Rich Mintz  

Okay, so that’s taking it a bit far. Nobody was hit, nobody was hurt. Still, I fell off my bike, on a New York street! On top of a Chinese man!

Here’s what happened: I was on a ride I do often from the Upper West Side downtown, stopped at a light on the far left side of 9th Avenue, in the mid-forties, where the Lincoln Tunnel traffic bunches up. It’s congested along here, but I still prefer it to going anywhere near 7th Avenue in the forties, and if you’re heading south, you’ve got to go somewhere.

I was in the left parking lane, next to a parked car, with a stopped taxi on my right. An apparently-Chinese man on a bike came up on my left, heading into the intersection, apparently thinking he’d clear? Not concerned about why I might be stopped? Oblivious to all the pedestrians? Who knows. In any case, he didn’t clear, and he got wedged in a drainage plate in the corner dip. He fell over to his left onto a bunch of people waiting to cross the street; he reached out to grab onto me (because I was there); I, and my bike, fell over on top of him.

Nobody was hurt, no pedestrians complained, everyone just helped each other up, Chinese guy and I checked to make sure we were both okay, and we all went on our way. But now I can say I’ve been in an accident!

I’ve been wanting to put on some extra miles, so this afternoon I decided to do a Brooklyn loop over two bridges, the Brooklyn and the Williamsburg. You can see my route here:

View Two Bridges Brooklyn Bike Loop in a larger map

This is almost exactly ten miles — long enough to get some real cardio exercise, but short enough to do in about an hour. (Plus there’s excellent coffee at the 3-mile and the 7-mile marks.)

I felt like going for a ride today, so I rode up to Ess-a-Bagel on 1st Avenue, near Stuyvesant Town, picked up a dozen bagels and some cream cheese and salmon salad, and rode back. It’s 5 miles there and back (about 200 calories), and I’m about to eat a thousand calories worth of what I brought back, so there’s a lesson there, but I’d rather not think about it.

I thought it sounded crazy too, but this blog post from Velojoy inspired me to try washing my bike in the bathtub, with hot water and the spray nozzle so I could get at the undercarriage.

My first thought was “that’s a terrible idea, you’ll rust it,” but then again I ride around in rain and salt anyway and it doesn’t rust from ordinary use, so probably washing it down isn’t going to hurt it. And indeed it didn’t. The hot water got almost all the loose salt, sand, and muck off, and made a good dent in the various oily smears in inaccessible places that I usually just assume will stick around indefinitely.

I let it drip dry for a bit, gave it a rough wipedown with an old towel, and then lubed the chain, which I always figured would be a messy process but (thanks to the lesson I got from my local bike shop) basically amounts to letting tiny droplets fall from a nozzle onto the edge of the chain as you slowly rotate the pedals backwards. It took about 90 seconds, and based on how well it rode when I was finished. I apparently did it right.

I’ve been busy living my life, as you can see from the dearth of posts, but I will say this: I try to give all my bikes some ride time, and the red Dahon folding bike rotated back into position about a week ago. I’ve been riding it for about a week, and I have to say I remember why I enjoyed it so much when I first got it. It’s nimbler and easier to control than my other bikes, the gearing is excellent, and it folds up (I took it to DC on the train yesterday for the day).

I gave it a bath (in the bathtub), had a broken spoke replaced, and had the hinge tightened (my local bike shop was kind enough to tighten everything else at the same time, so it rides snappier and firmer). I also bought a cable lock for it (now I’ve got four bike lock keys on my ring) — this kind of cable isn’t suitable for long-period or risky-location locking, but for the kind of “5 minutes popping into Duane Reade on a busy street” that I’m likely to do, it’s fine.

And now that I’m used to it again, I think I may give it an extra week.

Because I was curious what it would look like on a map, I plotted my daily bike route from home to work and back again. I tagged a few of the points of interest, and some of the hazards.

View My daily bike route in a larger map

I take other routes from time to time, and branch off for errands and so forth; but after doing this for about a year, all other things being equal, on an ordinary day, I go exactly the same way up, and exactly the same way down — up 6th Avenue, and down 5th.

This route is the most direct, more or less. I used to divert to the bike lane along 8th Avenue (protected above 14th Street) in the morning, and the bike lane along 2nd Avenue and Allen Street (protected or separated almost the whole way) in the afternoon. But I’m a competent street rider, I’m familiar with the route, and I know most of the hazards, so I’m back on the straight route.

The morning ride is harder, both because there are some gentle uphill stretches and because traffic is heavier on 6th Avenue than on 5th. It’s a bit more than 2 1/2 miles each way — 2.6 miles in the morning, and a bit more in the afternoon.

One interesting fact is that on almost all my avenue portions, I’m riding on the left, not on the right. That’s true on 6th and 5th Avenues, and it’s also true on 1st and 2nd and 8th and 9th, because of where the bike lanes are. But even when I’m riding on 7th Avenue, which isn’t a designated bike route, or one of the avenue portions that aren’t marked for bikes, I tend to stay left rather than right — there are fewer buses and generally fewer obstructions.

Almost without exception, if there’s a bike lane provided (protected or not), that’s where I ride. Not only is it possibly required by city law (there’s been some dispute about this); it’s the place where those drivers who are looking out for cyclists are expecting to see us, so it’s where it’s safest for me to be.

And virtually the whole way, in both directions, I’m riding legally, with traffic and on the street. There is one significant exception, and that’s my confession: in the afternoon, when crossing Canal Street near the Holland Tunnel exit, I do something illegal and potentially dangerous. From the foot of Thompson Street (at 6th Avenue), I ride west across 6th Avenue, ride diagonally westward across Canal to the wrong side, do one short block against traffic on Canal, followed by a short southbound block on the sidewalk on Varick (to avoid cobblestones).

Here’s a snapshot of Google Street View facing southwest from Thompson and 6th (the starting point of this maneuver) in the direction I’m about to ride. Imagine me crossing behind the taxi you see there in the traffic, then riding along (toward the right in the frame) on the wrong side of Canal, passing the postal truck on its left.

I didn’t use to do it this way, but because of the way the street grid comes together, the alternative (cutting east to Broadway) is worse, involving more travel on more congested streets. I could, of course, walk my bike two longgggg blocks on the sidewalk, but that’s my fallback, not my starting plan.

Because of the timing of the lights at 6th Avenue and Varick, and the fact that there are usually NYPD traffic officers in both intersections, there’s not actually any traffic coming as I do my riding against traffic. And I’m actually protected by a curb cut ahead of me at Varick, so I’d be hard to hit accidentally. You can see the curb cut here, in the distance at left (live link this time):

View Larger Map

But you can believe I’m exceptionally careful before and during this tricky crossing, watching that all the traffic on Canal, 6th, Varick, and Laight Streets is behaving as expected.

Because of travel I was barely on a bike for 4 days, and I couldn’t stand the idea of waiting another day (this is how you know exercise is becoming a normal part of life — when you start getting antsy if you don’t do it). So, I thought, hang the snow, I’m going out today. I figured that everything would be pretty much plowed, and we only got a couple of inches in any case, and it was still above freezing, so why not?

And everything was fine. I went out on the Puma, figuring it would be the most stable on icy ground because it has the widest, nubbiest tires, a heavy frame, and a low center of gravity. But in the end I didn’t encounter any ice. Most of the travel lanes were plowed and sanded and salted, traffic was light, and I had a pretty much normal 5-mile roundtrip, via the Trader Joe’s in Chelsea. There was some slush, but I coasted through it carefully and had no undue problems.

The only problems came when I got home, and realized that both my undercarriage and my … undercarriage were covered in sandy muck, which you’ll see here. And about ten minutes after coming in, about a half-pound lump of semi-frozen sand glumped onto the floor. So my pants are now drying, and I’ll give the bike a washdown later this evening.

Like anyone who’s lived as long as I have, I have a lot of keys I don’t use every day. Some are obsolete and others are occasionally used; they all live in (ATTENTION ROBBERS: PLEASE DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER) the Italian porcelain lady-shaped and lady-intended-for storage object you see pictured below, which I bought at some antique market (probably in Ellicott City) at some point in the distant past and which sits behind my desk.

However, like you, I have my ring of everyday keys, which I work hard to keep to the absolute minimum, since they live in my pocket. And it occurs to me that what’s currently on it is the following:

• Two (2) keys to my apartment
• Two (2) keys to two different mailboxes
• One (1) bike room key
• Three (3) keys to three different bike locks
• One (1) Presta/Schrader bike tire adapter

That is, of the nine (9) items on my keyring, five (5) are bicycle-related! That’s either awesome or disturbing, depending on how I happen to feel about it at any given moment. As of this moment, we’ll call it awesome.

This guy lost 320 pounds riding a bike, which is kind of amazing. The whole story is worth reading. It wasn’t just the bike that did it, of course — he committed himself to serious diet changes, and the bike riding led to a healthier lifestyle overall, in a virtuous circle. But, Jesus, last year he rode 20,000 miles! (I ride about a tenth of that, and I feel like I ride a lot.)

The thing that makes the story, though, was that he started a little at a time and built up naturally. In fact, he started by spending months thinking about getting a bike made that could support his weight (but not doing it), and then by spending months letting his new extra-strong bike gather dust in the hallway. He was afraid to ride. Then he did. And he did more. And he did more. And in the end, he was healthier and happier. It started, though, with one ride.

One in a series. First post

Mia Birk writes:

1. Look beyond the bike: bicycle transportation succeeds best when combined with investments in compact development, transit, and walking. Engage in and support various efforts to help shape your sustainable community.

Bicycling is not an end; it’s a means. Sure, biking has lots of benefits (you live longer, you get places easier, you spend less, you interact with strangers more, you’re more connected to your city and neighborhood, etc. times 100). But at the end of the day, investing in bike infrastructure will only do so much to change the character of your community. What really makes change happen is proceeding from two first principles: (1) everyone’s needs matter, and (2) when in doubt, think simpler.

“Compact development,” “transit,” and “walking” described every urban area in the world until about 1950. (Within my own father’s lifetime, Los Angeles had a functional fixed-rail commuter transit system covering hundreds of miles.) Then you-know-what happened. And you don’t have to accept a conspiracy, just accept that for lots of economic and cultural reasons that suddenly aligned, society changed in a way that left us with a lot more cars, disinvestment in public transportation infrastructure, and two generations of auto-centric cultural assumptions.

Things used to be different, and they can be different again. But remember that “bicycle facilities” and “bicycle culture” are just subsets of “human-scaled facilities” and “human-scaled culture.” If you focus broadly on the latter, rather than narrowly on the former, you end up with a mutually reinforcing system (more people bike from home because they know they can take their bikes on the subway, which leads to more bike parking in the city, which leads to a broader range of people trying out biking, which leads to a broader range of bike types on the market, which leads to… etc.).