bike ms

Today I learned that the sun is not risen at 5:50 am. Actually, I don’t know what time it does rise, since I was sitting on the subway while it happened. But by the time I met my dad in midtown at 7, the sky was light, and bikers were heading west.

I have my recycle-a-bicycle bicycle here in the city for commuting, and I keep my nice one back in my parents’ house. I know it’s a waste, but I couldn’t bear to have it stolen. Anyway, my dad drove in with the bikes, and I was happily reunited with my lovely touring bike with all its gears and its odometer and two water bottle holders (things my other ride still lacks) and we set off for the bike ms ride.

They close off the highways for the ride, so it’s much faster going than the trans alt ride, where you’re on the streets dealing with traffic and lights.

Here’s the starting line, on the west side highway. Pretty bunched up at the start, but it spreads out quickly:

Emerge from the Battery tunnel and start up the east side: time for the sunglasses.

As I’ve said before, we’ve been doing these rides for a while now. When we first started doing this ride, it began at the word trade center.

I’d always biked with my family growing up, but my dad and I really started biking together the summer I signed up for a teen bike trip. It went all around hilly Vermont, and we were going to be carrying our own gear, so I was pretty nervous and wanted to train. My dad and I used to bike around our town, and every time we passed a certain pond we’d call out, “That looks just like a lovely Vermont lake!” Or some such. I guess it worked, since I got through that trip (and up some pretty steep hills) in one piece–and have been riding regularly since.

Squinting away.

Today’s ride was pretty easy. We were done before you could say “delicious bag of trail mix.” I think we should go for the 60 mile route next year.

By the way, I didn’t actively try to raise money this year. I just gave the required minimum myself. But it’s a really good cause, a really terrible disease, and if you can, I encourage you to donate, which you can still do, here.

And now, I have to include this picture, even though it’s from October 4, 2008. Let’s just pretend I took it today.

Hahahahahaha. Helmet hair.

NYC Century Bike Tour: 55 miles!

A brief history of the NYC Century and me:

2006: My friend and I biked the 35 mile route. Lots of fun. We stopped at the prospect park rest stop to ride the carousel which TA had rented out for the day; whipped our horses into a frenzy, then biked to glory. We picked up our t-shirts in the park and biked directly downtown for a big brunch with her then-boyfriend. That ride downtown was, I think, my first time really riding in NYC traffic–I had just graduated from college and hadn’t even moved to the city yet. During the TA ride we were buffered by all the other participants, but going down we just went for it all on our own. No bike lanes back then in the wild west of ’06. Terrifying and completely fun.

2007: We planned to ride together again, this year signing up for the 55. Unfortunately, at the last minute my friend had to cancel. I decided to do it alone. It was a beautiful day, but hot. I’d never done such a long ride alone, and I think I forgot to pace myself. or drink. Something like that. My legs felt great, but the wind as we went around the Brooklyn coastline must have sneakily whipped all the sweat off me. By the time I was heading north through Williamsburg and Queens, I had a headache. I sat down under some scaffolding for a while to rest my eyes. At the Astoria rest stop, I really didn’t feel so good. I rested for a while, but, only five miles from the finish, decided to keep going. After Astoria the route took us right across the bridge to Randall’s Island. It was there that I realized I was completely done for. I huddled in the shade with my bike until two ride marshals came along. “I don’t feel good,” I moaned. “You’re doing better than that guy,” they said, pointing to a guy a few bushes down who at just that moment had started spewing in a distinctly gatorade shade of neon yellow. The marshals fed me some kind of salt/sugar cube and told me to get my act together. “Cabs can’t get to Randall’s Island,” they said, “you’ve got to just keep going.” (Is that even true??) So I kept going. The stairs on the bridge nearly killed me, but I made it to Manhattan. Two miles from the finish, I hailed a cab, stuffed my bike in the back, and drove across town to my boyfriend’s parents’ house, where I lay down in bed and vomited for about five hours. He claims that I talked a lot about how “the boat was rocking.” Oy. I was pretty dehydrated. To make a long story short: yuck.

2008: My bike had just been stolen, and I didn’t get a new one in time for the ride. Shoot.

2009: whoooo!! New bike, new blog even, and my boyfriend, Josh, agreed to do the ride with me–his first big group ride. After some hesitation (for some reason he didn’t seem to want to have to nurse me back to health again) I convinced him to do the 55. It was the most beautiful day, especially after Friday and Saturday were so dreary and drizzly.

The route:

The solid orange line is the 55. It was a pretty different route than when I did it in 2007. The path along the bay in S Brooklyn, gone. Instead, an on-the-road route through Marine Park, Canarsie, and Brownsville / East Flatbush. At least, I’m pretty sure. I didn’t get the direction sheet at the start of the ride (they ran out). Wasn’t a problem, but now I’m just relying on memory for which roads we took. I paid pretty close attention out there, though, since I was interested in all those neighborhoods that I don’t know at all.

This google map shows the part of the ride that went through the area I’m least familiar with. All sorts of memorable moments, like the graffiti that said “Fuck NYPD,” the yard full of carefully groomed topiaries, or the little girl who called out, “Is this a marathon?”

This is a bit of a sidenote, but the other day I came across Bitch Cakes for the first time. I read that she was going to be riding the century, so of course I was tickled when I actually saw her, heels and leopard print top and all, somewhere in Williamsburg. Thought I’d see what she’d posted about the ride, and was completely turned off when I saw this:

From there I rode through some very desolate, remote and unattractive sections of Brooklyn – places I had never been and will likely never be again. Places, dare I say, that were not worth photographing.

Not worth photographing? Huh.

Speaking of the marathon girl, I found that kids were our biggest fans. On the corner of Henry and Union, there were the little girls looking out for us, calling, “Turn left! Turn left!” And on Remsen there was the kid who called out of a car, “Go bikers!”

Ok, at long last, photo essay, go!

Here I am, hydrating at Prospect Park. I was kept on a strict regimen of gatorade, water, and granola bars. I guess it worked.

We first saw these guys at the Marine Park stop. Pretty great bike. The dad steers the front wheel from behind, but his son gets to feel like he’s totally in charge. In the photo on the left, note the suspenders (adorable). On the right, note the guy rocking the pink cruiser.

We saw them again on Eastern Parkway, and they were working on figuring out how many 8s went into 100.

I didn’t actually take that many photos of the ride. There was so much starting and stopping (lights, crowds, etc), that when we finally got moving and I saw something worth a picture, I couldn’t bring myself to stop again. As a result, most of my photos are taken at the rest stops. I did take a few photos from the Triborough Bridge, though, since we were stopped while waiting for everyone to carry their bikes up and down the flights of stairs.

(Those stairs, by the way, were a real killer in 2007. I remember just powering through them, and collapsing on the other side.)

All in all, lots of fun.

And…we made it! Here I am with Josh, smiling for the camera in Central Park. I got gifted with more water bottles than I know what to do with.

what I did on my summer vacation, or, why you should wear tevas

Oh damn. All of August went by and I only posted twice. Shameful. Well, #1: Bunny bunny! and #2: Goodbye, summer.

I just got back from a week of vacation on Martha’s Vineyard with my family.

Besides playing golf with Obama, etc etc, we did a lot of biking. Every year my dad and I bike across the island, from Edgartown to Gay Head, about 23 miles with a scenic ferry ride thrown in the middle. This year we had company (brother and boyfriend):

While the biking itself was perfectly lovely (we saw a pony. some cows. wild turkeys in the far distance.), the real magic began after the ride. At some point in the morning, my dad had started scheming. “I have a secret plan,” he said when we stopped for water. “I cannot tell you what it is.”

When we reached the finish line–lighthouse on a hill–it was getting a little cold and drizzly, so we decided to head home instead of staying at the beach. My mom had met us there with the car, which had a roof rack that could only fit three bikes. The plan was to stick three up on the roof, and someone would take the bus back. My boyfriend and I went down to the beach for a few minutes to dabble our toes in the ocean while my family loaded the bikes on the car. Little did I know that my father was about to put his plan into action…

Here’s a photo of my brother and father, going about their devilish scheme:

And, tah dah! Yup, that’s right. That’s four bikes up there. View the bike that was attached to the car with merely a backback and a teva*:

That bike that’s facing towards us is the renegade. The green blob you can see is the crucial backback. To be fair, there was also a sweatshirt used to secure the bike, plus a second teva, up front.

When I came back and discovered that this was how we planned on driving back, I thought that for sure we’d end up with a bike tumbling off our roof and maybe impaling a cow. But it worked out okay.

*yes I linked to the teva website. after what that shoe did for us, they totally deserve it.

no rain, please

This Sunday I’ll be doing the 42 mile Five Boro bike ride with my dad. Here’s the route. In the fall we did the Bike MS ride and it was cold and rainy. yuck. The start line was crowded so we ended up waiting on the windy west side highway for a while for things to get going, and my dad ended up sick a few days later. So let’s hope this ride’s a bit nicer.

My dad and I have been doing these rides for about ten years now. Here we are a few years ago:

After Sunday’s ride I have to dash uptown to catch the second half of the New Voices journalism conference.