This past Sunday saw the running of the [intern: find out how many]th Five Boro Bike Tour, brought to you by TD, the bank that’s just initials:
Sure, other banks are also just initials, but are they just two initials?
Jeez, talk about alphabet soup!
As always, the excitement started with the registration packet pickup in Midtown, where I chose to forego any arguments this time around and simply locked my bike up outside:
I didn’t know if potential thieves would be encouraged or deterred by the sign with a stein-hoisting German woman and a giant red arrow pointing directly at my bicycle:
Fortunately the packet pickup was swift and smooth, and upon my return I found my bicycle exactly as I had left it–though had I encountered a nefarious character in lederhosen attempting to pilfer the bicycle I would have run down to Reichenbach Hall, ordered a stein of beer, swiftly swallowed the contents, and then smashed the randy Teutonic thief over the head with it.
While the weather was warm and summery, Sunday’s forecast called for rain, and since my wife would be joining me for the ride this year, on Saturday I set about properly be-fendering her bicycle:
This is something I probably should have done long ago, but since my wife is a normal person she generally doesn’t ride her bicycle when the weather is foul, and since her husband is a lazy person he never bothered to put fenders on it. Installing full-coverage fenders is one of those things that seems like it should take like twenty minutes but ends up taking at least two hours, and at various points in the process I questioned the wisdom of finally getting around to it the day before the ride. However, as I cut the excess stay length with a Dremel and repeatedly burned my fingers on hot metal in the process I told myself it would all be worth it for one of two reasons: A) It would rain and we’d be glad to have them; or B) The Weather Gods would mock me by not sending us any rain at all.
On the morning of the big day, we rolled our Rivendae onto a downtown subway train and joined [intern: how many people?] other riders on 40 miles of New York City roadways liberated from cars and lined by annoyed pedestrians who JUST WANT TO CROSS THE GODDAMN STREET ALREADY:
If you’re ridden the Five Boro Bike Tour or read about it on these virtual “pages” you know all about the wide open highways…
And the exuberance in the tunnels that starts sounding eerily apocalyptic after awhile…
And the bunching on the bridge ascents that inevitably results in rear-end collisions…
And of course the many forms of helmet-mounted self-expression, which at times can be rather unsettling:
If you’re lucky, you might even spot a pennyfarthing:
This one turned out to belong to a longtime reader, and in retrospect he was probably sitting right there while I took the photo, only I didn’t make the connection since he wasn’t wearing pennyfarthing-specific attire–unlike the other pennyfarthing rider on the ride:
I like to think that at some point they encountered each other and made polite conversation while silently judging the size of each others’ wheels.
It’s always exciting to spot a pennyfarthing, though it’s always a relief to return to the comfort and convenience of your safety bicycle:
Arguably the highlight of the ride is the final segment along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and over the Verazzano Verrazano big bridge to Staten Island, and for us that’s exactly when it started to rain:
Contemplating this anti-Holy Trinity billboard…
…I wondered if perhaps my flirtations with a three-speed singlespeed had angered the Lord:
Nevertheless, I felt extraordinarily smug for having installed those fenders:
Yea, as it is written: “Woe unto the fenderless, for they shall be clad in garbage bags…”
That notwithstanding, the guy on the skateboard was taking it all in stride:
Plus, the ride uses the lower roadway of the Verrazzano Bridge, which means you’re shielded from the rain, and by the time we got to Staten Island the rain had stopped and so overall our exposure was mercifully brief–and mitigated by those fenders, of course.
That aside, the only other inconvenience we faced was a gentleman on a vintage Schwinn who joined the ride for several miles, repeatedly and exuberantly sounding an airhorn. It was both irritating and jarring, and in fact at first we even thought an irate motorist had infiltrated the ride. At a certain point it became too much for me to bear, and so I asked him if the constant honking was indeed necessary, knowing full well what the answer would be. He replied that he’d been using this horn for 45 years in New York City and nobody has ever had a problem with it, which of course proves nothing except that people are afraid to tell other people when they’re being really annoying. Certainly on a big ride like this you’ve got to expect a certain amount of dumb noisemaking, but if you hang on until the end of this video you’ll get a sense of the sheer volume we’re talking about here:
A Bluetooth speaker is one thing, but this sounded like an impatient truck driver stuck in gridlock.
And fine, there was one other thing, which was the bananas:
The Five Boro Bike Tour always provides literal mountains of bananas, which I always appreciate as a welcome alternative to all those cloying bike-oriented bars and goos. However, for some reason this year the bananas were warm; not just sitting-out-for-a-bit warm, but almost intentionally-heated warm, and as unappealing as I find Kliff Klumps or whatever the latest energy food is, there are few things more repulsive than a borderline-hot banana. Fortunately, I was able to pivot to raisins, as there were also plenty of those on hand:
Note the austere packaging. See, raisin branding has been extremely conservative since the California Raisins Debacle of the 1980s:
Who knew the California Raisins were a giant grift perpetuated by Big Raisin?
I wonder if this is the same criminal cabal that killed the frame pump, forcing those who refuse to settle for mini pumps and CO2s to take matters into their own hands:
See?
But yes, apart from a little rain, and a little airhorn, and a lot of warm bananas, there was convenience as far as the eye can see:
And we even had a police escort on the way home, though that was probably a coincidence:
The best part was doing the ride with my wife–not just because it was a rare-ish opportunity to spend the better part of a day recreating together, but because as I say she’s a normal person, and when you’re with a normal person you really appreciate how great this ride is. Many of us may be willing to do battle with motorists and traverse all sorts of hostile terrain in order to enjoy a bike ride, but if you’re disinclined to put up with that sort of thing–you know, because you’re normal–the opportunity to pedal in a leisurely fashion for 40 miles without undue stress is exceedingly rare anywhere, let alone through the heart of New York City. Plus, even if you’re the sort of rider for whom 40 miles amounts to little more than a lunch ride, it’s hard not to be moved when you’re sitting on the Staten Island Ferry and you overhear the conversations of people for whom completing this ride is a real accomplishment. I was also one of those people myself when I first did the ride many years ago now, though I did it by myself so I had nobody with me to share in the accomplishment. Now I get to do the ride with my wife, and my son, and hopefully one of these days my other son, and the people who organize the ride even ask me to make videos for them.
It warms my heart almost as much as Bike New York warmed those bananas.
