Six months of riding is oh so close. What a great time it’s been!
Not surprisingly, the more I bike the less there is to blog about it becuase it’s becoming routine. A couple things of note in the past couple weeks though:
1) I’ve changed my route home. One day in week 21 there was some nasty traffic cross town so I didn’t do the usual cross at 35th. Instead, I headed down Broadway, which was a good ride (and it took me by Union Square so I could get ice cream from @biggayicecream). Based on that experience, I decided to ride down 5th Avenue the next day and make the cross on 21st where I normally do. The 5th Avenue ride is so much better than across 35th and down 9th. There are fewer pedestrians and the traffic is easy to weave around. I’ve found that when there is no protected bike path, as there is on 9th, that it’s easier to go faster and be safer. As I wrote earlier, pedestrians seem to take the protected bike path as an annex to the sidewalk. But on 5th there’s no bike path at all until below 23rd Street (and then it’s not protected) so the pedestrians tend to stay where they are supposed to–on the sidewalk.
Going down 5th has taken 5-10 minutes off the ride home and I love that.
2) Just another call out for the jerk who NJ license plate NPT 10Z, driving a green SUV/truck type vehicle. Making the cross on 21st on Wednesday night this guy decides he needs to get to the front of the line waiting on the signal light. He ignore what’s going on in the bike path in an effort to get past the rest of the cars who are waiting in the correct lane at the light. Luckily I was paying attention and had some room to veer to the left to avoid getting broadsided by his large vehicle. He didn’t get to go like he wanted at the light either. I had time to get in front of him before the light changed. I hope it pissed him off.
It’s getting cooler outside and that’s making the rides soooooo very nice. Happy fall!
