I give you permission to begin your weekend just as soon as you've finished reading this Citi Bike guest post. You're welcome.

That's right, today's post is over on the Citi Bike blog, so wrangle that tank of a bike from the dock, mount up, and let's go!

(Click on the link above, or on the picture, or here.)

By the way, this post cost the hardworking SUV owners of Brooklyn a tiny handful of parking spaces, so in your face, suckers!


Before his brain explodes someone should remind him his property values have risen by a like a factor of 20 thanks in no small part to all these infrastructure improvements.

Anyway, see you Monday!

Love,


--Wildcat Rock Machine

Helmets--Oh Yeah, We're Going There!

Yeah, I know.  On the list of fun topics to discuss, helmets rank right in between politics and anal warts.  But don't blame me, because the media started it:

(Which is why pro cyclist injuries and deaths declined so steeply after the UCI instituted a helmet rule in 2003.  Oh, wait...)

A major study of bike helmet use around the world from more than 64,000 cyclists has found helmets reduce the risks of a serious head injury by nearly 70%.

The study also found neck injuries are not associated with helmet use and cyclists who wear helmets reduce their chance of a fatal head injury by 65%.

Wow.  Sounds conclusive, right?  Well, not so fast:

The compulsory wearing of bike helmets in Australia has long been a source of frustration for some cyclists, who argue it reduces participation rates. Previous studies have indicated helmet use encourages risk-taking behaviour or does not reduce serious injury to the brain.

But a comprehensive review by Australian statisticians Jake Olivier and Prudence Creighton from the University of New South Wales that drew together data from more than 40 separate studies found helmet use was associated with dramatically reduced odds of head injuries.

What?

New South Wales, Australia!?!

CUE RECORD-SCRATCH SOUND!

In case you forgot, New South Wales is the possibly the most bike-hostile place in the world:

Gay, a member of the junior party in the Liberal-National coalition, is minister for roads for New South Wales, and has described himself as “the biggest bike-lane sceptic in the government”. The NSW government is about to get rid of a much-loved and much-used AU$5m (£2.4m) protected cycleway in Sydney’s city centre – a move Clover Moore, lord mayor of Sydney since 2004, describes as “a shocking breach of trust”.

And recently raised all of its bicycling-related fines into the stratosphere:

And that's not including the fine for not carrying ID while cycling, presumably so they can make sure all those other charges stick and you don't give them a fake name like "Mike Hunt" or "Flavius Scranus" in order to dodge the fine.

So yeah, I'm going to look askance at any research paper that comes from a place where the fine for not wearing a plastic hat is over $300--and doubly so when it's presented at a Finnish safety meeting:

The findings were presented in Finland this week at Safety 2016, the world conference on injury prevention and safety promotion.

Which sounds a lot like a euphemism to me:

(For full effect garnish garment with Cheetos crumbs.)

Plus, what kind of safety conference has a ferris wheel?

Those things are dangerous!

Okay, well actually the ferris wheel Freds say they're not dangerous.  They probably just seem like they're more dangerous than they are to people who don't know anything about them--you know, like bicycles.  That's why I always wear a helmet when I go to the amusement park.

And while I'm striving for accuracy, I suppose it's not entirely scientific to deride a study just because it comes from a certain antipodean state with an anti-bike bias, or because I find the alliterative juxtaposition of Finnish safety meetings and ferris wheels to be conveniently amusing.  We need to look at the actual study, right?  Well sadly I can't, because it's behind a paywall and I'm not made of money over here (I'm made of high-modulus carbon fiber), so for the purposes of this blog we'll have to settle for the abstract:

Methods: Four electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, COMPENDEX and SCOPUS) were searched for relevant, peer-reviewed articles in English. Included studies reported medically diagnosed head, face and neck injuries where helmet use was known. Non-approved helmets were excluded where possible. Summary odds ratios (OR) were obtained using multivariate meta-regression models stratified by injury type and severity. Time trends and publication bias were assessed.

Okay, so they looked at a bunch of injured cyclists in various places--or, more accurately, articles and data about injured cyclists that other people have already collected and interpreted.  Now, how is it even possible to draw new conclusions about any of this data if you don't even know the total number of helmeted versus unhelmeted cyclists riding around out there in the general population?  And what were the circumstances that led to these injuries in the first place?  Isn't it possible the head injury odds they're presenting really just amount to statistical noise?

Well, maybe yes and maybe no.  But the danger here isn't the idea that helmets may offer you some additional protection from injury, which frankly sounds pretty reasonable to me, and which is why I wear them sometimes.  The danger is that these sorts of studies lead to conclusions like this:

Conclusions: Bicycle helmet use was associated with reduced odds of head injury, serious head injury, facial injury and fatal head injury. The reduction was greater for serious or fatal head injury. Neck injury was rare and not associated with helmet use. These results support the use of strategies to increase the uptake of bicycle helmets as part of a comprehensive cycling safety plan.

Funny how the conclusion is never  "make conditions safer for cyclists," isn't it?  But wait, actually it is--in an earlier paper about bicycle-related head injury trends in New South Wales, co-written by Jake Olivier, one of the very people behind this most recent study.  Indeed, in this earlier paper (WARNING: PDF) there's a graph showing a decline in head injuries--after increased cycling infrastructure:

The conclusion?  New South Wales needs more infrastructure development:

Not only that, but the paper also warns of the dangers of "meta-analyses" (which is what the most recent study is) and says that such studies can be biased when they relate to legislation:

"Results from mata-analyses should be interpreted with caution since ultimately, they are analyses of statistical studies rather than a large statistical study in itself and sample bias will always be present regardless of who is carrying out the analysis, particularly when it is related to a political agenda or legislation."

Yet this is exactly what this most recent study is--a meta-analysis being used in support of mandatory helmet laws:

The researchers cautioned that helmets were not a “panacea for cycling injury” and did not eliminate head or face injuries or offer protection to other parts of cyclists’ bodies. But it does make the case more difficult for those who oppose mandatory helmet wearing, they said.

“The legislation of mandatory helmets for cyclists is a controversial topic and past research on its effectiveness has been somewhat mixed,” the study said. “Irrespective of past research, the results of this review do not support arguments against helmet legislation from an injury prevention perspective.”

So sorry, but based on the researcher's own caveats in an earlier paper, I ain't buying it--nor do I understand why so many people pretend there aren't cities on Earth where people cycle safely in huge numbers and that helmets have absolutely fuck-all to do with it.

Instead of passing dumb laws and clobbering people with massive fines and presenting the media with dubious studies all we need to do is copy the cities where cycling actually works and that's that.

Speaking of helmets, in yesterday's post I featured the rider who commenter "bad boy of the north" subsequently dubbed "The Narwhal:"

(Thanks again for the photos, Aaron.)

And I was delighted to see that the Narwhal himself left a comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey! That's me - the narwhal.

I have a rearview camera under my seat that Bluetooths to my tablet on the selfie stick.

It works like a rearview mirror and record my rides from behind.

Thanks for making me famous, Bikesknob!

September 21, 2016 at 2:14 PM 

Though after reading it I have to admit I was even more confused.  After all, with any number of video recorders available out there in the marketplace--not to mention good old-fashioned analog rearview mirrors--one wonders why you'd endanger yourself and others by taping a golf club onto your head. 

But hey, he's wearing a helmet, so clearly he's 70% safer than I am!*

*(No offense to the narwhal by the way, I support whatever it is you're doing, and you make the world--or at least the Williamsburg Bridge--a far more entertaining place.)

The Indignity of Commuting by Bicycle: The Cat 6-ing of a Lifetime

The coming of autumn means many things: kids go back to school, adults who still go to school go back to school also, the cyclocross dorks start futzing with their tire pressure in earnest...

More significant than any of these though is that as autumn approaches the Cat 6 racing season begins its crescendo.  See, once the weather becomes uncomfortably cold (and for the typical Cat 6 that's anything below like 60 degrees American) many of these riders hang up their out-of-true wheels for the winter.  This means the months of September and October represent their last chance at Cat 6 glory.  Once you factor in weekends, Jewish holidays, etc., the race days are scarce, so you can believe me when I tell you they're out there doing their very best to stuff their ill-fitting Chrome bags full of "wins" before scarf weather is upon us.

I of course am no exception, and yesterday I commuted by bike to Brooklyn and back, which from my abode in the far reaches of the northern Bronx is the Cat 6 equivalent of a brevet.  Leaving my home, I knew the racing action was going to be intense, but I didn't appreciate just how intense until I reached the midtown stretch of the Hudson River Greenway.

The light turns red.  I stop.  With the light in their favor, waves of tourists begin crossing the Greenway and filling the crosswalk in order to board one of those stupid Circle Line sightseeing boats.  Now, the tourists have the right of way, but this means nothing to a pair of oncoming Uber-Freds locked in mortal combat.  The first Fred is wearing full Team Sky kit.  Of course, the only thing worse than wearing full pro team kit is wearing full team kit but riding a bike from a company that doesn't sponsor that team, and naturally this rider is flagrantly guilty of this violation.  (He's riding a plastic BMC or something like that.)

On this Fred's wheel is an even Fredlier specimen (if that's even possible) wearing a pair of LiveStrong Oakleys and a RAGBRAI jersey, which was so breathtakingly Fredly I didn't even have the wherewithal to take in the rest of his wardrobe or equipment.

Anyway, the crosswalk is really filling up with tourists now--tourists who (and I can't stress this enough) fully and unambiguously have the right of way.  With morbid curiosity I watch, wondering just how the Freds are going to handle the situation.  Is Sky Fred going to lock up the brakes on his BMC and get rear-ended by RAGBRAI Fred?  Will those black-and-yellow optics then fly off his face and describe an arc through the azure late summer sky against the noble and inspiring background of the USS Intrepid?  Would the air then be full of the sweet, crunchy music of breaking crabon?

Sadly, no.  Instead, the Freds just keep right on going through the light and the crosswalk without so much as slowing down, like the pair of complete douchenozzles they were.

But these Frediotic exploits were merely a prelude to my return trip, where I received the Cat 6-ing of a lifetime from a true master of the discipline.

In the sport of New York City commuter racing, the East River crossings represent the hors catégorie climbs, and the approach to the Manhattan Bridge from the Brooklyn side is arguably the most technical and thus rewards the rider with some off-road skills.  See, there's the sweeping paved path that runs along the graffitoed wall, but there's also a dirt shortcut that runs straight up the grassy embankment:

You can see it more clearly in this aerial view:

As I made my approach to the bridge I knew this was the moment that would make or break my entire commute.  Sure, I could have saved precious seconds by scampering up the dirt path, but instead I stuck to the roadway:

This was because I was not riding a proper gravel bike, nor had I optimized my tire pressure for dirt, and a crash at this crucial juncture would put paid to my chances once and for all.

However, Cat 6 racing is not a discipline that rewards the meek, and the rider ahead of me--on a Citi Bike no less--had no such concerns.  Instead, he attacked the dirt shortcut harder than Chris Froome hits an asthma inhaler:

I thought for sure that there was no way he'd get that 50-pound corporate-branded beast up the hill, but to my utter surprise he appeared at the top just as I rounded the bend, thus setting off a Cat 6 explosion of atomic proportions:

Getting Cat 6--ed is a lot like sharing a subway car with a pervert: at first you try to convince yourself it's not happening, but sooner or later it becomes undeniable and you're forced to confront the horrible truth of what's happening.  On the subway this happens when the genitals make their first appearance, and on the bridge it happens when you realize the unmistakable sound of the Citi Bike drivetrain right on your wheel is simply not going away:

Note he's also got a rider right behind him, which means you're now looking at the podium, but which step each rider would occupy is anybody's guess at this point:

Now I should point out that, hyperbolized prose notwithstanding, my participation in this "race" was completely involuntary.  Furthermore, I wasn't exactly putting in a great deal of effort.  Nevertheless, as annoyed as I was I couldn't help being impressed that this guy was managing to stay on my wheel, and after some consideration I decided it had to be the flip-flops:

See, it was pretty hot out, and he was running cool, whereas my middle-aged guy sneakers were no doubt causing me to overheat slightly:

Whatever it was, by the time we reached the "summit" I'd grown annoyed enough at his close proximity to my rear fender that I was seriously considering breaking the unwritten Cat 6 rule by saying something to him, but cunningly it was at that moment he attacked and gapped me like a spark plug:

Then, using the considerable gravitational advantage of his Citi Bike, he disappeared completely leaving me to wallow in my shame--which I did until I reached the Manhattan side, and abandoned my shame in order to contemplate this:

I don't know what he was about to do on that thing, but it was clear I was leaving the bridge just in time, and I was relieved to finally reach the northern precincts of the city where life makes a little more sense:

Speaking of bridges, the Williamsburg Bridge is even more...vibrant than the Manhattan, and I received an email this morning from a reader named Aaron who spotted a rider there with a selfie stick taped to his helmet:

(Photos by Aaron, I'm assuming it's OK to use them.)

I don't know what he's doing:

But I sincerely hope whatever it is gets uploaded to YouTube very soon.

So what the hell does "25 or 6 to 4" mean anyway?

When it comes to urban cycling, there is no greater authority than Bicycling, a periodical based in a Pennsylvania town of just over 11,000 people.  Once again, Fred-dom's magazine of record has announced the winner of its biennial "Kiss of Death" awards, and this year the hex falls upon Chicago:

In April, shortly after his re-election, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Chicago would build 50 miles of bikeways—many of them physically separated from motor vehicles—over the next three years. Such proclamations can come easily (and cheaply) to the lips of politicians, but during his first term in 2015, Emanuel made good on a promise to build 100 miles of buffered and protected bike lanes. “Those initial 100 miles of bike lanes cost just $12 million,” says Jim Merrell, advocacy director for the Active Transportation Alliance. “That highlights the cost effectiveness of transformative transportation projects like these.”

I'm very sorry you, Chicago.  Sure, you might be reveling in victory now, but what you have to understand is this whole ranking system is cursed.  See, back in 2014 we were "Number One," and since then bike fatalities have increased and it's basically all gone to hell:

New York City motorists have now killed 16 cyclists this year, compared to 14 cyclist fatalities in all of 2015, according to city crash data. After yesterday’s crash, Transportation Alternatives called on Mayor de Blasio to pick up the pace of Vision Zero safety improvements.

And of course we succeeded Portland, which was Bicycling's top cycling city in 2012, and which subsequently entered into a period of "biking stagnation" and increased automobile congestion:

(Most Portlanders drive alone because nobody can stand their company.)

Indeed, Portland does seem to be rebounding, what with the opening of Tilikum Crossing (oh, grow up) and the debut of the BIKETOWN bike share program, but it sure took them awhile and I would imagine the Portland smugerati are under strict orders to eject any Bicycling scouts to Vancouver, WA lest their city once again wind up on the top of this ill-fated list.

As for my quiet little hamlet, we're now sitting at number four:

This is a bit irksome--not because we deserve to be ranked higher (we don't), but because of the reasoning behind it:

One reason New York dropped out of the top spot is that the city has had a "really rough year" enforcing good behavior from both cyclists and motorists, Strickland said. New York also needs to do more to build protected lanes, he said.

Whoa.  I hope the Tribune is twisting his words, because if anything the NYPD does too much to "enforce good behavior from cyclists."  After all, this is the police force that ticketed people on bikes after cyclist Matthew von Ohlen was killed in a hit-and-run.  (By the way, the NYPD found the car that killed von Ohlen but there hasn't been a peep about it since, leading to widespread speculation that the driver may have been a cop.)

As for enforcing good behavior from motorists, I certainly agree with him there, which is the primary reason I was outraged when we hit number one in the first place.  Frankly, the NYPD's behavior should have been more than enough to preclude us from ever reaching the top spot of any "best bike city" list ever.  Then again, maybe making us number one and then knocking us down to number four sends a stronger message than never making us number one in the first place, so perhaps we should be thanking them.

I dunno, it seems to me that Bicycling should just review cities like they review bikes:

New York City

Buy It If: You enjoy riding in protected bike lanes through neighborhoods you can't afford.

Forget It If: You want your friends, family and loved ones to get justice in the event of your death.

Anyway, congratulations Chicago, and I'm sacrificing a chicken now on your behalf in an attempt to spare you from two years under the dreaded "Best Bike City" curse.

In other news, if you've ever had a bicycle shipped to your home you may have noticed that it's not always handled with the utmost care.  For example, when I received my Ritte some years ago, I was so excited that after buzzing the delivery person into the building I waited for him in the hall, only to see a bike box come flying out of the elevator.  So leave it to those clever Dutch to figure out a solution:

“No matter who was doing the shipping, too many of our bikes arrived looking like they’d been through a metal-munching combine harvester. It was getting expensive for us, and bloody annoying for our customers,” creative director Bex Rad wrote on the company’s blog.

“Earlier this year our co-founder Ties had a flash of genius. Our boxes are about the same size as a (really really reaaaally massive) flatscreen television. Flatscreen televisions always arrive in perfect condition. What if we just printed a flatscreen television on the side of our boxes?

“And just like that, shipping damage to our bikes dropped by 70–80%.”

This makes sense, since the only consumer good we revere as much as the car is the TV.

A brief look at who's disrupting what and how.

We've seen some indispensable innovation in recent years when it comes to the sporting bicycle.  For example, before electronic shifting, you had to press a button in order to change gears.  Crazy, right?!?  Well, things are much easier today.  Now all you have to do is press a button.

Sadly, water bottle cage development has not kept pace with the relentless pace of bicycle product development--until now.  Meet the Fabric cageless water bottle mount, the system nobody asked for and nobody will want now that it's here:

Yes, say goodbye to the arduous days of simply grabbing a bottle, taking a swig of your beverage of choice, and returning it to the frame of your bicycle without so much as shifting your gaze from the road.  Now you've got to line your bottle up perfectly with a pair of mounting studs:

In either case, the bottle is easy to grab with one hand, just as you would with a normal bottle and cage. The return trip is bit tricky, however, and takes some getting used to. We struggled to get the bottle back on the studs without looking down each time, even after several weeks of using the system.

Sounds great!  In fact, I just installed new smoke and carbon monoxide detectors on my ceiling over the weekend, and interestingly this appears to utilize the exact same mounting system.  And sure, I don't mind doing that once every ten years, but having to deal with a pair of mounting studs every time I want to take a sip of water is patently ridiculous.  Just ask ace bottle marksman Mario Cipollini:

("Yes, is very silly design.  In la casa di Cipollini, stud mount you!")

And there you have it.

By the way, they didn't just screw up the mounting system.  The bottle itself is also designed to choke you:

The lid secures tightly to the bottle and the nozzle opens and closes by pushing or pulling up on it. Inside the nozzle is a soft silicon flow fitting that regulates the flow of water in and out of the bottle. On one of our bottles, this piece detached from the nozzle and we nearly swallowed it mid-gulp. It’s tough to get this piece securely back in place so we had to replace the lid with a new one to keep the bottle functioning properly.

So basically if you don't crash trying to put your bottle back then you'll certainly go down when that chunk of silicon gets lodged in your esophagus--all to save like 30 grams!  Perhaps this is part of a conspiracy to rid the cycling world of Freds and weight weenies once and for all--though ostensibly it's also useful for cyclocross:

We found the cageless design to be especially useful for cyclocross practice and racing when we wanted to carry a bottle with us on warm-up laps but didn’t want to race with a cage. Instead of installing and removing a normal water bottle cage for each race, Fabric’s cageless system allowed us to carry the bottle when we wanted it and then remove it on the start line, leaving plenty of room in the bike’s front triangle for shouldering our bike.

Back when I was riding the cyclocross we used to just stick a bottle in our jersey pockets--or, you know, live life on the edge by riding our 10-minute warm-up laps without carrying water with us.  (And yes, of course true Cyclocross Freds wear skinsuits without big pockets, but you're supposed to wear a regular jersey over them while warming up, I mean come on.)

And the lowly water bottle cage isn't the only commonplace item being "disrupted" into oblivion.  Now you can also help fund a 40-function hooded sweatshirt!



Rest assured at least a small handful of these functions are cycling-specific.  Fore example, it emits an ambiguous neon halo around your head that does nothing to communicate which direction you're traveling in:

It also has turn signals for drivers to ignore:

Which double as warning lights when you're on foot so you don't get hit by one of those pesky cyclists:

Then there's the armpit ventilation system, which I'm assuming is bicycle specific since he's wearing a helmet, though maybe the sorts of people who wear "smart jackets" also wear helmets while running:

For best results, pair with some "smart pants" featuring a similar crotchal ventilation system.

Or, if you decide "fuck bikes" and hop in an Uber instead, it's equipped with both a neck pillow:

And a sleep shade:

Really, the only thing it's missing is an airbag:

AS IT HAPPENED #hovding #airbagged

A video posted by abc3d (@abc3d_) on May 19, 2015 at 5:39am PDT

Though it does work as a TV remote control, so there you go:

Lastly, here's a new video from Specialized explaining their new Fred bike suspension system:



Hey, whatever happened to that new suspension stem on Kickstarter?

Looks like a feasting insect.

They Rode Together, We Just Watched

As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday evening there was a ride down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to "demand safe passage for cyclists and pedestrians:"

Obviously as a semi-professional bike blogger and noted book author of books I am a highly-accomplished cyclist with a deep well of experience and wisdom from which to draw.  However, when it comes to bike (and pedestrian) advocacy I'm not even a Cat 6; I'm more like a Cat 30.  I'm also a relative "noob."  After all, when I started this blog I was terminal Fred who thought people like David Byrne (who does not own a car) were cloyingly smug and off-puttingly self-important.  Now I still find this to be the case, but I like to think I've developed a brand of cloying smugness and off-putting self-importance that is uniquely my own.

Anyway, despite the moisture behind my ears I felt compelled to join the ride.  However, I couldn't leave my seventeen (17) children behind until my co-parent got home from work, by which point the smugness train would have long since departed.  I also couldn't do the ride with my children, since I live in the far reaches of the northern Bronx, and I'm not riding a child-laden WorkCycles like an hour and a half each way in the dark.  Most importantly, I couldn't leave the neighborhood with the kids until my eldest child was finished with school--and no way I was taking him out early, because he's in first grade, and if he doesn't do well now he won't get into a good college, and in 20 years he'll still be living at home and I'll be buying weed from him.

Then it hit me like a fucked-up Altima with Pennsylvania plates: I'll choose my two (2) most favorite children and we'll take the subway!  Sure, we wouldn't get to to the actual ride, but at least we'd be there for the roll-out to show our support, for what tiny bit it was worth.

So that's what we did.

Hey, someone's gotta represent the pedestrians.

By the way, I should point out that attending protests with my offspring is not without precedent.  Remember way back in September of 2011 when I visited the Occupy Wall Street protest?

Of course you don't.

Nevertheless, what I didn't mention in that post is that I visited on my (erstwhile) Big Dummy with my (at that time only) child strapped into the kiddie seat.  At the time he was around one and a half years of age.  Now his brother is about that age, so exposing him to a massive smugness gathering seemed only fitting.

Anyway, here was the scene at 59th and 5th when we emerged from the subway:

And here are some Plaza Hotel guests wondering what the hell is going on with all these bikers and why they didn't go to Bermuda instead:

Now at first glance you might think that all these protesters are appropriating public space in the name of safe streets in a manner that, paradoxically, makes the streets less safe for the pedestrians attempting to make their way through:

This was not the case.  Even though I had two children in tow and was pushing a stroller like the worst kind of sidewalk-commandeering Park Slope parent, everybody made sure to clear a path and afford me easy and safe passage:

Of course, this could be for any one of three (3) reasons:

1) They're simply kind and considerate people who care about pedestrian safety;

2) They were under strict orders from their smugness overlords at Transportation Alternatives not to anger all the tourists and billionaires;

3) They recognized me as an important personage and were affording me VIP treatment.

Who knows, but you can be goddamn sure it wasn't #3.

By the time we arrived the speechmaking was in full swing and Paul "Steezy" White of Transportation Alternatives was addressing the crowd:

Participants had been instructed to wear yellow, a directive with which some complied by wearing golden neckerchiefs:

Though this particular rider also accessorized with what appears to be a USB cable:

Hey, it's a lot cooler than a LiveStrong bracelet.

Speaking of sartorial choices, the ride was a veritable runway show for the fashion style I like to call "advocacy chic."  Of course there were the usual unfastened helmet straps and gear from other protest rides:

(I'll bet this was a banner day for the Soupman, nothing goes together like soup n' smugness!)

Though designers also used the opportunity to debut new looks.  For example, here's the dope new #crashnotaccident collabo:

And some of the designs were really edgy:

"How dare you?," I shouted.  "Don't you know my child can read above his grade level?!?"   (New York parents always work a boast into their outrage.)  I then covered my kid's eyes with a yellow neckerchief, threw a poncho over the rider to obscure his shirt's slogan, and tackled him to the sidewalk.

Just kidding.  We took the subway down, remember?  I can assure you he heard "mother fucker" and other similarly offensive phrases at least once every 15 seconds on the way there--and some of them weren't even uttered by me.

And by the way, my own outfit was also the very pinnacle of "advocacy chic," and here's the shirt I was wearing:

Indeed, one of the riders complimented me on it and informed me he too was from Cleveland.  Horrified, I explained that I wasn't.  Then I thrust into his face a copy of the birth certificate I carry to thwart the birthers.

We continued to make our way through the crowd:

And all the way to the fountain from which the speakers were speaking, though by the time we got there the speakers had pretty much finished:

And before long the riders funneled onto 5th Avenue in the midst of the evening rush hour:

Grabbing my elder son by the shoulders, I ordered "Don't let anyone steal your brother!"  Then I climbed the base of a lamp post:

(Show me a parent who can take a kid into Manhattan on the subway without losing his shoes and I'll show you someone who's using Krazy Glue.)

And watched the riders make their way downtown:

It was an impressive showing, and without a hint of irony or smugness I can say that I felt proud:

Once the last of the riders departed the skullbusters followed behind:

And with that the city swallowed them up.

But for a little bit of residual honking you'd never know they had just been there--unless you were the Soupman of course, who promptly took over the bus lane to retrieve his cart and count his earnings:

At this point the sun was setting, so we headed into Central Park to stretch our legs before the return trip:

At twilight the rats become active, and the park was teeming with them.  So we chose a fitting vantage point from which to watch them forage and frolic:

It wasn't too long ago that you didn't want to find yourself in Central Park after dark lest you fall victim to a crime, but now you've got to get out before the LARPing begins:

In all, it was a successful and inspiring evening, but it was also an exhausting one, and it felt good to get back to the Bronx and set the parenting switch to the "Off" position:

Now to find that lightsaber and show those LARPers a thing or two...