It figures that lots of folks who took the day off yesterday are
coming in today. The car traffic out in Queens was horrible. The main
cross-Queens bike lane (34th Avenue) had quite a few more bikes than
normal for a summer day and it was 25F this morning with a pretty
stiff breeze. The 59th Street Bridge ped/bike lane was more crowded
than yesterday morning (at least at 7AM) and there were many more
bikes than yesterday. Gotta watch where we blast those snot rockets.
I saw two accidents on the bridge, both caused by "pro" bikers who
don't seem to give a [censored] that there's a transit strike on. Most of
the folks walking are pretty clueless and most of the folks biking
have no idea what they're doing either. The smart (and out of shape
ones) are walking the bikes across the bridge. The rest are staggering
up. Most of us "pros" are doing pretty well dealing with it, but one
[censored] flew past me and the bike that I was following moved a bit to
the left, and head over heels the [censored] goes. He gets up yelling and
I'm yelling at him that he's an inconsiderate piece of [censored]. He gets
no yellow jersey today.
Another one was a "pro" who managed to clip a pedestrian and then at
least had the decency to apologize.
The two lower deck car lanes are virtually empty. I'm starting a
movement to have them opened to peds/bikes. Another quixotic crusade
doomed to failure.