So it looks like there’s not going to be any professional bike racing this season:
In fact, at this rate, it’s only a matter of time before they postpone the Classics and the Tour de France and everything else and the most prestigious race of the season by default becomes the Gran Fondo New York:
I usually forget about the GFNY until I ride over the bridge and I see all the course markings. Also, for the record, I usually turn around here, which is a mere 38 seconds in the video:
Sure, I could keep going, but it’s really just more of the same after that, isn’t it?
Of course, if you go a little farther up you get to the Tappan Zee Mario Cuomo Bridge, which will soon have a bike path on it:
The potential lack of 24-hour bike path access is extremely frustrating, though the mayor of South Nyack, Bonnie Christian, says keeping it open would be a “safety issue:”
“I think it’s a safety issue,” Christian said. “We don’t need people out there in late in the early morning hours. Nothing good happens in the early morning hours.”
Firstly, wonderful things happen in the early morning hours. Has she never meditated on a beach at sunrise, woken up early to surprise a partner with breakfast in bed, or experienced the unparalleled joy of having the bathroom to yourself while everyone else in the house is still asleep?
Secondly, if the implication is that anyone out after midnight is up to no good (which is just the sort of thing you’d expect the mayor of South fucking Nyack to believe), why does she think these ne’er-do-wells would take to bicycles in order to sow their destruction? Everybody knows that the preferred mode of after-hours transport for dipshits and numbskulls is the car, which is why when you head out for your early morning meditation you’ll often find them wrapped around utility poles. If she’s really concerned about safety she should be lobbying to keep the bike path open 24 hours a day but close the roadway between sundown and sunrise.
Regardless, after like two years of delay it sounds like this path is finally opening, and the State of New York is even soliciting for concessioners:
This week officials issued a Request for Expressions of Interest for merchant opportunities at the Westchester and Rockland Landings of the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge’s dedicated 3.6-mile bike/walking path, starting this summer.
Given that the Tappan Zee Mario Cuomo Bridge is about to become the preeminent turn-around point for New York City’s recreational cyclists, setting quasi-Belgian foodstuffs from a truck to hungry bike dorks will be the retail equivalent of shooting Freds and Fredericas in a barrel.
Of course, the GFNY also makes me think of the BSNYC Gran Fondon’t, a total non-event I curated in direct opposition to the aforementioned Fondo, and which in its second (?) incarnation involved no small amount of forced marching:
It’s tempting to say that when the Tappan Zee Mario Cuomo Bridge path opens I’ll resurrect the concept.
Then again, it’s tempting to say a lot of things.
In the meantime, according to the miracle of tracking numbers, the new bike I’ve been hinting at will be arriving tomorrow:
If you’re half as excited as I am then you’re 50% excited.