Visiting the big City

For New Year's Eve and the few days before it, Johanna and I went to New York to visit her friend. Since Johanna is nice and all and I cleaned my bike since the very muddy Newtown race, I was allowed to bring my bike. We were staying in the Upper West Side, so this would give me an opportunity to go ride New York's first legal mountain bike trails at Highbridge Park. They've been open for awhile now and there are places to ride that are bigger in Queens and Staten Island, too. There was a big deal when these first opened, but I hadn't really heard about them ever since. There was even a race there that Doug et al. won. I found some reviews that weren't particularly favorable.

I'd never been to Highbridge Park before. It's this long skinny park up in Inwood. It's quite big and is home to the oldest bridge still standing in the city. The bridge is being redone as this sort of Highline 2 thing. I was hoping I could cross it, but it's shut. They're building a really awesome skatepark in the park underneath I-95.

I wasn't totally sure where these trails were, so I started in the southern part of the park and found some vague trails, but not something that people would make a website out of. Lots of elevation change, though. Eventually, I kept going north and found the dirt jumps and the real trails. They were surprisingly technical, especially so on a 'cross bike. Aside from the dirt jumps, though, they were also pretty forgot about: trees down, lots & lots of broken glass and sort of generally unused feeling, which is of course is really weird for trails in the biggest city in the country. You'd think the place would be packed or at least not empty- save some dog walkers, a dude who had just woken up and two friendly kids smoking a blunt. It was sort of cold and it was New Year's Eve, but still. 0% of the Manhattan population wanted to go mountain biking that day? People were riding in Connecticut. It was just especially odd, because I felt like I was riding secret trails around here, but it was a legit place with a map in Manhattan. I'll never understand the big City.

Then I rode to New Jersey.

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Blog post and video from NYC Critical Mass

BikeBlog (NYC) has a great post about the May Critical Mass in NYC. Reverend Al Sharpton showed up and either made a great, quick speech or hi-jacked critical mass; depending on how you see it. There's some great ideas to think about in the post, especially as the Beat's mass grows and has to deal with new issues and differing opinions on how things should go and what the ride is about.

There's some interesting twists and turns to the NYC story and i think if he had done a few things differently, he would have been embraced; but sending out press releases saying he was working with the bicyclists for a "slowdown" protest....not cool! Not true. We should all be united, i'm down with that, but you can't unite when you also alienate and divide by saying things that aren't true. Then we all loose and divided we fall.

Here's the LINK to the post. Give it a good read and definetly watch Chris Ryan's video.

I also have to give mad props to both BikeBlog(Michael Green) and Chris Ryan for lots of great reading, videos and inspiration. Its a great site! Check it often. Thanks guys!

Please also know, the NYC CritMass has had a long(and documented) history of serious police harrassment since the 2004 Republican National Convention when some serious stuff went down. Much serious stuff has happened since then as well. Google it and check it out. Lots of videos and posts from the two guys above.

More Critical Mass Reading
CM Tickets

Critcal-Mass.info

Team Spider

Wikipedia


Check this movie out! Ted White makes some great films. i got many great quotes for my flyers by the original organizers in their interviews.
We're Not Blocking Traffic, We Are Traffic

Eastern Mountain Sports in West Hartford will be showing the above movie and a second bicycing movie on Friday, July 18th. I'm not sure if the second movie will be Return of the Scorcher or a documentry about the August 2004 CM in NYC with the RNC crackdown.


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