N41° 09.358' W073° 52.203'
The wind coming down the Hudson is surprising. It's constant, like the wind I'd expect from the ocean or across a great lake: a wind made possible by an utterly vast expanse of nothing in its way. But the valley, though deep and substantial at this point, is nothing like as wide as a great lake. I'm going to cross the river in a ferry, and I don't expect the crossing to take even twenty minutes. I can see the other side, and with enough detail to admire the weirdness of the cliffs. Why is that one like a breaking wave? What kind of rock is that red cliff? What must this side look like from that side?
As for why I'm using a ferry instead of a road, that's a simple enough story. I like the romance of it. There is a stoic beauty to bridges, and there are more than enough bridges I love. There's one crossing near Cairo, Illinois, that's narrow and steel and blue and makes me think I'm going to die because I spend so much time looking up instead of straight. There's the Mackinac bridge that just goes for miles. There's the bridge in Duluth that the citizens are perversely proud of. But I don't suspect I'll have another chance at a ferry. I can't name another river so large and well-traveled as the Hudson.
So if this is my one chance, I'll pay the five dollars and drift from Ossining to Haverstraw in style. I'll pay it, but it was an ordeal doing it.
The wind coming down the Hudson is surprising. It's constant, like the wind I'd expect from the ocean or across a great lake: a wind made possible by an utterly vast expanse of nothing in its way. But the valley, though deep and substantial at this point, is nothing like as wide as a great lake. I'm going to cross the river in a ferry, and I don't expect the crossing to take even twenty minutes. I can see the other side, and with enough detail to admire the weirdness of the cliffs. Why is that one like a breaking wave? What kind of rock is that red cliff? What must this side look like from that side?
As for why I'm using a ferry instead of a road, that's a simple enough story. I like the romance of it. There is a stoic beauty to bridges, and there are more than enough bridges I love. There's one crossing near Cairo, Illinois, that's narrow and steel and blue and makes me think I'm going to die because I spend so much time looking up instead of straight. There's the Mackinac bridge that just goes for miles. There's the bridge in Duluth that the citizens are perversely proud of. But I don't suspect I'll have another chance at a ferry. I can't name another river so large and well-traveled as the Hudson.
So if this is my one chance, I'll pay the five dollars and drift from Ossining to Haverstraw in style. I'll pay it, but it was an ordeal doing it.
The ticket office in Ossining was closed. Fair enough. It was definitely far off peak hours: I got there at two fifty. There weren't any signs of a ferry, either, nor a ticket booth on the pier. I tried the automated tellers, but they only sold train tickets. I could have gotten to Grand Central in NYC for ten dollars. I figured the police might frown on my hammocking in Central Park, so I checked my phone. 14% battery. I found the New York Waterways website. They had a schedule of the ferry that mildly disagreed with the paper copy outside. On 8/22 there's a special ferry slightly earlier? That's today! But there was no way to buy passage on that page. Eventually, though, my savage google-fu found the right page. 11% battery. I went to purchase a ticket and had to sign up for an account. I had to enter my card information. I had to choose a username. Fine, I get it! You think I'm a repeat customer. 6% battery. But the ticket doesn't appear in my email. Where is it and how do I show it to the ferryman?
Imagine you've just dropped a woman's expensive sugar bowl, the one she received as a gift on her wedding day. Now imagine the state of your heart in that moment, the state of your muscles. That's where I was suspended. 5% battery. I, thinking like an asinine corporate shill, went to download their proprietary app. No dice. Not enough space. I have sixteen gigabytes and who knows how they've gone so fast. I have so few apps. I upload all my pictures to Google and then delete them. What could you possibly want from me? I delete a few things, pictures my lockscreen holds on a special folder, the song I downloaded to listen to later (Up and Up by Coldplay—my song of the summer), and an app I don't even remember now. It was useful and I'll miss it in a few months when I go looking for it. Finally, the NY Waterways app downloaded. 2% battery. I rolled my bike to the waterfront park and plugged in my phone.
I'm at 25% battery as I write this. I have to hold the wire a particular way or it just won't charge.
Imagine you've just dropped a woman's expensive sugar bowl, the one she received as a gift on her wedding day. Now imagine the state of your heart in that moment, the state of your muscles. That's where I was suspended. 5% battery. I, thinking like an asinine corporate shill, went to download their proprietary app. No dice. Not enough space. I have sixteen gigabytes and who knows how they've gone so fast. I have so few apps. I upload all my pictures to Google and then delete them. What could you possibly want from me? I delete a few things, pictures my lockscreen holds on a special folder, the song I downloaded to listen to later (Up and Up by Coldplay—my song of the summer), and an app I don't even remember now. It was useful and I'll miss it in a few months when I go looking for it. Finally, the NY Waterways app downloaded. 2% battery. I rolled my bike to the waterfront park and plugged in my phone.
I'm at 25% battery as I write this. I have to hold the wire a particular way or it just won't charge.
I still don't know when I'll leave (4:20? 4:40?), But I guess it doesn't matter. I'm learning to change my expectations when I don't want to. This isn't a life lesson, yet, this is just a trip lesson. Yesterday, when I was riding uphill to the Weir Farm National Memorial, I heard a strange clattering from my bicycle. It sounded like something was dangling and slapping about in the spokes. It sounded like a harp player with a prosthetic limb made of plastic forks. I pulled over, lifted the front end and spun the front tire. Nothing. I went to lift the back end and just collapsed on the ground. Dang. A broken spoke. I mean, it was inevitable. The front spokes are new, comparatively, but the back wheel has well over two thousand miles on it. The last five hundred have been under heavy load. But I don't know where a bike shop would be.
I sat down, right there in the middle of the road to fix my spoke. A middle-aged Indian couple strolled past me. I didn't have tape, so I twisted the spoke around its brothers and secured it with a zip-tie. Stupid, but effective.
When I finally did look for a bike shop on Google, there was one only a short distance away, in Ridgefield. Wonder of wonders. The mechanic, Adam, criticized how tightly my cassette was attached (that was either me or Montana or the fact that I am a beefy boy and I pedal hard uphill). He replaced my spoke, gave me an extra, and charged me for less time than he worked. I paid out all $20 I allowed for maintenance this month. I'm not sure where my laundry money will come from, now.
I sat down, right there in the middle of the road to fix my spoke. A middle-aged Indian couple strolled past me. I didn't have tape, so I twisted the spoke around its brothers and secured it with a zip-tie. Stupid, but effective.
When I finally did look for a bike shop on Google, there was one only a short distance away, in Ridgefield. Wonder of wonders. The mechanic, Adam, criticized how tightly my cassette was attached (that was either me or Montana or the fact that I am a beefy boy and I pedal hard uphill). He replaced my spoke, gave me an extra, and charged me for less time than he worked. I paid out all $20 I allowed for maintenance this month. I'm not sure where my laundry money will come from, now.
None of it was how I expected my day to go. None of this is ordinary. But I have the Waterways app and I presume that downloading the tickets to it will somehow allow me to show the conductor on the ferry. I have 33% battery. My spoke is replaced.
Helga, at the Weir Farm, has been working as a docent since the farm came to public use twenty years ago. It's a very recent national monument, and she was a caretaker long before. She told me about how the orchard was frosted out this year, but there was almost always a basket of apples for the taking in the fall, and they often made cider in years past.
"If you come back, I will make cake with the apples, apfelkuchen," she explains. Perhaps I should explain. Helga is German. The first question she asked me was if I had Dutch roots, I don't know why: I hadn't said my last name. She said "Von der Niederlande?"
"Ja wohl, although that's German."
"I, too, am German."
She was showing people the Weir and Young studios. She seemed to be full of more information than she could get out. Sometimes, she would start a thought, explain that she had a picture "right here, someplace," and then shuffle through while talking, just long enough to forget what she wanted to show us because another thought interjected.
Once, she surprised me a lot more than perhaps is fair. "You must remember that a hundred fifty years ago, this land was all farmland. It was significantly more denuded than it is today." Imagine this, in a strong German accent.
I barked a laugh. "Helga, you surprise me. It's the right word, 'denuded,' but I wouldn't have remembered it when I needed it."
"Well, I love languages, and it helps that I studied in Great Britain."
One of the other members of the tour was an older man without accent, who, upon Helga revealing to the larger group that she was German, said "Auch bin ich Deutsch."
"Ah! Wohin kommt du?"
It is times like these when I must resist making a fool of myself. All I want is to reveal my fledgling ability. I bit back the tide of ill-formed German.
When Helga ran out of pertinent things to say about Weir and Young, she started taking about her tone in Germany and hope it has affected her appreciation of the farm. She turned to the man.
"When did you come to America? I came here in the fifties."
He was very soft, almost inaudible. "Neunzen hundert dreizich . . ." It was the only German he spoke unprompted. It was just like everything that happened to him before America happened to him in German.
"Then you got out just in time! She continued as if the strangeness didn't happen. "We had it lucky where I lived. We got American culture, we got French culture, we got British culture. We were exposed to different views and a different history. When the reunification happened (this is a transliteration of the word Germans use: reunteilung, the putting of pieces together), it was like they were living a different history! You could teach history, but even people the same age as me from the Soviet Germany, they had a different history than I did."
She was facing a long-term broken spoke, or a long-term wait for a ferry. Her country got broken in a way that makes eighty-year-old men whisper. They had to change their plans in a long-term way. I have to change my plans in a very short-term way.
But what I really want is to feel comfortable with a midway point. I eat, drink, and live a years long change, not hours or lifetimes. I just want to figure out how to do it right.
I'm at 45% battery, now.
Helga, at the Weir Farm, has been working as a docent since the farm came to public use twenty years ago. It's a very recent national monument, and she was a caretaker long before. She told me about how the orchard was frosted out this year, but there was almost always a basket of apples for the taking in the fall, and they often made cider in years past.
"If you come back, I will make cake with the apples, apfelkuchen," she explains. Perhaps I should explain. Helga is German. The first question she asked me was if I had Dutch roots, I don't know why: I hadn't said my last name. She said "Von der Niederlande?"
"Ja wohl, although that's German."
"I, too, am German."
She was showing people the Weir and Young studios. She seemed to be full of more information than she could get out. Sometimes, she would start a thought, explain that she had a picture "right here, someplace," and then shuffle through while talking, just long enough to forget what she wanted to show us because another thought interjected.
Once, she surprised me a lot more than perhaps is fair. "You must remember that a hundred fifty years ago, this land was all farmland. It was significantly more denuded than it is today." Imagine this, in a strong German accent.
I barked a laugh. "Helga, you surprise me. It's the right word, 'denuded,' but I wouldn't have remembered it when I needed it."
"Well, I love languages, and it helps that I studied in Great Britain."
One of the other members of the tour was an older man without accent, who, upon Helga revealing to the larger group that she was German, said "Auch bin ich Deutsch."
"Ah! Wohin kommt du?"
It is times like these when I must resist making a fool of myself. All I want is to reveal my fledgling ability. I bit back the tide of ill-formed German.
When Helga ran out of pertinent things to say about Weir and Young, she started taking about her tone in Germany and hope it has affected her appreciation of the farm. She turned to the man.
"When did you come to America? I came here in the fifties."
He was very soft, almost inaudible. "Neunzen hundert dreizich . . ." It was the only German he spoke unprompted. It was just like everything that happened to him before America happened to him in German.
"Then you got out just in time! She continued as if the strangeness didn't happen. "We had it lucky where I lived. We got American culture, we got French culture, we got British culture. We were exposed to different views and a different history. When the reunification happened (this is a transliteration of the word Germans use: reunteilung, the putting of pieces together), it was like they were living a different history! You could teach history, but even people the same age as me from the Soviet Germany, they had a different history than I did."
She was facing a long-term broken spoke, or a long-term wait for a ferry. Her country got broken in a way that makes eighty-year-old men whisper. They had to change their plans in a long-term way. I have to change my plans in a very short-term way.
But what I really want is to feel comfortable with a midway point. I eat, drink, and live a years long change, not hours or lifetimes. I just want to figure out how to do it right.
I'm at 45% battery, now.
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