Brianland

“Keep One Neal on The Wheel”

with a twinkling & loving nod to Neal Cassady . . .

Coming into Manhattan thru the Holland Tunnel, 6PM on the Friday of the Labor Day Long Weekend . . .
My first moments in Manhattan since Obama’s Election Night.
And on the exact anniversary of the very first day I first arrived in this town 29 years ago.

Everything’s not too bad considering, until I cross all the way over the island to the FDR entrance at Houston — and it’s freakin’ closed!  No reason no warning.  Just big orange blockers.  After contemplating just running them, I turn with everyone else and head back to First Avenue to go uptown. It was already a freakin’ nightmare of Long Weekend Friday rush-hour traffic and now the FDR detour is merging with everyone funneling off the freakin’ Williamsburg Bridge so fuget-about-it.  Motionless in the quicksand, I brilliantly hang a right onto dark n shady Clinton St. (New York’s first black street) and sneak up to Houston to get around it.

When I turned onto First Avenue from Houston — Zero Street — I couldn’t believe I was seeing a green Avenue light still shining there for a second so I gunned it like hell for the holy grail through the yellowing intersection and right into the end of the racing pack.

Zippity-doo-dahing along the crazy off-road tarmac they call avenues in this town — this whole island should be four-wheel-drive only.  But I’m in the mood for some real driving, so I scooch the hell up with the flow and make it all the way to 14th St. without stopping!  But suddenly the light’s turning so again I run the yellow past stopping cars on all sides and jump in on the bare-assed end of the next flow. “This is great! I’m gonna stay right here!”

I’m heading for 23rd where I plan to cut over onto maybe clearer 3rd Avenue, but I’m thinking, “Sumpthin’s goin’ on here.  This thing’s flowing.”  And you don’t break your flow in New York if things are going your way.  So, Boom, I stay on it, bouncing through Gramercy Park, using all three mirrors, windows open cuz you need all your senses, jumping lanes as needed, having to not worry about Casey cuz I’m on a serious roll.  But of course I glance back for a nano-second and she’s got her claws dug into the luggage and is holding unshakeably on.

Hit the 30’s and still haven’t stopped, slaloming between yellow cabs and other non-personal cars.  Nobody in their right mind would risk their own vehicle at more than 10 mph on these cement bike trails.

Suddenly I’m completely surrounded by buses — ahead, behind, both sides — driving in their dark canyon shade, deafened by their roar, gassed into a stupor by their smoke and all the while knowing I could be crushed like an ant in an instant by any one of the Goliath’s bouncing un-phased at 40 mph up this horribly broken track.

Then Boom — the U.N. coming up! “Go tunnel or road?  Tunnel or road?”   Too quick.  In the tunnel lane and there’s no movin’. Poof, down into the dark hole of the only Manhattan non-water-crossing tunnel, then just as soon Bloom!  Out and back into the light — and the red one ahead just turns green!!  Suddenly I’m crossing freakin 50th Street!   And a new flow’s starting!  Zoom, right into it, not letting up on the pedal at all.  If there’s any space ahead, take it.   Go go go.  ”Keep chasing the front of the serge, Sarge.”

All of a sudden, “That’s the 59th St. Bridge! That’s the last traffic clog on this Avenue!” And I’m passing 60th St. and haven’t stopped since Houston!

Suddenly it’s just your regular daytime bouncing rapids — fast flowing cars all around, shushing over cement moguls, in the zone, in the flow.  Next time I look up I’m passing my old neighborhood, 81st Street. “No frickin’ way! I gotta tell Rob when I get there. I just went 80 freakin blocks in one shot!”   And of course right then there’s a major clog!  But I’m feeling fine cuz I just set a new freaking All-Time Non-Stop Record!

There’s all these trucks unloading and cabs and people and about 1 lane trying to squeeze through, but I’m already sailing at a mighty clip up the center of the river and keep bullishly paddling straight ahead to where I’m through without stopping — and as soon as I pop out of the hourglass the light ahead’s turning yellow so I just floor it and make it through only by the courtesy of the old New Yorker’s rule: “Never pull into an intersection without first seeing if some maniac is gunning the light.”

But I’m way in the back of the flow again so I just give ‘er, and poor old Casey’s holdin’ on for dear life, but I gotta get with the flow, man — flooring it through yellows all the way till iI catch up.   And Lord help me but I’m crossing the fat freakin’ 96th St. at a race-car pace, dented cabs and army-surplus-bumpered trucks smashing along on either side, everything’s raging at breakneck New York old-school speed when we all lived by, “The speed limit is whatever you can manage to drive on these crowded lumpy roads.”

Boom! Going fast as hell through the crazy trunk-bouncing pot-holed rapids of Harlem when the thought first hits, “What if I could make it all the way to Rob’s 117th Street! . . . Play it smooth, now.”   I’d raced all the way from the back of the last yellow-light pack up to the pole position. “Don’t be too fast and hit the red.” I pulled ‘er back and just surfed on the crest of the wave.   Easy now, easy, just flowin’ with the lights, and glide in softly for a you-won’t-even-notice-it landing, a sweet coasting turn onto 117th Street. And of course I roll right up and park directly in front of his apartment where I won’t have to move the car till Thursday.

117 blocks non-stop through Manhattan during rush-hour on the Friday of a Long Weekend.

In the words of John Cassady — “I’ll take it.”

Be here now.

Brian & Casey O’Cassady