Quick quick slow

It gets cold and my joints start to hurt, especially my knees. I notice that I can't start fast, and I can't climb hills fast, and everything just sets off frightening little twinges. I slow down some. I slow down some more. I warn the boys that I will be slow, and tell them they can drop me on the bridge if they like, but they don't.

They are not my usual boys. They keep a nice pace, one that doesn't hurt me to keep up with but still gets me just that little bit out of breath that I need to achieve some kind of benefit to my old heart.

I feel like thanking them, but I don't really know them well enough, and it would require some explanation.

It would require explaining that I spent all summer racing to keep up. I liked it, and it made my legs stronger than they would have been, going my own pace, but it's impossible now.

I did a bunch of cooking today; it was a lot of work, and it hurt my back, and afterward I had to mop the floors, which made it worse. I thought some about the slow food movement in Italy.

I thought about how that'd never in a million years fly here. We're all about nanoseconds - you should see the bagel guys get impatient with people who can't rattle off their orders in auction-speak, who don't know what kind of cream cheese they want, whether they want it toasted or not toasted. Everything here gets abbreviated: LES, EV, UWS, TriBeCa, DUMBO.

To bicyclists, the bridges are the QB and the Willie B and the Manhattan (no abbreviation there, other than to drop the gratuitous Bridge at the end). Nobody rides over the Brooklyn, just as nobody spells out Brooklyn. It's always Bklyn, or the even-shorter Bkn, or even Bk.

I do it, too. I have a friend who rides a Paris Sport, who always calls it by its full name, and I get irritated. Why don't you just call it the Paris?

I suppose I hate slowing down. My knees are happy, but I feel a lot less like a superhero. I can see the need for it in food, though. I put a pot of chickpeas out to soak overnight, after I'd spent four hours making bread.

The only way to make good food, especially if one is a vegetarian, is to take your time with it. To start from whole pieces of things. To go to the farmers market. To soak dry beans. To cook in that magical way where you are only half-conscious, musing on something more important, or more trivial, or just listening to music, or watching MI-5 or whatever BBC America is serving up that evening.

I know that part of why I don't want to stop is that I can't look at anything right now. It's not often the way I operate, but for the time being, I just can't look at that thing on the shelf.

I can look at the bridge rising up like a long-limbed robot, I can look briefly at Chinese vegetable stands. I can look at half a squashed dead rat and wonder, quietly, which is worse - that or the intact, squiggling version.

I can look at bladed spokes. I can look at the muscular calves of friends, now mostly clad in tights. I can look at a stray morning glory straggling along a fence, and wish it were a grove of pines.