There is nothing that is more fun on the bike than riding in NYC, period, end of story. OK, I'll tell the story anyway. There is a magic that happens when traffic density reaches the point where the cars are always traveling slower than the cyclists. NYC has created miles of bike lanes and all the bridges have bike and pedestrian lanes. The best part though is just taking the lanes or riding the stripes and weaving amongst the cars. It must be experienced to be understood. The day was warm and sunny so I threw on saddlebags and a change of clothes and shoes and headed off for a day of fun in the city with no real plan. I wandered around Brooklyn and crossed over at the Brooklyn Bridge where the pediterrorists were out in force standing in the bike lanes with their cameras pointed skyward.
Arriving in Manhattan, I wandered around chinatown and little italy and up to Madison Square where my friends Betty and Michael have an architectural firm at 23rd and fifth avenue. After chatting them up and making tentative plans for later, I headed over to the food court at Madison Square where open air food trailers reminded me of Austin. I grabbed a salad with tofu and an icecream sandwich and got in touch with Henry Gifford who was just finishing work and agreed it was a great day for a ride so I headed up to central park where I traded attacks with the local biking badasses though I was on a bike with fenders and full saddle bags weighing in way north of 30 pounds.
After once around the park I went to meet Henry on the upper west side.
He suggested a ride over to Jamaica in Queens to meet his parents, which
was a gift in my eyes after all I'd heard about them. The ride over was unadulterated rocket fueled craziness on crack. Henry has ridden here all his life and can handle the traffic effortlessly by just "getting into the rhythm." We stopped for traffic, not for lights. The lights just tell you there might be traffic. You have to ride with your head on a swivel and all focus on the flood of data that you take in as you wind amongst the cars. We were so much faster than the cars. On long straight sections we rode 25-28 mph which was the speed of the cars. Any other time we just left them behind. There is no way to describe it adequately but it is magic. The cars trucks and busses are big but they are slow and predictable and you just ride with them as if they are part of the road. They are used to having to watch out for millions of pediterrorists so cyclists are less of a pain for them I think. The real dangers are the pediterrorists. They wander around in a daze staring at their phones and will look at you and step right out while you try to reign in your 20+ mph at the last minute. There are thousands of cyclists and they all seem pretty strong.
Along the way, Henry turned in to a small city park where he said it was a nice place to ride. They had a freaking velodrome and the races were just starting, so we stopped and watched a few.
As it started to get dark, we arrived at the home of Henry's parents, Henry and Catherine(Cassie).
Cassie, who taught at the local university for 40 years immediately started cooking while Henry senior, a 93 year old retired machinist, inventor and all around good guy took me down to the basement where he had a labrynth of machine tools including such gems as a 100 year old highly modified southbend lathe. I heard so many great stories and learned a bit more about my great friend Henry Jr. We both agreed that growing up with access to a work shop make a man think differently than those that are not so blessed.
Cassie had a huge dinner ready upstairs when we got back up from the shop beneath the house and the stories that continued illustrated the love and admiration that they held for all three of their children. They did indeed do a fine job. The meal was filling and delicious and all too soon it was time to go. I snapped a few pictures of photos that adorned their walls and a bit of wood sculpture that the elder Henry had created but as is my horrible habit, I neglected to get a picture of Cassie.
Henry decided that it would be prudent to take the subway back to Brooklyn because the cars weren't used to cyclists at night so off we headed to Matt's place.
Matt had asked about a problem he was having with his bathroom floor that seemed to be related to the heating system in the basement. I told him at the time that he would need to talk to someone that had been in the basement and that Henry had likely been down there as he has worked on or seen a good number of the boiler rooms in NYC. Before I said anything to him about it Henry told me that he had been in the basement of the building within the last month and if he gets the job he will make sure that the large steam pipe under Matt's bathroom gets insulated to address the problem he is having. Amazing.
