Bicycling
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Back on April 16, snow fell on New York City and deposited enough of the white stuff to leave a measurable accumulation. It was the latest day for measurable spring snowfall in Central Park. The snowfall kind of ruined my commute the next morning. The Queensboro Bridge was covered in slush, and I had to walk my bike across the bridge to safely cross the East River.
Today: deja vu!
Although I don’t take the Queensboro Bridge as often as I once did, the usually reliable Williamsburg Bridge was covered in snow, ice, and slush.
I managed to get to the top of the first incline, but after that, my wheels kept spinning in the ice. At that point, I gave up on pedaling and decided to walk across the remaining span.
I did notice quite a few intrepid cyclists ride the entire way. The Citi Bikes seemed to do the best on the slush. I suppose this is their reward for having to slowly lumber on three-inch–wide tires the rest of the year: they now get to cruise along slushy roads with relative ease. Most people with road bikes and treaded tires did well, too.
But to my surprise, I saw quite a few people on single-speeds or fixed-gears with thin, slick tires ride the entire span. There was even one guy with a kid in a bike carrier seat who rode past me. He was certainly braver than I was: he felt confident enough to carry his child on the bike while I was too scared to scratch or dent my five year–old MacBook Pro cradled in a padded sleeve inside my backpack.
As crazy as it seemed to me to ride across the entire bridge this morning, everyone apparently succeeded in getting over the bridge. There was not a pile of injured cyclist at the bottom of the bridge.
Despite some late-season rides I’ve been doing lately, perhaps, I really am just a fair-weather cyclist after all.
Update: It appears that the other vital East River crossings, including Manhattan, the Brooklyn, and the Queensboro bridges were all similarly covered in slush this morning. And if you read the comments section of this Streetsblog article, some cyclists did take some spills.
When posting a ride for the New York Cycle Club, the ride leader is supposed to rate the rides based on the riding style (A, B, or C) and cruising speed we expect to maintain. I listed Sunday’s ride to Philadelphia as a B-ride, meaning that we would ride as a tight group but wouldn’t be pace-lining, cruising at about 17 MPH on flat terrain. However, I didn’t count on there being a really strong wind out of the north. That 10-15 MPH wind was at our backs the entire day and when it would gust to about 30 MPH, it was like a divine hand pushing us closer towards Philadelphia.
Five of us started pedaling from Bound Brook, New Jersey, at around 8:30 AM. At the beginning of the ride, we got a nice start, averaging close to 17 MPH. That was due to the fact that we were riding at 17-18 MPH and that we had open road ahead of us: there was no reason to slow down or stop. We made really great time to our first stop in Hopewell, twenty-three miles from the start, and continued at an accelerated pace towards the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border. We arrived in Washington Crossing, 35 miles from the start, at about 11:30 AM, where we encountered a dress rehearsal for a reenactment of Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776.
We didn’t have time to watch the whole thing, but we did stop to take a photo with a soldier.
We grabbed lunch in Yardley and even had time to each get a small four-ounce pour at the Vault Brewing, a personal favorite of one of our riders. Afterward, we sped through Pennsylvania, taking a different route than I did in July. Instead of riding through the industrial wasteland between the Delaware River and the Northeast Corridor railroad line, we rode along Trenton Avenue between Morrisville and Bensalem. It turns out that this particular road is designated as bike route PA-E and part of the East Coast Greenway. Over the twenty or so miles west of Yardley, we cruised at around 22 MPH. One guy in our group quipped, “I didn’t realize that this was a B22 ride to Philadelphia.”
Our hustle paid off, we arrived in Old City at around 2:45 PM. It was 15 minutes before our target time, and it gave us almost two hours in town before catching the ghetto train back to New York City.
We toasted our grand effort with a few beers at 2nd Story Brewing.
When our waitress asked me if I rode to Philadelphia from New York often, at first I said, “no, not often.” But then I realized that this might be a worthwhile ride to keep doing. As long as there’s enough daylight, a swell group of riders, and beer at the end, this really is the best way to get to Philadelphia.
Earlier this year, I ticked off a ride that appears on most every New York City cyclist’s list of “Rides to Do.” It was a century ride to Philadelphia in mid-July.
As great as that ride, and the accompanying weekend with some of my greatest friends, was, my life more or less went south since then. It has been plagued by one big suck after another:
- Sarah broke up with me.
- I moved out of Long Island City. That was difficult because it’s where I lived the longest since leaving my parent’s home.
- I couch surfed for two months. Then I moved into a place on the other side of the Newtown Creek.
- A month later, I moved again. My new room doesn’t have a ceiling and has only some floor coverings. I now have to wear shoes or thick socks to walk around my own room. (But, hey, at least, I’m paying below market.)
- During most of that time, I could barely walk because I had an ingrown toenail. The new toenail only grew back a few weeks later to cause even more pain and a nasty infection. It’s gross, I know.
- The softball teams I played for this summer all lost. The Librarians and The Robots lost in the finals, and the Ball Busters did even worse, losing in the semi-finals. And likely one of the reasons the Librarians and Robots did as well as they did was because I was an emotional wreck and didn’t play in the playoffs
- The softball team I quit won its league championship. That’s great for them, but it sucks to know they were better off without me.
- I won’t be going to Greenport as much anymore. The reason I was riding towards Greenport, as often as I was, is moving to Nevada.
And let’s not even talk about “satisfactory academic progress.”
At this point, all that is keeping me going is some irrationally primal instinct to not die, a handful of great old friends (and some really nice new ones), and bicycling. The latter is why this blog has turned into an informal record of my rides. It’s the only thing I look forward to doing each weekend, and it’s the only thing that I enjoy doing all week. I’m even looking forward to riding in the rain for the first time ever.
In the spirit of revisiting a personal highlight and exorcising the demons that I might have agitated the last time I was in Philadelphia, I will be leading a ride to Philadelphia this Sunday with a small group of riders who are as obsessed with cycling as much as I am.
The ride will not be a full century as it was in July. For one thing, it’s December, and the days are short. Moreover, it’s going to be cold with a daytime temperature hovering around 40°. To make the ride a more palatable seventy-file miles, we’re going to start in Bound Brook, New Jersey, where I made my first food stop on July’s ride. Not only does that cut out the junk miles outside of Newark, it will also save all the day’s hills.
Since Philly is a lot more fun when you actually spend a bit of time there, we’ve charted a few places to go once we arrive. Current possibilities include 2nd Story Brewing in Old City, Strangelove’s near Center City, and the City Tap Room in University City. After that, we’ll head back on the ghetto train: the combination of SEPTA and NJ Transit trains back to New York, with a connection in Trenton.
And instead of being as sad as I’ve been over the last few months, going to Philly might make me angry. That has to be better, right?
Over the course of seven Thanksgivings together, Sarah and I would go to as many as three Thanksgiving Day dinners in a single day. We would eventually pare that down to one because the travel would be a bit draining, but even then, there was still a lot of food to eat. It was early in that period that I started to ride about fifty miles or so on Thanksgiving morning. A turkey trot, even one on two wheels, is one of the best ideas ever! I did one last year, and despite the temperature being well below freezing, we all pushed on and burned a couple of thousand calories in anticipation of all the food we would be eating.
This year, I volunteered to co-lead a ride to Piermont on Thanksgiving morning (membership required to view listing) because the usual leader is out of town. But this Thanksgiving eve, we had a Nor’easter pass through the region that threatened to blanket the area with freezing rain and snow, making the prospects of riding to Piermont seem grim.
Despite all the hoopla over the storm, the snow didn’t actually materialize. But my co-leader and I were concerned that the rain and freezing temperatures throughout Thursday would create icy conditions between the city and Piermont.
We were not interested in riding in such nonsense. As I said to him, I’d rather be called a chicken (for being scared of possibly non-existent icy roads) than a turkey (for slipping and sliding all the way to Piermont and back).
We postponed the ride to Friday.
Happy thanksgiving, everyone!
Yesterday, I learned the answer to one of life’s burning questions.
I learned that it is about 92 miles from Greenpoint, Brooklyn to New Haven, Connecticut.
I also learned that the Two Roads Brewery in Stratford, Connecticut is 70 miles from Greenpoint.
The last long ride I did last year was one of my favorites. It was a long but flat run from the Bronx to New Haven, Connecticut, along what one day could be the East Coast Greenway. For what the ride lacks in climbing difficulty and sweeping vistas from up high, it makes up for it in distance. Without too much effort, you can ride almost 80 miles, or over 90 if you start in Manhattan, and still finish before it’s dark, which at this time of year happens well before 5:00 PM.
I was thrilled to have the chance to ride it again as it could very well be the last long ride I do before March. I even started in Greenpoint all the way to the start in the Bronx.
This year, I was deputized as a co-leader of ride and leader the “fast” group, riding at about an 18-MPH pace. As an official co-leader of the ride, I, in turn, deputized another rider as a co-co-leader of the fast group. Knowing that she is a beer aficionado, I asked her if she wouldn’t mind stopping by the Two Roads Brewing Company’s tap room in Stratford. Our route passed right in front of the brewery about 55 miles from the ride’s start in Pelham, and she agreed that we could not afford to miss an opportunity to fill our growlito for the train ride back to New York City.
After stopping in at the brewery, our small, “fast” group of four riders became even smaller. Our fearless co-leader had to return to the city for an important evening engagement, and another rider was taking it easy as he was returning from an injury earlier in the season. That left just me and one other rider to finish the route at our accelerated pace. The “slow” group, consisted of five riders, and rode at a more leisurely pace.
In all, I rode 92.8 miles, finishing in New Haven at about 4:20 PM. For as fast as we were going, the “slow” group must have finished no more than ten minutes behind us because they caught the 4:45 train back to New York. One of things that frustrates me about club rides is after traveling for many miles, we seemingly always arrive at our destination only to take to take a train right back to New York. It’s safe to assume that as cyclists, we’re an intrepid group and wouldn’t mind exploring a little.
My fellow rider agreed that we should at least grab some food and a beer before boarding the train in New Haven to New York City. Upon the recommendation of a staffer at Two Roads, we went to BAR on Crown Street, a huge restaurant-bar that welcomed us with a pint, a pizza, and a place to stash our bikes inside.
It made for a more interesting destination than the New Haven train station.
I convinced three guys to overshoot Riverhead and go to as far as Greenport.
Yesterday was my much-anticipated North Shore Ride to Riverhead. Except we didn’t go to Riverhead. We overshot it by about 20 miles and rode all the way to Greenport. Again.
I arrived at Woodside to catch the 8:03 train to Huntington and met Harry, one of my fellow riders. As he and I spoke about the ride and the modifications I made, he said something like, “too bad we couldn’t go to Greenport.” I knew that we had a small group of four guys (including me) for this ride, and I knew one of them well. I said that if everyone was game, I was fine with going to Greenport and taking the late, 6:11 PM train back.
On the Huntington train, we met up with the other two riders, Brian and Joe. Harry and I asked them if they would mind riding an extra seven miles to go to Greenport, instead of Riverhead. Without hesitating, they both agreed.
After arriving in Huntington and exchanging Westhampton-New York train tickets for Greenport-New York tickets, we got on our bikes and, at around 9:30 AM, pedaled east toward Greenport.
Sunday was by far the warmest day of the weekend, with highs around 55° and, for the first time this year, the wind was coming from the west not the east or northeast. That’s right, I finally rode on Long Island without the wind in my face for the entire day.
A fellow club member, who I referred to as a club elder because I’ve seen his name on rides for years, emailed me earlier in the week to suggest taking a few back roads to avoid NY-25A and NY-25. I adopted about half of his suggestions, which added about 400 feet of climbing, and the modified route was absolutely worth the extra effort. The roads had rolling hills, which I personally love to ride, and were for the most part bucolic, tree-lined roads that wound around Long Island Sound. I didn’t take many photos because we were hustling up and down those rollers at a pleasant but accelerated pace.
Ducks on a Pond.
Because of the tail wind and the rolling hills, we progressed along our route at a very quick pace. For most of the ride, we averaged around 14 MPH and, as usually happens on a Long Island ride, we increased that average as continued further east. Because I was leading the ride, I purposefully kept a slower-than-usual pace, but I still finished with a 15 MPH pace.
We stopped for lunch at a market in Miller Place and, because I promised everyone pie, we stopped at Briermere Farms in Riverhead for a blueberry crisp pie that we all split.
Four guys. One Pie.
We left Riverhead at around 2:30 and continued for the final twenty miles along Sound Avenue and then on to Main Road in Mattituck. It’s hard to believe that even with a quick bathroom break at a winery in Peconic, we still rode the last 20 miles in about 75 minutes. We arrived by 3:45.
Because we arrived so early, we had over two hours to spend in Greenport. We had our customary burger-and-beer post-ride meal. The other three guys watched football. And then we went to the Greenport Harbor Brewery for a couple of pints and bought a growler for the train ride home. I even had time to greet a friend.
Speaking of Ducks… Black Duck Porter from Greenport Harbor Brewing.
One of the things I like about the New York Cycle Club is its structure. But it’s great when you gather a group that’s up for some spontaneous (and extra) riding. It makes for an unforgettable day.
This Sunday, after making some modifications to my initial route, I will be leading a North Shore Ride to Riverhead for the New York Cycle Club (membership required to access listing). Much like September’s North Fork ride to Orient, this ride begins at the Long Island Railroad station in Huntington and continues to Port Jefferson, where we will climb Belle Terre, and then to Riverhead. Although we may have a chance to get some pie in Riverhead, we will certainly stop to enjoy a pint at the Crooked Ladder Brewing Company before continuing for another seven miles to Westhampton, where we will catch the train back to New York City. If we are running behind or are feeling extra festive, we can always catch the 6:40 train from Riverhead to New York, with a connection in Ronkonkoma.
Although I would rather have gone from Huntington all the way to Greenport, a town which I am beginning to like quite a bit, I was concerned about the train’s capacity to hold eight bikes. I didn’t want to have anyone stranded 110 miles from New York City, or, worse even, have to make them take the jitney back.
This, by the way, is not the last ride I plan to do along the Long Island Sound. Next week, I am co-leading the New Haven ride I did last November with the club.
On that ride, we will be keeping the sound on our right.
Remember how I planned to ride from the Bronx to Beacon on Halloween Friday?
Those plans changed on Thursday after I received an email from the NYCC club president. I had proposed a North Fork ride from Huntington to Orient Point, similar to the ride I did in September instead of the NYC Century, but he said that taking the train from Greenport to Ronkonkoma might pose a challenge for a club ride. Indeed, that train from Greenport is a very small one, with only three cars, I think, and last time, we had to cram our bikes into a small area. If more than six riders were to come on my proposed club ride, we would be left scrambling for space and some of us might even be stranded.
He proposed that I lead a fifty-mile loop from Ronkonkoma, which would rely on a train with more regular service and with more capacity for bicycles. He sent me a few cue sheets, and I reviewed them during a break on Thursday. He also suggested, in the interest of adding more miles, finishing in Babylon, which also has more train service. Since I was pressed for time on Thursday, I misread his suggestion and that I should ride from Babylon to Greenport. In my head, that seemed like an equivalent ride to Huntington to Greenport so I agreed to lead that one.
So, instead of riding to Beacon, I decided to scout the ride from Babylon to Greenport. In passing, I asked if the club president wanted to join. He did, and the next morning, we connected on a Babylon-bound train in Jamaica for a Halloween ride towards Ronkonkoma and Riverhead.
This week was peak foliage on Long Island, and the leaves were in their autumnal greatness.
And there were haunted houses ready for Halloween.
And a decommissioned but well-preserved gas station in Yaphank.
After I posed for this photo, someone drove right up to the pumps, expecting to fuel up, until he realized that it was out of service and drove on in search of gasoline elsewhere.
In Yaphank, our two-man riding group split up. He headed back to Ronkonkoma and I continued east towards Riverhead and then to Greenport.
There were more leaves in their full glory.
Further east, there were even more signs of Halloween, such as this corn maze in Cutchogue.
For whatever reason, every ride I did on Long Island this year was with a headwind. This one was no different, and I had the wind in my face for the entire seventy miles. A few miles after Riverhead, I was getting cold and tired. I had planned to scout a hillier route along the Long Island Sound, but the headwind made reconsider. Instead, I followed NY-25 the whole way from Riverhead.
When I saw the carousel in Greenport, one that I had last seen with my mom in August, my exhausting journey on two wheels was finished.
It’s rare when Halloween falls on a weekend evening, such as it does this year. But for the most part, we usually observe it on the Friday or Saturday before October 31. In recent years, that has produced some mixed results.
Halloween 2011
Three years ago, on Friday, October 28, Halloween sucked because we all learned that my mother had breast cancer for the second time. Feeling helpless a continent away, Sarah took me to a Halloween movie at Loews Jersey and a then a party in Long Island City. It helped take my mind off my mother for a little while.
Aside from the bad news in my family, the festivities for the rest of the weekend were muted because the city was hit with snowfall on Saturday, October 29. It was, by some accounts, the earliest New York City had seen snow since the Civil War.
Halloween 2012
Two years ago, with my mom’s cancer treatment behind us, we were ready to celebrate on Saturday, October 27. Sarah and I joined a few friends and went to that same Halloween party in Long Island City. I found a half-assed pepper costume, and she dressed up as a pineapple.
We had a blast! One of the nice things about the night of Halloween party was the warmth, but that warmth would soon subside as we were hit by Superstorm Sandy a day later.
As I’ve said before, the storm was big enough to cancel Halloween in New York City. No one was in the mood to do celebrate.
Halloween 2013
Last year, the parties happened on the day after Halloween, but we didn’t go to any. Sarah had just been injured in a bike accident a few days earlier, and she wasn’t in the mood to be festive. Neither was I. Instead, we stayed home and got take-out or something.
I also had to teach class on October 31. Since the class was on Experimental Film, I sported an “Andy Warhol” wig to class.
That’s about as far as the festivities went.
Halloween 2014
Because of this mixed track record, I couldn’t be less enthusiastic about Halloween this year. A great deal of this lackluster enthusiasm is because of Sarah. Despite how good or bad our Halloween experiences were, we were always together, and this year we won’t be.1
This Friday is not only Halloween, but it is also the only day of the weekend where the temperature will be above 50°. It is also the second-to-last day of Daylight Savings Time. So, much like I did last year, I’m going to ride up through Westchester and Putnam counties for the last chance I will have to do that after 4:00 PM until spring. It will also give me the chance to really see the leaves.
Although the New York State Fall Foliage Report says that they are just past peak at this point, that’s just how I like it.
The ride will start in Woodlawn, Bronx around 8:00 AM. I plan to head to Connecticut for a few miles and then to Bedford, New York. From there I will continue north to Croton Falls then to Carmel. At that point, I will decide whether I will head northeast for about five miles to Brewster to catch the train back to New York or to continue northwest for another twenty miles towards Beacon.
And if when I get back there’s a worthwhile Halloween party, I’ll be costumed as a very tired cyclist.
A week ago, I signed up for a bike ride with the cycle club. It was the first official club ride I had done since the ride to the Peekskill Brewery for the Pig Roast back in late June. That ride was on the second day of summer, but last week’s ride was most certainly a fall ride. Not only had the temperature dropped almost 20 degrees from the day before, bringing a distinct chill to the air, but it’s also leaf peeping season.
The ride started and ended in Trenton, New Jersey. From there we went crossed the Delaware and headed north along the west bank of the Delaware to tour some covered bridges before finishing at a brew-pub in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Our first stop was in Washington Crossing, about ten miles from Trenton. It was a familiar sight because I had been there in July as part of my ride to Philadelphia.
It was a bit after leaving Washington Crossing that I began to feel as if my eyesight was a little off. I couldn’t figure out why, either. It felt as if my eyeglasses were crooked or something. I also noticed that my hands were really warm and itchy. At that point, I took off my long-fingered bicycling gloves, but then I got really cold so I put them back on. The itchiness returned, and I remembered that last summer, Bike Snob NYC broke out in mysterious case of hives as he rode on Long Island. I wondered whether I was having a similar allergic reaction. When we arrived in New Hope, about twenty miles into our ride, I looked in the mirror and noticed that my eyes were swollen.
I was indeed having an allergic reaction. Finding the cause was the least of my concern at the time. I needed to stop the swelling. We stopped at a general store, and I bought a pack of antihistamines. I was so worried about the swelling that I doubled up and took four tablets and continued the ride in search of covered bridges.
We found one, which was as quaint as you would expect.
And then as we approached the second, we found that it was missing. The bridge was, as they say, out.
That threw off our whole ride because we were to ride over that bridge to the other side. We considered detouring but found that it would add about seven miles to our ride. We were already collectively discouraged because we had lost two of our riders earlier in the day, and I was still swelling up like a balloon. We felt that our best bet was to find the most direct route back to the main road, PA-43, and continue towards our lunch stop.
Along the way, we saw some very pretty signs of fall, such as the canal that runs parallel to the Delaware River outside of New Hope.
There was also this majestic tree that caught my eye.
And, in observance of Halloween, someone put some “witches” in the field. Or at least I hope that someone did that.
But my favorite colors of the day were these beers from the Vault Brewing Company in Yardley, as that meant that our ride was essentially over and I could stop freaking out about my allergies.
As far as allergies go, I’m a total rookie. I have never been allergic to anything in my life so I didn’t know how to handle an allergic reaction. Apparently, taking four antihistamine capsules was kind of a bad idea because one pill can make most people drowsy. Four should have rendered me unconscious. And then I had that flight of four beers.
Needless to say, there were no more photos for the day. After coasting for five miles from Yardley to Trenton, I boarded a New York-bound train and didn’t wake up until we arrived at Penn Station, an hour and a half later. I rode home after that and proceeded to sleep for the next eleven hours.
A week later, I still never figured out what caused the allergies. My therapist, which I know is the wrong kind of doctor, suggested that I likely inhaled some exotic pollen on the ride and that I just reacted to it. That’s the best explanation because I am not sure how I am going to live if I am allergic to bicycling. And that seems more plausible than being allergic to the bagel with cream cheese and lox I ate that morning (or the cheeseburger I ate the night before).
I’d much rather just be allergic to Pennsylvania.
