the journey is the destination…
Six months ago – yes, this is coming a bit late – I entered the 5 Boro Bike Tour in New York City with the intention of completing it on the Christiania Bike. It was a long ride – maybe 40 miles – weaving through the 5 boroughs of the Big Apple and ending on Staten Island. For me it would be a personal challenge, but also a way to show that the Christiania is not all that hard to ride for long distances. I regularly ride 10+ miles a day on it — with a full load. So, with no cargo and no timeline, 40 miles wouldn’t be an unrealistic distance to travel on the old girl.
Halfway through the ride, however, I found myself in Williamsburg (Brooklyn), and though I had plenty of juice left in the tank, I was getting a bit bored. I made a quick decision to skip out on the ride and live by my mantra — ‘the journey is the destination’. I will admit, the fact that the destination was Staten Island made the decision a bit easier — just a little…
By backing off of the structured ride — I don’t like organized rides anyways — I entered a Zen-like state, where the bike pointed me in directions that I might not have conceded to had I had my eyes set on the finish line. Not a few minutes after making the executive decision to pull the cord, I came upon a familiar sign — mind the pun. It was literally a sign — a beautiful hand painted one — but for all intents and purposes it was also symbolic way of telling me that I had made the right decision.
I recognized the work as that of Jeff Canham — my absolute favorite sign painter — and a quick memory jog reminded me that Canham had done a bit of work for the Mollusk Surf Shops — which are probably the nicest surf shops in the country. I had been to their outposts in San Francisco and Venice in California, but then remembered that they also had another shop in Brooklyn — this must be it!
I weaved through a bunch of barren streets lined with old-industrial buildings and there it was, shining in the spring light like it had been plucked from surfside California and dropped into some strange, post-industrial wasteland. Whatever the case, I had, by virtue of forgetting about the finish line, stumbled upon a real diamond in the rough. I parked the old girl out front, popped inside, and chatted up the guy (dude) manning the shop. Some time later, I walked out with gifts for my nieces and nephews, and a sweatshirt that I have worn probably 80% of the days between then and now — if you know me, you know the one I’m talking about!
From there, I zig-zagged about Williamsburg in first gear moving just ‘fast’ enough to keep the bike from completely stopping. The beauty of riding a trike is that you never hit that point where you are riding too slow to keep your balance — you need only pedal enough to keep headway. ‘Fast enough to get there, but slow enough to see…’ — I think Jimmy Buffett said that.
During this pedal-powered saunter through Williamsburg, I came upon countless hidden gems — ranging from large murals, hidden beneath the blossoming trees of New York in the spring…
…to small sidewalk art (see opening image); bright, funky buildings; and a new bike shop just being renovated.
Eventually I came upon the Williamsburg Bridge and decided it might be a good time to land back in Manhattan — maybe make an impromptu stop-in at Adeline Adeline. Halfway across the bridge another familiar ‘sign’ caught my eye. There, in the distance, through the iron fence grid, was the Christiania symbol emblazoned on a building two blocks away. I rubbed my eyes, hopped off the bike and then realized that, not only was this certainly an homage to Christiania, but the composition and placement of the artwork was such that it appeared that the Christiania flag was surfing the waves of the painting immediately below it!
Christiania, surfing, street art, and hand-painted signs — just a few of my favorite things coming together in a sort of ‘perfect storm of cool’ — all because I made a turn and took the road less travelled by. And for a small window of time in May, the planets had aligned and all was right with the world…
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Posted on: Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
Posted in: news
Tags: brooklyn, cargobike, christiania, journey is the destination, new york