Things I learned on the Bike Path

On Sunday I went for a 5 mile run followed by a 30 mile bike ride. I rode from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, up the West Side greenway, across the top of Manhattan on Dykman Street, then down the East Side. I came to several realizations along the journey. The first is that it is always a good idea to bring a spare tube when riding through the trash and broken glass strewn across the bike path at 155th Street and Edgecomb Avenue. I learned the hard way that patching an inner tube while the neighborhood crack-heads cruise by looking for something to steal is not fun. For everyone who has argued with me over the last week that New York has become a safe comfortable place to raise a family I dare them to go for a leisurely walk in East Harlem and then tell me that the bad old days are a but a memory.

The second thing I learned is that paying $10 for a rear derailleur adjustment does not guarantee that said adjustment will hold through 25 miles of urban riding. A tip of the hat to the Tribeca Bike shop for doing the adjustment while I waited, a wag of the finger for being so sloppy as to not check their work before letting me out the door.

I also learned that many people with bicycles, especially the bikes that have all that stuff on them, many, many of those people are absolutely fucking crazy. When I was disembarking form the ferry I accidentally nudged, and I do mean nudged, a guy’s bike which was in the rack next to mine. I immediately apologized to the owner who glared at me and then shot me the finger. Well, ok, whatever, I replied and then walked away. Another lesson: don’t turn your back on an angry lunatic. As we were getting off the boat he came up behind me and slammed the font tire of his bike into my rear derailleur (which, as I note above, was not working so well already) and then stood there staring at me. I just said, “whatever, dude” and got on my bike and rode away. There are a lot of angry morons in this City. Maybe some of you accept this sort of behavior as normal for New York, but it pissed me off. That man belonged in a jail cell, far away from civilized people who do not incite physical altercations with random strangers over non-events.

So, Sunday was full of learned lessons. A few more: No one fat, ugly or poor apparently resides on the West Side of Manhattan between the Battery and Fairway at 125th Street. However, when I got above 125th Street throwing garbage in the park and drinking in public are much more prevalent Sunday activities than the running or bike riding done in the lower half of the island. What is wrong with people? Why do people think that they can trash their surroundings? Does no one give a crap that we all have to live in this City together? I wish we could bring back public flogging for littering; it really is a criminal activity when you live in a city of 10 million people all sharing the same spaces.