I don’t care what Lance Armstrong may think: it is about the bike. I’m a rabid urban cyclist. Fanatical even.
I biked in Los Angeles when I lived there in the early 80s (and if there is anything more antithetical to Los Angeles culture than commuting by bike, I’d like to know what it is—though I do hear that things are now getting a little easier there for my fellow bike freaks).
I biked year-round in Minneapolis during college days. More to the point (and anyone who’s ever visited that place even briefly from mid-October through April will understand the lunacy to which I’m admitting), I did this on slush, on ice, on snow in the dead of winter—and this is serious winter, tundra winter, Moscow winter, 0-degrees-Kelvin-lungs-burn-tears-turn-to-ice-on-your-cheeks-unprotected-skin-freezes-if-exposed-to-elements-for-more-than-two-minutes winter.
And, against the wishes of most who care about my physical well-being, I bike year-round in New York City and have done so for more than 20 years. I do training rides on weekends, have been known to do numerous loops in Central Park after work—and when forced, Prospect Park in Brooklyn—and, in embracing the nut-job cyclist’s creed of always being merely two inches from catastrophe, I commute to work daily, more than 10 miles each way through the streets of Brooklyn across the bridges and through the canyons of Manhattan.
But know this: our numbers are increasing steadily and we won’t go away. So cabbies; pedestrians; bus drivers; tourists; jay-walkers of all sizes and styles; out-of-towners, limo, stretch limo, Hummer stretch limo, SUV, delivery truck, moving van and town car drivers? You’d better learn to deal. Whether we’re weekend pleasure riders, competitive racers, commuters, or messengers, we risk our lives to do what we love to do. There is a lot to contend with: bad streets, bad conditions, metal construction plates that will wipe you out in a nano-second, broken glass to blow out your tire and crash you in the street, potholes, manhole covers, pedestrians who don’t look, drivers who don’t look, insufficient and poorly designated bike lanes, double parked cars and trucks, reckless cyclists (have to admit that, too). And some of us will not make it home at the end of the day.
The brutal reality of urban biking (particularly in New York City, where, I swear every car is out to kill you), is that cyclists get hit by vehicles, cyclists crash, cyclists get injured, and cyclists die. When a car meets a bike, no matter who’s at fault, the bike always loses. Always.
I love cycling, but I have paid a price for my addiction: in over 30-odd years of riding, racing and commuting, I’ve been in seven accidents, three of which have required nice little rides to emergency rooms and not so pleasant experiences once there. Some might think this ratio passes into the law of diminishing returns. No, I say, it’s just living life in the city in a way that provides meaning for me, that helps give me definition and perspective, that provides an unrivaled sense of freedom. That helps me get through the days.
I defy you to rival the feeling of flying across the
Brooklyn Bridge in fall on a cool, misty day when tourists and pedestrians don’t venture onto it, the two towers and the web of cables above you, the buzz of your tires on the wood planks below. You glance down to the roadway and see cars stuck in traffic as you blow by them; you’re up and out of the saddle, toes down, moving fast through the middle section where the grade levels out, wind whipping past your face and channeling through your helmet, mouth slack pulling the air into your lungs. Everything in sync, leg muscles taught, chain whirring through the cogs, ripping up the road. You’re alive. Two inches from catastrophe, as always, but alive.
photo copyright screeningroom.com
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