Rudderless and Fenderless

This morning a window presented itself between rain showers, and so I headed out once again on the Tresca:

I've been enjoying this bike as a winter workhorse, and on a whim I swung by their website to see what was new.  As it happens, it looks like they're now having their own artisanal hand-curated IPO:

Confession: way back in the 20th century, when Cannondale went public, I bought some shares.  It probably won't surprise you to know those shares became worthless in fairly short order.  There were a number of reasons for this, including a foray into motocross bikes on Cannondale's part, which I probably don't have to tell you was fucking stupid.  Anyway, those shares sat in my account with a value of roughly $0 ever since, until just a few weeks ago when my brokerage account finally zorched them from my balance sheet.

If only I'd invested that money in Amazon or Google instead of Cannondale I'd probably be typing this from a diamond-encrusted sofa, instead of the food-encrusted sofa I'm typing this from now.

So it's up to you whether or not you want to invest in a startup bike company, but if you do you should sell as soon as they start talking about motocross bikes.  Either way, you can subscribe to my financial advice newsletter here.

As for my ride, I wasn't sure where to go.  Rain was imminent, and given yesterday's deluge I knew River Road over in Jersey would probably be strewn with debris.  So I decided to roll around the city limits check out the new bike lane on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx:

The lane runs along the New York Botanical Gardens, and the ghost bike in the distance is for Heather Lough, whose killer received the customary wrist-slapping.  I was exceedingly pleased to learn that the DOT had finally put a bike lane here, since I take my kids to the Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo by bike from time to time (the two institutions are adjacent to each other), but until now once you got to Southern Boulevard there was zero bike infrastructure and you were on your own.  (Southern Boulevard is too hectic for kids, which means you've pretty much got no choice but to take to the sidewalk.)  So this project could be potentially transformative--at least for me, anyway, which is what's really important--and as such I had high hopes.

Well, hopefully this is a work-in-progress at a very early stage, because so far I am not impressed.  Firstly, it's a two-way bike lane, but there are no markings to that effect, save for the portion that runs past the entrance to the Botanical Gardens parking lot:

Also, most of the bike lane was full of buses:

And when I say full, I mean it:

Even without the buses, riding south along the painted "buffer" was mildly disconcerting what with the car traffic barreling towards you and all, and obviously with the buses there the whole thing is utterly useless. 

I mean I don't want to jump to any conclusions here, since the city may only just be getting started, but if that paint is all that's going to stand between motor vehicle and the bike lane then this ain't gonna work.

From there, I continued on with no particular destination in mind, as you can see from my weird route:


Actually, the route map also looks kind of like a rudder, which is ironic.

Eventually I decided I'd head down to Central Park, then I headed back up the west side of Manhattan, and at around the George Washington Bridge the rain started coming down, so I was nice and soggy by the time I got home--but it was a good soggy, for somehow when I head out for a ride I always arrive home happier than I was when I left.

Though maybe it's just relief that I made it alive.