Thinking back

Sunday, May 1, 2016 broke dark, gloomy, damp and chilly in my home area. It went downhill from there into raw and wet.  I was up early to watch the start of the NY Five Borough Bike Tour be televised on the news channels.  They do it every year as it is quite the spectacle.  32,000 bicyclist wend their way through New York City over roads that are closed to motor vehicle traffic.  After seeing the sendoff, I rode my bicycle to Sunday Mass.  I chose to ride in the wet and cold to commiserate with my fellow bicyclist.  My ride was assuredly much shorter.

Bicyclist are people who are conscious of their community of fellow cyclist.  I said my prayer for the 32,000  for I remembered the year we rode in the monsoon ourselves.  It was an awful ride. Many people became hypothermic and had to be trucked off the course wrapped in space blankets.  The wet permeates your clothing if you are not prepared and soaked skin chills.  Our group would survive as we had proper rain gear, but even with that the ride was not a lot of fun.  Eyeglasses fog and vision through raindrops is dim.

 In rain New York streets run with an accumulated grit mixture of water and road dust. That dark gray mix is picked up by bike tires and sprayed on everything. The extent of the dirt is not appreciated so much in the rain as in the snow. Two days after a snowfall in NYC and piles are really dark looking.  The slow pace and constant braking caused out pads to wear out as the gritty slop acted like sandpaper.  Children , of knuckle headed parents, placed in bike trailers were tortured by the spray hitting them full on. Thankfully many of them took heed of the warnings at the end of the FDR Drive before it departed over the bridge to Queens.  TAKE YOU CHILDREN HOME,   Many of them did, some of the more self centered did not.  Child protective services would have done well to have been there.  I commented to my wife that I don't even think they allow those trailers anymore, in the era of heightened fear.

Our monsoon ride was sort of white knuckle in that the lines painted on the road become slick as a hockey rink when water is added.  The manhole coves of NY  worn smooth by the passage of millions of cars are even more deadly .  Hitting one of those even one degree off center was a recipe for a nasty spill.  There were many of those on the rain slicked course.  It is surprising just how many obstacles exist on city streets in the rain. Construction plates, utility access points, the lines, the crosswalks that lay in wait around every corner where they seek to shove your tires out from under you..  Leaned over into the turn and you hit that slick stripe and the next thing you find is that you are splayed out on the street with 5 or 6 other folks who skidded and lost it or just plowed into you.  You have no idea how it happened , it happens so fast.  Running with the bulls in Pamplona is less dangerous and produces less adrenaline.

So with memories of that ride in my mind, I laughed at my good fortune at foregoing the ride this year, even though I still harbor the hope to ride just once more.  It is a fun experience and for me was aright of passage into the community of cyclist.   Knowing that you can hop on a bike and ride it for 50 miles is testament to your physical conditioning and ability. It makes you feel young.

I also laughed at our ride in the rain.  We bailed out at the Brooklyn Bridge ( or t least some of us did) and rode back into Manhattan. One of our members who had  a defective cell phone continued the extra distance to Staten Island. I don't think he has ever forgiven us  We of the Brooklyn Bridge Bailout, rode crosstown back to the car and dry clothes.  We also quickly spotted the Square Diner and set off .  We feasted on pancakes and omelets and hash brown potatoes , with coffee in china mugs.  As we ate, more and more soaked and bedraggled cyclist came in and joined in the revelry of a Sunday Morning Diner Breakfast.

I hope those who rode yesterday came home intact and have warmed up.  I hope some of them had the sense to bail at the bridge and get pancakes and omelets and hash browns and coffee in those heavy china mugs.  One of the guys I rode with stopped in to say hello and borrow the men's room and we had a few minutes to reminisce.  It was good, but neither of us jumped at the prospect of doing that again.