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NCMF cycling jerseys are for sale in-store at Riverside Cycle with all proceeds going to the festival. Thank you, Riverside owner Tom Reinke! You can follow David live along the route and watch his pin inching along.

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Looking out your window today, perhaps sitting in front of a fireplace or sipping a steaming mug of hot chocolate, some of you may have noticed that it rained today. Steady, incessant, continual, unrelenting, pissing rain.  

Around 70 miles in, I turned to Mona and innocently inquired “do you like the vacation I took you on?”  I realize with regret that perhaps my timing left something to be desired.
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We left the Upper West Side, quietly slipping out around 7:30 am from Misha and Hsin-Yun’s apartment thinking we might avoid the worst of the storm. It was slow going out of New York but we were pleasantly surprised at the East Coast Greenway’s amazing infrastructure in the Bronx. Someone worked really hard on this.

Dedicated bicycle paths were smooth as glass with bicycle-only traffic signals, and the route snaked along small creeks or abandoned rail lines. You could see the industrial waste just beyond the trees, but the trail and plantings were maintained lovingly. Honestly, it was beautiful.
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The exit from the city was abrupt. Just after Pelham Bay and right around City Island and Co-op City, NY, we suddenly found ourselves in a dense forest, emerging in what is essentially southern New Rochelle. Pretty soon we were able to develop more of a rhythm to our riding.

At each stop – a little café in Port Chester, a pizza parlor in Bridgehampton – people saw the bikes and asked us where we were coming from, responding “You came from New York City? Ay!”
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The piece for today is Jay Reise’s “The Gift of Urashima Taro” (2015) for string trio and shakuhachi (Japanese flute). Emilie-Ann Gendron (violin), me on viola, Eddy Aaron (cello), and James Schlefer (shakuhachi). We’d never done a work with dancers before and this was a ballet done in conjunction with EXIT Dance of Newburyport and choreographer Stephen Haley.

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The medieval Japanese folk-tale tells the story of a man beguiled by a sea turtle’s princess in human form, a kind of cross between “The Little Mermaid” and “Rip Van Winkle.” After jouneying with the princess to the bottom of the ocean, he returns home only to find that a hundred years have passed.

The piece seems more than apt on a day when it often felt like we were cycling in a sea of water. I adore Jay and his wife, artist Cecilia Paredes. Jay has spent time considerable time studying in the Far East so commissioning a piece for shakuhachi seemed a natural fit.

Urashima Taro has a dreamy quality that reflects the folk tale it is based upon. It reminds me of the early works of Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa: films like The Seven Samurai or Yojimbo or The Hidden Fortress (which George Lucas has said was the direct inspiration for Star Wars): all folk tales, small yet epic at the same time.

James Schlefer played shakuhachi, that reedy Japanese instrument made from bamboo that bears about as much relation to a western flute at chicken noodle soup bears to ramen.

‍David Yang, Artistic Director