One great thing about living in New York City is that we are both near the mountains and near the sea. This past week, for the first time, I rode my bike to the ocean with my two sons. We live near a park, where we sometimes ride the three-mile loop. The ocean is over five miles away.
Noticing might be the biggest job for a writer. I spend a lot of time working on being better at noticing the world and all of its little parts. I have been longing to ride bikes to the beach with my kids for years. When we want to do something, or at least when I do, we often imagine all of the fun and the easy parts of it. Often, after we do something, we share only the fun and easy parts with our friends and family. On this trip I tried to notice all of the parts. I will share with you all of the parts. We have to also value the not-fun parts, because they are what make the fun parts fun.
We had to navigate many bumps and cracks. Some parts of the bike trail were smooth and new. Others really need some work. Some of the bumps were so big, they were more like ramps for jumping, which made us a bit excited. My youngest told me, “Mommy! Stand up on your pedals when you go over the big bumps, so you don’t hurt your bum!” We spent more time spent looking at the groundthan at the sky or the trees.
I was nervous my sons would fight the whole time. It is, after all, one of their favorite past times. But they didn’t. My nervousness was worse, it turns out, than the thing I was worried about. They didn’t even bicker until we were almost there. Why did I waste my energy worrying?
It was a long trip. The boys kept exclaiming — I see the end! — but what they saw was usually a far-away truck waiting to turn left, or a light-colored house posing as the sky. I told them they would know that we were there when the saw the ocean and felt the ocean breeze. We kept feeling for it.
When we finally saw the expanse of the sky open before us, we rode up onto the boardwalk and rode our bikes in circles, yelling, “We did it! We did it!” The wind cooled our faces. I took a picture, so I could share the fun part.