mile 28 Valley Stream

The sun was heating up my black bike helmet to dangerous temperatures as I biked through Valley Stream. The traffic on Grand Ave was quite heavy and as I biked I noticed a trend. If you bike closer to the edge of the road(to feel safer), the car drivers will almost instinctively come closer to you, forcing you even further to the edge. This is a potentially very dangerous trend, so I biked far from the right hand edge of Grand, forcing the cars to go around me a bit. While this seems more dangerous in theory, it worked out real well for me.

In any case, the blazing sunlight was killing me and I was forced to stop at a watermelon stand. There I met Ezra. He's a produce farmer from Georgia trying to offload some of his watermelons near NYC. The man gave me a gallon of ice water for free. After I drank my fill and loaded my water bottles, I paid him 2 dollars for a quarter of a melon, which we then shared. Ezra told me about how the high gas prices were killing small farmers across the land. He mentioned that it now costs him 1300 dollars to ship a single truckload of produce to NYC as compared to under 1000 dollars just 4 months ago. He was wondering when the government will start rationing gas...since small truck suppliers like him can't take much more of this high fuel cost. I had no answer for him. In any case, I thanked Ezra for the ice water and went on my way.