Yesterday I decided a bike commute to Brooklyn was in order, though a pre-ride inspection revealed that the messy winter had rendered my derailleur all sticky, which I set about remedying via judicious application of WD-40 followed by some of Dumonde‘s finest:
The stiff and arthritic appendage was back to full articulation in no time.
As for this stiff and arthritic cyclist, he could have done without the Hudson Greenway detour at 125th Street, which sends you up that climb just under the Riverside Drive Viaduct:
Once downtown I left the greenway a bit earlier than usual to sample the post-congestion pricing traffic situation, and it’s now light enough to ride down the middle of 2nd Avenue and take photos during the morning rush hour:
This has imparted a feeling of somnolescence upon the streets which some have claimed is bad for business, but I doubt this is the case, since if you’re ever driven through Manhattan you know the last thing you want to do is pull over and run into the store. I’d have popped into the No Ho Juice Bar & Deli to ask how things are doing in there, but alas, I didn’t have time:
Anyway, if anything’s hurting their bottom line it’s their discriminatory anti-ho policy.
While the quiet streets are no doubt a net positive, they do bring some of the city’s more colorful eccentrics and itinerants into sharper relief, such as this gentleman who was transporting a large quantity of beer via Citi Bike:
Clutching tenaciously at the pallet of Presidente which threatened to topple from the bike’s front rack at any moment, he ranted angrily whilst executing a series of reckless maneuvers that had me absolutely convinced I was about to witness him getting killed by one of the city’s remaining cars:
It’s certainly possible he did eventually end up expiring in a pool of beer foam surrounded by hissing cans, but if so it happened after we parted ways.
As for me, I soon arrived at the Manhattan Bridge, and gently alighted upon Brooklyn like a piece of down from a molting goose’s ass wafting on a warm breeze:
Here’s the path over which I traveled:
I had business in Queens that evening, so instead heading straight home I had occasion to travel some of the Great Hipster Silk Route:
In the years since I dubbed it thus, it has only become more exuberantly gentrified, and on the raised section by the Brooklyn Navy Yards automobile traffic and the human- and e-powered wheeled miscellany people refer to as “multimodal” transportation have attained something resembling parity:
If you look closely at the photo of the Manhattan Bridge a few photos back, you’ll notice a barge under it. Eventually these vessels need to pass under drawbridges, which , when they open, afford you and your fellow riders (as well as the riders of gas-powered motor scooters who continue to infiltrate the bike lanes) ample time to reflect:
But what goes up must come down, at which point it’s “Gentlemen, start your engines:”
Though the fireman did make good use of the downtime by unwrapping and consuming an ice cream bar:
The FDNY knows how to remain cool under pressure.
As the evening wore on and it got late I opted to forego riding the rest of the way home, and instead opted to complete my journey by rail:
Sometimes it’s better to quit while you’re ahead.
