Meet the Rivendell Roaduno, a bicycle at home in town…
…and country;
I know what I’m talking about, too, because I recently had business in town and the bike carried me swiftly yet comfortably to and from my destination…with one brief exception:
Usually the best part of riding a bicycle in the city is the near-total immunity to traffic–it’s the source of the cloying smugness that is our hallmark as cyclists. However, on this particular occasion, I found myself completely boxed in by stalled traffic in front of me and behind me, a double-parked truck on my right, and parked cars on my left. I had no other choice but to wait along with all the other schmucks. Not only was there no way to squeeze between the two vehicles in front of me or behind me…
…but there wasn’t even enough room between the parked cars to allow me to escape onto the sidewalk:
Yes, there was no escape in any direction, and as much as drivers hate traffic, I suspect the rare opportunity to watch a cyclist get trapped in it too made it almost worth it for them.
But I can’t blame the bike for that, because even an early-21st century fixie couldn’t have squeezed through:
And yes, that’s a track bike and not a pennyfarthing.
The only way I could have possibly gotten out would have been to hoist the bike over my head and shuffle out sideways, but the humiliation simply wasn’t worth it…though had it gone on any longer I suppose I might have just walked over the hood of that parked Corolla.
Fortunately, the wait turned out to be brief, and to be completely honest I preferred it to the frighteningly narrow pathway on the Triboro (technically the RFK, but nobody calls it that) Bridge:
I can almost deal with it until the suicide fencing suddenly disappears, at which point I experience abject terror:
Why the fence disappears at the best possible place to jump is a mystery to me, but a collision like Terry B had recently would be enough to send you over the railing and into Davy Jones’s locker, and my heart jumped every time I passed an e-scooterist.
Fortunately, I made it over the bridge and into the Bronx:
Apparently the building in the background with the flags on it is some sort of sports stadium, I think they may play soccer there or something.
Even though I live in the Bronx, for reasons of geography that I won’t bore you with it’s generally easier for me to ride home from the city through Manhattan, and so it’s been awhile since I’ve taken inventory of the rest of the borough. The city has added a number of bike lanes to the Bronx in recent years, but there’s nowhere else in the five boroughs where you’ll find them so universally disregarded–not only by drivers, but by pretty much everybody, including people who just set up chairs and hang out in them. They’ve also been a tremendous boon to the mobile automotive detailing industry:
In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx you will find a mobile car detailing station roughly every two feet, and while they’re more than happy to ply their trade in the traffic lane or on the sidewalk, the new bike lanes are prime real estate for them and they take advantage accordingly.
The streets of the Bronx can be particularly hectic, even by New York City standards, but the final stretch through the park affords me the opportunity to decompress:
There’s even some ceremonial gravel:
However, the best way to decompress is to keep heading north and leave the city behind altogether:
And it’s here the Roaduno feels most at home:
The older I get, the more I do too.