Urban Adventures & More

Last Thursday I took a ride to help me prepare for the upcoming NYC Century ride. My route was as follows.

• Down the Hudson Bike Path
• Over the Brooklyn Bridge
• Straight through downtown Brooklyn to 4th Avenue. At this point, I had intended to shoot over to Prospect Park, but when I got to the turning point, I remembered what a trek it was, so I just opted to ride where the getting was good.
• I turned at the Prospect Expressway. 4th Avenue took an abrupt decline in quality here, so I took this opportunity to make the left turn I had wanted to make earlier.
• I followed 20th Street and East 4th to Church, at which point I made a left and got on Ocean Parkway.
• I rode Ocean all the way to the Beach on the separate bike path. The big problem with this is the poor timing of the lights; I hit almost every single one. Furthermore, cars that don’t make it across the parkway stop right in the bike lane, so it’s got a lot of dodging. Even worse, my knees got murdered on the fixed gear from the starting and stopping. Also, the pathway gets pretty chopped up from tree roots (to the point where there is a jump somewhere around Avenue J, I think!), so it’s hazardous, even.
• I took the Boardwalk, Oriental (on a little detour), Shore, and Emmons east. This portion of the ride was the most spectacular. It was a sunny, late summer day and I was just riding right along side the beach and the ocean, with a cool breeze. As I felt in Red Hook, this was a more bucolic corner of the city, with beach bums you might find in California.
• Right before the Belt Parkway, a separated bike path begins at Brigham Street. I followed this along the highway to Flatbush Avenue and the Marine Parkway Bridge.
• Off the bridge, I went right to get to the western tip of Far Rockaway, Breezy Point. I ate lunch at a coffee shop once I got into the little town of Breezy Point.
• I rode back east again after lunch and came over the Cross Bay Bridge. On the right, I watched a seemingly tiny A train (?) of 4 cars shuttle over its own dedicated bridge across the bay. Again, quite a beautiful sight.
• Once on the other side of the bridge, there is a bike lane, and about halfway across the island (isthmus?), a separated bike lane starts on the western side of the street.
• Over another bridge. I went on the west side on the sidewalk, but I would recommend crossing back over and going on the bike lane in the street. On the sidewalks there is a weird double-fence thing that I don’t understand dividing it into two narrow walking paths. The outer path was lined — this was a summer weekday — with people fishing over the edge of the bridge. The inner path was deserted and was like my own harrowing bike lane.
• Over the bridge, the traffic explodes into a huge 8- or 10-lane road. I crossed back to the correct side of the street, but my nerves were overloaded once I got past the Belt Parkway and Conduit Avenue. Instead, I took a left at Pitkin Avenue, along which the A and the C trains run a little further down.
• I discovered the East Brooklyn Industrial Park further down this road, and eventually Pitkin merged into East New York Avenue. After one block I made a right up the hill on Ralph Avenue and got on a dedicated bike path along Eastern Parkway. My misery from Ocean Parkway with lots of stops was repeated, but to a slightly lesser degree.
• I made it to the Grand Army Plaza. At this point, I knew I was about 12 miles from home, so I did a victory lap around Prospect Park (love it!), and then rode up Vanderbilt Avenue and Bergen Street to get back to downtown Brooklyn, over the bridge, up the West Side and home.

Total distance was about 65 miles, done in 4 1/2 hours of riding time, for an average speed of 14.5 mph. I’ll see a lot of this again (or at least the going-out part) when I do the Century ride on Sunday.