Commitment, Marriage & Babies

I worked off Friday night’s wicked hangover with an excellent afternoon ride over the GWB. I met the guys (my brother, John and Jason) on the Upper West, then headed north along the Hudson.

The first half of the ride was a bit slow goin’. Jason was on his girlfriend’s bike, which had to suck for him. And John kept insisting that we stop for pictures, thereby reducing any riding consistency to 10 minutes at a time. Course, in the end, I’m glad he did. But by the fifth photo on the bridge span, Chris and I are like, “Can we ride now?” and led on to the Palisades Park, which stretches from just south of the Jersey side of the GWB to Alpine, NJ. It’s a beautiful, if narrow, strip of green wedged between the sheer cliffs of the Palisades and the Hudson.

So we paused for a water break at the Ross Dock, and sit there a while just jawin’. Jas starts into an expletive-laden monologue about relationships that was straight outa’ some great Ed Burns or Kevin Smith script. And everyone starts chimin’ in. But not about sex, or typical frat boy stuff: about relationship, commitment, marriage, babies. Of course me, I’m mostly silent, laying on my back watching the clouds roll by, turning the blue sky to gray. But I’m weighing in with empathy, and support.

But that’s not really why I took the time to write about the experience. The point is, it was a beautiful autumn day: windy, cool, crisp. The sky was turbulent, changing. And I was with some guys who, through better and worse, have known each other for years. And we were all wrestlin’ with some stuff, all tryin’ to figure it out. And it was poignant, and sweet, and hilarious, and very real.

And then, after each guy called home to say, “I’m on my way, honey” (except me), we climbed on our bikes, and rode home to New York.