Little G desperately wanted to visit the city of his birth over the long weekend, so he and I trekked into Gotham via Metro-North. The Saturday morning train was packed with riders in gold jerseys; I thought either Brasil had a soccer match against the U.S. on Randalls Island, or we’d stumbled onto a car full of Tour de France winners.
In fact, it was Brazilian Day in Manhattan, with food, music, and lots and lots of people in gold soccer jerseys packed into the Little Brasil section of the city on 46th.
With our frequent trips to the city, Little G seems to have lost interest in what he sees out the window on the train. He used to be rapt, calling out each train that passed, those parked at North White Plains, the Ritz-Carlton towers in White Plains, every tunnel we went through.
Not so much anymore. Now he just wants to draw dinosaurs and complain about the lack of dessert options in our travel bag.
Once in Manhattan, we rode buses to and from Central Park, climbed a million boulders, and gorged on hot dogs and ice cream before hitting the 2:48 home. We snuck by FAO Schwarz without him realizing what was inside, and I taught Little G the finer points of doing the bum’s rush to use the bathroom in some of New York’s finest hotels. Parc Lane, you’ve got quite the men’s room!
We prepared to exit at Hawthorne on the way home. The conductor stood nearby. I told Little G to thank the guy for the ride–we’re big on manners in our house–which he did. I held one of Little G’s tiny hands, and the conductor, a Latino man with some sort of goatee, grabbed the other. Together, we lifted Little G over the gap. (Not that he and I hadn’t drilled on Watch the Gap maneuvers several times before.)
The Labor Day fun now in the rear view mirror, school is back in session in our corner of the country. We’ve apparently had this mad boom in middle-schoolers in our hood, who start school later than both the elementary kids and the high school kids. Last year, I didn’t used to see a soul on the street as I flew past on my bike en route to the 8:16. Today, I saw packs of kids on three consecutive corners along Pythian–right where we block partied with these same kids, and parents, not even a month before.
The school system appears to have installed a dress code for boys this year: Yankee t-shirts and giant basketball shorts. Girls are free to dress as they see fit.
It’s fun to see the kids and all, but the school year is a bit of a drag for bike commuters: more traffic, more frantic parents, late for the big meeting with the teacher, looking for parking spots near the school, crossing guards who really, truly don’t know what to do when a cyclist appears at the intersection. It all amounts to another minute or two of travel time.
The morning train was full–vacations are clearly over–and riders seemed to have a sense of relief that the kiddies were back into their routine for the next nine months.