Thinking about the things that hit me

View from the Hudson River bike and jogging path, uptown

It hit me that a week ago I was jogging on the path along the Hudson River and thinking what a beautiful place it is. I jogged (slowly as per usual these days) from my friend's house on 110th Street and Riverside down to the 79th Street Boat Basin and paused to look down at the boats and up at the Boat Basin Cafe, thinking it would be a great place to go some day. I stopped to stretch and look around.

It was about four miles of feeling so-so. I was thinking about the upcoming Hot Chocolate Run to Benefit Safe Passage and about how last year when I said to myself that it was "just" a 5-K, I didn't know it would be hilly. And about how when I finished I was so bent over that someone asked if I needed medical attention. And how as you get older, maybe the definition of a good run changes from feeling fabulous to other things: enjoying the scenery, accomplishing or even overshooting your goal (I had meant to do just three miles), getting at least part of the good feeling that you used to get, and being in decent enough shape to run with tennis friends to support the mission of Safe Passage and the hard work of its director, our teammate Marianne Winters. I was thinking that it was good to be in New York on a beautiful day and that it was good to be looking forward to a dinner in the neighborhood with Katie.

79th Street Boat Basin

It was the northern part of the path where the Isis-inspired truck attack took place. When I'm in New York I often run on the southern end near where this happened. It hits you when you can see the whole deadly scene clearly in your mind. And when you think of how New Yorkers, while mourning, went about their business, and how the Halloween parade that went on as usual "was a beautiful example of that failed attempt” to sow fear, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who marched with Mayor Bill de Blasio, said at a news conference on Wednesday. The governor’s remarks were a reminder of how terror attacks can elevate otherwise ordinary events into symbols of resilience, the Times reporter wrote.

I can relate to that way of being, and that is why I still always say I'm a New Yorker even though I haven't lived there for, well, for quite a while.

Also in the week's news, it hit me that because journalists at two small New York news outlets decided to unionize, their billionaire owner shut the outlets down out of spite. He was objecting to "a few dozen modestly paid employees who collectively bargain for better working conditions."

According to the story: "And, as a final thumb in the eye, he initially pulled the entire site’s archives down (they are now back up), so his newly unemployed workers lost access to their published work. Then, presumably, he went to bed in his $29 million apartment."

This sentence especially hit me: "The careers of most journalists feature constant uncertainty and heartbreak, interspersed with periods of life-affirming work that you hope make it all worthwhile."

Some people ask why I am still doing it. Some of us who lost our jobs and who stayed in the field say, "because we don't know how to do anything else."

The life of a freelancer amplifies the frustration because unless you have an "anchor client" (which I hope to someday find), you are always looking for your next job. Like reporters who I imagine do the same in many newsrooms, I complained bitterly (my father's words) about this and that, about my editor's instructions to go out and "find people who..." (fill in the blank with a variety of person-on-the street or in-the-mall questions), about the same event that had to be covered with a fresh perspective every year, about not being given enough space, about deadline pressure and story quotas, and so on.

But I would do it again. And am still going after those good stories that you have to dig out as a freelancer.

I also got literally hit by the driver who sideswiped me when I was driving to The Literacy Project in Amherst on Tuesday. It was a perfect way (not) to come down from my perfect New York weekend with Katie. I thought it was going to be a hit and run because the other driver kept going. A Good Samaritan saw what had happened, three police cars came, the other driver came back, my witness supported my story, and nobody got hurt, etc., but it is a real pain in the rear to deal with.

The insurance company didn't want to pay for my rental until my car was in the shop. So yesterday I drove with no driver's side mirror and did not feel safe at all, especially crossing lanes in the highway. The frame of the mirror, dangling from a wire, banged up against the door.

I emailed the insurance rep and said the magic, and very true, words: I do not feel safe driving this car and I'm afraid of having an accident. He emailed right back to get the rental. Yesterday a lovely woman from Enterprise came to pick me up. We had to go to Fuller Road to fill out the paperwork. Then I came back and now I have the rental and feel safe again. It seemed like a good part of the past few days were taken up going about getting the police report and the estimate and going to the insurance agency.

I thought about how it could have been worse had the other driver strayed just a little further into my lane, and I thought about how I could have been on the part of the bike path where the terrorist attack occurred.

But I'm here, in one piece (more or less).