Getting ready

Last time I was in New York I rented this bicycle:

            

I spent four solid hours riding around my neighborhood.  Up and down the same streets.  Over and over.  Figuring out which gym I should join and where the 24-hour drugstores are.  I found a jazz club on Broadway that will probably get me into a lot of trouble.  I discovered that the Hudson River can be just as meditative as the Mississippi.

In other words, I finally spent a day slowing down a little bit, and learning to love my new home.

Every time I've come to New York the past six months I've been running around at breakneck speed, Doing and Doing and Doing.  Visit this person, see that person.  Dinner here, drinks there.  Sign papers,  meet people, clean out an apartment, haul a dead woman's shit away.  Busy Busy Busy.  But every time I go it gets easier and there's less work to do.

So it was nice to finally have time to be lazy and ride around and see what was going on.  It turns out my mother picked a nice neighborhood.  I liked what I saw.

I liked the bicycle, too.  At the end of the day, when my four hours were up, I bought it from the guy who rented it to me.  There's room for it in the apartment now that all that shit's cleaned out of there.  It's in the hallway, waiting for me to get back so we can go to that jazz club together...