New Yorkers are kind in their own way/My First NYC Bike Crash

By now I have tallied a fair number of miles riding around New York City on two wheels.

After several harrowing close calls involving near head-on collisions with shitheads obliviously turning left in their ridiculously sized SUVs while talking on the phone or dodging swerving cabs, opening car doors and partially covered manholes, I finally wasn’t so lucky.

 Only I was pretty lucky.

Several months ago I bought a Groupon for Citibike – that fleet of bikes available all over Manhattan that you can take and return at your leisure for a daily/monthly/yearly fee. They seemed like a great idea. But upon my first attempt to use them, as much as I wanted to love it, it turned out the whole system kind of sucks.

Citibikes come with many bugs and annoyances, the most obvious being:

A) No bikes at a station. Or, as the case may be, the absence of bikes at several stations in spite of the “real time” Citibike App telling you that there are bikes.

B) Broken stalls. Even if it looks like there are bikes at a station, for some reason, they are permanently locked into their stalls. Sometimes you don’t know this until the machine takes your money but fails to give you a bike.

C) 30-minute limit. If you are actually able to get a bike out of the stall, you only have a half hour to ride it to the next station without being charged for extra time. Again, sometimes the App will tell you stations have space to return bikes but in reality, they don’t. Or it looks like they do, but then the stalls are broken and you can’t put the bike back. With all the bullshit you go through just getting a bike, you usually have 17 minutes rather than 30, so instead of enjoying the journey, you’re frantically pedaling to your destination before time runs out.

None of that has anything to do with My First NYC Bike Crash. Except that I was on a Citibike.

Usually I ride my own janky bike ($20 on Craigslist), which presents its own set of dangers (eg: brakes that barely work, broken gears, wobbly wheels, etc).

But today, I had taken the train into Penn Station and was grabbing a Citibike to ride down to the harbor. Miraculously, it took less than five minutes to get the bike, but I was only on it for about 40 feet.

I was pedaling down the open pathway behind the line of Citibikes and looking at the upcoming busy intersection. Seeing a green light, I was just standing up to increase my speed when instead I launched over the handlebars.

It’s funny how in any kind of crash, the spinning-out-of-control-before-impact part of it can feel like it lasts about 10 years.

Even though my crash happened suddenly, during the 10 years it took to hit the pavement, I had a couple of thoughts. The first was looking down and realizing that it was a random parking block sticking out into the street that had brought my robust, 70-pound Citibike to a dead stop. And the second was to realize – while the panicky half of my brain was in AAAAARGGGGGH free fall mode – that there was a crowd of about 200 people at the street corner witnessing my crash.

“Fuck,” the observant part of my brain noted on the way down. “This is embarrassing.”

Happily, my ego ended up the most bruised part of me. Although I did land hard on my knee and tear my jeans (new ones, dammit) and felt incredibly sore all over the next day. It could have been way, way worse.

As I brushed myself off and started picking up my ridiculously heavy bike, keeping my head down to avoid eye contact with anyone, a pair of hands helped pull me up.

ARE YOU OK?

 I looked into the furrowed brow of a middle-aged man who spoke with a strong New York accent.

ARE YOU OK? he shouted again, genuinely concerned.

“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you.”

“WHAT HAPPENED? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? OH! YOU MUST HAVE HIT THAT THING,” he pointed at the concrete block. “WHO PUT THAT THERE? WHY WOULD SOMEONE PUT THAT THERE? STUPID ASSHOLE!”

I thanked him again and walked away shaking and unsteady, but smiling.

Some stupid asshole put some block in my way that made me crash. Stupid asshole.

Anyone who says New Yorkers are cold, selfish and uncaring has not met enough of them to know any better.

Spin class VS the outdoors

These are the options I find myself weighing for my daily exercise each morning now that it is no longer the dreary Arctic here in NYC.

I had never attended a spin class before moving here, but given the discomfort of riding through the city in winter (you’re still gambling with your life even in the most glorious of spring conditions), I decided to give it a try. Now I am a weekly regular.

The energy and spontaneous dance moves of the spin instructors at my gym are truly uplifting. However, there was one drill sergeant woman who, rather than shout motivating axioms in coherent English (“YOU CAN DO IT!” “THERE’S MORE IN YOU!” “FASTER!” etc) would grunt loudly into her face mic, sounding not unlike an angry predator having sex (“HEF! HEF! GAH! GAAAAH! AW … SHIT! GEF! HEH!”).

The “Aw shits” were especially charming, and only vaguely indicative that she had any idea she was supposed to be teaching a class and not having her own lung-busting workout. After experiencing her class twice (giving it a second try because I had convinced myself the woman was just overwhelmed with psychological problems during that first class and not believing it could possibly be her MO) vowed never again to go to her class. Thankfully she is no longer instructing.

This morning’s class was taught by a sexy accented hulk of Latin origins. We’ll call him Mateo. He is perfectly sculpted (not that I’m into that sort of thing, but it does make the whole experience more pleasant) and has a way of shouting out numbers over the maxed out pounding club tunes that is almost indecipherable but perfectly fine because he’s aware of it and starts pantomiming while off his bike, shaking his ass and marching around the room.

Of course I have also been pedaling outside and my last adventure involved attempting to ride to the industrial wasteland of College Point (that has nothing to do with higher education at all and is in fact one of the city’s ugliest areas). It was actually a very enjoyable ride – down breezy residential streets in Corona and East Elmhurst and over Grand Central on a pedestrian bridge that spits you out directly in front of Laguardia Airport. From there you ride on a spacious and empty promenade along the water, which unfortunately reeks like hundreds of years worth of hepatitis-infused sewer waste. Once I reached the end of the promenade near the Worlds Fair Marina the only options were to ride up a variety of on-ramps into blaring horns and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Google Maps’ highlighted bicycle route failed to clarify this.

The destination was never quite crossed off my list, but there will be other attempts. To other parts of the city hopefully less armpit-like. The shockingly disparate (from interesting and relatively pleasant to sludge-infested and death-defying) cycling options are endless here. And there is always spin class to fall back on.