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Bike Shorts at Galapagos

I've been remiss in my biking and as a result, my posting. So here's something that has nothing to do with me getting on my bike, and everything to do with other people getting off their asses.

Bike Shorts 8
"The next Bike Shorts screening will take place on Sunday January 25th at Galapagos's new location in DUMBO. Keep filming and creating. Remember that you don't have to be able to do barspins or backwards circles to make a movie about a bike. Be creative! Submit your work to us whenever you're finished."

BTW, The flier is apparently wrong, according to the website the deadline is January 18 - so go make a movie.

VIB's?

There is little enough parking available for cyclists in NYC, so I was mystified by this convoluted system of barriers protecting/saving/blocking this bike rack on Third Avenue and 49th Street in Manhattan.

I mean, can you park here? Not park here? Valet park here?

Who are they saving this for, David Byrne? He's got his own bike racks.

Weird.

Snow

The Cold Sucks

I didn't feel like biking this morning. It was too cold and I was too cranky.

As a reward, this is the mob scene I faced on the subway platform.

A commute like this just makes me appreciate the fact that I have options... even if I'm too lazy to take advantage of them.

As seen in ... Midtown East

The press.

Waiting for Antonio Pierce of the NY Giants to make his appearance at the 17th Precinct in the Plaxico Buress debacle.

Traffic is a misery today.

With the Christmas season comes the dreaded 'Gridlock Alert'.

I find this fascinating. Like the other 11 months of the year the traffic is ok?

Poleriders

Wow. Two great tastes that taste great together - biking and pole-dancing.

I can't post pictures here because then my blog would have to have an adult content warning, but talk about utilizing pedal-power.

"PoleRider is the first and only bicycle rickshaw powered mobile dance pole; a new invention that merges pole dancing and bicycles.

Our mission is to raise awareness of the immense potential of pedal power and the imagination and to unite two great things that are even better together: bicycles and pole dancers! If you are driving, remember to look out for bicycles. One of them might be PoleRider!"

For more info go to Poleriders

As seen in ... Brooklyn Heights

I have no idea what these guys are doing, but this seems like a really inefficient way to move a car.

And The Winner Is ...

Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve,
originally uploaded by — default.

The Hoop by Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve, designers based in Copenhagen.
It's rather ironic that I finally managed to post about this yesterday - and today they announce the winner, especially since I just discovered that they were supposed to pick a winner three weeks ago.
Oh well, I guess that blows my rep as the place to get timely news....

The reaction to the announcement has been surprisingly cantankerous. Some of the comments have been downright rude.

“Evoke an abstracted bicycle tire”: what a lame brained
rational. What ever hapened to some small modicum
of functionality.

— a.may

My favorite?

"Well, if they’re pretty enough, maybe the bike thieves will start stealing the racks instead of the bikes."

— KWillets

They say they are going to install at least 5,000 of these over the next few years. I'm going to go the glass-half-full route and just be grateful for small favors. After all, they could have decided to spend that money for more parking meters.

Nice Rack

The Department of Transportation along with the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Google and Transportation Alternatives are sponsoring a NYC bike rack design competition.

The finalists are on view at Astor place if you'd like to give them a test park.





"From bus stop shelters to parking meters to street lights, the streets of New York City are a diverse landscape of urban forms. One increasingly ubiquitous element is the CityRack, with thousands on sidewalks in the five boroughs. These simple racks have served us well for the past 10 years. But as we look to make even greater strides in increasing the number of cyclists we need something more. We need something that is functional while simultaneously capturing the attention and imagination of New Yorkers. To supplement our CityRacks, we also seek to promote off-street parking inside buildings to make it even easier for New Yorkers to take up the two-wheel commute."

Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner, New York City Department of Transportation





I know no one wants to be a guinea pig, but as the official site says,
"If the racks are broken or missing this indicates the designs as submitted might not be tough enough for NYC. Vandals are lame, but it’s better to know the pitfalls before we start to mass produce new racks."

So lock it up - and vote for your favorite at nycityracks

Vote

...or shut up.

As seen in ... Greenpoint

There's nothing like biking down closed streets.

If you missed it, today was the 'Get to the 'Point' 5K run through Greenpoint.

I don't run, but I love all the streets closed to traffic.

For a real kick, try riding the NYC Marathon route before the runners go. It's totally under the radar, but super fun.
No, you don't get to ride across the Verrazano Bridge, but the rest of the route gets closed off pretty early in the morning of the race.

The Night The Lights Didn't Go Out On Broadway

Paul Newman who?

The last time the lights went out on Broadway was just after 9/11 and like many people, I was stuck in another borough, so I've never seen the marquees go dark.

I was back working at 'no wheels allowed' (not even no wheels please), and I was already in craptastic midtown so I figured I'd head over to 44th St. to watch Broadway's tribute to fallen star Paul Newman.

I picked out a good spot. I know it was good because 2 minutes later a Fox News crew almost boxed me out of it, and I got ready to be moved by the sight of the lights going out.



So we stood there - me and the Fox News crew, 8 o'clock came, The Schubert went black, the Marquis flicked the switch for about 5 seconds, they both came back on, the Fox folks and I turned and looked at each other and shook our heads. The Saint James and The Majestic just didn't even bother at all.

So much for honoring Paul Newman.



They asked me if I wanted to be interviewed, but I decided that saying that the tribute was shitty on national tv was probably inappropriate.

Shame on You Brooklyn Marriott

I know I'm always harping on this, but come on!

According to the Marriott web site, the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge boasts "1,100 indoor parking spots" - so why don't you use them instead of allowing the bike lane that is the most direct access to the Brooklyn Bridge for cyclists to be abused?

In a neighborhood already overrun by 'special' parking permits for the local, state and federal courts, do we really need 'protected' livery cab parking?

On the other hand ...



With bike lanes like this, who wants to ride in them anyway?

As seen in ... The West Village

How cool is this?

The mom who rides this contraption with her two kids told me you can't get the jump seat that sits on the top tube anymore because of the danger that the kid will get a foot stuck in the front spokes, but the older one - who rides in back, still has both feet, so he seems to have done just fine.
I don't know what that extension is called that's attached to the back, that's what got me interested to begin with, but the little footrests on the downtube are my favorite part.

Oy Vey!

Armstrong to Race for Astana in 2009
By JULIET MACUR for the NYT
Published: September 24, 2008

"Lance Armstrong, the cancer-survivor who retired after winning a seventh consecutive Tour de France in 2005, will resume his racing career in Australia in January, and will end his season after riding down the Champs- Élysées during the Tour de France in July.

Addressing the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Wednesday, Armstrong said he would convene the first global summit of the Livestrong campaign to raise cancer awareness in Paris after the Tour.

“I cannot guarantee an eighth Tour victory,” Armstrong said as he addressed a room filled with more than 60 heads of state and hundreds of others. "But I can guarantee that the Livestrong message will touch all aspects of our society , all continents of our society and certainly touch all the different aspects of cancer.”

...

Since his retirement, Armstrong has traveled the world to promote his cancer foundation, which he formed after surviving testicular cancer in the late 1990s. He also has been a staple on the social circuit, attending film premieres and dating actresses and singers."


Armstrong to race for Astana

Have we learned nothing from:

Michael Jordan
Muhammad Ali
Roger Clemens

I'm sure the list goes on ...

I know he says he's doing this to raise awareness for his foundation, but as a cycling fan, I REALLY don't want to see him huffing and puffing his way through the Alps.
Maybe he's really that good and he can compete on an international level at his age. If so, what does that say about the state of cycling today?

"When you retire too late, you damage your reputation. Michael Schumacher quit when he is still world class. You can only wish that all athletes made such decisions." — IAAF vice president Helmut Digel.

As seen in ... Lower Manhattan

Waiting for AIG to sink or swim, the press camps out.

The 2008 NYC Century

NYC Century 2008

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Well that was interesting.

"Interesting" in the same way your do it yourself Flock of Seagulls hairdo was interesting, or interesting the way Aunt Dottie gets after her third cocktail.

I was half dreading 4am went I went to sleep the night before. Hurricane Hanna was in full effect on the eastern seaboard, and as much as I enjoy cycling, cycling a hundred miles in a raging storm is not my idea of something you do voluntarily.

Even I had to admit it was obviously going to be a perfect day when I checked the weather and walked my confused dog.

I got myself together, got myself to the subway, and boarded the bicycle express to the Upper West Side.



There's nothing quite like the combination of spandex-clad, sunblock covered cyclists packed on the same subway as night-shift workers and drunk yuppies who only wish they were doing the walk of shame.

I wish I could accurately quote some of the conversations that I overheard, but they all boiled down to the same general topic:

Drunk Dude #1 "Yo, what's with the bike?"
Cyclist "The NYC Century is today"
Drunk Dude #2 "Huh, What's that?"
Cyclist "You bike a hundred miles around NYC"
Drunk Dude #1 "A hundred miles? No Shit."
Drunk Dude #2 to Drunk Dude #1 "Sounds stupid"

Thankfully, I made it to the start without getting barfed on, got my cue sheet and was on my way.

I love the first part of the NYC Century. Starting in the dark. Bombing down Riverside Drive and then through Times Square. No traffic, just the whirr of a hundred bikes coasting down the hills. Then across the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn and into Prospect Park.

The things I remember are random; The guy in the orange 'You don't have to be the best, you just have to try the hardest' tee shirt that spotted as I was leaving the top of Central Park and then rode with for about 50 miles, the two unicyclists doing the whole hundred, the weird twists and turns the route took through Brooklyn - both across the Carroll Street Bridge (odd choice) and right past the subway station I was at two hours before, but most of all, I remember how I felt after mile 30.

Why mile 30?

Well at about mile 25 on the Shore Parkway Bike Path, right around Gerritsen Beach (at least I think that's Gerritsen Beach - you know, where it's all twisty-turny and there's sand all over the path and there's a little port-a-potty stop?)
Well, right there as I slowed to take a 'natural break', I got broadsided by another cyclist.
Now I've never been in an accident with another cyclist.
I've been doored by cars and I've hit things and fallen, mostly I slow speed topple over while trying to do dumb things, but I've never actually been in a high speed crash.
I wish I could describe what happened, but I can't. One minute I was on my bike and the next, I was all the way across the road on my back. I got hit so hard, I was thrown clear of my bike and didn't even get a scrape.
I checked myself, I checked my bike, I checked the guy (he said he was fine, although I think he knocked the wind out by slamming his stem into his own sternum) I got back on my bike and continued down the path.
Five miles later the adrenaline high wore off and I've never felt worse in my life.
Everything hurt, every mile was agony. I was thirsty no matter how much I drank, and hungry no matter how much I ate, I was tired no matter how slow I went, and I was depressed no matter how beautiful the day was.

I struggled on through to Queens. Gamely did my loop around the Velodrome.
And then at the absolute stinkiest part of the bike path along Flushing Bay - you know which part I'm talking about...

This happened.



I managed to get my tire fixed, rode 20 feet and - don't ask how, it's too embarrassing - broke the tip off the brand new tire nozzle.

A couple of Marshalls stopped to help me and give me a new tube, and I stumbled unhappily into Astoria Park.

Then the person who was supposed to be watching my dog called to tell me they were sick and couldn't get to my house and I just gave up.

I was out of shape, out of spare tires, and out of gas.

I crawled back to the park, picked up my tee shirt and cookie and headed home.

When I finally stripped out of my riding gear, I found a bruise the width of a tire perfectly imprinted on my right upper thigh.

I count myself lucky it wasn't worse. I hope that guy is ok. And I owe that Marshall a drink.

The 2008 NYC Century is in 10 hours?

I don't know about this...

This is Broadway. I'm supposed to be riding down this at 6 am tomorrow morning, but hurricane Hanna seems to have something to say about that.

I'll see what it's like at 4am.
I know the Century goes rain or shine...
But I don't.

Why I Love Bicycling in NYC

Cool Ass companies that invite you to bike to work -

And give you a place to park.