Spring is finally in the air. i had almost forgotten that all the toiling during winter amounts to a certain amount of excitement when it seems to be over. in other words, i am feeling the "spring fever". my girlfriend and i are starting to behave in such a way that we rush home to take a bike ride in the park, followed by a glass of wine on the shores of the boat pond in Central Park. the trees are all blowing their loads of blossoms in a similar show of enthusiasm. hopefully my hullabaloo won't blow over as quickly as theirs is destined to.
i would like to bottle up this feeling to be opened when i am in the middle of a cold, wet, and gloomy nor-Easter, wondering what the hell i am doing in such a rugged climate. its the kind of intoxication that is all about appreciation. it's dependant on the ups and mostly downs of an oscillating situation. if there wasn't a long shitty winter, then spring becomes just the time when you have to file taxes. like it is in coastal California. So i guess, in the middle of April, i can safely praise the seasonal system that exists here, where in February, not so much.
But now that its getting warm and i am driving with all my windows open, the time of the year to start heading to the water is basically here. last year i got the opportunity to try something so unheard of to my NY ears, that the sheer simplicity and audacity of it was astounding.
Wake boarding on the Hudson river. you know, that sludgy river that reflects the lustrous skyline of Jersey City. the one that whips by on the Henry Hudson Parkway and makes its way into your daydreams of what it would be like to be able to fly like superman and jump the GW bridge like it was just a hurdle in a relay race. well that River, is just about empty. while you sit in traffic on either side of it wondering how you will ever get that wasted time spent in the car back, there is a river the size of the Mississippi river that NOBODY is using. there is the occasional sail boat, and the occasional mid-sized cargo ship lumbering along in the very middle. but really, considering the millions of people that the river passes everyday, it is a lonely body of water.
A friend of mine noticed this a bunch of years ago, and when an opportunity came up that gave him a parking spot for a boat at the only Marina on the upper west side, he jumped. he got himself a nice speed boat and wake boarding equipment. i got my first invitation to join him last June and it was INCREDIBLE.
first of all, the water is warm during the summer, jumping into it went against ALL of my instincts, as during my 25 or so years growing up in the city i had always thought of the river as a human bacteria frappe. the kind of water that if it got near your eyes and nose, you would come down with the kind of diseases only heard of in the amazon or during the Vietnam war. i had only seen one of my friends ever go near it, and that was because he had a major fall off his bike on the side of the west side highway, causing him to fly over his handle bars and into the drink. he came up covered in sludge and VERY unhappy. but that was well before they really started cleaning it up 20 years ago. that was also on the dirtiest stretch of shore down near the old piers that are now torn down and cleaned up.
so when i willingly jumped in. it was a very unnatural act. but there i was. just fine. the water didn't smell funny and there was only the occasional wrapper or piece of paper. the kind of litter that one finds normal when surfing in LA or near any major city. it was fine. plus it was EMPTY. the boat was floating near the GW bridge, in full view of the Cloisters and uptown Manhattan. the Palisades were on the other side, looming high and mighty up to the other side of the GW bridge. it was emptier then any beach i had ever been to. it was emptier then any lake i had ever sailed on. it was completely OUR river for all intensive purposes. and this is not unusual, apparently.
the river had been a completely ignored asset by me, except for it's place in the scenery of NYC i had never considered it as an object of sport. i was a little uncomfortable not knowing what was going on below me. i know the river is attached to the ocean near there and just about anything can be swimming there. i am always a bit eeked out by water i can't see through. but that's natural, and its part of the excitement and the sense of accomplishment i got when i had the balls to do jump in.
so then the instructions are given to me. the need to line up the towing rope and the tip of the board. the need to spring up and out of the water quickly. all things i was pretty much familiar with having skated, surfed, water skied, and snowboarded my whole life. i knew EXACTLY what i was going to feel. i just didn't realize how fucking cool it would be to surf down a river i had always looked at as off-limits and out of bounds. i had never, except in dreams, pictured myself on a board, whipping across the ruffled surface of a calm flowing river, with Manhattan passing by on the shore. in all my years it had just never occured to me that it was a real possibility. until that moment.
my ears were under water so i heard very clearly the powerful engine roar into action. suddenly the handle of the tow rope pulled away with great force. i stiffened up my body and braced myself between the force of the rope, and the sluggish force of the water. i got a face full of spray and was almost ready to let go to avoid inhaling too much of the water i had just gotten over fearing. but my board lurched up and i levitated out of the water and just took off. suddenly there was wind in my face instead of spray and the surface of the river had a solid feel to it. i was wake boarding.
it was heaven. it was very much like the first time i rode a wave. it redefined the way i looked at a river. it was no longer this completely fluid deep and unknown element. it was now a rippled surface that i could skip across and play with like a toy. i could dig the edge in and slide out of the wake zone and skip across the water to be almost adjacent the speed boat and then, when the sheer force of the pulling rope and my extreme leaned angle was too much, i could turn back in and fly across the wake, jumping a bit over the wake itself, and then whip out to the other side. all this in full view of traffic on the HH parkway, and the little red light house under the GW bridge. it was as if one of my dreams about flying to NJ had suddenly come true. only it was more like i had the ability to run across the surface of the river. which was actually what i was doing. it was a real super power. i can't freakin' wait to do it again.
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