It Was The Best Of Times It Was The Horst Of Times – Bike Snob NYC

A couple of weeks ago, I took the AMP Research B-3 to Cunningham Park in Queens, only for drivetrain problems to put a premature end to my ride. I’ve since solved those problems, so on Friday I returned to finish what I started:

Here is a photo of the bike next to a jump from which I did not launch myself:

There’s a lot of that sort of thing at Cunningham:

And every time I come back it seems like they’ve added more, though I’m never sure if the ever-expanding mounds of dirt are for stunting purposes or because someone needed to hide a body:

I suspect that in more than a few cases it’s both.

Then there’s this section, which has been there for years, though I’ve never seen anybody on it:

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong and they’re excavating the remains of a lost civilization. Or perhaps it’s the work of mound-building termites:

Whatever the case may be, I steer away from all that stuff and instead seek out the singletrack, of which there is also plenty:

Besides a full-on road bike I don’t think there’s any type of bike on which you can fail to have fun at Cunningham, but you’d be especially hard-pressed not to enjoy yourself on a racy 1990s mountain bike with 26-inch wheels:

Really, my only complaint was that the large chainring–which I didn’t shift onto even once–hit pretty much every single log crossing:

If one were optimizing this bike for this part of the world one would simply replace it with a bashguard.

Other than that the bike was entertaining and playful, and I happen to really like these pedals, which have just the right amount of concavity*:

*[Pretty sure they have to have a concavity now that the Pope just died.]

Clipless pedals would also suit the bike and also maybe mitigate the aforementioned chainring strikes by making it easier to lift the wheels or jump over stuff, but at the moment I’m enjoying the ability to hop on the bike while wearing sneakers and scamper into wooded areas far more enjoyable:

Queens truly is a wonderland.