Five Boroughs, 32,000 Riders, And All The Bananas You Can Eat

When last we met I’d picked up my registration packet for the TD Five Boro Bike Tour, and on Saturday in anticipation of the big event I did the most non-Five Boro Bike Tour ride possible:

Instead of riding city streets with tens of thousands of people I rode dirt trails with absolutely no people:

I even found some trails I’d never ridden before, and this section was so steep I almost fell over trying to get up it:

You know you’re riding a trail the wrong way when you look up and see jumps:

Anyway, it was a lovely ride both coming:

And going:

But of course it was a mere prelude to The Big One; the Mother of All Charity Rides; the mind-bogglingly huge Hybrid-Pocalypse that is the TD Five Boro Bike Tour. In previous years I’d ridden it with a wingman, but this time I’d be flying solo. Now I don’t want to imply I wanted to get the ride over with necessarily–I’m always happy to be on the bike, and I’m very grateful for Bike New York for asking me to help promote it–but at the same time I figured if I was riding by myself I’d approach things a little more expediently. The forecast called for rain starting at around noon, and if I rode both to the start and back from the ferry I was looking at something like a 70-mile day. So I decided to approach it like a road ride by riding a speedy bike, stopping only when necessary, and carrying as little as possible, which is easy to do since there are so many well-stocked rest stop. This way I’d enjoy a nice brisk ride, get to the Staten Island ferry before the line got too long, and hopefully be home by lunchtime and before any downpours.

Alas, my first mistake was forgetting that the street had recently been milled around the vicinity of Seaman and Cumming:

If you’re unfamiliar with the way they do streets in New York City, basically in the early spring they start stripping off the road surface, which they leave bare like this until about the middle of summer, at which point they finally repave it–though when they take the extra step of painting the lines back on it is anybody’s guess. The upshot is our streets are usually so rough that when you’re riding them you feel like you’re having a seizure, or else just black unmarked slabs of anarchy. I’m beginning to expect Big Gravel may be behind this, since a milled street is best handled with wide tires at low pressure, but in any case this totally avoidable secteur pavé that would cost me precious time and energy.

From here I headed over to the Hudson River Greenway where I briefly contemplated the cloudy skies:

Roadies were already riding Jerseyward across the George Washington Bridge, and as I continued downtown into the belly of the beast they headed uptown, fleeing like birds before an earthquake as they knew all too well that Hybrid Hell was about to descend upon the city:

A little later, I stopped in a restroom:

Unlike the baronial facility in yesterday’s post, this one was small and cramped and with my bike in there with me felt only marginally larger than an airplane bathroom:

I had just finished relieving myself when an extremely agitated man entered, ranting violently. To the extent I could follow what he was saying, he seemed to be threatening to assault me physically, though there was also some stuff in there about amphibians or something. He was fairly young and looked quite fit, like one of those zombies who’s so freshly dead you almost think for a second that maybe he’s not one except for the fact that he’s hissing and gurgling and wants to kill you, and as I met his wild-eyed stare I felt fairly certain he was about to lunge at me.

When you crash your bike, sometimes in that split second before you hit the ground you think to yourself how disappointed you are that your ride is about to be ruined. Similarly, as I looked into the eyes of the man I was relatively certain was about to become my assailant, I thought, “Wow, I can’t believe my day on the bike is about to turn into a life-or-death struggle with a lunatic on the floor of a public restroom.” For while I’m always aware that any ride has the potential to end in disaster, this particular turn was not one I had expected the day to take.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do next, and so I took my bike and said something along the lines of “Okay, I’d like to leave now, I just need to get by you.” The ranting intensified, and as I made my way to the door there was nothing between us but a couple of inches and a pink bicycle. Slipping past him was easily the most awkward two seconds I’ve experienced since my last physical, but thankfully I emerged from the tiny restroom unscathed.

In retrospect, the guy was so crazy he probably wasn’t even talking to me; odds are he was addressing any one of the 20 or so imaginary amphibian people who were in that bathroom with him. Even so, it was a bit unsettling, and so I stopped someplace to collect myself, as well as to affix my various ride numbers to both my bike and my person:

I’d like to say I drew great strength from this landmark, but you can’t really call a ship a landmark, can you? It’s really more of a watermark–though that means something else, so it doesn’t work either. Fuck it, let’s just say I drew great strength from this badass boat.

Back on the bike, I saw more and more riders bound for the Bike Tour, and upon arriving downtown some marshals directed us off the greenway and towards the start:

Which I elected to bypass, instead just picking up 6th Avenue a few blocks north of the staging area:

I had the street almost completely to myself for awhile, and the first riders I caught were the ElliptiGOers:

I don’t know why there are so many people on ElliptiGOs at the Five Boro Bike Tour every year: either they’re really popular, or else ElliptiGO seeds the ride with them in an attempt to convert the world from bicycles to these saddle-less contraptions.

Either way, if I were in charge of the Five Boro Bike Tour, I would not allow them on general principle.

Shortly thereafter, at a traffic light (the ride must occasionally stop for extremely annoyed pedestrians and other though traffic), I found myself behind New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez:

He looked rather worried, like someone was going to accost him and start yelling at him, which I imagine happens a lot when you’re the DOT Commissioner. (“WHAT THE HELL IS WITH ALL THE MILLING ON SEAMAN!?!”) In fact, every waking moment for him is probably like what I had just experienced in that bathroom–though I suppose there are perks, too. For example, the person he was riding with had somehow managed to flout Bike New York’s stringent helmet requirement:

Prior to this, the only people I’ve ever seen get a pass on the whole helmet thing were Sikhs, who are no doubt exempted due to their traditional headwear. In fact I even considered obtaining this headwear myself in order to circumvent the helmet requirement, but it seemed like more trouble than it was worth, and probably also a little disrespectful to the Sikhs.

In any case, the presence of The Commish was a good sign, because it meant I must have already caught the VIPs, who presumably would have started first. Clearly I was making good time–though that changed once we entered Central Park:

The ride enters the park at a section of roadway local racers call “Horseshit Alley,” because it is always strewn with the leavings of the carriage horses, and indeed many of the riders around me remarked on both the manure and the smell. When you race in Central Park, Horseshit Alley is where you need to jockey for position if you’re going to contest the sprint at Cat’s Paw just up the road, which means you usually hit it at high speed, with bits of horseshit flying into your mouth from the rear wheel of the rider ahead of you.

With so many riders on such a narrow roadway the overall speed of the ride dropped considerably, but while it was tempting to try to thread my way through there was no way I was taking any chances, because a ride like this is about a thousand times riskier than even a Cat 5 road race. At the slightest hint of an incline, for example, each rider reacts differently: some speed up, some slow down, and some simply veer inexplicably either to the right or to the left. This invariably results in crashes, so I remained both patient and alert–or as alert as I could be given the din:

I have often noticed that the lousier the music, the more compelled the listener is to share it with the world. This is why people are content to enjoy classical music in the quiet of their own homes, but blast the worst shit you ever heard from their cars. And nowhere is this more true than on the Five Boro Bike Tour, where some of the most annoying songs ever written refuse to die.

Exiting Central Park and passing through Harlem, we then made or way over the Madison Avenue Bridge:

And paid our token visit to the Bronx:

The Bronx portion of the Tour is so short it’s best measured in feet:

Though it does afford you a close look at the massive residential development that’s been happening in the South Bronx:

This one’s called The Motto, because it’s in Mott Haven:

It’s a “captivating addition to the thriving Bronx cityscape,” though they fail to add it’s conveniently situated on the Five Boro Bike Tour route:

Prices start at $3,050 a month for a studio:

Though they’re calling it $2,396 with the incentives:

By this point I had to use the bathroom, and I was tempted to stop at The Motto and see if there were any open houses where I could pretend to be interested in an apartment so I could take a leak, but instead I kept going back to Manhattan and onto the Harlem River Drive:

You know you’re a New York City motorist if you’re familiar with the Black Cherokee, who used to do what I guess you’d call performance art installations alongside the highway in the vicinity of the Triboro Bridge:

To this day I always look out for him, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him, and as we passed his spot there was only what appeared to be a hollowed-out watermelon:

Past this point the Harlem River Drive becomes the FDR:

Then the ride briefly heads back onto the Manhattan street grid:

And across the 59th Street (Queensboro) Bridge into Queens:

The pavement on the descent was pretty choppy:

And a rider next to me must have hit a seam in the road or a pothole or something because he was catapulted into the air spectacularly, and I watched in horror as he went over the bars and landed hard amid his scattered belongings. I stopped briefly, but fortunately he seemed to be okay, and one of the ride’s gazillion marshals was rushing to the scene, so I continued on my way.

The first big rest area is in Astoria Park, but I didn’t need a rest, and I knew I could save lots of time by bypassing it, which I did:

Granted, you’re an elite rider on the Five Boro Bike Tour if you know how to use your shifters, but in skipping the rest stop I’d officially joined the big guns:

A sleeveless vest with arm warmers is the very apotheosis of triathlete fashion.

The view along Astoria Park is among the best in the city:

And on this day you could see the tips of the skyscrapers vanishing into the clouds beyond the Triboro Bridge:

Continuing along the Queens waterfront, you pass Socrates Sculpture Park:

As well as Rainey Park, which for several years was the venue for New York City’s only cyclocross race:

[Photo courtesy of @shatterkiss]

However, the organizers could no longer meet the city’s onerous demands, which included not staking anything into the ground:

This prohibition on sticking some stuff into the grass is rather ironic, given that the park currently looks like this:

I think the fact that the city wouldn’t let some bike racers put a few stakes in the ground because it might damage a park they new they were going to completely tear up and renovate a year later anyway tells you everything you need to know–though it looks like you could have a hell of a gravel race in there right now:

From Queens, it was on to Brooklyn:

This billboard was right on the border, and it seems to imply that Brooklyn is heaven and Queens is hell, which I have to say is rather harsh:

I mean I suppose Williamsburg is heaven if your idea of paradise is modern apartment buildings:

Will this be the South Bronx in 20 years? Maybe, or maybe not. But for the time being the pets in Williamsburg are more pampered than most of the world’s humans:

Speaking of pampering, I treated myself to a stop at the rest area by the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and I pretty much had the full run of the place:

There were snacks as far as the eye could see:

And bananas by the bushel or however the fuck they measure bananas:

Did you know a bunch of bananas is actually called a “hand?”

It’s true, hence the old saying: “A hand of bananas is worth two in the bushel.”

Indeed, the ready availability of bananas was rivaled only by the abundance of unoccupied porta-potties:

And of course you could refill your water bottle thanks to this ingenious dispenser that was hooked up to the fire hydrant across the street:

It’s much safer than drinking from the hydrant directly:

Since my goal was to keep things moving I didn’t linger for too long, but I did take a few moments to check out some bikes, and as always the hot charity ride setup was extreme speed coupled with extreme comfort:

The next neighborhood along Brooklyn’s Gold Coast is DUMBO, which stands for Douchebags Undulating Monumentally Beyond Oblivion:

This is a decisive section, because it’s crucial to secure position on the smooth strip in the middle of the decorative cobblestones:

From there it’s not too long before you enter the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which is a highlight of the ride and arguably worth the registration price alone just to experience once:

With plenty of room it’s easy to maintain a steady pace without getting stuck behind a hand of ElliptiGos:

And soon I was at the Verrazzano Bridge, where the attacks came fast and furious:

I believe this is actually a timed segment on the ride, though either way I imagine if you’re an avid Strava-er it’s pretty cool to have the KOM on the Verrazzano Bridge, since it’s only open to bikes one day a year:

The Verrazzano Bridge of course takes you to Staten Island, and to the finish of the ride:

It’s easy to be tongue-in-cheek about this stuff when you’re a semi-professional bike blogger, but there are a lot of people who are very proud of themselves for finishing, and are riding for a cause, or in memory of something, or of someone, and this makes me feel good about humanity, though it also makes me feel like a little bit of a schmuck.

That aside, at the finish there’s a variety of food vendors if you can’t stand the thought of eating another banana. There are also porta-potties. Lots and lots of porta-potties: