Review of The New York City Five Borough Bike Tour

I've been to the mountain top and now I've seen it all! Thirty thousand riders of all levels, shapes and sizes crammed into the street of New York City. I have to say, I had fun on this wacky road trip.

I decided to use my mountain bike for this tour of New York with pot holes being the primary consideration. My fears were unfounded; for the most part, the roads were smooth. Next year I may try it on my road bike. The tour started in Battery Park, Manhattan, and wove its way through the Bronx, back into Queens, on to Brooklyn and finally to Staten Island. On this day we got rained on for the first 40 minutes of the tour. The Marshall's kept telling us the sun was out around the corner. Somehow I never got to turn that corner till the last seven miles and that was okay because I was still having fun. Even if my feet never dried the whole ride, I wasn't alone.

The great thing about this ride is not the distance. It's the people and possibly the place. On this day people from all over the world drop in on New York City to do just one thing and that's ride. It doesn't matter what kind of bike you ride, the type of riding you do or your physical conditioning. What matters is your state of mind. It's a sight to see New Yorkers riding side by side having a good old time riding their bikes.

Ride their bikes they did, recumbents, mountain, road, cruisers, cut edge, and some machines that could be best described as things with wheels attached. You could tell who the tight-on-space apartment people were by the fire escape storage rust on the bikes. You could see dozens of people riding their bikes with their quick release skewers open and spun tight like some type of wing nut. The strangest bike maintenance thing I saw was a young woman who should have let the bike shop put her bike together for her. The front fork was installed backwards on the bike. She told me when I pointed it out, "I thought the bike looked a little funny but couldn't put my finger on it."

Many people started out in large groups. There were all kinds of wild things worn or carried so people could identify other members of their groups, at a distance or in a crowd. The tour had Reunion Centers set up so that separated members could meet back up or leave messages for each other. Even so, many groups never were able to meet back up with their missing people. Ours was such a group. We didn't wear anything special, but some of our members did carry radios or cell phones. Unfortunately the combinations didn't add up, so our only source of communication was the Reunion Centers. That didn't work out either. After waiting at each location 15 to 30 minutes each party thought the other was farther ahead and so continued on. It was too wet and cold to wait too long as muscles would start to stiffen. I guess on the next Five Borough tour we have to come up with other ideas. Perhaps big tissue paper flowers, sharks fins, flags, plastic pumpkins, or silk flowers. Well, I guess we shouldn't steal other people's ideas. We will have to just come up with something real original!

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