You’d think that the start of the 2010 Five Boro Bike Tour with it’s 32,000 entrants would look grandiose and wonderous. And you’d be mostly correct. But in actuality, for those of us who worked as marshalls (the helpful folks who line and ride the course) it actually looked like this:

But I’ve already gotten ahead of myself. The day really started the night before, maybe not technically, but for me it certainly is the “night before” when I have to get up at 4:15am. And waking would’ve been harder if I ever fell asleep in the first place. But I got into one of those obsession cycles about various details of my planning and never got there.

No matter, I got up 15 minutes earlier than I had planned when I went to sleep, and everything promptly took longer than I expected and I wound up leaving 15 minutes later than I planned. I hate that.

I did my standard commute, dragged the bike out of the car, threw my little bag over my shoulder and headed toward Times Square which of course, was recovering from an attempted bombing. I rode down 7th, caught a little pave down by Varick, salmoned past the riders on Church getting to their fixed positions along the course and made my way to the castle in Battery Park. Signed in and found a quiet corner to begin waiting, the key element of the start of any large ride.

After briefings were given and materials handed out, our group headed out to a small park near the start to… wait for it… wait some more. We gave the waiting our full attention. Jamieson disappeared on some marshall related chore, only to reappear just before we started out. That was cool, although it set a pattern that was to repeat the entire day. One second he’d be ridin’ with us, and the next second he’d be gone. After a long disappearance it turned out that he worked on two “medic” stops. He caught up with us as we worked with a Westpoint cadet on a flat tire after she crashed. She called me “Sir”. I suggested she not call me that (“They tell us to”) and added “Cadet, drop and give me 20…” Fortunately she laughed, because had she even begun the process, I would have been embarrassed beyond belief. Shortly after that he disappeared for the final time this ride…

Anyway after waiting so long that folks began to get know each other, the show got on the road. A stripper on a pole biked by and so did the the hoards of cyclists of every kind and stripe. The folks reflected the City—there was a bit of everything.

Two things stood out as bad amidst an extraordinary ride (for someone born and raised here, riding a bike on the FDR Drive, BQE, Gawanus Expr., Verrazano etc. is more than a little strange, and disheartening in that I rode many of the sections faster than I would traverse them in a car on the average trip…). One was the walking of Central Park. Too much congestion led to almost walking the entire park. It was not a pleasant stroll, though Jenni ran into a student from a recent bike class (unfortunately in need of help with a flat which we could not exactly provide due to equipment failures). The second was that onramp inclines led to large backups because people seemed intimidated by the ramps. Without even trying they would bounce off their bikes and start pushing as if there was no other choice. I think some encouragement might help.

Since I rode down from midtown and Jenni decided to join me for the trip home, we chose the West side cycle path to get back to the car. With that and other minor detours I rode a bit over 60 miles including the distance to the ferry in Staten Island. I can’t comment on general food and services as I we didn’t venture into the rest stops, this was not a particularly long ride for us and the sheer number of people at the stops was intimidating (Do you really want to wait that long for a banana?). We also didn’t have to wait for a ferry—there was one there loading up when we got there.

A lot of folks asked me if I would do it again… and the answer is sure, if you give me a reason to do so. The ride is nice, the number of people involved stunning, but there’s nothing so incredible that I would look to do it again. But if the right person asked, or Lisa wanted to do it, I’d happily go again. I’d hope for cooler weather (a decent chance most years) but other than that things were nice.

As you’ll note from the back of this guy’s shirt, traveling with a medium sized parrot has a downside on a trip like this. But he did get style points… I first saw him just before we stopped for a nature call, and then over and over again throughout the day. This happened with a few folks which I didn’t expect because we did stop quite a few times to help folks. I would have thought that we’d be “off the back” of any particular group, but nope. We saw folks over and over again. Fun!

So I talked about waiting? Here’s what it looked like…

And then the start looked like this from the back… that’s looking north toward the park…

I left my camera home because there was a party planned for Noah, but there was amazing juxtapositions of cyclists and the NYC skyline… and the oddness of seeing bikes where there’s usually cars as in this view from off ramp of the Queensboro Bridge…

Thanks
to the
folks
whose
images
I
abused
to
help
tell my story.

For those of you who asked… I rode the MootoX, with 27c Challenge Parigi Roubaix tires, its YBB, and pedals for walkable mountain shoes. The walkable shoes were an especially good choice. Early in the morning while it was humid, it was cool and I wore arm warmers (Smartwool), knee warmers and a rain cape (both Rapha) over my jersey (Swobo). All of them were packed into the Carousel Design Works Escape Pod seat bag before we started riding (along with extra rubber gloves, plastic bags, and other “assistive” technology. I love that thing… I carried a tiny messenger style bag as well which was part pain and part joy. Yeah, I had to sling it around quite a bit, but it made access to paperwork, maps, food, etc. organized and easy. I would have preferred a frame bag… but I haven’t ordered one yet, and it might have been overkill (I didn’t have that much to carry) but it would have put it where I wouldn’t have to fuss as much. Toss up. I thought about finding a document bag and clipping it to the Pod, but I couldn’t find anything lying around the house… but it would be something to consider for the next ride where I have that much stuff to carry.

So I’ve got Battenkill in a week, and I have very few miles in my legs. Getting out today was imperative. The problem was the crazy huge rain storm we’ve been experiencing. High winds, pouring rain, lightning, thunder, flooding from both the rain on top of the snow melt and saturated ground. It’s quite biblical overall.

But there’s gonna be a lot of riding to do next week and taking two weeks off seemed like the wrong approach. I prepped last night, getting crud catcher and fender in place. I made sure there was a rear light and that headlamps were charged. I found clothes that seemed like they’d keep me warm and somewhat dry.

In what appeared to be a break in the weather I set out on the Moots. The break lasted about five minutes. But no matter, I was prepared (Ha! That was my attempt at foreshadowing). I headed off toward Harriman for the some climbing, and things were going well until the road turns toward the foothills. There’s a car parked on the side of the road, and someone standing in the middle of the road taking pictures. And the road was a mess of gravel based “sand bars” left from the flooding. I slowed and picked and my way through. And just when I thought things were cool I see the “river” that now has reclaimed the road. I looked for a shallow spot, and didn’t find much. I dismounted, found the best section I could and stepped. I got only half a boot full of water. I was thinking that I was under prepped for today’s ride at that point…

At least it wasn’t freezing out, so I shook it off and pedaled off to start the climbing. Things were good for a while and I enjoyed the lower gearing this bike provides. Some of the tributaries were class five rapids but they’re well drained and the mountain side is steep, so all was well with the roads at this point. I climbed up and over the hill, and felt like absolute crud. After cresting, things loosened up a tad, but not a lot. I start making my way around to turn for home and I’m heading down the first prolonged down grade. There’s a hiker or runner on the side of the road sittin’ on the guard rail talking to someone in a car. The car was naturally stopped in the middle of the road, and I soft pedaled to see whether this party was breaking up anytime soon. Naturally a second after I commit to going around the car they decide to move along. I grabbed two hands full of brake briefly forgetting that I have discs on the Moots. It kindly reminded me by locking up the rear wheel until I eased off… in the meantime my flashing and very bright headlamps caught the eye of the driver in his rear view, and he eased up before any real damage was done.

Out on Route 17 things were progressing apace, and I was trying to decide how hard The Transition would be. The Transition is where the cars peel off Route 17 onto I287. It’s often annoying and sometimes dangerous to continue going straight, when so many cars want to pass you on the left and then head off to the right.

Even as I was considering all this I see two marked cars with lights going. Uh oh. Sure ’nuff the road is closed. Folks are turning around or being shunted off into New Jersey. I pedaled up to the first cop, and asked “Wires down?” “Nah, road flooded, but you can ride through if you want. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll get wet?” Which was somewhat ironic considering how wet I already was, never mind the damp right foot from the river crossing. So on I pedaled hoping it wouldn’t be too bad, and enjoying the rare opportunity to ride Route 17 free of cars.

It was bad. All four lanes covered in water. I tried to sneak through near the Jersey barriers, and when the water got high enough sort of pushed my way through with the pedals evened out, still both feet and the bike got a pretty good soaking. Further up the road I see the other closure, and another swimming pool. But this time the other side was clear. I lifted the bike over the Jersey Barrier and then vaulted over (Cross skills? Who knew). Back on the bike I ride the last closed section, chatting briefly with some folks who were looking for some fishing supplies from Davis Sports. They were walking up the road in the opposite direction. Sportsmen are an interesting breed, no matter the sport. (It occurs to me that I was kinda thinking, “These crazy guys are walking half a mile up the road in order to get some stuff, and then walk back here, get in their car and go fishing somewhere in this weather? Crazy” Of course, the irony that I was out riding 30 miles on a bike never crossed my mind. Such compartmentalization keeps me chugging in the right direction…)

As I wove my way past the road flare and cars blocking the road, the cop opens his window, leans out and exclaims “You are my hero!” with a big grin on his face. I smiled, accepted the “chapeau”, and pedaled off with a wave.

Other than a few more minor river crossings, where I got more wet from the cars who couldn’t manage not to splash me, by, oh, I dunno, waiting a second for me to pass, than the water I was passing through, the rest of the trip was uneventful. By now the common mix of rain, thunder, lightning and junk in the roads caused me no concern. The headwinds were as usual, annoying, and not helping me feel any better about my riding. But you can get used to anything it seems. Alas, I had nothing but heavy legs anyway… it is what it is.

But the ride was worth it. I feel like I worked out some of the kinks. I feel a bit more mentally prepped for next week. And there’s nothing like “suffering” for one’s art. I don’t recommend it, but there’s nothing like it.

After completing a very long haul for work, I had to cover Noah’s winter break. There’s only so many days Lisa can take off after all. And while watching Noah can be tiring (he doesn’t stop moving), it’s also an enormous joy that I do not partake of enough. Every day I make a choice… sometimes many times a day, to finish up something for work, or play with him, to take care of a chore or read him a story, etc. I do not always make the right choice. I try to, but I fail. But this day I could do right, and while the baby sitter was an option, I really wasn’t interested in missing this opportunity to take care of some chores that would wait for some other time.

Noah was sitting in the snow fort we built. Snow fort building followed sledding, which followed snowman construction, and inscribing a heart on the base of the snowman for mommy when she got home from work.

There was also the requisite snow ball fight, and general rolling around in the copious piles of snow.

Everything was awesome until in one blinding second I realized I had lost my wedding ring. This was not one of those where did I leave it deals. I *knew* it was gone the minute looked at my hand. I ran back outside, but saw it nowhere, and there where no telltale holes or indications as to where it might have gone. It was very upsetting.

I’m not so foolish as to believe that the ring is anything more than symbol. Lisa is equally clear about this. The rings change nothing. I didn’t even get married with this ring. I purchased rings for Lisa (with her, I guess I should say), and my family passed on a wedding band from Mother’s mother to her. I received a similar gift of a wedding band from her family. But we put off buying me a ring. I don’t recall why. Expense? Sure. Uncertain of what I wanted? Nah. I knew exactly what I wanted. I don’t recall, but clearly the time wasn’t right, and waiting would fill. It always does. It is the pattern of our lives together.

Roughly two years later we stopped into a jeweler to have something fixed, and there it was. The ring I desired, in my size, and on clearance (I never knew this happened to things like wedding bands, but I guess even the timeless styles have their moments.) I had my ring. More recently, we’ve considering what to do since I’ve lost quiet a bit of weight and the ring is now loose most of the time. Especially in the cold. And a glove can pull it right off. See another pattern developing?

I had pulled my gloves off a bunch of times while playing with Noah. I’m usually fairly aware of my ring during these “transitional” moments. But one of those times, I had clearly missed my ring pulling loose. And now it was gone—lost in three foot piles of snow.

I looked a few more times but found nothing. All that was left besides moping around was telling Lisa, who said “Don’t worry. We’ll find it.” I thought she was trying to make me feel better, but having looked fairly carefully by that point I was confident that it was gone. It would melt into the ground and then get flung by the gardeners to heaven knows where with the mowers and blowers.

A coworker of Lisa’s owns a metal detector. Lisa arranged to borrow it and went to fetch it today. We place her ring on the driveway to get some sense of what it would sound like, and I hoped that there wouldn’t be too many screws and nails swept off the driveway to make this a silly quest. I started where I thought it had fallen and got a quick hit. I dug up the snow down to the grass and went through it finding nothing. This could be a long day. I checked another long section around the snowman, and a place where I know I had put my gloves. Nada. I couldn’t believe I would have lost it further along by the fort, because I built the fort with my gloves on (as I recall. Who knows at this point). The lack of false positives made me more hopeful. So I continued. And there in the front of the fort on the inside was a chirp. I needed sharper shovel especially if I was going to get down to the grass, the fort had frozen fairly solid in the last two days.

I got the gardening shovel out of the garage, and with Lisa spotting grabbed the whole section down to the grass and spread it out on the now snow free driveway. I went through a bunch of clumps without finding anything, and I was beginning to be very wary of finding anything. But I was going to go through every clump… I broke open another clump and there it was! Yes! Some things are meant to be.

alentines day is not much of a deal around here. Lots of reasons, but if nothing else I don’t need the retail and card industries telling me when to appreciate my wife, nor how. Still, it makes a nice story… Ya remember back in 2010 when I… You can almost see my most doddering old self from here. Frankly, it’s not that far away.

On an entirely different topic… my latest bike build has started. It’s been taking a while since figuring out the parts took longer than I expected and some parts are still being anodized. But a few parts have made it to the bike including the 36-11 SRAM XX cassette, rear der. and the BB7 brakes. It’s going to be fairly spectacular… if it works. Time will tell. Prolly be another week or so.