Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Up and over the Queensboro Bridge with a massive, blasting wind coming at me like elfhammers. Then down 1st Ave. On these long rides I reconnect with places long-gone. There's the Citibank building and with it memories of a long-gone branding job. And P--'s old apartment in that brutalist Turtle Bay block-wide concrete slab across from the hospital; I house-sat there once. Before passing that building I passed the NPR studio, from when I was recording for them. A grand failure, that. Not the first or last. None of these things are connected in my mind but they all happened along 1st Avenue south of 59th St. I go back to Google Maps and run a line through my route to get the miles (12.8); the bicycle knits together the last decade into something totally new.