Last night, over a splendid homemade dinner of spaghetti and meatballs (well, not that splendid, but close enough), I thought to myself, Do I really want to spend another two hours riding in Prospect Park tomorrow? Typically, I join the SIBA group rides every Saturday and Sunday, although this week, I didn’t much feel like making the trek out to Staten Island both days. Tomorrow I’ll join when the guys are planning on climbing hills all morning as opposed to the usual perimeter ride, but today, I figured I’d stay in Brooklyn.
With that in mind, I broke out the New York City Bicycle Map last night and attempted to plot a route. From Brooklyn Heights, I would take the usual streets to Prospect Park, yet instead of entering the park on 3rd Street, I followed Prospect Park West around the southern tip until I connected with Ocean Parkway. Actually, I was forced to make something of a detour as I couldn’t connect so easily with Ocean Parkway. After climbing a walkway over what I think was Prospect Expressway, I found myself on the corner of Canton and Ft. Hamilton Parkway (all these damn Parkways). Outside a Burger King, I consulted the bike map, turned around, finally found Ocean Parkway, and started south.
Riding under the Belt Parkway, I reached Brighton Beach and made a left on Neptune which soon became Emmons Avenue, riding past the party boats (I’m assuming that’s Sheepshead Bay, but then again, I really have no idea). Once Emmons reached an end, it took me a moment to locate the bicycle path that runs parallel to the Belt Parkway. A few moments later, I hopped on that and followed it all the way down to Floyd Bennett Field that, at this time of the year, seemed relatively deserted. I was looking forward to riding through the field as my understanding is that races are held there during the summer months. I would have liked to get a sense for the course, yet instead, I continued along the bike path until I reached a bridge that carried me over into what I believe was Far Rockaway. Granted, this was my first time ever in Rockaway, Far or Near, although the ride over the bridge kicked me in the ass big time yet not due to the climb, but the wind. That damn howling wind practically froze the right side of my face as I headed southeast over the water.
Once across, I made a left, the wind now at my back. The path that hugged the water was crap: glass, gaping holes, rocks, and at one point, I had to veer off the path completely where I almost threw it away in the sand. When that path reached its end, I again consulted the map to figure out exactly where I was. Indeed, it was Rockaway. As a quick detour, I made a right down B 110th Street until I reached the boardwalk. In this kind of weather, riding near a beach is so completely desolate and depressing. Sort of reminded me of Coney Island in Requiem for a Dream. If you haven’t seen that movie and you don’t care much for depressing dramas, waste neither your time nor your money as that movie starts off bad and just gets progressively worse and worse.
Finished with the boardwalk, I started forward again and when I reached B 95th Street, I had a left to make and another bridge to climb: the Veterans Memorial Bridge. I now had the wind on my left, which felt as if it was picking up speed, making my life that much more of a pain in the ass. Riding along, I noticed one of my sleeves coming undone. The windbreaker I’ve been wearing since autumn--that garish neon yellow thing from PricePoint.com--has removable sleeves and as I road along in Queens (first time for everything, right?), the zipper on my right sleeve was coming apart. Pulling to the side of the road, I peeled off the jacket (which, standing in that cold wind, I definitely did not want to do) along with my gloves and tried fixing the problem. Nothing was working as the zipper was three-quarters of the way apart and totally jammed.
“I really don’t need this right now,” I mumbled under my breath, cursing PricePoint’s shitty product. My fingers almost numb, I ripped the zipper off and tossed the sleeve in a nearby trashcan. Could I have saved it and fixed it later? Of course, but I never plan on using that damn jacket again as anything other than a vest, so off I went less a sleeve.
Over the bridge, I followed the bike lane to 165th Street where I made a left, followed by a right, another left, and then one more right, all of which eventually returned me to the bike path that parallels Belt Parkway. That’s where I made another left and began battling a friend, the freaking wind.
Do I go into detail about how the wind kept knocking me back, causing me to downshift lower and lower? You know what it’s like to ride into the wind, although it always seems that much worse when you know you’re another twenty miles from home (or your car) because you know the wind isn’t going to leave you alone for a second during those twenty miles, and that’s what I had in front of me once I reached the Belt Parkway.
Regardless, I rode until the Dunkin Donuts on Emmons Avenue where I stopped for a glazed donut, a plain bagel with butter, and the box of raisins I had in the back of my jersey. I sat inside for ten minutes until my hands and feet felt like they were mine again, and then I hit the road for the last leg of the tour. At Ocean Parkway, I turned north and took it all the way up into Park Slope, did half a loop in the park, cut through North Slope, through a small slice of Cobble Hill, and made my way home to the corner of Clinton and Atlantic.
After almost four hours on the bike, after a hair under fifty miles (an average 14.2 MPH kind of sucks), my face is now covered with a mix of sun and wind-burn and my legs are ready for a long nap, yet once I swallowed a few Hot Pockets washed down with a tall glass of iced tea, I walked to R&A for a new jacket: a nice black and silver Pearl Izumi that only set me back $151.73 including tax. When you really think about it, that’s a shitload of cash for a freaking polyester jacket, but it’s a hell of a lot better than that yellow tent I was wearing.
See you in the hills.
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