Last Sunday 5:30 AM found me biking to the Battery where, with a few hundred others, I helped put on BikeNY’s Five Borough Bike Tour. My main job was to ride very slowly, fix flats, gears & chains, hand out water, snacks and encouragement to 30,000 riders. In a previous post I suggested low-key NYC rides you can still go on. Below, I suggest somewhat more adventuresome multi-day rides in order of their physical demands.

When I was a very young teen, I rode on multi-day bike trips organized by the 92nd Street Y and American Youth Hostels. We carried our gear and food; rode 30 or so miles a day on fairly unforgiving 3-speed English touring bikes. I loved it. Heavy duty exercise, lots of unsupervised time on the road for making out, group meals. My dream – never achieved – was to lead those trips.

Fifty years later, in the course of courting, I’ve been getting my wish. On a dare, a couple of years ago I signed up to help put on a multi-day bike ride in the Adirondack Mountains. I practiced and practiced until I could get up the steepest hill in Central Park without collapsing. (Of course, in the Adirondacks, most every hill was steeper and longer than those in Central Park.). Since then, I’ve been on a number of multi-day rides and I want to invite you along.

The following three rides – sponsored by non-profits --, in order of increasing difficulty,

It's spring, the weather has been perfect and May (which starts Thursday) is Bike Month. Middle-aged folk like me (and Room 8's Larry Littlefield ) are looking for exercise, cheap transport and global warming solutions. Bike messengers, Critical Mass riders (like my Council Member Rosie Mendez), edgy fixed-gear fanatics and teens are already out there. Join us. (For a full list of Bike Month events, click here (For Jennifer 8 Lee's NYT Bike Month Round-up, including NYC DOT plans, click here ).

It's already too late to sign up for the biggest NYC pleasure ride the Five Boro Bike Tour on Sunday May 4 which filled up at the beginning of April. The 42-mile car-free ride through NYC's streets parks and highways is an odd mob scene with a cast of tens of thousands, lots of snacks, flat tires and sweat. Because the whole ride is done with no cars, you get a little of the feeling about what a car-free-NYC might be like. Pedaling on auto-free highways is a revelation. It is definitely not for those who want to be alone. If you're going, look for me there.

Three still-open May bike rides:

The 6th Annual Brooklyn Greenway Bike Tour on Saturday May 3, 2008

Protest Saturday September 8, 10AM As part of the ongoing demands that New York and Federal authorities fund appropriate health monitoring and treatment for responders to September 11, NYC's Central Labor Council has asked people to turn out Saturday 10 AM.

HONOR, SUPPORT AND RESPECT
the contributions and sacrifices of all workers

WHEN: Saturday, September 8, 2007 at 10:00 A.M.

WHERE: West Broadway between Vesey and Barclay Streets

Sponsored by:

NYC Central Labor Council
NYS AFL-CIO
Building & Construction Trades Council

The strong positions taken by Mt. Sinai's Irving J. Selikoff Center For Occupational & Environmental Medicine on behalf on injured and ill September 11th responders has subjected them to a hail of criticism which ironically is more or less identical to that leveled at Dr. Selikoff himself when he began campaigning against reckless exposure of workers and citizens to asbestos. I've been treated by the Selikoff Center for job injuries and I've used their expertise in asbestos litigation. See you Saturday Morning.

Helping to put on the Hudson Valley Pedal, a week long mass (150) bicycle tour from Albany to the Battery (-- well, actually to the Seaport) was an eye-opener. I did chores like cutting fruit, helping to pitch tents and rescuing tired riders. I knew the route well from a car, but seeing the Hudson and its countryside at bike-level was brand new. We visited mansions and farms (ripening apples & ripe corn), talked to farmers who hated Bush’s immigration rules which threaten the harvest (See an interesting NY Times report on this here.). We saw the Clearwater, climbed Bear Mountain, toured West Point (great breakfast at the Thayer Hotel).

Since you can’t go on that trip ‘til next year and may hate biking and camping, consider driving to Scenic Hudson’s Day Long Festival this Saturday, August 25, 2007. Free food, music and fun . It’s in three widely separated parks, so a car would be handy. Do try to RSVP, so they’ll know how much food and drink to bring.

Starting Monday, I will help put on a mass bike ride from Albany to the Battery in NYC. The Hudson Valley Pedal will go through great countryside and now more solidly Democratic Congressional districts. We'll camp out along the way, meet local elected officials, fix flats, talk politics and drink beer. (A truck brings tents, luggage, food, so we bike with minimal burdens).

In case long distance, multi-day biking feels to be too much for you, I want to alert you to two NYC opportunities:

On Sunday September 9, 2007, The NYC Century offers cycling options at every range: 100, 75, 50 , 35 & 15 mile routes. Because many fewer people go on it, than on the 5 BBC ride in the spring (6,000 vs. 42,000), the mob scene aspect of the ride is much reduced. People say the lack of crush makes the NYC Century a lot of fun. I plan to help out on the ride. Come say "hi!" The ride costs money, benefits Transportation Alternatives and fills up; register now.

On Sunday Oct 21, 2007 The Tour de Bronx (which was my first and for that reason perhaps) is still my favorite mass bike ride.

Sun-burnt, bug-bit, and aching, I coasted into Albany, NY with 500 or so others bicyclists who rode the 400 miles from Buffalo along the Erie Canal. It was a physical challenge, a wonderful chance to meet a huge range of riders and to see parts of Western New York up close and personal. (Do you wonder why even older, less fit riders did better than I did? Click here for Gina Kolata's explanation)

While I read no newspapers and looked only once at a computer, I did speak to many upstaters. The first thing I learned is that there is no such place as upstate.

We read and write about "upstate Republicans" or the need "upstate" for economic development. "Upstate" is too broad a brush for the varied communities to our North and West.

Even rust belt cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Schenectady defy generalization. Some have gentrifying waterfronts, others seem utterly in ruins. When the plants closed, the bars, beauty salons, car dealers and supermarkets closed too, so many communities feel ghostly with empty store after empty house.

If you cannot make it to DMI’s Congestion Pricing forum Friday, Get free breakfast anyway while bicycling to work. Transportation Alternatives presents
National Bike To Work Day (Breakfast Served)

“Biking to work is fun, saves money and keeps you in great shape. What better time to try it out than on National Bike to Work Day? Stop by one of Transportation Alternatives' commuter breakfast stations on your way in for free coffee and pastries (you earned it!) courtesy of Birdbath: Neighborhood Green Bakeries. They'll also have bike maps, guides to Taking Back NYC Streets and tons of other useful info, no matter if you're biking to work for the first time or the five thousandth. Come say hi and meet T.A. staff, volunteers and your fellow bicycle commuters."

Friday, May 18th, 2007 8:30 - 10:00 AM – at: The Queensboro Bridge The Williamsburg Bridge, The Manhattan Bridge, The Brooklyn Bridge and the Hudson River Park's Clinton Cove Park near 51st Street on the Hudson River Greenway

In a sea of 30,000 bright spandex butts , Sunday May 6, I rode in the 42-mile Five Borough Bike Club tour. As a volunteer, my job was to help riders who were in mechanical, logistical or physical trouble (fix flats, find bike shops, offer drink & encouragement, call backup). Keep the riders safe and happy. It was a crisp bright day – perfect for a moderate ride. One rider’s story of past tours, which captured the flavor well, I thought, appeared in the NY Times City Section . See some of this year’s photos here. You can still sign up for the smaller, shorter Tour de Brooklyn on Sunday June 3, 2007 sponsored by Transportation Alternatives . It’s free, not too taxing and experience is not required. Online registration, it has been said, will close May 31, 2007 -- so do it now.

The Minimum Wage has not gone up –- it’s still stuck where it’s been all these years.

I wish New York City :

1. Only allowed residents and business owners to park in the streets of Manhattan.
   If it were up to me, I would issue special EZ-Pass-like permit readers good for a 10 block perimeter from where people lived --so that it would discourage car owners from using their cars to move from one end of the island to another and instead force people to use mass transit.

   It's ridiculous to hear Manhattanites bitch and moan about traffic problems when they insist in driving in the city instead of using mass transit.

2. Banned suburban buses from NYC streets.
   Why in the world are we allowing buses from Long Island or Yonkers on our city streets? Get suburbanites to walk from drop-off garages instead of having their "I want my oil from Iraq" boxes clog our city streets and pollute our air.

3. Turned whole avenues into pedestrian, bike and pedicap traffic only.
   Broadway is impossible to close because it goes all the way up to Yonkers but if it where up to me, I'd nominate First, Park, 6th and 9th as the avenues most like to benefit from having no cars, trucks or any other kind of motorized vehicles entering them.

Sometimes it seems to me that the real reason that Mayor Bloomberg and his Police Commissioner have gotten into their unending multi-million dollar war with Critical Mass bicycle riders is that they hate being sassed by scruffy radicals. Other times it seems to me that the fault really belongs to two former officials of Mayor Koch's era, Stanley Brezenoff and Nat Leventhal who restructured how NYC evaluates agency productivity. Those two developed and polished the Mayor's Management Report (To see the current draft of the MMR for the Police Dept. click here.

As I read the data there, there are fewer arrests in many categories of offenses. How can the police show they are busy? Well, issuing 49 summonses and arresting three Critical Mass riders certainly gives their numbers a boost -- but so does narcotics enforcement. Misdemeanor narcotics arrests -- read pot -- are up very sharply. Is this the result of a pot wave or a need to boost productivity numbers? You may want to read Paul Armentano's article on Alternet a few days ago where he points out that marijuana arrests are vastly and disproportionately of people of color. NYC arrested more than 32,000 for pot in 2006, overwhelmingly minorities.