Stay Horsty My Friends – Bike Snob NYC

I’d hate to talk down to you…

…but as the TD Five Boro Bike Tour’s spokesdoofus I should remind you that this Sunday is the big day:

I was all set to lay waste to the ride aboard George Plimpton’s Y-Foil, a.k.a. The Charity Ride Destroyer…

…but my wife will be joining me this year and she really doesn’t deserve that, so instead I will be riding a far more civilized bicycle, sorry.

By the way, I would have forgotten the ride was this weekend myself, except I recently found myself in THE CAR THAT I OWN and all the electronic highway signs were warning motorists of the impending street closures…which they’ll either ignore or forget about until Sunday when they find themselves sitting in traffic cursing that “goddam bicycle race.” (Both participants and non-participants alike labor under the collective delusion that the TD Five Boro Bike Tour is in fact a race.)

So what was I doing in the car? Well, that’s my business (okay fine, I had to dump a body, “bike blogger” is the ideal cover for a professional hitman), but while I was out there burning fossil fuel and crossing bridges I worked in a trip to the mountain bike trails in Hempstead Harbor Woods in Port Washington:

I’d been curious to ride these trails since they opened in (I believe) 2019 but it’s hard to justify all the traffic and tolls between here and Long Island just to knock around in the woods on a bike for an hour or two, especially when I have such an abundance of trails within easy riding distance of my home–none of which, I should add, are under any sort of camera surveillance (at least as far as I know):

In fact there were at least two cameras trained on me as I perused the map:

See?

Presumably these are to thwart vandals and people on ATVs, which I’m all in favor of (I mean I’m in favor of thwarting them, I’m not in favor of them), but I hoped I wouldn’t run afoul of both CLIMB and the Town of Hempstead for riding a 31 year-old suspension bicycle, which probably violates several local ordinances as well as my own anti-suspension ethos:

Speaking of the map, it doesn’t require much in the way of perusal, because it’s virtually impossible for anyone over the age of six to get lost in here:

This suits me just fine, because as an inveterate city slicker (some even say the most legit city slicker in all the land) with even less spare time than I have outdoor survival skills I have no tolerance whatsoever for wayfinding or orienteering of any kind. Whether it’s a mountain bike trail or a dentist’s office I want to know exactly when I’ll be getting out of there so I won’t be late to my next appointment. (And you can forget camping; the only way you’ll find me sleeping in a tent is if this city gets struck by a natural disaster and FEMA forces me into one.) In retrospect, this is why I raced bicycles for so many years–not because I was good at it (I emphatically wasn’t) or because I was overly competitive (I’m emphatically a big “woosie“), but rather because the races started at like 6am and I knew I’d get a full day’s riding in before most people were even awake.

Is the grass always greener on the other side? I would say so. It’s also sandier. For years the closest trails to me were the smooth, sandy trails of Long Island, and I longed for more. Then I moved to my current abode, from which I can ride to far more varied and challenging terrain–and yet I now find myself missing the sort of fast, twisty, rollicking trails of which Hempstead Harbor Woods is almost entirely comprised:

I suppose everything feels sort of magical at this time of year, but I found this diminutive little park both delightful and enchanting:

And on the mainland you simply don’t find trails that give you that exhilaratingly effortless marble run feeling:

The AMP was a good fit for them, too:

These are compact trails with little to overwhelm a 26-inch wheel, and this is a compact bike–though a singlespeed might be even more fun here:

Something like this would probably be ideal:

Oh, well…