The Existance of God, part deux

I'm always amazed at the number of Year of.... readers who deny the existence of God. To them I would pose the following:

Yesterday morning the Brooklyn cohort of the Mammoth World Celebrity Bike Tour embarked on the New York Century Ride--a 100 mile circumnavigation of Brooklyn and Queens, with a stop in the Bronx and a beginning and end at the top of Central Park.

Because my group is aging, we chose the 55 mile loop. Please don't think less of me. And because I am aging at what is apparently a faster rate than the others, and because my recent shoulder problems were making themselves known the way repeated hammer blows to the side of the head make themselves known, I found myself in the outdoor eating section of Nathan's, munching on a dog with kraut and creamy garlic fries, staring across the street at the Coney Island F Train Stop thinking, "Screw this, I'm getting on the fucking train and going home."

This would, of course, be at the 25 mile mark, approximately.

But the hotdog and fries worked their special magic and I decided instead to carry on. After all, my favorite part of the ride was coming up--the part that takes you along the Brooklyn seashore out to meet the Rockaways (loved him, hated her).

Might have been a mistake because another ten miles or so later, nursing my back at the next rest stop, staring up at the sky, I knew I wasn't up for the full 55. Except now I wasn't staring at any subway station. I was as lost in the boondocks as you can be in New York City without being on Staten Island.

And then it happened. One of my associates uttered the following words:

"Ya know--I'm looking at the upcoming route and it takes us right through the Grand Army Plaza...*"

At which point, realizing we were in the presence of something bigger than simply us, my teammates and I looked at each other in silence. In the nanosecond it took for us to jointly recognize this as an opportunity to close the loop to a mere 44 miles and get the hell home, I could hear every Seraphim and Cherubim in the heavens, accompanied by the same choir that backed up The Rolling Stones on "You Can't Always Get What You Want", singing the glories of God in full throat. It's possible I could also hear Charlie Watts in there too, but that could just have been my imagination.

And before I knew it, I was home.

Praise Allah.

* the Grand Army Plaza is about ten blocks from my house