Aaron

A few weeks ago I had come home from a bike ride and I was chaining my bike to the street sign outside my building. An old man approached. He was wearing plaid Bermuda shorts and a plaid shirt that clashed, not that I'm the fashion police. He had white athletic socks pulled up almost to his knees and black dress slippers.

Before I continue, let me just say that I've edited the man's words because he had a very foul mouth, dropping F bombs right and left.

He came up to me and said, "I used to have a bike in Miami. I would ride it to the beach every day. I couldn't ride it here with all these hills but in Miami I could still ride even now but someone stole my bike." He had a slight accent that I couldn't place. Then he shrugged and said, "C'est la vie!" He said, "That means 'That's life' in French. Do you speak French?"

I told him that I spoke a little.

He said, "I lived in Paris for many years but now I live between here and Miami."

Then he said, "You don't leave your bike out here on the street do you?" I told him that I only put it out during the day when I was going to be using it again but I took it in at night. I also told him that once I forgot to bring it in the day before I was going to be away for two weeks. So it stayed out there for two weeks. The only thing that happened was that the handle bar grips were stolen.

He told me (again) that he had a bike in Miami but that it was stolen.

I asked him where he was from originally. "Poland," he said, "But I escaped from Poland when the Germans came. I am Jewish. My brothers were in the Polish army but I was only 17. So I heard two boys talking about escaping to Russia. I told them to take me. The one boy said, 'no, I will not take you!' but I said to him, 'You will take me or I will tell the police what you are going to do.' So he said okay I will take you.

"I went home to say goodbye to my mother. She was such a good, smart woman. My father had been dead since I was a child and my mother did everything. She cried and I cried but she told me to go. Of course, I never saw her again. She died in the camps.

"So I went to Russia. The Russians accused all Polish refugees of being spies and they sentenced me to 25 years hard labor in the gulags. You know the gulags? So I stayed in the gulags all through the war and it saved my life but after the war, the Americans helped get the Poles released and I went back to Poland. I came from a city of 5,000 people, 3,000 Jews. Only 3 Jews came back alive, my cousin, me and another man who still lives there today. My cousin came to America. I went to Paris.

"In Paris I worked as a tailor in haute couture. Very nice job. But it was the Cold War. My wife and I didn't want to live in Europe through another war so we came to New York. We stayed for a few years but we liked Paris more so we went back. But it was better for our children here so we came back to New York. And I bought an apartment in Miami.

Then the man changes course a little. I was just listening.

"I know this rabbi who says 'god this and god that' and that is fine for him but you know what I say, 'Where was god in Poland? Where was god when they killed my mother and my brothers? And so, I say, that is fine for you rabbi, but I don't believe. If you want to believe, fine, but I don't.

Then the man realized that his fly was down. He looked down, zipped up and said, "Well, I like to be ready at all times." (This was obviously a sexual reference.)

Then he went on, "I like New York but I can't take it in the winter. I can't take the cold. My cousin told me, 'Come to Miami.' And I said, 'What do I want with Miami but I went for a visit and I bought an apartment the first week. I had sciatica. When I escaped from Poland, for a week I stayed in the swamps on the frontier. A week sleeping in the swamps and then five years in the gulags. I got sciatica. Then I moved to Miami and swam in the sea every day and no more sciatica. I mean I can f#@% all night now. If you have sciatica, swim in the sea.

I had to go. So I asked him his name. "Aaron," he said. I said, "The brother of Moses."

"Yes," my father's name was Moses. My brother, Abraham. My other brother, Yaakov."

"I'm Martin," I said.

"Oh, I know another Martin who lives here. Two Martins."

I told him I'd see him again and if he ever wanted to borrow the bike, he could. He said, "I can just steal it from here!"

I hope to see Aaron again. By calculations he's about 87 years old.

Riding

This week I've just been tired and the temptations to sleep in and get a car to work (provided by the firm) were too appealing so I didn't ride. Yesterday it was just too beautiful not to ride so when I got home from work, I decided to take a ride down to Central Park and ride the loop. But once I got there, and rode around once, I was just overtaken with the day and I decided to ride my bike down to the office and leave the bike there so I could ride home this morning.

When I came out of the park, I was riding down 7th Avenue and the sane thing to do would have been to head west and take the bike path downtown. But I was lured into the riskiness of riding all the way down Broadway. And so, right in the middle of the day, dodging buses, cabs and trucks, down Broadway through Times Square I went.

At 42nd Street, a big moving truck, with a clever slogan on the back that I can't remember now, cut me off. The stretch of Broadway between Times Square and Herald Square has been turned into an amazing eight blocks for bikers. There's a bike lane separated from the traffic by tables and chairs where people can sit and have lunch. I'm not sure how many lanes there are for actual cars but there can't be more than two lanes. It is almost perfect. If this is the work of Mayor Bloomberg, I'm all for doing away with term limits and electing him again.

I have to say that there is something exhilarating and a great adrenaline rush from the danger of weaving through cars. I'm no daredevil but I have to admit, it is fun. You definitely see the city through different eyes.

The real daredevils are the bike messengers who often stupidly ride up the street in the wrong direction darting in and out of traffic.

When I got down to the Wall Street area, there was a huge police presence and traffic was backed up for blocks. It turned out, two protesters had climbed the flagpoles beside the big brass Wall Street blues and stretched a banner condemning the proposed congressional bailout of Wall Street.


And just as I rode by the bill, there was that big truck with the clever slogan (which I still can't remember). Evidently I can get downtown in the same amount of time as a truck. I'm sure a bike courier could do it much faster. I guess I'm just not that daring.

Scenes from my daily 12 miles

New York Harbor with The Lady

Ellis Island

Morning exercises, Jersey City in background

World Financial Center Marina

What a yacht!

Midtown

The path


Clothesline?

George Washington Bridge and The Palisades

The Little Red Lighthouse (Google it!)

A killer hill. It is much more painful than it looks.
There's a sudden turn at the top.

I love New York!

I especially love New York City in Autumn. Okay, so it isn't exactly Autumn yet but almost. And while I can't say I love my job, I love my new schedule 12:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. Tuesday-Friday.

So, this morning, I decided to take advantage of my schedule and the city. First, breakfast with my friend, Gregory, in Soho. The company was nice. The food? Well, don't get me started. I'm quite dismayed at the state of the New York bagel. Twice in the past month I've gotten a bagel that was really your basic white bread inside a bagel-like shell. First of all, bagels are not supposed to be soft inside, not white Wonder bread soft. They are supposed to be crunchy on the outside while chewy and dense on the inside. And I spent $9 on this particular bagel. Okay, it came with cream cheese and lox along with red onion, capers and a tomato. But even so, for $9 I expect a real bagel. I could make better bagels and have!

After breakfast I wondered up to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). I have always been discouraged from going to MOMA because of the $20 entrance fee and the long lines of European tourists waiting to get in. But then I became a member for only $60 a year. And in just a month or so, I've been in the museum six or eight times. As a member, I can just walk past all of those tourists and flash my membership card. Today was the opening of a Van Gogh exhibit and it was a members-only preview so I felt very exclusive walking in while all of those Europeans over here taking advantage of a great dollar exchange rate had to wait. I saw at least four people try to sneak in the exhibit. They didn't make it. Great exhibit. My favorite picture was The Potato Eaters.

After the museum, I walked up 5th Avenue past all the posh shops. I'm dismayed by Abercrombie and Fitch. First of all, their clothes look like clothes that should be discarded or at least bought second-hand. And the trend of having a nearly-naked young man (boy?) standing at the entrance to the shop seems truly tasteless. It would seem if you're selling clothes, you would have the model wearing some.

Then I walked past The Plaza and across the way at the Sherry Netherland, a man on the 11th floor (I counted) was reparing a window. He was standing in the window, half hanging out and he didn't appear to be tethered to anything. It was toe-curling. You can't see him in the picture but I swear he was there.
On into Central Park I stopped to watch the seals swim around in circles at the zoo and stopped to take a picture for a tourist couple. I do that at least once a day. I'll see a guy taking a picture of his wife or girlfriend or vice versa and stop and offer to take a picture of them together. They almost always say yes. Except the Japanese. I'm sure they think I wouldn't know how to use their expensive camera (or that I might steal it).

And then I walked through Sheep's Meadow. No sheep there anymore. But what a beautiful place!
Then home to sleep for the rest of the day.

I love New York!

My 9/11

I have to tell it again.

September 11, 2001 was my first day back from vacation, a 500-mile bicycle ride from Montreal to Portland, Maine. I didn't ride my bike to work that day because it was due to be shipped back to Manhattan that morning from Portland. So at 6:30 a.m., I was picked up by a towne car to bring me to work. I knew the driver as he'd often picked me up in the past, a Russian guy who liked to talk about how much vodka he'd drunk the previous night, not a very reassuring thing for a car driver to do. But I remember we both commented on what a clear morning it was. You could see forever. We drove right past the World Trade Center down the West Side Highway, nothing unusual. I pasted the WTC nearly every day.

I got to work and I was excited to tell everyone tales from my bike ride. And I was cleaning out the hundreds of emails that had accumulated over the past ten days.

I logged into AOL and my sister, Laura, in Indiana was on and we were chatting. She said, "Katie Couric just said a plane hit the World Trade Center. How far is that from you?"

I told her I was about ten blocks from there and then I started to investigate. From my floor we couldn't see the towers and I really couldn't leave my desk anyway. I was looking online to see what happened but not finding much yet. Someone then walked in and said, "A plane just hit the other tower." At that point I knew it was no accident and I picked up my backpack and headed out of the building.

Someone asked me, "Did they say we could leave?" I replied, "If planes are hitting buildings in downtown Manhattan, I'm not waiting for someone to tell me I can leave." As I was getting on the elevator a lady was coming out, crying hysterically. Just as I was getting on the elevator, they were making and announcement to leave the building.

I walked out of the building and out into Battery Park. I remember looking up at the towers and screaming. It seems strange now. But everyone was doing the same thing. And people were trying to make calls. I had a signal but couldn't get out.

I decided to head toward the Williamsburg Bridge where my bike was to be delivered. I knew a few people who worked in the WTC as I had worked there about two years before for a company called Pure Energy. But the only person I would consider a friend was a lady in her mid-30s who was about six months pregnant. As I made my way through the teeming streets, I happened to run into her husband. He had verified that she was fine.

A few blocks up, a guy yelled from a second story window, "They just hit the Pentagon." I thought, "What a terrible joke!"

I walked on under the Brooklyn Bridge which was still open, at least to foot traffic and under the Manhattan Bridge. It was so strange to see people walking where there should be cars and trucks. At some point in Chinatown, I was at a place where I could see the towers again because there was nothing blocking my view. I thought I saw an explosion but I didn't know what it was, just a huge cloud of smoke.

I finally made it to Delancey Street where there was a truck full of bicycles. The guys there were frantically loading bikes back on the truck. I asked if I could get my bike. They said, "If you see it outside the truck, you can take it." I saw it. They had no idea they weren't getting their truck out of Manhattan.

I kept looking at the WTC and I couldn't figure out why I could only see one building. It never entered my mind that they could fall. That was inconceivable. It still is.

I started across town, toward the Hudson River, on my bike. I passed a bar on 17th Street that had its doors open and was showing CNN on its huge screens. I stopped in to see if I could make a phone call. The manager said, "The phones are downstairs. You can try." I called my parents' number using 1-800-COLLECT. I got through on the first try. At least they knew I was okay.

I stopped in the bar to watch the screens. That was the first time I saw what had happened and the first I saw that the South Tower had fallen.

I left the bar and did something that still seems odd to me. On the bike ride, people had told me that after riding 100 miles a day for five days, I'd be ravenously hungry for several days. They also told me that if I could resist the desire to stuff myself, I could lose a good ten pounds. Well, by 10:00 a.m., I was ravenous. I came around 17th Street onto 6th Avenue and went into the Hollywood Diner. There was only one seat in the whole diner. Everyone must have been ravenous. I sat down at the only seat left with three ladies and ordered the Big Breakfast with eggs, ham, bacon, sausage and hash browns. I'm not sure. There may have been pancakes involved. We all talked about how we felt kind of guilty eating but it didn't stop us.

Sixth Avenue had the most perfect view of the towers. When I came out of the diner, they were both gone. Hordes of people were walking north.

I made my way to the bike path on the West Side. It was almost too crowded to ride but I slowly rode along.

The further I got up into Harlem, there were fewer people. But it was obvious that they were headed for the George Washington Bridge. The lines for ferries to New Jersey were more than a mile long and some people had decided to walk the ten miles up to the bridge and walk across.

The day had turned hot. I stopped at Fairway and bought as many bottles of water as I could carry and took them out to the bike path and gave them to the walkers. But that was all I could do. So I headed home.

In the ER

This past week I was in the emergency room but not in New York, rather, back home in Indiana. Not a big deal, I just stepped on a rusty nail. But it reminded me of an emergency room trip several years ago in New York City.

I've lived in the same neighborhood now for eight years. It is called Inwood and is predominatly inhabited by people from the Dominican Republic. But up until that time, I'd never noticed whether or not there was a hospital in the area.

One afternoon I was just getting to go to sleep in preparation for another graveyard shift. And it hit me. I knew what it was immediately--kidney stone. I'd had several before though this was my first one in New York. I decided to try tough it out. I'd passed a couple before on my own and mine have tended to be small and while extremely painful, I've been able to pass them quickly.

So I groaned and threw up from the pain but after about two hours, the pain passed and I passed out. Just before midnight, I got up to go to work. Just as I was getting out of the shower, it hit me again. Only this time it really hit me and I said to myself that I was not doing this again. So I called 911.

The paramedics came and seemed skeptical that there was anything wrong with me but they put me in the ambulance and asked me where I wanted to go. I didn't know that I had a choice but I told them I didn't care, just somewhere close.

They took me to a hospital which it turned out, was walking distance from my apartment. I went in and registered. The nurse at the counter where I registered was gruff and mean, especially when she found out I didn't have insurance. But honestly, I didn't care. By then, I was hurting so bad. I bee-lined for the toilet as the pain was causing me to vomit again.

I came out and took a seat. There were probably a dozen people in the room. And I realized that I was the only English speaker in the room. The television was blaring a Spanish telenovela, a melodramatic soap opera. Everyone else seemed to be interested. I didn't care. I just wanted the pain down there to stop.

After about twenty minutes, the nurse at the front desk called the security guard over. She told him to switch the channel on the television to an English speaking channel. She said it was a rule that if there was an English speaking person in the waiting room, the television had to be on an English speaking channel. The security guard did it and told the crowd the rule in Spanish (which I totally understood) and they all looked at me and I just went and threw up. Now, it was going to be my fault that they were having to wait in the emergency room and watching a Jerry Springer rerun in English. I was expecting to be assaulted when I came out but before long I was called into a room.

The doctor who examined me was from North Carolina. He had come to New York for med school and had met his new wife there. He wanted to go back and she wanted to stay. He was very nice and when the first pain killer he gave me didn't do a thing, he gave me a shot of demerol. And I think I told him I loved him when it took effect. He asked me if I had insurance and when I told him that I didn't, he told me when I left to just leave and say nothing, which I did and never heard anything from anyone.

And by daybreak, I was walking home.

What I saw in the park

Yesterday I went out for my lunch break at about 4:00 p.m. It was about 95 degrees, hot and humid, but there was a nice breeze blowing off New York Harbor so it didn't seem so bad. It is always windy right down on the harbor.

I went to Subway for a sandwich. Let me just add that I think it is probably a sin to eat a Subway sandwich in New York City with all of the wonderful delis around that make far superior sandwiches BUT there is that $5 special AND I know the Weight Watchers points values of the Subway sandwiches. So, I committed that sin anyway and went out to the park to eat.

There is a park nearby with park benches surrounding a fountain. I sat down with my sandwich and started to eat. I saw . . .

A well dressed stock trader (I could see his tag) sat down, pulled up his left pant leg and started to vigorously scratch his left leg with both hands. Then he pulled down that pant leg, pulled up his right one and scratched his right leg as well.

A man, I'd say mid-thirties, came into the circle and strutted around daring anyone to notice him. He was wearing a negligee with a big red flower pattern. He was only wearing the negligee. It barely covered all the parts that so desperately needed to be covered. Every few steps he would flip the back up to reveal his behind. If he did catch anyone looking at him, he yelled, "What are you looking at?" He did not catch me looking. He finally sat down by two people who appeared to know him. I didn't look because I'm not sure what it might have looked like sitting down in that negligee. After all, I was eating.

A man speaking Russian on his cell phone did not sit but circled the fountain, round and round, talking the whole time.

A man, obviously a tourist (you can just tell) and his son, maybe an 8 year-old, were not quite running through the park. The boy obviously needed a toilet and it appeared that he wanted to run but couldn't. You know how it is. They were evidently heading toward the Museum of the Native American to try their luck there. And let me just say to Mayor Bloomberg and the city council members reading this blog that it is time to bring in the self-cleaning pay toilets like they have in Paris. We had a few of them and now they are gone. Bring them back.

Three little birds sat hopefully waiting for me to drop some crumbs. They got nothing from me. I mean, if you feed one . . .

A lady, elegantly-dressed but obviously homeless by the looks of her shopping cart, sat down and pulled out a small sandwich and started daintily eating. SHE fed the birds.

The tourist and his son came back, no longer in a rush, the man giving two thumbs up to the rest of his family across the park. I guess you can potty at the Museum of the Native American. I make a mental note of this for my upcoming book: Gotta Go NYC: a potty guide for tourists. I'm sure it will become a series with all the world's major cities featured. Except Paris. They don't need it. They have self-cleaning pay toilets (and besides that you can really go anywhere in Paris).

The man in the negligee strolled out. I caught him looking back over his shoulder every once in a while to see if anyone was looking. He didn't catch me looking.

My sandwich was gone and it was time to go back in.