When I went out on my new bicycle, the sun was out but the air was cold. After riding a few blocks, I could feel the chill through my gloves. My bare face stung, and my body tensed over the saddle.
I looked up and saw a seagull circling. It covered a wide expanse of sky; then two others joined it. The brisk air didn’t slow them down. In fact, it gave them lift. They’d found the opposite of a thermal—a cold spiral—and they rose on it. They had to follow the draft. They were looking for food and were spotting it in the garbage on the sidewalks.
After a while, the sun had climbed, and I became less aware of the cold.
*
The bike path narrowed when I came to a stretch under an expressway, so I rode on a sidewalk. I rolled past benches where people could sit and look out at the East River. The benches were empty, and sites of new construction were fenced in with plywood boards. Parts of the area had been closed down so that a flood barrier and a new park could be built, but the only renovations were fresh pits in the earth and new piles of gravel and sand.
I missed my turn onto a path and rolled toward a dead end. A security guard saw me and yelled, “Yo! Hey!”
I slowed and started to turn, then heard a louder “Hey! Yo!”
I left the forbidden zone and came past the guard. He raised a hand and stopped a truck that was rolling toward me. “Thank you,” he said.
Shortly, I heard a woman’s voice behind me, “On your right!” she called.
I might have been drifting to my right without looking behind. I might have been getting too close to her. In an instant, I could collide with her and knock her over. That was what she was telling me. But if I steered to my left to avoid her, I would definitely hit her, because she was on my left, not my right.
“On my left, you mean,” I said.
"Yes, left!” she called back as she passed. “I know my left from my right!”
*
I looked for the place where bronze replicas of seals once sat, embedded in the cement. The seals were basking in shallow pools fed by small fountains. My wife and I used to bring our daughter here when she was a toddler. She liked to straddle the seals’ backs, and she didn’t mind getting wet. Now, all I could see were pickup trucks, a few sizable cranes, and a pneumatic drill on wheels.
*
I rode toward the one pier that was still in use. A small cruise ship was docked at the pier, but it was not yet taking passengers.
A man standing near the entrance ramp said something as I slowed to go around him. He was dark-haired and not tall—about my height, but younger.
I put my foot on the ground and asked, “Were you talking to me?”
“Can I take this boat to the Statue of Liberty?” he asked.
From where we were standing, we could see the gray-green statue rising over the bay. “This boat comes back to where it started,” I said. “It won’t stop at the statue.”
The man and I looked across the water. If we leaned one way, the statue disappeared behind a wall, but when we leaned the other way she was visible again.
*
I looked up at the bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn. I remembered how, months earlier, I had hit a metal barricade while coasting down the far slope. The barricade was on its side, its feet sticking up like those of a shot bird. I wasn’t looking down; I was looking ahead. When I collided, I fell to the ground. I got to my feet and saw that my front wheel was bent, but would still spin through the brake pads. I got back on the saddle and rode. I didn’t notice until later that the impact had torn the ligaments in my shoulder. I felt the ache now, next to the river, as I grasped my new bike’s handlebars.
*
Beyond the pier, I arrived at an area where trees were growing through the cement. Standing under the branches were a couple of young women in winter coats, holding a megaphone. They seemed to have walked across the adjacent expressway to get into the park.
“You can’t cut down the trees,” one of them was saying. “We will stay in the trees until.”
“You can’t keep us out,” another said. “We will slash the fences.”
I rested on one of the remaining benches. Among the trees, a few squirrels were foraging. I saw several gray specimens and one black one. I wondered if this sighting was bad luck, like seeing a black cat. Or was it good luck, because I was seeing a rare creature? It was not the best of luck, because this black squirrel was not as rare as an albino squirrel. This creature was just middling rare.
At that point, a couple of men wearing fluorescent vests came into the clearing. “Hey!” they said. “Do you want to go to jail?”
“We’re saving the trees!” one of the protesters said as she began to climb.
One of the men went after the woman in the tree and wrapped an arm around her. He reached for his zip ties as he brought her down.
When I came to the end of the bike path, I found a chain-link fence with a sign that read: “ENTRY CLOSED.” Someone had cut a hole in the fence large enough for a person to walk through. The words on the sign had been crossed out. On the fence, a hand-painted cardboard sheet read: “ENTRY OPEN.”
*
I headed down to the tip of Manhattan. As I crossed the Battery, I remembered riding there with my wife and daughter. It had been a warm day, and the path was crowded with bicyclists. We had to go slowly, and our daughter was wobbling. She brushed against another rider, a woman, and they both went down, landing in a patch of flowers and weeds. The woman righted her bike and rode on. When our daughter got up, she said, “I’m never riding here again.”
Now, I stopped at a lookout point, where bronze sculptures of merchant mariners were installed on a dock. Two of the figures were standing, but one was kneeling and reaching over the side of a lifeboat. His hand was extended toward a partly submerged mariner, straining upward from the water. Their hands were almost touching.
In the distance, the dark-gray Statue of Liberty rose above the white-flecked water. Behind the statue, the sky was a lighter gray. The statue stood in front of a ragged bar of trees that surrounded a construction crane. In the sky, a jet plane flew toward the new World Trade Center. The plane was low, about a mile above the ground. But that was more than twice the height of the single tower.
*
As I rode uptown along the Hudson River, I saw a truck in my lane. The path was wide enough, and the driver was coming toward me, aiming straight at me. We were playing Chicken, to see who would swerve first. I didn’t want to turn aside, but my two-wheeler was nothing compared to a truck; it was a fly against a tank. The tank was going to win. I braced for impact. Then I saw that the street paralleled the bike path; I was going one way; the traffic was going the other. The perspective made the truck driver look like a madman.
Above me, a seagull wheeled. Soon, the bird was joined by others. They floated easily on the updraft. They circled, looking for food. Out on the Hudson, another object bobbed. For a moment I thought it was a seagull—it was the right size and shape—then realized it was a white buoy, perched on the surface, rocking like a white bird to warn ships away from the shallows.
*
When I got home, my wife greeted me.
“Did you miss me?” I asked.
“Not at first, but after a while I did.”
“Were you worried?” I asked.
“I worry only when you go out at night. You can’t see then.”
A half hour of light was left in the day—I had made it back in time.