Visiting NYC's Islands

One of the great things about biking in New York (or any city for that matter) is that a whole new world of sights and sounds become available to you with a bike. While most people think that all they need is the subway to reach every place in NYC, it's just not true. There are many places that are out-of-the-way, like City Island, Governor's Island, Randall's Island, etc. that are pretty inaccessible by subway. You can get there by bus if you're determined, but only if you're the kind of masochist that enjoys pouring over convoluted MTA bus maps and standing around for hours before realizing that the bus stop had moved or that the bus route had been temporarily re-routed somewhere else. Buses are really for local people who live in a local area and who are familiar with the local geography. Everyone else needs to take the subway...or ride a bike!

Governor's Island

This past summer I went to Governor's Island specifically for the purpose of biking (I'd visited the island on other occasions in the past). I'm glad to report that biking is fantastic and actually the best way to see the island! Governor's Island is a small island to the south of Manhattan. The ferry ride is literally 5 minutes. The fastest way to get to the Governor's Island ferry is to take the 1 train downtown to the South Ferry station. Once you exit the Battery Maritime Building will be right in front of you. It is a Beaux-Arts style building that was built in 1906 with lots of cast iron properly treated to resist corrosion from the sea air. It looks like this:

Entrance to the Battery Maritime Building.

The backside of the building as the ferry heads to Governor's Island.

As of August 2015 the bike paths around Governor's Island are still under construction. A continuous path currently goes around the entire island, but will be extended farther south in the future. The City has replaced a lot of the aging water and gas lines as well as renovated historic houses, forts, and a former garrison. On the island the Blazing Saddles bike rental company has set up shop and you can rent a cruiser, hybrid, tandem, and some other interesting unusual bicycles (comfort bikes start at $16/hour).  I arrived late in the day, so had to settle for what bikes were available. A largish gray comfort bike was chosen for me and served its purpose well though it couldn't come close to the comfort of my fitted Miyata 310! If it's your first time visiting Governor's Island expect to spend a day (or 4-5 hours) on the island checking out the historical landmarks and interesting spaces. Construction of new parts of the island is currently underway and there will be four grassy knolls(!) at the southern end of the island next year. I can't wait to check them out. The view of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty from the hills is supposed to be fantastic.

After wandering through the forts and visiting an interesting art fair at Colonel's Row I found myself entering Hammock Grove. What a surprise and I could really use a nap too after laboring on the bike and walking around for a couple of hours. The hammocks vary in quality. Some are so stretched out I wouldn't bother trying to lie in one unless you like the feeling of your butt grazing the ground while your knees are pressed into your face. All the less stretched out hammocks were taken, so I took my bike and wandered off again.

This time I came across the food court. It felt like stumbling into the Garden of Eden! All sorts of foods and snacks were available. A big Starbucks dominated one corner. I even found Alchemy Creamery, which sells those vegan ice creams that are so much healthier for you than Ben & Jerry's. I don't remember what else I ate but everything was delicious. I will definitely come back to Governor's Island next summer just to be able to ride around on a bike and look forward to a good meal.

Hammock Grove

City Island

When I'd first gotten my hands on NYU BikeShare bikes I immediately set off for the outer boroughs hoping to dig up some gem of a place to brag about to my friends with no bikes. City Island in the Bronx looked promising, so I set out one day during the summer to explore this mysterious island that I'd never set foot on in all my 30-something years of life in New York City. According to the Gothamist, City Island has its own distinct culture where "clamdiggers" and "musselsuckers" are clearly defined.

For a cyclist the most sensible route is to take the 6 train to Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, bike across the overpass and follow the bike path across Pelham Bridge on to City Island Road and into City Island. Unfortunately, the bike path is not clearly marked the entire way and parts of the route don't even seem to be designed for biking. I don't recommend taking this route to City Island. It's not really designed for bicycles, which is a shame since it has the potential to be a really nice ride.

Once you get into City Island, the main drag along the island is City Island Avenue. It's full of cars most of the time, so to ride your bike I advise taking paralell side roads, like King Avenue. A portion of the island is private; the guard at the booth with shoo you away from riding farther. There are some gimmicky seafood restaurants along the island. Apparently, people from the other boroughs seem to believe the seafood here is great even though it's hauled out of the same chemically saturated, sludge-filled waterway of sewage we call the East River. I bet they just get their fish from the supermarket or some supplier from a cleaner place.

One of City Island's many seafood restaurants.

Tour de Bronx participants riding across the City Island Bridge.

Randall's Island

This past Wednesday, I decided to venture to Randall's Island. Originally composed of two islands--Randall's Island in the north and Ward's Island in the south--the gap between the two was filled up and the islands made into one. For the uninitiated Randall's Island looks like a space that serves multiple functions, like housing a golf range, baseball fields, police and fire department facilities, as well as two psychiatric wards. But this island has a darker, murkier past as a home to orphans, people dying of smallpox, the criminally insane and juvenile delinquents. Well, the criminally insane part is still true. The Manhattan Psychiatric Center and Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center are both located on the west side of the island and looms over the bike path in a somewhat intimidating manner; you can't miss it.

Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center

The criminally insane seem to be regarded by the public in much the same way as they were regarded a hundred years ago. While the ordinary insane receive much more compassion from the media and general public and are allowed to live at places like Bellevue Hospital, the criminally insane are a category of people to be avoided at all costs. If you google this hospital, you'll get an interesting list of articles about how the rights of the mentally insane override the rights of nurses and the staff who care for them and that working at one of these places means being terrorized by some scary, nutty people. It makes me wonder who works here. I imagine you'd need either a tremendous amount of compassion or a tremendous amount of courage.

At any rate, my bike sped past this institution and eventually found itself beneath the Hell Gate Bridge, a stone bridge that was constructed in the 1930s as a train pathway to link New York and the Pennsylvania Railroad with New England and the New Haven Railroad. The bike is well-maintained and especially beautiful at sunset.

A view of Hell Gate Bridge from the Triboro Bridge.

Bike path beneath the Hell Gate Bridge at sunset.

Overall, Randall's Island wasn't as much fun to bike as Governor's Island. The bike paths shown on the various information boards scattered across the island are not accurate. One bike path seems to go through an NYPD facility, which is blocked off to the public. I ended up biking in circles trying to find an open road. The bike lanes also sort-of disappear and merge into traffic at times and you end up sharing the road with cars and buses suddenly.

One interesting highlight of this bike journey was stumbling upon the New York Haunted Hayride set. I'd no idea that this event was being held on Randall's Island and rode past a sign saying "Sisters of the Burning Hearts Children's Home". Right behind the sign was an old graveyard. A rectangular altar was at one end of the cemetary and seemed to double as a sacrificial table. There were mannequins covered in blood littered all around the altar. The mannequins were cut in half at the waist, so they were either just legs or a torso and head. The fact that it was almost Halloween hadn't clicked in my mind yet and I thought it was some kind of crazy sacrificial ritual held by a bunch of New Age satanists or something! I'm atheist and have no fear of gods or devils, but like a healthy New Yorker I am afraid of crazy people. It was around 5 pm, the area looked abandoned, and I pedaled harder on my bike to get away from the graveyard. The reviews for the New York Haunted Hayride seem to be pretty bad, but if you don't tell people what it is and ask them to ride a bike on a nice sunny afternoon in an abandoned part of Randall's Island, it will have the intended effect of scaring the crap out of them a little.

On my way back I took the pedestrian route across the Triboro Bridge towards Astoria, Queens. This is what I saw:

Pedestrian path along the RFK (Triboro) Bridge.

This is actually a pedestrian path and while there were one or two people crossing the bridge the majority were all cyclists. Towards the Queens side the bridge morphs into a highway and you have to walk next to 10-ton mack trucks going at 50 miles per hour 5 feet away from you. The only thing separating you and those monsters is a thin, 4-foot high concrete barrier. Not a nice experience at all, avoid this route!

Bike fitting for fun and profit

It's great having your own bike to ride around NYC. By far the biggest benefit is that you're familiar with all the quirks and unique traits of your own bike. When I rode the school bikes they had a fun way of revealing their idiosyncrasies in inconvenient places. For example, a little red comfort bike with a low step through frame had a tendency to drift left at higher speeds. Inconveniently, I found out while coasting down the Manhattan Bridge. Another had a funny boom-thomp sound that only happened when riding over bumps and gravel. A third one (bearing NYU's trademark violet and white colors) had a seat that suddenly sinks down like an escalator in the middle of gridlock. Each one was a little scary in its own way and I guess that's all part of the fun. Granted not paying a dime (except tuition) to borrow the bike is great, but after enough of these quirks I bet more than one student decided to get their own bike to avoid any more nasty surprises (even a wheel that suddenly pops off might only do that on gravel, so you'd know what to expect if you were on gravel).

When you buy an older bike be prepared to invest as much money in fixing it up as you do in buying it. There is also the issue of getting fit for the bike. I spent only $175 to buy the bike and my local bike shops want to charge $100 just for a fit assessment...perhaps next semester when I get more student loans (sigh). Being cash-strapped does do something to you though--it makes you a far more resourceful person (this works out since you also have a little more free time). I started reading everything I could about fit and bicycles. While a bike fitter has many modern techniques (and computers) to estimate the size of the bike you need, in the end the best (and only real) way to know if the bike is a good fit is to ride it.

I took my Miyata out for many spins and put about 30 miles on it before deciding on a number of things:

• the top tube is too long
• the seat tube may be a little too long but no biggie
• the brakes levers are stiff and difficult to squeeze
• the brake levers are too far away from me
• the drop handlebars are the right width but have a 120 cm reach, which puts the levers far away
• the saddle is too narrow
• I didn't check carefully inside the shipment box where the beautiful original steel pedals were wrapped in brown paper and instead put on a set of ugly black pedals by accident - Fixed.
• the bike needs to be made "legal" with a headlight, tail light, and bell - Fixed

Before going into the nitty gritty here's some basics: a bike's "frame size" is the distance from the very bottom of the seat tube (called the bottom bracket) to the top of the tube. Nowadays, the measurement seems to be taken from the center of the bottom bracket to the center of the top bracket of the seat tube. The bracket is the place where all the tubes join together.

Parts of a bike frame.

The problem with the top tube is something a lot of women are going to encounter. Diamond-shaped road bikes frames made before the 1990s were, as a rule, made for men (bikes made for women all featured a step-through frame). While there was no standardization of frame sizes like today, the diamond frames were designed for male bodies in mind. While a woman with a longer torso might feel very comfortable on one of these bikes, most women are going to find that the only way they can ride these bikes comfortably is to get a frame with a shorter seat tube (so, if online bike calculators tell you "50 cm", you'll want to go down to 49 or 48 cm for 1980s and older diamond frame road bikes). A smaller frame will have a shorter top tube to accomodate shorter torsos.

If you ride a bike with a top tube that's too long for you, a number of problems arise. One is that you'll feel "stretched out" on the bike. It may be hard to reach the brake levers, which makes it dangerous to ride the bike. If this is your first road bike or the first time that you've ridden one in many years, a slightly long reach might not be a problem since with frequent riding (especially on longer rides) you'll eventually feel more comfortable with a slightly too-long top tube than a slightly too-short one (this is true for both women and men). On my Miyata the seat tube is 51 cm (center-to-center) and top tube is 52 cm. This sizing is bizarre since the top tube seems to be too short for the average man who rides a 51 cm road bike. But odd sizing was a frequent event in the old days of bike manufacturing even within a company itself. While my Miyata has a 51 cm seat tube and 52 cm top tube, there is a 610 Miyata on eBay at this moment with a 48 cm seat tube and 52 cm top tube. Sizing was all over the place in the old days.

The Miyata I bought was in fact previously owned by an older woman (85 years-old) who broke her collar bone riding a mountain bike. Her very concerned son decided to put up her entire bike collection on eBay to avoid another mishap. It was a stroke of luck to find a 1982 men's road bike with such woman-friendly dimensions though it ended up that the top tube is still just too long for me. Going through growing pains with this bike was not easy and at one point I wanted to sell it and get a slightly smaller bike. But after checking around on eBay I found that most 49 or 48 cm vintage road bikes have 52 cm top tubes. And a bike any smaller than 48 cm is going to look like a kid's bike on me! I thought of getting a different type of bike (e.g., hybrid, comfort, cruiser), but in a city like this, it seems like only delivery guys ride hybrids, messengers ride fixies, hipsters will ride anything vintage, fixie, or weird (tandem bike), wannabe racers ride Cervelos, and Manhattanite yuppies ride Italian cruisers. The last was entertaining to see because the man wearing the business suit had to pedal very hard and fast to avoid an oncoming taxi. All that sweat must have ruined his expensive suit. I look forward to the day that NYC starts imposing some Zona Traffico Limitato zones and give pedestrians and bicyclists a break! Buses, trains, and pedicabs are more than enough to shuttle people around.

It might have made more sense to buy a modern road bike with a diamond frame designed for women, but the only constraint is price--they don't come cheap and even the lowest end Specialized women's road bike starts at $700. Not an option for most students.

So, some last words on the bike fit problems. The way I approached adjusting the bike to fit me was to (1) get a handlebar with a shorter reach, (2) get a shorter stem. The current handlebar reach is 120 mm, which tells me the previous owner had arms and legs longer than mine! I found a handlebar with a 95 mm reach that fit me on eBay. Also on eBay I found a 50 mm stem (current one is 60 mm). I bought it on impulse because my neck and back pain were getting really bad due to the excessive reach on the bike, but based on all the advice in bike forums, 90 mm is really the shortest you should go on a road bike without compromising safety and stability at higher speeds. Oh well.

Finally, the saddle. This might deserve its own post but I don't really want to rehash the hellish experience of trying to find something that doesn't constantly punish your derriere. Let's just say there's a reason why Brooks saddles work for so many people and the reason is that it hurts less than the competition for most of us.

Buying a first bike

Grad school has been so hectic and demanding that I've had little time to blog in the past 2 weeks (I should have gone to bicycle repair school). Now that there's a little lull in the pace, it's time for some updates.

Back in mid-September after a summer of biking around I was ready to buy my first bike as an adult. It really didn't take long to realize why the university's bikes were always hanging alone and neglected in the bike room. When you ride one you look about as sexy as Fozzie the Bear. Yes, you might get a few looks here and there but probably not for the reasons you hope.

The Muppets enjoying a nice ride.

After wandering through Bicycle Habitat in Soho (a bit pricey even by NYC standards) and test-driving a few Trek WSD hybrids, I decided that vintage was the way to go and after seeing a teenaged girl straddle her men's frame road bike with the top tube spanning straight across in a completely unfeminine manner I knew I had to get a men's road bike too. Hoisting my leg up and giving everyone a clear view of my crotch albeit concealed in demin is like flipping people the bird but in a way that suggests it was unintentional and completely outside of my control.

I started to research what bike to buy. After looking around I decided to avoid American manufacturers because there were too many Raleigh and Schwinn 10-speeds all over NYC (they're like the Chevy and Fords of bicycles), but the Pinarellos and De Rossas (lambourghini and alpha romero) were way out of my budget. I did what any American would do in this kind of position--I decided to buy a Japanese brand.

I discovered the Miyata bike company while browsing around on eBay. Miyata, while not well-known in the U.S., used to build some sleek racehorses for events like the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia back in the 1980s. They made racing bikes, mountain bikes, and even touring bikes. Being a total novice at the time these bikes all looked pretty similar. Throw in the modern varieties of hybrid, comfort, and cyclocross my eyes glaze over and I just wanted to pick something pretty. Luckily (or so I'd thought), I had educated myself enough about bikes to try to measure myself with a bike fit calculator first at the Competitive Cyclist website. While this calculator works well if you are male, it is (like many things in the world of cycling) completely inaccurate and incorrect if you're female. Basically, after measuring myself and entering the results the calculator told me that I needed a frame with a top tube (center-to-center) length of 53.7 cm. But when I entered in the same measurements and selected "male" the calculator told me that I need a frame with a top tube center-to-center of just 52.4 cm. If you're unfamiliar with bike frame sizes this might not make sense to you but just know that if you compare an average woman and average man of the same height the woman will have a shorter torso, shorter arms, and longer legs. If your torso and arms are shorter, you will of course need a shorter (not longer) top tube to reach the handlebars--obviously the 53.7 cm top tube length for a woman is wrong if the top tube length for a man is just 52.4 cm. What a disappointment! I just wrote to the owner of this "bike fit calculator" and let them know that their results for women are screwed up. Good thing I didn't bring these calculations to a bike shop and try to buy a bike with those dimensions. It would have been a very costly mistake! If you are female and are in the market for a vintage road bike with a diamond frame (and not a step-through frame), the best suggestion I have is to stick to the 1-to-1 rule (I just made up this name). Basically, it means that whatever seat tube length you buy, you should aim for a top tube of the same length or even a bit shorter. For example, if you punched your numbers into a bike fit calculator and it told you that you need a 48 cm seat tube height, then you should look for a top tube with the same length of 48 cm (this approximation was taken from Myra Simon's website Buying a bike that fits a woman). I have assessed my own fit and this ratio works for me though I might even go 1 cm shorter for a top tube and just get a longer stem to increase the weight and stability of the headset. Of course, the best way for a beginner to find a bike that fits is to get a fit assessment from your local bike shop and test ride a bike before you buy. A road bike may take some adjustment, but it should be fairly comfortable from the moment you ride it. If you end up riding a lot and you develop more core strength and flexibility, you might end up getting a longer stem because your reach will be longer. A reach that is a little longer than comfortable will be okay if you plan on building up endurance, riding long distances often, or getting into racing.

In the end I browsed around on eBay and found a blue Miyata 310 made in 1982 that was selling for $175. Sweet deal said my mind. It turns out the shipping was about $100, but in a bike market like NYC's, $275 for a mint, well-maintained Miyata 310 is nothing to whine about. Of course, I immediately violated the first cardinal rule of bike-buying: never buy a bike without test riding it first. To help you, dear reader, to avoid the same mistake I recommend reading the article How to Buy Your First Bicycle by Bicycling Magazine. I have no need of that or of any other instructions. I like to suffer through trial and error.

So, here is a photo of what the Miyata 310 looks like. This photo isn't mine; it's someone else's perfectly preserved bike. Mine has a few more scratches hidden nicely from view, so looks similar. I will post up photos of my bike after rebuilding. Hopefully, all those vintage parts bought on eBay will arrive in a week.

First Post!

Welcome to my blog about bicycling in NYC! Some time in August 2015 I embarked on an interesting adventure to become a bike commuter in NYC. I'm documenting all the hurdles and headaches of biking in a not-especially-bike-friendly city. Hopefully, some of these stories (mishaps) might help other cyclists avoid the same problems and enjoy biking in NY more.

Where it all began…

I currently attend grad school at NYU. The school runs a Bike Share program that lets you borrow bikes during the day. Like a lot of things in life I had found out about Bike Share early on but it look me two years to finally get around to trying it out! (Grad school will refine your procrastination skills). When I finally went to pick out a bike they turned out to be mostly beaten up cruisers with step through frames so low that a toddler could climb on them. So, I wasn't going to look anything like Eddy Merckx.

The next challenge was to watch a video on how to ride a bike in NYC. For anyone living in an urban environment this kind of introduction is crucial. In NYC urban motorists think you're a nuisance trying to steal their roads; some of them seem like they'd rather avoid running over roadkill than a commuter on a bike. But whatever. The streets of NY belongs to cyclists as much as drivers. Also, never forget that as a cyclist you are clearly superior to them. You're on a highly efficient, environmentally friendly machine that doesn't cause global warming nor decimate our artic ice caps and therefore does not endanger living things or future generations on this planet. You're getting substantial exercise and are far less of a risk to pedestrians than any motorized vehicle. On top of that when you bike you use only 1/5 of the energy of a pedestrian to go about 5 times faster. Whoever came up with the idea of a bike should be given the Nobel Prize in Awesomeness.

After watching the standard introductory video to urban biking the next step is to take the bike out on to an actual road. I started with a curbside lane right outside of a school building on West 4th Street. On Google Maps you'll see it's a solid dark green colored line (Google calls it a "bike trail" and it's different from the lighter green one that indicates just a standard asphalt bike lane with white lines on the street). For curbside lanes and protected paths the ground will be painted green with a large white icon of a person on a bike repeated periodically. Often protected paths will have some "padding" on one side, like hatched road markings to separate traffic. Sometimes there are also parked cars next to one side of hatched road markings that act as a buffer fast moving traffic on a major boulevard. First and Second Avenues in Manhattan come to mind. For a description of the different types of bike lanes in NYC go to the Department of Transportation page located here.

A bike lane near the building where the NYU Bike Share office is located.

After reaching the end of the block I was presented with a bigger challenge. The bike lane abruptly ended and the road ahead was dangerously unmarked. I saw experienced cyclists whizzing straight past me without blinking into the dark, unmarked asphalt, but that was unthinkable. It would be like a beginning swimmer being tossed into the deep end. I certainly wasn't ready for an unmarked road! Where to go now? Checking my map it seemed like turning left would put me on another green lane. Relief! It was clever of NYU to set up the Bike Share program near Washington Square Park. Interesting challenges on every corner (or I might be a bit of a timid lame-ass at this, but it's great either way)!

After going another block the green bike path disappeared again. This time I had to ride on unmarked asphalt, but luckily there were other cyclists boldly pedaling ahead, so I followed them up to 10th Street, where I turned right and headed east for the protected path on 2nd Avenue. The 10th Street bike lane is clearly marked with white lines and filled with weekend riders. But I noticed immediately that cars don't especially care about staying in their own lanes and they seem to care even less about double parking in ours.

It was hair-raising at first. A large white van passed me veering slightly in and out of the bike lane as a silver Honda Accord decides to suddenly lurch out of its parking spot, cross the bike lane, and merge into traffic. This all happened in front of me in about 5 seconds. Yikes! You're supposed to be able to navigate this? In spite of all the signs everywhere, many drivers forget there is a bike lane or that people are using it! Oddly, the helmet gives you some irrational sense of protection. I mean, afterall it's just a helmet on your head and the rest of you is just flesh with some cloth draped over it. You're very vulnerable. But for some reason when I wear a helmet, I feel a little more fearless. I guess you'll have to get your courage from somewhere to bike in this city!