An unexpected rhythm, a stressful ride to Midtown - and why I feel I'm waltzing with the city

When I’m riding my bike home in the evenings and have come down the long, spiral ramp off the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn, I often find myself waiting at a pedestrian crossing nearly right under the bridge’s first girders. Given that the bridge carries four busy subway tracks as well as three roadways, a pedestrian path and a bike path, that means I frequently hear the ear-splitting din of a B, D, N or Q train crossing just above my head.

 

An unexpected source of syncopated rhythm: the bike path
under the Manhattan Bridge's Brooklyn end

But the noise’s effect isn’t what one might imagine. A joint in the tracks means that the wheels produce an exquisitely syncopated rhythm. A-ONE-and-a-two-and-THREE-and-a-four clack the four successive axles as the joins between the cars roll overhead. The rhythm is so compelling that sometimes, when no-one’s looking, I permit myself a little dance with my shoulders.

My jiggling shoulders generally prompt a second thought, however. The sound turns my mind to how cyclists in cities like New York or London or anywhere else where cycling’s an on-road, minority activity, have to attend closely to the rhythm of the city around them. In such an unforgiving environment, it's vital to pick up the cues from the surrounding, constantly-changing city about when and where to cycle fast and confidently and when to exercise maximum caution and restraint.

Call it snirt, call it snarbage: we New York City cyclists
have been dodging a lot of snowy, rubbishy mounds like
this in the last few weeks and months.

Many of the patterns I've come to recognise are things that restrict me. During the recent long, bitter winter, for example, I noticed myself learning after each snowfall the distinctive pattern of snow clearance and how it affected each cycle lane and where I positioned myself on the road. An event like last week’s sad gas explosion and fire in the East Village will suddenly paralyse traffic across vast swathes of the city. Light rain after a dry spell makes surfaces particularly treacherous – especially, ironically, those painted with the rather slippery green paint the city uses to mark cycle lanes.

Yet there’s a pleasure, after two-and-a-half years and at least 10,000 miles of New York City cycling, to having learned to recognise – and anticipate – so many of the city’s moods. The sudden surges in traffic in various places; traffic’s unexplained disappearance in others; the surge in grumpiness among drivers in certain conditions: all reflect, I know rationally, a multitude of individual decisions. But they can feel so concerted and sudden that they almost feel like the actions of New York City herself. A cyclist riding through the city has to undertake a kind of dance with her, getting in step and learning how she moves.

I had something of the same feeling about London when I lived there and enjoyed an encyclopaedic knowledge of much of its backstreet network of quiet cycle routes. But New York is a far more mercurial dance partner – hotter in summer, colder in winter, denser, with far more dangerous streets and more prone, it seems to me, to catastrophic mishaps. It feels far harder to learn to get in step with her – and a more satisfying achievement to have learned to do so.

That makes all the more enjoyable those moments of bliss one experiences from time to time riding a bicycle – the moments when the city seems to slip by and it is the other forms of transport that seem momentarily absurd.

 

The kind of weather that's slowing me down particularly
dramatically at present: Fifth Avenue in a light rain shower,
perfect for creating a treacherous surface

There is, nevertheless, a dissenting voice inside my head that wonders how much I’m dressing this phenomenon up. I sometimes wonder if my having got to know the city better simply means I’m growing more fearful. I notice how I’m increasingly stopping to let cars past on the narrowest roads where I know drivers are most aggressive. I’m less often taking the middle of the lane and forcing them to slow down to, say, a 20mph crawl in a 20mph limit. I noticed myself easing off significantly on my speed in some recent rain showers, feeling that the streets, still greasy with the detritus of winter, might be particularly treacherous. I find myself waiting behind motor vehicles as lines of other cyclists slip through narrow gaps between them and parked cars or the kerb.

Perhaps, a voice in my head says, I'm feeling the familiarity of the bullied with the bully. Maybe I’ve let the city’s toughness beat me into mental submission.

The dissenting voice grew particularly loud on March 23 when I had to cycle from home first thing in the morning to a conference right by the south-eastern corner of Central Park. I tried to fall in step with the city. I used my knowledge of the position of the many new potholes that have appeared over the winter to decide when to dodge out of the cycle lane and into the car lanes. I used my experience of the weather to look out for the inevitable ice patches, products of a mixture of the cold and a hundred little thoughtless sloshings out of buckets into the cold street or spillings of drinks.

 

New York's Metropolitan Club: maginficent inside - but
a devil of a place to cycle to.

Already feeling slightly ill before I started, however, I began to feel a little defeated. The corner I was visiting – 5^th Avenue and East 60^th St – is one of New York’s least accessible by bike for anyone arriving from the south. Having prided myself on finding a viable but unconventional bike route up 1^st avenue to 55^th street then up Park Avenue to 60^th – I found myself dismounting and pushing rather than deal with the gridlock (and yet more ice patches) on Park Avenue.

The experience was a useful reminder that, in an ideal New York City, there would be no real skill to cycling in step with the city’s gyrations. Far more experiences would be like riding along the best sections of the Hudson River Greenway – a chance to travel quickly around New York, put no strain on the city’s environment or infrastructure yet take in the city’s excitement. I was torn between cursing three things: my own cowardice in intimidating conditions, the city’s unwillingness to provide a joined-up cycling network and my own stubborn refusal to give up cycling in the face of these facts.

 

The Queensboro Bridge: where my journey started to go right.

Yet, as I pondered at the end of the day how to get home after my unpromising outbound trip, I realised I was only a few blocks from the Queensboro Bridge and its bike path. I set off and was soon barrelling at nearly 25mph down the bridge into Queens, under the elevated subway tracks then over another bridge into Brooklyn.

I covered the route, though it was long, quickly and efficiently. I took routes through Greenpoint and Park Slope that I’d devised only after many attempts and much trial-and-error. I was able to enjoy the grandeur of the panoramas over the East River and take in the city’s details. I saw the Polish shops in Greenpoint, the Yiddish writing on the buses for Hassidic Jewish schoolchildren in South Williamsburg and the soul food restaurants run by African-Americans in Fort Greene.

I grew briefly frustrated with a cluster of visiting-hour cars outside Methodist Hospital on 6^th St in Park Slope but soon slipped past them too and sped, unmolested, down the hill towards home.

It was, in short, the kind of rare, transcendentally enjoyable trip that explains my refusal to give up. It’s the kind of experience I may, if anyone asks me soon if he or she should cycle in the city, recount as evidence for the “yes” side.

But I probably won’t dare articulate my true feeling about how such a near-perfect journey feels. In my head, New York City and I were, for that hour or so, spinning and whirling across the dancefloor in a rare, elegantly-executed and ecstatic waltz.