things i think about while powerwashing 136

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In the past few months, I've been doing a lot of biking. I think this might be the third week in a row where I talk about biking (fear not my esteemed subscribers, this is not going to become a biking newsletter) but it sometimes is one of the most fun things I do in a week!

After all, it's not every day you can go to the beach in New York!

My ride from Long Island City took me over the Pulaski Bridge (the best one as usual), and instead of my usual ride around the perimeter of the Brooklyn Navy Yard I made a hard turn towards Prospect Park.

In the New York biking circles, Central Park and Prospect Park are the great biking loop parks and it's easy to tell why. Both have these great sloping (how about a Park Slope? Hahah!) hills on one side of the park and these wonderful uphills that are perfect for training. If you were on a good enough bike and at a decent pace, I'm sure you could just keep rolling and rolling without getting too tired.

I did not ride a continous loop — I just biked down one end on my way south through the beautiful shaded path. The wind whizzed through the holes on my helmet as I cruised past the 10K race runners, out of the park and into Deep Brookyn TM.

The area I happened to roll through seemed to be very Jewish. Granted — I was biking on a Saturday morning which I think is the time when Jewish people would head to synagogue. The apartment buildings slowly melted into houses, and the electric poles became trees. Grass started growing around the sidewalks and before I knew it, I was in a completely suburban area. Which I guess is still New York!

Then suddenly the trees fell away to sand. I started passing by something institutions that looked like it would be near the ocean — flatter, somewhat sandier, grassier. When I biked over a highway I had a terrible thought — this feels a little like the Midwest. Ashamed of myself, I pushed on.

The first sign of water came when I was crossing the Marine Parkway Bridge. Heights don't really bother me when I'm biking now, but I was still a little too nervous to pull my phone out to take a picture.

And finally, the beach!

When I saw the ocean, I remembered what the biking was all about. Yeah sure it's about fitness (that's been working!) and also the cool Strava numbers. But honestly it's about having fun, rolling around and seeing the sights. I'll be starting to do some workout rides this week I think, but nothing beats the feeling of a great adventure.

museum of the week

I have had a past of struggling with natural history museums. The idea of a museum is kind of where I get stuck — is a museum something for human history? How can nature, which is living, be shown in a museum, something that is for revering artifacts of the past?

Let's not dwell on that question because I know I'm of the wrong opinion. Instead, the Harvard Museum of Natural History absolved me of figuring out this question by having one of the greatest exhibits I've ever seen: the Blaschka Glass Models of Plants. And I was accompanied by esteemed subscriber Alex Weliever and her boyfriend (not an esteemed subscriber work on that Alex).

Created by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka back in 1886, the flowers are from what I can tell anatomically correct. If you told me they weren't glass, I'd have a hard time telling if you were lying. Cited as being "gifted ... as a flameworker and a love for natural history", big Leopold himself landed a ten-year contract to produce these flowers for Harvard with his son Rudolf carrying on for nearly three more decades after.

In a sense, this absolves me from answering my question because we now have something that is a) dedicated to natural history and b) a sort of pinnacle of human art.

There were a few other parts I liked:

• They have three very large whale skeletons (three, which barely fit).
• They have another large whale skeleton
• The stuffed animals (i forget what they're called) are actually quite well done!

anonymous subscriber news

nothing this week :(

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animal of the week

Another dawg — but a little more domesticated than last week's. What a very good boy! Thank you to esteemed subscriber Junghyun Choy for this submission!

This was taken during a dog costume contest in SF Japantown

Send me your animal photos at ryan@torrtle.co!