The Indignity of Commuting by Bicycle: After The Rains

Not sure if you heard, but we got rained on pretty baronially yesterday.  I can assure you I'm not complaining, since I realize other parts of the country have been getting ravaged by tornados recently, which puts the little spritzing we received in perspective.  Still, the fact remains that Mother Nature squatted over our faces and sprayed us down pretty good for something like a 24-hour period, stuff flooded, and it was on the news and everything.

As of this morning though, the rain had stopped, and all was steamy and sultry in the land of Seaman and Cumming as the sun burned away the primordial mist and the trees were ripe with fresh buds, promise, and some semen:

(Semen on the trees always causes my seasonal allergies to act up.)

I love few things more than a spring ride immediately after what meteorologists call a "heavy rain event," the air pregnant with vernal urgency and the bike path still strewn with last night's debris and inundated with skanky giardia water:

That's why you need fenders:

By the way, there's a sinkhole up this way that's been spreading for something like a year and a half now.  It's already claimed most of the bike path, and it's only a matter of time before the hillside crumbles into the Hudson, taking some poor unsuspecting Fred or tridork along with it::

I'm only 75% joking by the way, and I can assure you that the retaining walls around here can and do fall down, especially after it rains:

In fact, one came down last night up in Yonkers, not too far from where they found all those dead cats.

Anyway, despite all of this I was feeling good and reveling in the dramatic landscape.  The sun was coming out, the air was warming up, and between my fenders and having finished a full course of antibiotics last night I was relatively certain I hadn't contracted giardiasis--which, awesomely, is also known as "beaver fever," and could very easily be the title of a porno movie.  Then, through the trees, I could just make out a spectral presence:

Could it be?

Yes, the George Washington Bridge!

The "GWB" is of course the Bridge That Launched A Thousand Freds, carrying legions of them each weekend from Manhattan across the Hudson River and into New Jersey, at which point they head north across the state line and infest the arterials and quaint towns of Rockland County like Lycra-clad giardia specimens.

By the way, here's a fun fact about the GWB: they were supposed to cover those towers, but they thought the exposed girders looked cool, so they left it the way it was--kind of like how the fixie people didn't want to tape up their shiny Nittos.

Sadly, my journey this morning would not take me over the bridge, even though I felt its Fredly pull deep in my Fredly DNA:

Indeed, you'd have to look 3,000 miles to the west to undertake a more dramatic water crossing by bicycle, and I'm referring of course to the Golden Gate Bridge.  Even then, neither bridge emerges the clear winner.  Both bridges certainly carry more than their fair share of Freds, and in fact I'm surprised neither has yet collapsed beneath all of that sheer Fredliness, for to cross either bridge is to very nearly drown in a sea of crabon and ill-fitting Rapha straining to contain those porcine Fred midriffs.  Then there are the triathletes coming towards you with their pointy aerobars like jousting nights suffering from some sort of mass aero helment-borne inner ear infection that is wreaking total havoc with their equilibrium.

So as far as sheer dorkiness, I'd say it's a toss-up.

Some miles and many giardia-filled puddles later, I found myself in Central Park:

Where I saw a man riding a Citi Bike in Lycra:

I don't know if he's in from out of town and wanted to get a quick workout in, or if he's local and just likes to ride in the park without the hassle of actually owning a bicycle.  Either way, it made me happy to see.  Incidentally, as I took that photo, another rider heading towards me on a privately-owned bicycle told me to "keep my eyes on the road" or words to that effect, which was ironic because he was salmoning.  Sure, admittedly I was futzing around with a smartphone while riding a bicycle, but what he doesn't know is that I'm a semi-professional bike blogger, and that unlike 99.9% of the population I have super-senses that allow me to do things while riding that the "normals" simply cannot.  For instance, while it may look like I'm distracted by my attempts to photograph a guy on a Citi Bike, I actually have a second pair of eyes in my nipples that keeps me fully apprised of everything going on in front of me.  Moreover, I even have a third pair of eyes that keeps watch behind me:

So I'll keep doing stuff myself that I criticize other people for, thanks very much.

Then I kicked some piece of shit Magna out of the way so I could lock up the Son of Scat:

See, you can't be too careful, because the bike thieves in this town will pick your bike clean--though I'm having trouble figuring out why they went through the trouble of stripping this particular bike when it's not even locked in the first place:

Guess they really don't like Gary Fishers.