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.

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?

Thanks for Stealing my Bike

Wanted:

Super Crappy Bike to replace the Super Crappy Bike that was stolen from me last night.

Would $10 cover whatever costs you incurred clipping my lock?

It certainly won't cover the cost of replacing that lock.

Let's make a deal. Once a month why don't you just come by where I work, I'll give you twenty bucks and you leave me my bicycle so that I can get home.

Sunday Riders

I haven't been on my bike since the 5-boro due to an injury, so even though the weather looked a little questionable, I hauled my out-of-shape self onto my bike and headed out for a spin.
Like any good urbanite, I try to avoid certain key, congested areas when I travel from place to place. These are dependent on weather, season, day of the week, time of day, and like a London Cabbie, 'the knowledge' is a source of pride amongst those of us who make this city our home.
So today, I decided to bike to Harlem for brunch with a friend - and promptly regretted it.
Why? Well, my schedule has been a bit bizarre recently so I forgot one very important fact.

Today was Sunday.

And Sundays are for Sunday Riders.

Sunday Riders in NYC fall into three distinct categories:

1. The Date or Family outing.
Riding hybrids or cruisers, these cyclists will do anything to avoid riding in traffic including riding on sidewalks and going the wrong way in bike lanes. They ALWAYS ride abreast, never in line and are impossible to pass.

2. The Tourist.
Riding rental bikes, these daring adrenaline junkies are found only on the West Side Bike Path doing no more than 8 mph and can most often be seen stopped in clumps checking to make sure that they aren't lost. (Hint - It's a bike path, not a bike maze, it goes in a straight line.)

3. The Weekend Warrior.
These lycra bedecked athletes are out in force once the weather warms up, time trialling up the Hudson with their heart rate monitors and handlebar mounted GPS.
I don't actually have a problem with most of these guys. Hey, we all gotta pay our bills, and for most of us, that means no play time during the week.
The ones I have a problem with are the headphone wearers.
I get that music makes a work out easier. It's motivating. But given the crowds on the path on the weekend, cyclists wearing headphones make me homicidal.
We've already got the power walkers, joggers, and roller bladers wearing headphones. As cyclists, you've got to have experienced the insanity of trying to pass someone on a crowded path who's meandering all over the place and can't hear you behind them. Add deaf cyclists doing anywhere from 10 to 20 mph into the mix, and it's just hair raising.

Now, I'm not advocating something like this:



It's called a "CyFi" and quite frankly, I hope if you get one of these, you ride where I don't. But at least you might hear me when I tell you that I'm going to pass.

Spring is Here and it's Totally Craptastic

Beautiful, beautiful day.
Some of you may remember the issue with my new job - no bikes allowed in the building.
(See my post "Well That Sucks")
Well, I finally managed to get off my butt, collect about 40 pounds of locks, put air in the tires of my commuter bike, and get moving.
And I can honestly say, I've never seen a worse route in my life.
I now work in midtown, and there is really no way to get there that isn't fantabulously craptastic.
I mean, it's horrible.
Forget about the fear and agita of having to chain my bike up to the scaffolding outside the building. Forget about carrying four different locks that, I kid you not, weigh more than my steel frame road bike. No matter which side of Manhattan I come up, I've got to cross the worst, exhaust filled, speeding bus, potholed, crazy tourist filled streets I've ever seen - and I LIKE biking in NYC.
And the comments. My God.
Allow me to digress for more than a moment.
I love spring in NYC. Some of the most pleasurable weather is in spring and fall. The air is warm, but crisp and clear feeling. The light is beautiful, and everyone is happy. People start stripping off clothing left and right, which isn't always a good idea, but is, at times breathtaking. (There are a lot of very beautiful people here, and there is nothing like that first spring day when they start soaking up the sun and showing off the skin.)
For some reason, most bicyclists do not fall into this category of super-hotness. Could be how many fat asses there are out there. Could be that even if they aren't fat they jam those selfsame asses into unspeakable lycra outfits that you wouldn't make a beer cosy out of.
Ow! My eyes! I've gone blind!
Digression number two:
The other day, someone I haven't spoken with in many, many years found me via the internet. I was telling a friend about our little email exchange, and he said to me, 'Oh, he's just trying to date you.' - Like that's a bad thing. I don't think he meant it like that, but maybe he did. What, I can't go on a date? The guy was totally friendly, polite and nice.
Which brings me to my final craptacular point.
By what right do you - and you know who you are - get to say shit like that to me? Because I'm female and I'm on a bike? I am not wearing Lycra (and even if I was what business is it of yours) I am not shoving my body parts at you, I'm not even showing any skin between my bike gloves, my long sleeve shirt and my jeans.
To the nice guy in the van in Williamsburg who wished me a good day... 'Thank You' - was he trying to date me? I don't know. But he was polite and friendly and he made my day better.
To the (numerous) schmucks in Manhattan near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel... 'Fuck You' and I hope someone says that to your Mother, your Sister, or your Daughter - then come talk to me.
Sometimes I think the world just wants me to be a hater - and I don't want to be a hater.

Doored

...or why I hate riding on Manhattan's East Side.
I must be eligible for some sort of prize as of today. I think it would be called "most failed attempts at riding the periphery of Manhattan by one individual". I just can't make it work, and I don't know why.
Well, I sort of know why...
I feel like I know where I'm going when I'm in Manhattan, so if I miss a turn or two, I'm never that worried. "I'll just catch the next entrance", I say to myself. Only, I'm wrong.
Whenever I try to ride completely around Manhattan, I screw it up.
According to the Official NYC Bike Map, there is a (basically) unbroken line that goes around the island. This is a lie.
The West side of the island is quite lovely to ride on until you hit (Pet Peeve Alert), the parking lot of Fairway Supermarket at 125th street. After a little deadly intersection detour, it becomes one of my favorite stretches of bike path in the five boroughs. It passes through Riverbank State Park and then Ft. Washington Park (with a little detour to the Little Red Lighthouse), up along the Hudson into Inwood and the Cloisters.
It was a lovely day for a ride. Sunny, but cool, a little too windy for comfort - I almost got blown over a couple of times, but that's always the downside of riding near the water.
I got to portage my bike on the Henry Hudson Drive to get around some construction. I was impressed to see the workers set up on either end to help bicyclists heft themselves and their bikes over the barriers and across the highway - it was a happy bicycling high point of the day.
The low points followed in quick succession from there.
I followed the greenway signs across Dyckman to the Harlem River Drive Bike Path which quickly disintegrated into a broken glass covered on and off road excursion. Somewhere near Jumel Terrace, I picked up St. Nicholas Avenue and instead of turning left, I went straight.
This is not a disaster. Manhattan is very narrow, so when I figured it out, I turned. My best guess is that this is where I screwed up. Like little red riding hood, I strayed from the path.
My original plan was to go over the Triboro bridge into Queens and then ride down to Brooklyn, but somehow, at 125th street it all went wrong.
125th street is the bane of my bicycling existence. On the west side, it's where my happy, traffic - less riding ends. On the east side, it's where I ALWAYS get lost. Crossing on it is like attaching your mouth to the exhaust pipe of a bus.
The last time I tried it going north, I ended up in a sanitation storage yard where they store sand in enormous piles. And I don't mean that I left the bike path - the bike path ends in the giant pile of sand. The time before that, I ended up accidentally going over the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx. This time, I was sure my plan would work.
I rode to the entrance of the pedestrian walkway of the Triboro and stopped short. It was gated shut with a sign that read, "Closed. Please use the walkway on the North Side." I crossed 125th street again (and the 6 lanes of on ramp, off ramp bridge traffic). The pedestrian walkway was gated shut with a sign that read, "Closed. Please use the walkway on the South side." Umm, WTF?
Is the Triboro closed to Bicycle traffic right now? Or is it my 125th street juju that makes it impossible for me to figure this out?
I sighed heavily and set off along the East Side of Manhattan.

Now some parts of the path are quite nice. And the sections in the North are fairly empty of pedestrian and bike traffic. But trust me, it may look like a path on the map, but it's not.
First of all, it's made of hexagonal concrete tiles, very bumpy on road tires. Second, though parts of it are quite beautiful, they end abruptly in flights of stairs that you have to carry your bike up or down. Third, when heading South, the section from 55th street through 34th street runs on 2nd Avenue. Not next to 2nd Avenue, not marked with a bike lane, just follow the NYC greenway signs straight to the bus lane.
So I was cranky and possibly not concentrating as hard as I should as I swung off onto Sutton Place and promptly got doored by the passenger side door of a car parked at the edge of the bike lane. I did a nice little slide on my elbow between the idling car and the moving traffic, leaving a bit of myself embedded in the road, but my bike seems ok and the rest of me is just slightly more bloody and banged up than normal.
I hate riding on the East Side of Manhattan.

Thanks for the door.
What do you do when you get doored?