Don't let this happen to you.
Coming back from Long Beach to Manhattan (30 miles) the Saturday after
Thanksgiving, I had an opportunity to ride the bike I keep at the beach
-- the Trek 400 -- since i was going to have somone in the city
consult on restoring it to its former glory. (I had kept in really good
shape for a long time, then one day, riding in a freak storm, some
debris took off the cage. It couldn't be replaced with the original
short cage or anything like it -- short cages were out of favor that
year -- so I accepted a long cage, but then psychologically stopped
really caring about the bike.)
I wasn't originally planning on biking back, so i didn't have my NYC
handy dandy bike route guide, which had the location of every bike shop
in the city and every bus (there are a couple) that has a bike carrier.
It was pretty cold, and I didn't want to fix a flat in the cold and
screaming wind, so I didn't take a patch kit, figuring that for most of
the route I was going to be shadowing the A Train.
Crossbay Boulevard goes from Rockaway (named after the Reckawawang
Indians who sold Manhattan to the Dutch) across the Jamaica Wildlife
Area, a long and fabulously scenic ride with a bike lane, passing
through Broad Channel (you may remember Black to the Future and Hassidic
Park) and Ozone Park/Howard Beach (you may recall the Pizza Murder) on
its way back to civilization.
Anyway, I'm really enjoying getting back into riding low with hands
where a cyclist's hands belong, low on the racing handlebars, no sissy
levers for the brakes, down tube shifiting, nice and balanced and
minimal resistance. I was concentrating on practicing cadence riding
and working out an algorithm for how often I should look up to see if i
was going to smack into anything, but it was a pretty empty stretch.
Until there was a pile of construction rocks (apple sized, jagged edges)
in the bike lane. And an SUV snug up against the buffer to the bike
lane. So instead of gambling on the attention and acuity of the driver,
I tried to navigate the rocks.
Big mistake. Total flat. And I later figured out this was the absolute
farthest point on the ride from a subway stop. And I didn't have the
guide that could have told me about buses. So I started walking through
anti-bicycle land. Really. Another two miles through the wildlife
preserve, then here was one store with all kinds of rec-v's but no
bicycles, a sporting goods store with no bicycles, even a Strauss Auto
Parts but sold out of fix-a-flat, heaven preserve me i was even thinking
along those lines, and a hardware store with plenty of f-a-f but only,
of course, the monster truck size.
I know that on a summer weekend, there are literally thousands of bikes
a day going past here. Couldn't there be one bike facility? it was
like bicycles completely didn't enter the consciousness of these people.
Or subways either -- I was directed to a sandwich shop first before I
clarified that I wanted a train.
Moral: be prepared, don't rely on any one.
--ag