Rustin and I drove down to New York this last weekend to ride in the annual Five Boro Bike Tour (we were tempted to instead participate in the annual "
No Pants Subway Ride", but common sense eventually won out and we opted for the biking). The original plan was for this to be a big group shindig including Pete, Rosana, and Blue, but they had to cancel on account of knee problems, so it was just Rustin and myself.
Slightly scary weather reports, but when we made the drive Saturday morning the weather was in fact lovely -- perfect spring weather, sunny and warm but not hot. We drove down to Greenwich Village to visit my cousin Sam and his wife Nikki and their daughter (now 1.5ish years old). It was a fine visit -- they made us a nice lunch and we sat around chatting while their ultra-caffeinated dog Ruby ran circles around the living room and hopped into everyone's laps. Sam's daughter is now at the age where she is chatty and likes to talk, but about half of what she says are utterances that only her parents can decode (I remember that phase from when my kids were little).
We then made our way down to the South Street Seaport area to collect our packets. Subway to Fulton St, then walked the rest of the way along the water. Here is a shot of Rustin with the Brooklyn Bridge along the way; lovely old pile of stone that it is (Rustin's not so bad either):
The packet pickup place was an absolute scrum-- huge lines of people waiting, but it was a cheerful crowd with everyone in good spirits, so it didn't really matter. This being the "post 911" era we had to show photo ID to pick our packets, which included a plastic placard to put on the front of your bike (which included the rider name), a Tyvek sheet to wear on your shirt (also with name) and then a helmet cover as well. Photos:
You can't see it from the photo above but in fact this it the middle of a very long, winding line that runs all the way around the expo center.
We eventually made it back to retrieve the car, drove back up to the upper west side, found a parking spot, and met up with my dad and Joanie at their apartment. For dinner we walked down to "Ouest" on 84th St; it was a nice meal.
The Five Boro bike ride is an enormous event these days-- 36000 riders, with the start staged into three "waves", starting at 7:30am. We were instructed to show up for the 3rd "wave"; the ticket said that we should arrive between 8:15 and 9, then prepare to actually bike at 9:15.
Sunday morning: up maybe a little later than I had expected (normally I wake up before 6am with or without an alarm, but this time I slept almost until 7), had a nice breakfast with Carey and Joanie, and then girded ourselves for the bike ride. Pre-race photo:
We decided that we would take the subway down most of the way and then bike once we got close enough. The ride was interesting-- there were five other people with bikes in the subway car, however there was also an extremely stinky homeless guy "sleeping it off" in one end of the car, so we were holding our noses the entire ride.
Upon emerging from the subway we were immediately confronted with a huge wave of riders streaming by -- and this wasn't even our "wave" (we had to then proceed further downtown to find the "end of the line").
We finally muddled our way south to find something that looked like it might resemble the end of the line, so we piled in and joined the crowd. Slow going at first -- we headed north on Church St (stop and go the whole time, mostly walking our bikes); it didn't turn into actual bike riding until we eventually reached 6th Avenue. At that point it was a little more fun.
It was a cool crowd to ride with -- every conceivable different age, race, body type, race, dress, you name it. There were people who looked ready to ride a "Tour De France" stage, people who looked as though they had just dug their bike out of the basement after leaving it there for a year, people with weird costumes and helmet ornaments, people speaking foreign languages, wheelchair riders, tandem riders-- pretty much everyone you can imagine was out there on a bike pedaling along.
From downtown up to midtown there were enormous crowds of people along the sides of the route-- it was clear from their expressions that the ride was a big surprise to many people. You could see them taking pictures and hear them exclaiming into their cell phones ("... you'll never believe how many bike riders there are out here on 6th ave..."). Unfortunately being New Yorkers there were also pedestrians who tried to cross the ride while it was in full stride (I suppose the thinking was "it's only bikes"), but of course once they got out into the middle of the street they realized what a ridiculous choice it was, and had to sort of inch forward with gritted teeth as thousands of riders zoomed by them on either side.
Here is a graphic of the ride map, extracted from one of the booklets on the race. Weirdly, this is about as specific they got with the maps -- maybe they were worried that if they published a detailed ride map people would try to join the ride illegally or that it would help someone planning a terrorist attack, who knows.
Sixth Ave eventually hit Central Park, so we plunged into the park and continued riding. This was a nice part of the ride, since everything was in bloom, and there were fewer crowds along the way. Not a lot of pictures from this section, I was too busy enjoying the ride.
From there it was north up into Harlem; at 138th St we turned to the east and headed over the Madison Avenue into the Bronx. After arriving in the Bronx we didn't stay long -- in fact only a little while later we hopped back on the 3rd Avenue bridge and re-entered Manhattan (I guess the people organizing the race decided that there wasn't all that much interesting to see in the Bronx). At that point we headed back down the east side of Manhattan, taking up the entire southbound lane of FDR drive. Lovely views off to the east of the Randall's Island, the East river, the bridges to the south, and of Queens. We eventually made it down to the Queensboro bridge (now the "Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge" I might add), where we head briefly into the interior of Manhattan and the back out up the ramp to the bridge.
Here we are on FDR Drive southbound, experiencing a slowdown / traffic jam prior to the bridge:
Once we got up onto the bridge it was much nicer -- the views from up there are fantastic.
Looking back towards Manhattan from the bridge:
Queens was nice, albeit a bit bumpy. The course eventually fed us into one of the rest areas (you had to actually wade your way through all the other people hanging our there to get to the rest of the course). The rest area was on the bank of the East River underneath the hulking Robert F Kennedy bridge (which takes the Grand Central parkway across from Queens to Randall's Island). It was kind of interesting to watch the river -- very strong flow of water to the north (must have been the tides?), strong enough so that the boats we saw had to really fight against it. Photos from the rest stop:
Next: south through Queens again, over the Pulaski bridge into Brooklyn. The route went into the big buildings in Brooklyn for a bit but mostly kept close to the water, so we got some more views of Manhattan. We went all the way down through Brooklyn until we hit the Red Hook neighborhood (or thereabouts) at which point we hopped onto none other than the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway). That was kind of a weird experience: the BQE is about as grim, crowded, and utilitarian a highway as you can imagine, the sort of road that you don't even think about getting onto in a car unless you absolutely have to... and here we were, thousands of brightly colored wobbly bikers just toodling along for the fun of it. Hah!
At the end of the BQE: the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Even having seen in many times in photographs, it still took my breath away to look at it up close and appreciate the scale of the monster-- it is truly immense. You wonder how it is that human beings could have created a thing so graceful but so enormous and strong. The ride up to the mid-point of the bridge was a slog (long slow climb, punctuated by annoying tour marshals telling us that we were not supposed to stop (?)).
View looking back at the bridge from the ferry:
The other end of the bridge was the official finish line, so there was another huge rest area with zillions of people milling around and taking in the various booths and offerings. Rustin and I decided not to stay long (the lure of free "stuff" was outweighed by the lure of finishing up and getting out of the saddle for good). From there we wound our way north through Staten Island and finally to the ferry terminal -- this portion was punctuated by a lot of stop-and-go sections where we had to wait around at the choke points. On the plus side we had many more lovely views of lower Manhattan and of the bridge off to the southeast. The ferry ride back to Manhattan was cool-- I had never done it before. The boats are sizable but not the biggest I have ever been on (the ones out in Washington State going in and out of Seattle are bigger, ditto with the one I took back in the 90's from Germany to Denmark, where they actually put part of the train onto the ferry).
At Battery Park we decided to forgo the subway this time and instead just rode the bike path back up to the upper west side, another 8-9 miles. The bike path on the west side of Manhattan is amazing now -- almost unrecognizable given the number of improvements they have made to it in recent years. Great street markings, signage, and even little signal lights on the bike path for the bikers (which were completely ignored by at least half the bikers). Very pleasant.
Other impressions from the ride:
- there were huge numbers of bike crashes; it seemed as though every five minutes you would look over and see someone take a spill somewhere along the ride. I guess this makes sense given the crowding (riders packed in cheek by jowl) and the fact that many riders had never experienced riding in close with legions of other bikers.
- weather was great; sunny for almost the entire ride, with just a small sprinkle or two on the final stretch back up the west side of Manhattan
We finally rolled in at Joanie's apartment a bit before 5, which was later than I had originally envisioned (I actually told Amy that I thought we could make it back to Boston for dinner, oops). We got cleaned up, said our thank-yous and goodbyes to my dad and Joanie, and then hopped in the car for the drive back up to MA. Not too much traffic on the freeway, thankfully. We did see the most amazing double rainbow off to the east as we were getting near New Haven -- brightest one I have seen in a really long time.
