-worthy Statue of Liberty. You know the one. You can view her through one of the many coin-operated Telescopes of Equality.
Florid from exertion, I dribble to a halt at the southernmost tip of the park, the questionably named Black Tom Island. Now incorporated into the park, the island was the site of a massive explosion during WW1 committed by a pair of German spies. It’s a cracking story, but aside from a small faded plaque near the picnic area, it seems largely forgotten. I like to pause here and absorb for a few minutes. Also, by this point I’ve remembered that exercising is stupid and standing still is fantastic. From this vantage point, I can take in the Big Lady, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the stately Verrazzano bridge, beyond which is the deep and mysterious Atlantic Ocean. The gulls caw, the odd pleasure boat chugs by, the fresh salty air invades my stunned lungs; if I’ve got the place to myself, and I don’t look back at the evil city, I can believe it’s still an island, as disconnected from reality as me.
I could happily spend all day out here, but I tear myself away. Things to do. I take the scenic route home, past the old rail yard waiting rooms (the bathroom floor is still intact, as if to commemorate the immigrant families and their pee), and the surprisingly tasteful 9/11 monument; at this point you can look directly over to Manhattan– it feels like you could swim over, or at least float back after a big night. And at last, the marina. The going is slow along here– the path is a chaotic mess of gaping ditches and treacherous hillocks– but it’s worth it to gaze at the boats and dream. In my imagination, I’m a salty old sea dog on the deck of one of the weather-beaten fishing boats, resting between rum-running sorties to Havana; or maybe engaging in high stakes drug deals on one of the ostentatiously hulking cabin cruisers.
I try to hold onto these fantasies as I wheel across the footbridge back into blinding reality, but they unwind from my mind like a silk scarf in the breeze, floating back towards the park and disintegrating, leaving me with only a yearning for rum and drugs. But on the bright side, I know a guy, and I’ve got just the basket to carry them.
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