Relay: Getting Back On the Bike

So, I did it. With help from a kind, generous friend in Montauk, I got another car. Not a 240, but a Subaru, 2001 Forester. Had about 80,000 miles on it. Nice.

I haven’t put a bullet through the old Volvo 240 yet. I have visions dancing in my head, after my book comes out next year, of another advance, paying off the Subaru, then getting the 240 wagon back on the road. Or maybe not. Maybe another new-old 240. Call me a member of the 240 Love Club.

All this car talk leads to my Giant Rincon bicycle. It was my main form of transportation for many months, straight through the winter. Then I had a car, and left my beloved, bedraggled bike out in the yard. Car here, car there, drive your car everywhere.

Until one morning I stepped on the bathroom scale. Jeez! Time to get back on the bike. 

Since soaking in the sobering sight of those numbers that do not lie, I’ve been on the bike every morning at daybreak, come rain or shine. 

Except, of course, the time I went down for my ride and found no bike at all. A thief had made off with it during the night. But the creep got his, when the gears jammed. He tossed my bike into the bushes a couple of blocks away, where East Hampton Town Police Officer Grace Peterson spotted it 24 hours later. Thank you, Grace!

I have stuck to my regime, stretching the ride out daily. My favorite course right now is away from town past Ditch, then double back through Ditch, to Shadmoor State Park. When we lived on Caswell (so many years, too many years ago), I used to love to run through the park, with its great hilly, narrow paths, tricky with rocks. My knees and ankles aren’t up to that run anymore, but on the bike it is a dream. Work, work, work up a hill, then fly down the other side, keeping eyes peeled for the boulders that stick up through the glacier-compressed soil.

Daybreak is the only time that ride is safe. Get out there before the joggers, and the other bikers. And the sun, low in the eastern sky, highlights the rocks to avoid as you’re flying downhill. 

On weekends, that course is out. Even at daybreak, there will be someone on the path. Instead I head up Edgemere to the train station, then parallel the tracks west to Navy Road, pedaling up the hill at Edward Ecker Sr. County Park, flying down the other side. On the way back, I go counterclockwise around Second House Road. 

I am averse to riding on roads without shoulders. But with the half of Second House I bike, there is a good stretch of sidewalk, generally abandoned at that early hour.

Every day I step on the scale. At first, change came slow. Frustrating. But this week, the numbers that don’t lie say 10 pounds gone. It’s a start.

See you at daybreak.

T.E. McMorrow covers police, courts, and planning and zoning matters for The Star.