Rebounding

Just last week, I took the metro into downtown DC for the first time since March of 2020 and then on Monday I rode the train to New York City. No particular reason. I just felt like taking a trip and seeing how the city was faring in the wake of COVID. I also wanted to see some New York friends I hadn’t seen for more than a year. New York has always been a city that fascinated me and I particularly like the gritty parts. I especially love the subway, that fine example of early 20th century industrial design that costs little to use, goes everywhere, and (I don’t care what you say) works incredible well all things considered. 

I took the local commuter train right from my town to Union Station. I was shocked to see the state of DC’s train station. Virtually all of the retail in once gleaming Beaux Arts showplace, was shuttered. Only Starbucks and McDonalds seemed to be doing a thriving business. Downstairs in the food court, only the large chain restaurants seem to have survived.  

In New York I checked into my old standby, The New Yorker. The New Yorker is an old hotel (1929) but is kept up pretty well by the Wyndham chain that owns it. It was also the cheapest thing I could find in its class and super convenient being right across the street from the train station.

I found the city quieter than it was on my last visit. Here too, much of the retail, at least in Manhattan was vacant. However, the restaurants that survived the pandemic were busy. The diners and coffee shops seemed to be doing a decent business. Of course, there are no international tourists yet and that is keeping hotel prices down and making even mid-town feel quiet. 

Once out of midtown, things get really chill. Usually in Manhattan you don’t even consider jaywalking but some streets were completely empty of traffic. The sidewalks felt uncluttered. Again, many businesses were shuttered. Some business had signs on the door that masks were required, others didn’t. There was no discernible pattern. 

Part of the quiet was, no doubt, that it was insanely hot this week. Wednesday’s high was 36 C (97 F). The heat was brutal. But what I love to do in New York is walk and so with my water bottle I braved the heat until I could take no more finding refuge in a diner and lingering over a salad and iced tea. But those who live there and lucky enough to have AC in their homes or office perhaps wisely stayed indoors. 

I came away from my visit with a better understanding of how we are emerging from Covid and like most human journeys  there is no clear consensus for what we should be doing. Some people are still wearing masks even while walking alone in an open park. Others aren’t wearing them even where required by law such as public transportation or ignoring signs a business has on the door saying they are required. In all fairness sometimes it is not clear whether the business still wants you to wear a mask or just hasn’t taken down the sign. The CDC says vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks in most situations but the delta variant is causing some authorities to rethink this though there seems to be little or no evidence that it poses a significant risk to those who are vaccinated.

Some restaurants are still only offering takeaway while others are packed with unmasked patrons. Many restaurants have clear plastic barriers installed between tables and booths that I suspect will never come down. Some wait staff are masked and others are not. 

In other words, what one should be doing from moment to moment is confusing and all over the place. 

While I was away, express transit was installed at every subway turnstile allowing paying with your phone or smartwatch at every entrance. No more waiting in line to buy or refill a Metro card. (The DC metro has added this too). I always felt that the old tokens worked better than the metro cards but I have to admit, I like just tapping my watch to enter the subway. The subway felt clean and safe as always. 

There is a new waiting area for Amtrak trains in New York. The Daniel Patrick Moynihan Hall was built in the old post office building that is across the street from the horror that is Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden. (Madison Square Garden is like the Holy Roman Empire. It’s not on Madison, it’s not square but round, and it’s not a garden.).

Although the new train hall doesn’t make up for the travesty of the demolishing of the first Penn Station in 1965, it is nonetheless beautiful, light and spacious. It is worthy of being a transport hub for one of the world’s great cities. The old new underground Penn Station has largely been relegated to the departure of Long Island Railroad Trains. 

As hot as it was Central Park is an amazing gift. It was cooler in the park and it was full of runners, bikers and parents/nannies with strollers. Many people only work in New York but a lot of people still live here. I spent a good hour on a bench watching the midday world at play. 

Heading home as the holiday weekend approached, the train to DC was packed and a cooling rain was falling as the heat wave broke. My town just announced that it will resume the annual outdoor 4 July costume contest, parade, and celebration and then there is a family gathering for a long-postponed family wedding. 

So we lurch forward but not toward what was. Any remaining illusions that there is a ‘normal’ to return to are pretty well dispelled at this point. At every turn we are called upon to adapt, to learn, and (ouch) to change. Some of what we lost is gone forever. Some of what we’ve gained will alter things in profound ways. We know that. We just don’t know anything else. 

Cicadian Rhythms

It feels like they just started emerging, and now they are starting to die off in massive numbers. The car port was littered with their bodies this morning. A human life may be three score and ten (four score if granted the vigor) but their lives are shy of one score and the vast majority of it is spent below ground in what I have heard described as quasi-hibernation. 

The first time in my life I experienced the periodic cicada, I was about 8 years old. Now the smell of their decaying carcasses takes me right back that summer of my childhood in Baltimore. 

I am enthralled by these winged creatures. There is so much to wonder about. How do they count off exactly 17 years so that they emerge on schedule every time? What do they think about life in the sun after all that time underground? If they could, would they delay coming out if it meant a few more years of life - albeit in cold darkness - or are they satisfied with what they are allotted?

Even if I get a full four score, their next emergence will likely be the last time I will see them. Probably we won’t have the answers to these questions by then. But beyond the wonder, there is still so much to love about them. I love the sound they make as they sing in the trees – a sound that I would describe as the sound of the USS Enterprise’s phaser banks firing in the original Star Trek series. I love the comical expression of their huge red eyes, each with a tiny black dot. I love their delicate cellophane wings etched with a black letter W. I was told when I was a child the W signified that there would be 17 more years of war. Supposedly, if it were a P there would be 17 years of peace. I have only seen them with a W. So they have been dead on so far.

Most of all, I love the way they fly. When in flight they look like something pre-historic. Something that I would imagine flying around among the dinosaurs. Their wings seem too insubstantial for their bodies, which is perhaps what lends their flight a kind of clumsiness.  Their flights are short. They are airborne just until they quickly bump in a tree, a person, or the ground and then they just stop and cling as if surprised at the interruption but in no hurry to take off again. As when I go into another room to get something but then don’t remember what it was and just stand there blankly for a few seconds hoping it will come to me, they don’t seem to remember where they were going when they took off 15 seconds ago. 

When I am out on my daily walks they often crash into my head, my legs, my arms, and sometimes they dive into a bag I am carrying. If you gently brush them off, sometimes they fly away, but often they just fall to the ground and stay there. I hate to attribute human traits to other animals but unlike say an ant, or a spider, or a squirrel, they just don’t seem to have much sense of purpose. And that makes sense, because in their brief few weeks above ground, they don’t eat or even drink much. They don’t fight. If something wants to eat them, they have no defense mechanisms. Mostly they have sex, lay eggs if they are female, and die. In between there is a bit of aimless flying and lots of bumping into things.  

Now in mid-June already their singing is already greatly diminished. I still see them flying around but many more are dead or twitching on the ground, to the great delight of the birds eating them up or the ants I have seen hauling away a few headless thoraxes. In a few more weeks, they will be almost completely gone. 

Meanwhile, the eggs the females deposited into the branches of our trees will start to hatch and the nymphs will drop down into the soil to sleep, to dream and to sip the dew from the roots. If they and I survive the next 17 years, we will meet with joyous song in 2038.

Last Mile Problem

Last Sunday, my wife Barbara finished a bicycle journey from Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan to the Canadian border at Rouses Point in the Northeastern corner of New York State. In doing so, she completed the entire 1200 kilometers (750 miles) of the Empire State Trail, having ridden the west-east Erie canal section (Buffalo to Albany) with me in the summer of 2016. And although I shuttled her to and from the start and end points for the day to the campgrounds where we stayed, she cycled every centimeter of the trail. See the photo album here. 

The first few days there was a steady downpour and it was unseasonably cold. This hardly tested Barbara’s determination but did test our ability to stay warm and dry while camping in our converted Toyota Sienna minivan, VanGo. I am pleased to report that on the whole, we were able to do both, though cooking outside in the rain on the camp stove required raingear and a large umbrella. (Though we have talked about getting some kind of weather and bug proof shelter, we have not yet acquired it.) We also had a good opportunity to evaluate the van and how well it would serve its purpose. This was our first journey of more than one night.  

A converted Sienna is not an RV. There is no bathroom. The ‘kitchen’ is a system of organization under the rear hatch and though our builder offers a sink in the conversion, we opted to do without one in order to have more storage space and countertop. 

We have long been ‘car campers.’ This used to mean camping from your car with a tent but now increasingly seems to mean sleeping in your car and this is exactly the transition that we have made. We are still staying at campgrounds (usually state parks which are less developed and often less popular than commercial campgrounds) and using the facilities (bathrooms, showers) there. The main difference is that now we have a mattress that is off the ground and a dry place to sit when it is raining. The other benefit is that with the cabinets and drawers that was part of the conversion, it is much easier to stay organized than when trying to cram everything into a car trunk. 

We have a battery that charges when we drive. That provides more than ample energy to recharge the computers, phones, headlamps, and to power the all-important coffee grinder. (Yes, I have a hand grinder but you’d wouldn’t believe how tedious it is grinding 70 grams of coffee with a crank. I don’t know how our great grandparents did it but maybe they weren’t drinking as much coffee as I do.). 

Somewhere around Albany, we met Jeffery who had biked to that point from Key West, Florida. He was doing over 120 km per day and finished the trail one day ahead of Barb. Jeffery had three flats on the day he met us and had to spend a few hours in a bike shop getting his tires swapped out. He was carrying a ton of gear including a computer for video editing and a tent ‘for emergencies’ though he mostly stayed in hotels with wifi. He was a good-natured guy who was both a U.S. and Canadian citizen but he’d left his passport at home and therefore couldn’t cross the border. Speaking of which…

I rode with Barbara the last few kilometers and we followed the trail markers right to the sign announcing the Canadian border. We had seen no signs that said ‘now leaving the U.S.’ or any border markings at all, but as we stood taking selfies with the red maple leaf, a Canadian border guard came out of the kiosk and told us sternly that we had in fact crossed the border and were now in Canada. 

She didn’t seem happy to see us. There was no warm smile, no ‘Welcome to Canada.’ She said we had to go with her and have our passports processed but when we said we didn’t have our passports with us, she decided to let us turn around and bike back to the U.S., which it turns out, was the other side of the railroad tracks 100 meters away. Once on the other side of said tracks, we were stopped by the U.S. Border Control who also wanted to see the passports we weren’t carrying. They settled for my driver’s license but Barb had no state issued ID on her at all. The dude went in a building and presumably looked her up in a secret U.S. government computer that stores every detail of our lives. 

“Where were you born?” he asked her when he came back out. When she gave him, what was apparently the right answer, they let us pedal back into the land of e pluribus unum and to our vehicle 500 meters away which held our passports we had brought all the way from home and then failed to have on us at the crucial moment. 

Neither of the U.S. guards ever drew their weapons and were indeed most courteous, promising to “have us on our way very soon.” That’s what a crisis at the border looks like if you are middle-aged, speak with no accent, present with light colored skin, and are reasonably well groomed. They look you over, check a smart phone app and wave you through. No papers, no problem! 

Once back at VanGo, we began the drive home retracing half of the week’s journey north in an a few hours. Cars go really fast!

We spent the night at Lake Moreau State Park just south of the Adirondacks, a beautiful public campground that we had stayed in on the way north. As the weather had turned splendid, there were many more people there than during first stay including our neighbor who turned on his monster gasoline generator just as we were making dinner and went inside his RV to enjoy his AC and TV while we enjoyed the sound of something very like a large riding mower and the smell of exhaust. After dinner, we packed up and moved to a different spot. Although it was a pain to move, I appreciated how easy it is to change sites when there is no tent to take down and pack up. Simply throw everything in the back of the van n’ go.

As we drove home, we marveled at what an incredible resource the Empire State Trail is and what kind of generous vision goes into creating something like this. Our tiny home town here in the Old Line State is in the throes of the biggest controversy since we moved here more than 20 years ago. After several years of vigorous deliberation in the town, our town council recently approved a resolution to recommend to the county that a long planned half-mile stretch of recreational path connect to the town at a point that is currently a drainage area at the bottom of a dead-end street. 

The county of which our town is a part recently completed a study that also endorsed this connection point as the most viable, least costly and with the smallest environmental impact. The Town Council’s recommendation aligns with the county’s. The county planning board approved the recommendations and construction of the path is slated to begin in 2024.

When complete the connection will allow residents of our town to walk or bicycle to a grocery store that currently you must drive to (well you can walk, but you have to ford a stream, climb over downed trees, and navigate loads of poison ivy and ticks potentially carrying Lyme disease.) The connection will also allow you to walk or bike to the Metro on a car free path without having to travel on busy roads, some of which have no sidewalks.  There will be no cost to the town to have this connection and it will not require any modifications to town roads other than signage we might choose to create. 

When I used to work in DC, I paid $5.75 a day to park at the Metro a ten-minute drive away. (This comes out to an astonishing $25,000 over the 17 years I commuted and that is without considering investment income or the time value of money! This does not include the actual Metro fare about $12 more per day.) I would have gladly walked or biked to Metro had there been a safe and agreeable way to do so. City planners call this challenge of getting folks from a public transport terminus to their home, the ‘last mile problem.’

A walkable/cycle friendly connection to Metro seems like a no-brainer solution to the last mile problem for my environment loving, sustainability seeking, largely progressive, and recreationally inclined community of some 400 residents.  But sadly, it will probably not surprise you to know that a small number of my neighbors are trying to stop the connection. They cite increased crime, safety concerns, or simply not wanting ‘outsiders’ to travel on ‘our’ public streets. 

The idea that recreational paths bring crime has been debunked by study after study. In fact, studies show such paths lower crime and raise home values. The safety claim is, of course, also a red-herring since most of the streets of our town are already packed with walkers, cyclists, and parents pushing strollers many of whom are residents of our neighboring community. The walkers and cyclist co-exist quite peacefully with motor vehicles, which generally slow to a crawl as they pass pedestrians. On fine days, we have counted an average of 30 people per hour passing in front of our home (not counting those in cars). It is a delight to sit at our kitchen table and see the families with children, runners, and cyclists float by. 

I hope this effort to stop the connection will be unsuccessful but opponents to the path recently got a few signatures on a petition that calls for council’s resolution to be rescinded. The controversy is a reminder that even when change is overwhelmingly positive is often resisted because, it is, well, change. 

All the more impressive then, that a 750-mile route through New York State was accomplished with barely a murmur. Millions of people live along the route which runs on residential streets and on asphalt pavement constructed right through their backyards, yet a search for ‘Empire State Trail Opposition’ yields very little – not nothing but little and the opposition there was seems to have been related to cost that the locality would have to bear or a legitimate safety concern about bikes sharing rural two-lane roads with cars traveling 55 mph. (The max speed in our town is 15.) 

Though the Empire State Trail is a nice attraction for tourists (adventurers?) such as we, most of those I saw enjoying the trail appeared to be local community members and families out for a run, a bike ride, or perhaps a walk to a market previously only reachable by car.

It gave me hope that we can build better, more welcoming communities if we are willing to make big sacrifices – like having neighbors or even strangers (some of whom may have skin colors that differ from our own) walk, ride a bike, or push a stroller down the street in front of our homes. 

We are also required to add a bit of substance to the style of those ubiquitous lawn signs that have appeared in suburban communities such as mine that proclaim, “All Are Welcome Here.” and “Black Lives Matter.”

A sign at the border proclaimed, “Welcome to Canada!” But it was just a sign. They didn’t mean it. We were turned back by the gatekeepers.

We should erect signs of welcome in our communities but posting signs is not enough. If our signs are to have meaning, we must open the gate.