Times ten

On a Saturday blessed with a few sunny hours, picnics blossomed on the soaked grass of the Long Meadow. I had ample opportunity to observe them pitching camp and settling in: Today I cycled around the park 10 times. That's a personal best for one-day mileage: about 35 miles. (Each circuit is about 3.5 miles.) My Century ride is next week. (It will almost certainly be a "metric Century," or 65-mile segment, for less Olympian riders; I am digesting my disappointment in the hopes of converting it to fuel.) I was thrilled to find some other members of Team in Training were also charging around the park drive.

I made a brief stop for yogurt drink at the Greenmarket, where a mob of caffeine-seeking zombies thronged a table giving away fair-trade coffee and chocolate bar pieces. Despite the ample literature on the benefits to picturesque and worthy Third-World farmers, I suspect the jostling crowd would have been just as avid to snare samples labeled "Exploit-the-Earth Chocolate" and "Cheat-the-Peasants Coffee." At least that's how it felt; I was grateful to get back on my bike and out of there.

Of course I left the house overdressed, so I stowed my windbreaker inside this tree (the left-hand one, whose base is hollow). It was still there 4 hours later. Back in the 80s, man, the squirrels would've stolen it and sold it for crack; thank God for Giuliani time!

As my loops added up, I used the lovely Peristyle as home base. Someone set up these party preparations at noon, but by 5 o'clock, no guests had arrived but these two little skateboarders.

There's a magnolia opposite the Peristyle, upon whose thick low branches I like to stretch; to my surprise, after round 8 I found it already occupied by a runner who considered it his stretching magnolia! We agreed on its merits and took turns.

From the stretching magnolia, I love to observe the impromptu park-bench clubhouse of the guys I think of as the "Cool Runnings" cycle club. They are lean and steely-legged fellows (never any ladies), and they gather to relax and trade tales in what I think are Jamaican accents. (In Brooklyn you qualify such statements if you aren't sure; it is not well-received to assign someone the wrong island based on a mellifluous inflection.) Then they take off and fly around the park again, Roadrunners to my Wile E. Coyote.

Hey, today I had nothing to be ashamed of. I climbed the Dreaded Hill all 10 times without stopping. Okay, in an easier gear each time, but without stopping. I am grateful to the following for their support and inspiration:

* the thrush that sings in the woods along the West Drive

* the guy with a cane walking backwards up the big hill

* the personal trainer who hollered at her track-suited charge, "Don't even think of stopping yet!" just as we both were about to

* the guy in the recumbent bike, that most Bill-Murrayesque of conveyances, for always bringing a smile to my face

* the smell of woods and fields

* Child, who insists I am developing discernible quadricep muscles. What a Mother's Day present!

 

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[Michael]

What a small world. My daughter (not pictured) was at the party on the top of this page