For the sixth time since 2008, I will be riding a bike to Montauk. The ride is this Saturday and like I did last year, I’ll be riding the 150-mile route from New York City. The official route begins at Penn Station in Manhattan, but if I am able to check in my bag the day before, I’m going to cheat a little and start pedaling from home in Long Island City. In all, that should save me only about three miles of riding but a whopping forty-five minutes that I can spend sleeping. My plan is to hit the road at 5:00 AM and arrive in Montauk by 5:00 PM.
The weather looks to be a bit cooler than it was for last year’s ride. The forecast calls for a high of about 60° out east with a chance of light drizzle developing throughout the day. As I look at Forecast.io for New York, Babylon, Westhampton, and Montauk, it looks like I’ll be pedaling ahead of any rain all day. (Maybe that’ll translate to tailwind, too.) Because it’s going to be cool, I’ll be wearing a long-sleeve wool jersey, which should keep me warm (but not too warm) and dry from sweat and drizzle. It’ll also save me the trouble of getting too much sun.
Having done this a few times, there’s not many unknowns on this ride. I know the route well, especially since I’ve marked the parts of the route more than a few times. I know where the route is challenging, such as the high-traffic area in Amityville where we cross the Sunrise Highway and the miles-long hilly section right before we reach Montauk. And I know the milestones that help break up a long ride into manageable sections.
The only thing I might do different from years past is go to Tully’s Lobster in Hampton Bays. I went there in September with my mom and her half-brother, who lives in Riverhead, Long Island.
Since the food supply begins to dwindle after Westhampton, I plan to recharge with a lobster roll after the seven-mile slog on Dune Road and climbing up the Ponquogue Bridge. Should I call ahead?
If you want to follow my progress, I’ll be posting updates to my Twitter feed with the hashtags #ridetomontauk and #werideforpie. I’ve even made a few IFTTT recipes to automatically post when I get to the five rest stops with 125, 108, 87, 59, and 30 miles left to go, and when I arrive at Camp Hero State Park in Montauk.
Although I bike to work just about every day that it’s not raining (or snowing) and the forecasted high is around 40° Fahrenheit, I tried to get in the spirit of “Bring Your Bicycle to Work” Week. My current rides to work are a little less intense than usual because my semester at Fordham has ended, and I’m now only commuting to two jobs, instead of three…or four, as I did in the fall. If you’re biking to work this week, I hope you’re having a better experience than me.
Monday
I rode to NYU just fine and without incident. It was a gorgeous day, the morning temperature was already around 60° when I hit the road. I even arrived at work with a little sweat on my back, which is the first time that had happened since August.
On Sunday morning, I woke up with a sore throat, which led me to call of my plans to ride to Cold Spring. By Monday afternoon, it was pretty clear that I was coming down with a cold, but I was determined to ride to my next job, at Queens College, twelve miles away, through some of the least bike-friendly parts of New York City. I’ve done it before, most recently on an unseasonably balmy day in December, and I was lucky to be alive at the end of it. But that was five months ago, and I was ready for the challenge anew.
I arrived there fine. No driver tried to kill me, I didn’t get lost, and because it there was plenty of daylight, I was able to see and avoid every pothole—and there were many—on Grand Street/Avenue, a third-world, potholed artery between Williamsburg and Rego Park. By 6:30, I was ready to start my last Media Technologies lecture of the semester.
Very little invigorates me like lecturing. I might put insomniac undergraduates to sleep, but I am fired up because I get to hear myself talk for three hours. After building up all that energy, I was ready to ride home, nine miles, from Queens College to Long Island City. I strapped on my new lights and was ready to head out.
I didn’t get very far. I was cruising downhill about a mile from campus when I hit a pothole. Thankfully, I was riding in the drops so when the bike jolted back up out of the pothole, my hands continued to grip the handlebars, allowing me to maintain control of the bike. However, it did a number on my rear wheel, ripping a hole in the tube. By the time my tire went flat, I was already up the hill and was only about a mile from the nearest subway station.
My first day of Bike to Work Week ended with a punctured tube.
All things considered, it was the best of all possible outcomes: I didn’t fall off the bike, my wheel didn’t bend, my tire was intact, and it was the rear wheel that took the brunt of the force, not my front. If it were the front wheel, I would have ended up on the pavement for sure. But still, my first day observing Bike to Work Week ended with a trip home on the E train.
Tuesday
The first thing I did in the morning was replace my damaged tube. Since I was removing the rear wheel, I cleaned out the drivetrain, which was long overdue. A half hour later, my hands were covered in grease and grime, but my chainring, freewheel, and chain were clean and shiny.
After putting everything back together, I began to inflate my tire. But at around 80 psi, my floor pump stopped pumping. I took it apart and I found that the rubber o-ring inside my pump, which is what pressurizes the air to inflate your tires, had ripped. I would need a new o-ring to rebuild the pump, which you can buy online from Specialized for about $5 (plus a usurious $8 shipping-and-handling charge). That still beats shelling out $50 for a new pump.
Apparently, you’re supposed to lube this once a year. I never did so in ten years of owning this pump. (Also, the linoleum in our kitchen is cracking.)
My plan was to head to the local bike shop to use their pump to get my tires to 110 psi. I strapped on my backpack, shoved my water bottle into my bottle cage, strapped my pant cuffs, and then headed out the door.
Notice that I forgot something. It wasn’t my keys, my wallet, or my phone.
By the time I got to Manhattan, I realized that I didn’t bring my lock. Thankfully, my coworker let me sneak my bike inside the building and stash it in a storage closet. Like the flat tire from the day before, it wasn’t devastating, but for a seasoned bike commuter, it was a rookie mistake.
Wednesday
That cold I was coming down with on Sunday and Monday has turned “full-blown” today. Although it’s a lovely day today, I am pretty much housebound today.
It’s also a work-from-home day.
Looking forward, here’s what I am expecting for Bike To Work Week.
Thursday
According to the forecast on Monday it was supposed to rain all day Thursday. That has been downgraded to breezy conditions. I’ll take that and ride to and from NYU.
Friday
Friday is National Bike to Work Day. A local bike and pedestrian advocacy group, Transportation Alternatives, stages fueling stations at the East River crossings. I’m volunteering at the Long Island City approach of the Queensborough–59th Street–Ed Koch Bridge, between 6:45 and 8:45 AM. If you stop by, I’ll hand you an extra Kind bar.
There’s also an after-work party for intrepid bike commuters to share their horror stories and to decide that they’re…
never doing this again, or
saying, “screw the MTA, I’m never not riding to work…until it gets above 80°…then to hell with summer, I’m not riding until fall…until it gets below 50°…then screw winter…”
I’m still not sure which camp is mine.
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After a brutal winter and before a sultry summer starts, it’s a perfect time to get out on a bike. Plus it’s National Bike Month, and in New York City, there are ton of events, such as:
Glen’s Ride to Montauk, open only to those who registered early or don’t mind doing a 30-miler from East Hampton to Montauk or a 70-mile loop from Montauk to Montauk, on May 31.
And these are the ones I know off the top-of-my-head. Trust me, there’s much more.
I’ll be volunteering for Bike to Work Day at the bike path at the Queensborough Bridge in the morning, handing out coffee and snacks to intrepid bike riders, many of whom are riding to work for the first time.
With so much going on, it’s no wonder that even automobile drivers want to get in on the action and ride too.
If only these drivers would get out of their cars before driving on the Queensborough Bridge’s bike path…
By the way, if you think this is absolutely crazy and never happens, then you haven’t ridden across the Queensborough Bridge bike and pedestrian path very many times. I’ve seen it at least three times in my six years living in Queens. One time, I saw two cars appear to get lost and end up in the bike and pedestrian path. They retreated once they got stuck around the hairpin turn at the bottom of the Manhattan approach and a bunch of people yelled at them, guiding them to the automobile lane. Another time, a sedan sped up the Manhattan side of the bridge. I was riding along in front of him, huffing and puffing from climbing that ramp on a single-speed, and then I head a loud throttling engine accompanied by horn honking warning me to get out of the way. Instinctually, I moved to the right to avoid getting hit. I tried to chase the car to get a picture, but the driver was too fast.
Sign up for one of my favorite organized bike rides, Glen’s annual Ride to Montauk. This is the ride that is famous for its pie at the Water Mill rest stop.
Admittedly, this is not a cheap ride. Registration starts around $150, but it is very well organized, and it’s one of the few rides that usually doesn’t run out of food. And they also don’t run out of beer!
As I’ve done in the past, I’ll be helping with marking the route in exchange for a free registration, and as I did last year, I’ll be aiming to ride the entire 150-mile course, from one end of Long Island to the other.
I’ve been complaining about the cold since Thanksgiving Day, when I took a Turkey Day bike ride to Piermont to turbocharge my metabolism. (It didn’t work, by the way.) That was a long time ago, which means that this has been the longest winter ever.
Since I started bike riding again in March, we’ve had some respite from the cold with some days warming up to 50°, 60°, and even 70°. This past weekend was no exception as it was almost hot outside. However, any hint of warm weather gave way to a cold snap that dropped rain, ice, and then snow on us Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning, there was a thin but visible layer of snow on parked cars. Watching drivers scraping snow and ice off their windshields seemed unimaginable on Sunday, when the temperature hovered around 70°, and I got my first sunburn of the year.
By Wednesday morning, after the snowfall had stopped, the morning air was cold but not bitter enough to stop me from riding to work. That was too bad because riding over the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan was nearly impossible: the bike-and-pedestrian path was covered in slush.
I ended up walking across the bridge because my tires are as thin and slick as they come, and I didn’t dare to slip and slide en route to 9:00 AM class, especially when I had my MacBook Pro in my backpack. That computer has been through enough, as have we all over this winter.
No one appreciates a beer after a long bike ride more than I do, but I can wait until I find a pub where I will draw the irritated gazes of the patrons as I walk in wearing spandex, an unflatteringly tight bike shirt, and clicky shoes. But not everyone is so patient:
Some bike rides end with stretches and a cold shower. Others end up in the park, where you don’t even take off your helmet before breaking open some brewskis with friends. This 6-Pack Bike Bag is designed for the latter. Though its over the frame, six-compartment design could probably be used to tote your post-workout water stash, that’s not what Donkey had in mind.
Timbuk2 makes one that will at least keep your beer cold. In either case, remember a pint is a pound the whole world ’round.
My dad taught me a long time ago that solid state devices, those without moving parts, almost never go bad. If it doesn’t wear, it won’t tear. There are some exceptions of course, and today, I learned that Citibike key fobs can in fact go bad. Mine was completely dead.
Usually when you insert a key fob, you get a reassuring (or completely confusing) set of lights. Today, at the station at West 3rd and LaGuardia Place, I got nothing. Maybe the station is down, I thought.
I walked to a nearby station at Bleecker and Mercer Streets. As I approached, I saw a guy trying to check out a bike. Telling him about my difficulty, I asked him if he could get one. He, in fact, could. But then when I tried my key fob, there was no response. Time to call Citibike support.
Thankfully, there are a lot of stations in downtown Manhattan.
The agent reviewed my account and closed out some open trips. This seemed routine to her, but I was a bit alarmed that I had "open trips." Don’t they charge you $1,200 for a lost bike? By this time, I had started walking toward my destination and was approaching my third Citibike station of the evening at Lafayette and Houston Streets. The agent asked if I could use my key here. No dice!
With my key fob apparently bricked, she ordered a new one for me. It’ll arrive in two-to-five business days. Thinking that we were done, she then asked me if I wanted to get a 7-day pass. What?!? I get a loaner?
The only catch was that the touch screen at the station was down. On to a fourth station at Mott and Prince.
To get a temporary seven-day membership, I basically had to get one like any non-member: provide a credit card, phone number, and consent to a $100 deposit against my card. As I agreed to all the terms and conditions, the agent gave me a coupon code. That code discounted the $25 fee for a seven-day pass. After getting a five-digit code to unlock a bike, I grabbed one and headed to the Rivington and Suffolk.
By the time I started pedaling, I had covered half the trip on foot.
My first and oldest piece of wearable technology is something I still have and use to this day. Since about 2003, I’ve been using a Polar S720i, a cycling-specific heart rate monitor, to track my feeble heart and body try to power my bicycle up a hill. State of the art for its time, it is still useful. It records your heart rate, speed, and cadence data for up to eight hours of cycling. Over the years, I never ran out of memory until last June on the 150-mile Ride to Montauk, which took me just under ten hours of pedaling to complete.
I have had a Polar S720i since 2003, and it has required a few batteries replaced over that time.
Ahead of its time, it can upload your cycling and heart-rate data to your computer, provided you have a Windows PC. As a Mac user, I spent countless hours and about $100, buying USB-to-serial adapters and proprietary software, getting it to interface with my Mac. That setup, by the way, still works today.
Another “feature” of the S720i is that will repeatedly beep at you when you were outside of your target heart-rate zone. This was cool back when that whole zone-training was a thing. I used to “train” that way, but I have found it way more satisfying to just pedal to a brew pub or a train station, or better yet, a brew pub next to a train station.
Over the years, the battery on my Polar has needed replacing. Polar warns you not to have the battery replaced by another other than an Authorized Service Center. You can ship it to their main center in Lake Success, New York, which is only about 30 miles from Long Island City, or you can take it another authorized service center, the most distant of which is in Los Angeles. Guess where I went? Time-Tec in Los Angeles is on Hill Street in the downtown Jewelry District. It occupies a very small space on the second floor of a building occupied by other watch-repair shops. I’ve gone here multiple times to repair my Polar, and they have questioned my sanity in coming all this way. I explain that I am visiting family in the region and that I appreciate their while-you-wait service. (It only takes about five minutes to do simple repairs.)
Also, Downtown LA is a bit more interesting these days than the former home of the United Nations. Incidentally, I can clearly see current UN from Long Island City, which makes for a lovely view.
They moved for a reason, right?
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The fine folks at Travelzoo have posted a local deal for a Central Park Bike tour, through Central Park Sightseeing. It’s not a bad deal: $22 for a two-hour tour through the park’s major sites. Once you buy the deal, you get a voucher for the tour that’s good through next March.
The offer page shows an image of the Central Park Boathouse that simply screams “fall.” We see a young red-headed man, wearing a red sweatshirt, riding a yellow bike on a sparkling autumn day with peak fall foliage. Only the blue track pants clash with the autumnal colors. The location of the image, the Central Park Boathouse, is an especially familiar site because it’s where many club rides start and where we started our Turkey ride on Thursday.
The park, however, doesn’t resemble that bucolic image. Having been there two days ago, there is no foliage in Central Park. With the temperatures hovering in the 30s and leaves all gone, the park is bitter and barren. You may also want to look out for ice. The weather might change by March, when most procrastinators would actually use their voucher, but it could still be very cold. There might be blossoms by March, but I swear we didn’t get those until mid-April this year. Riding in the cold can be fun, but don’t expect the setting of a rom-com.
Although Central Park sightseeing provides a helmet, these riders aren’t wearing them. I’m not one to scream at people for not wearing helmets, but these riders don’t seem to have the best bike handling skills. I can’t tell if the guy on the right is turning or about to jerk his front wheel so he can fly over the handlebars. Helmets are designed for this very type of rider (also road cyclists traveling at 30 mph and mountain bikers who are one downhill away from eating it).
The biggest offense in the image is actually their chosen terrain: the pedestrian paths. Why is this ad encouraging casual bike riders to take to a pedestrian path in Central Park? The park has over six miles of perfectly good road to ride around in circles. Rather than create a hazard for people walking on a pedestrian path, these novice riders can anger runners by darting into their paths and spandex-toting roadies, who made the mistake of doing laps after 8:00 AM, by clogging up the fast lane or riding the wrong way.
And you’re robbing them of the true Central Park bike riding experience.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day, and it was another year that I didn’t see any family. Since everyone reminds you to be thankful for what you have, I professed my gratitude for this year’s bountiful harvest our global, just-in-time food supply system that made possible a huge Thanksgiving feast and days of leftovers.
Last night’s feast was actually my third Thanksgiving dinner of the month. A few friends in Long Island City hosted a dinner for friends two weeks ago. We continued our tradition of observing the annual Fake Thanksgiving dinner in Kentucky. And, of course, there was last night’s huge feast. All those dinners lead to a lot of surplus calories!
Thankfully, the skies were clear and the roads were dry enough for a bike ride to Piermont to make room for this third Thanksgiving dinner. Early in the week, our region hosted a big storm that wreaked havoc out west. By Thursday, however, the storm had passed and left us with a cold and windy but sunny day.
In New York City cycling terms, riding to Piermont on Route 9W is almost as routine as riding in circles around Central Park. It’s a fine ride the first twenty times you do it, but it gets boring after that. However, it’s a great ride to do on Thanksgiving morning. You’ll get about fifty miles of riding, which for me burns about 2,500 calories. You get done in about four to five hours, leaving plenty of time for a snack and a shower before indulging and passing out for the day. And the best argument for riding to Piermont is that the Community Market is open on Thanksgiving Day.
Our group of nine riders braved the cold and some isolated patches of ice in the name of caloric balance. When we started in the morning, it was a brisk 30°. The 14 mph wind made is seem like it was 20°, but if that’s if you’re standing still. Because we faced that wind for our entire ride to Piermont, it was like adding another 15–18 mph to that headwind. I don’t even want to think about what the “wind chill” was.
Our riding group at the Piermont Community Market. The photo is blurry probably because the photographer was shivering.
The challenge to riding in cold weather is remembering to drink. When it’s that cold and your water bottles are close to freezing, the last thing you want to do is take a sip. But you have to keep hydrated, otherwise, you’ll cramp up and die. The same is true when it’s hot, but in that situation you’re faced with a different challenge: remembering to eat.
After gulping some room temperature water and devouring an egg and cheese sandwich at the market, we all began the trek back to the city. Gettting going was tough. My fingers were instantly numbed by the wind, and I began shivering. The magic of Thanksgiving however put a nice climb ahead of us, and with that, I was warmed up and stopped shivering. We also had a nice tail wind for most of the route, which was welcomed because it was not a bone-chilling head wind.
Another reason I rode yesterday was because I signed up for this silly Earn That Turkey Challenge put on by Ride with GPS and needed some miles. Even with the eighty-mile New Haven ride (77 miles) and yesterday’s Turkey ride (53 mile), I still need another 32.5 miles to finish 200 between November 11 and the end of the month.
It looks like I’ll be riding tomorrow to get that silly 200-mile badge.
