Of course, that’s a good day. A normal day means I run into at least one of the above obstructions.

Today, I think I hit all of them, plus a few new ones. Seriously, today was the coldest commute I’ve ever had, and not because of the temperature. I just never warmed up, I wasn’t pedaling that hard for that long. Ever.

Probably the most non-fulfilling ride I’ve had in a while… I just hope the ride home is more enjoyable. And warmer.

Brake: Tightened.
Rusty Chain: Replaced.
Dangerous sounding rattle coming from intersection of fork and frame: Still there, apparently.  Guess it’s not so dangerous…

Forgot how great it is to have a bike that stops on a dime and pedals like its chain was dipped in butter…  Rain and snow in the forecast for Monday, though.  Here’s hoping this chain makes it to May!

I’ve had the bike working for about three weeks now and aside from the weekly trips to the bike shop to buy parts that I should have replaced when I first put it together (axle, ball bearings, etc.) it’s been working like a charm. Now I just have to find some time to learn how to ride it properly…

On the Brooklyn side I couldn’t even see the bridge.

Once I got closer I started to make a few things out, but only on the side closest to me.

The Manhattan Bridge was fairing a little better, but was still stuck in it’s own little fog-bound world.

Midnight rides are generally fun. Generally. Which is what I thought when I set out twenty minutes ago. Despite it being actually midnight, and thus dark, the full moon was directly over my head, bathing the entire road in a nice blue light. As I set out I felt refreshed, I felt exhilirated. Here I was, gliding down a dirt road with nothing but the moon to guide me. I’d spent almost the entire day (rain and shine) in the garage tearing parts off, afixing others, and generally being crabby and pissed. But now it was all paying off. I’d cleared the last obstacle before “rideable” and I wasn’t going to wait for Sunday morning…

My bike was eerily silent as I pedaled up gentle grades and then down into the fog banks collecting in the lowlands. Having a simple one-gear system makes for a very quiet ride, and I felt like a ghost gliding up and down those hills. Like something out of a Washington Irving story… Aside from the steel and rubber thing I was pedaling on, I really could have been drifting through the moors of colonial times. It felt so completely surreal.

Coming down the final hill, approaching the main road, I noticed a slight disturbance in the harmony that was man and machine. My left crank was pulling a little strangely. Odd, I though, as I approached the train tracks that represented the boundry between my own fantastical world and the modern one of macadam and reflective paint. My crank was pulling very strangly now, like the metal axle had suddenly warped. I slowed, I’d better check this out.

As I was pulling my left foot out of the foot strap I suddenly felt my entire foot go free, but not the kind of free I was used to. I looked down. Crap.

The entire left crank was hanging from my foot and swinging freely in the night air. And suddenly I saw my midnight ride for what it was: On a dirt road that sees one car an hour after midnight, if that. Away from my friends who were all going to sleep when I quietly sauntered out of the house, not even telling them I was leaving the house. On a bike that I’d just put together two hours earlier, that obviously had not gotten any type of inspection or anything before I rolled up my pant legs and took off into the darkness.

I was at least a mile from the house when I finally wrangled the bike to a stop and turned it around. Sadly, the hills didn’t look quite as enticing as I trudged back toward the garage.

Cyclists who take the Brooklyn Bridge during a time of massive subway failure are idiots.  Cyclists who hurl obscenities at the throngs of pedestrians that can’t seem to get out of their way should be dragged off their bikes and beaten to death with their own helmets.

Reason #1: The Brooklyn Bridge is a crisis icon.  It’s the worn out teddy bear with one eye and missing stuffing for Brooklynites everywhere.  When bad stuff happens in New York it usually means we have to walk home; and the gothic towers, the steel framework, the overwhelming history that sweeps over us when we even look at it are exactly the friend we need when times are tough.  Standing inside one of those massive natural cement towers is akin to standing in that snow fort you spent hours building when you were a kid.  You’re invincible.  And it’s a feeling that a lot of Brooklynites have.  We love our bridge, and when the subways fail us, it’s the first place we turn.

All of us.

Seriously, nearly everyone walking over to Manhattan from the general downtown Brooklyn area this morning was walking over the Brooklyn Bridge.  Never mind the Manhattan Bridge, with its entrance only a mere block North of Brooklyn Bridge Blvd.  Never mind the fact that the Manhattan Bridge deposits you about half a mile further uptown in Manhattan (helpful if you work anywhere that’s not the Financial District).

So when everyone and their mother needs to use a bridge, and they all pick their safety blanket (naturally), there are going to be way too many people for the pedestrian lane.  Which brings me to…

Reason #2: The pedestrian lane of the Brooklyn Bridge is crappy for cyclists anyway.  I bike over this thing every day, trust me, I know.  The lane is anywhere from 15 to 20 feet wide and combines a pedestrian walkway with a bike lane, separated by a foot-wide white strip of paint running down the middle.  What’s crappy, you say?  Well, on paper it sounds fine.  But the designers forgot one key factor.

Pedestrians are idiots.

That might sound elitist, but it’s grounded in fact.  Pedestrians don’t have that much to pay attention to, it’s difficult to mess up walking, so they often meander around, not really paying attention to where they are going or where they are in reference to that big white line in the middle of the lane.  Cyclists, on the other hand, are forced to pay more attention to their surroundings, simply because they are balancing on a collection of simple machines traveling anywhere between 10 and 30 miles an hour.  I can’t afford to meander, I have enough problems just not getting myself killed.  But getting back to the point I was making: Pedestrians are complete idiots on the Brooklyn Bridge, particularly when it comes to respecting the bike lane.  On a typical ride I’ll have to deal with at least two of the following, usually three:

• Someone who is walking in the bike lane.
  
• Someone who darts out into the bike lane to pose for a picture.
• People milling about under the arches of the towers, always a crowd standing where I can’t see them until I’m almost on top of them.
• Self-important joggers that don’t want do deal with running through crowds of people.
  
• Some asshole who is walking his bike up the grade, yet still in the bike lane.
  

Sure, it sounds like I’m whining, but most encounters with said idiots usually involve me swerving, locking up the back tire, or narrowly avoiding terrible injury of all parties involved in some other fashion.  On a normal day I am that asshole hurling obscenities at witless walkers, and I completely support any cyclist who does the same.  On a normal day.

The fact that I work at the extreme South end of Manhattan (the reservoir tip, if you will) is the only reason I put up with the annoyance of using this bridge every day (even though I love everything else about it).  So why the bridge would be used by any cyclists to get to get to Manhattan on a day of a city-wide subway shutdown is beyond me.  Multiply the typical amount of people walking over the damn thing by ten and tell me they’ll all stay on the pedestrian side.  Right…

Reason #3:  Speaking of dedicated bike lanes, did you know that the Manhattan Bridge has one?  Yup, completely separate from the pedestrian walkway, it’s on the North side and it’s wonderful.  I took it this morning and I can count the number of people on there with me on one hand.  Literally, there were three other cyclists on there with me, all of whom were going the same way I was going.  The same thing happened during the Transit Strike.  Cops were forcing cyclists to dismount because of the crowds on the Brooklyn Bridge, but the Manhattan Bridge was a ghost town…

There are other reasons why the Manhattan Bridge is better: shallower grade, steadier climb, concrete riding surface (think about bad weather), but I think I’ve proved my point without getting into the boring stuff.

When I arrived at the employee parking garage I asked the guy at the door what I should do. I explained that I was a new employee and was told that there was free bike storage there. He told me to talk to the guy next to him, which I did, and told the same story to him. He, in turn, waved me to the guy minding the gate, so I walked the bike around the gate and told that guy the same story too. He told me to see the man in the office in the center of the garage, so I walked to the exact middle of the structure and knocked on the office window. A white haired man answered me.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m a new employee here and I was informed that there is free bike storage. Can you tell me where it is?”

“Did you show your ID?”

“No one asked me,” I said. “I have it though, I can show you.”

“You can’t come in without showing your ID to the guard over there,” he said, gesturing to the first guy I talked to.

“But I’m already in the buliding. Can’t I just show you my ID?”

“No, gotta be him, procedure. Otherwise you’re not allowed in.”

I paused and looked around. I was in the exact middle of the building. If I moved in any direction, I’d actually be on my way back out. I was literally as far in the building as I could get. Sensing an Abbot and Costello moment about to start, I decided to forgo common sense (the enemy of so many people’s jobs nowadays) and go back to the first guy so he could let me in the garage.

I often wonder what goes through a person’s mind when you try to appeal to their sense of reason like that. Seems a lot of jobs (and I’ve had a few) try their best to beat the common sense right out of you, and if you stay in one job too long, it usually succeeds.

My favorite part is the realization. This usually happens in retail or when I’m on the phone with a customer service person. I argue my point over and over and over again and usually after forcing the rep to tell me exactly what is happening, why it’s happening, and why it can’t happen my way when they suddenly realize the rediculousness of the situation (read: I’m in the right, but there is some arbitrary reason why I can’t do what I need to). Arbitrary rules are the only ones that ever provoke a realization. Problem is, I only get my money back/situation rectified about half the time, even with a hefty dose of realization induced common sense.

I and about a billion other people took part in the 3rd Annual Tour de Brooklyn today under slightly cloudy skies. Pictured above are Greg and I about a half an hour into the ride. I’m proud of this photo because I’m the 2nd most attractive male in the immediate foreground of it, takes work…

Because I heard about, signed up, then took part in this event all in the space of about 24 hours I had no idea what this whole thing was about until I actually got underway this morning. Apparently this is Brooklyn’s capstone to Bike Month, and takes riders on a tour of a litany of neighborhoods and attractions, including: Park Slope, Greenwood Cemetary, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, the Verrazano Bridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Kensington, Prospect Park South, and Prospect Park itself.

Unfortunately for the ride organizers, I live very close to Park Slope, used to live in Bay Ridge, bike through Sunset Park to get to my friends in my old neighborhood, and have meandered my way to many of the sights in the surrounding areas (read: everywhere but Kensington), so this ride wasn’t so much about discovering Brooklyn for me as it was about feeling like I was among kindred spirits. Indeed, when we stopped to let all the riders back behind us catch up I was able to snap a photo or two and I was floored by how many of us were taking part. There seemed to be an endless stream of bikes coming over the horizon, or around the corner, or into the park, or wherever. I really got the sense that I was part of a community. I saw kids attached to parents’ bikes, toddlers riding in seats above tires, custom chop-jobs, club jackets, and my personal favorite, t-shirts that read “One Less Car” on the back. Rock!

In the past few weeks I’ve been on a major fitness kick and Monday I was supposed to start biking to work (though I may push that off if the weather is still as nasty tomorrow morning. I’m hoping I can carry through all this energy that I’ve been able to generate for the rest of the summer and turn it into something good for the fall and winter. Maybe a new hobby. I’ve always wanted to pick up archery…