Thread by @bdhowald

Yesterday, I took my first #bikenyc ride in two months!

What’s more? I did it entirely from memory (did not use maps for navigation while riding, though I did study the route the night before)

(h/t to @akgerber and @CWFNYC for the idea.)

1/

For the first 20 minutes, I forgot how to ride a bike on the streets of Brooklyn.

Moving at speed while outside, even being outside itself felt unnatural.

2/

I’ve never minded shoaling before, but I got spooked by the enormous number of people riding with me down Dean and headed two blocks south to St. James.

I came across one of the plazas built by Bed Stuy Restoration and detailed by @wjfarr last month (

https://twitter.com/wjfarr/status/1250065922024497154?s=21

)

3/

There was little traffic for a Thursday at rush hour (~5 PM), but what drivers were speeding, running solid reds, making turns at speed, blocking bike lanes, etc.

Oddly, I got way more passing distance than I’ve ever gotten in NYC and was not honked at once.

4/

An obligatory @HowsMyDrivingNY post. JJT1550:NY

5/

I have a pretty good sense of direction (and mental map of large NYC streets), but I relied on transit to let me know exactly where I was.

Here the L passes over Van Sinderen Ave. and the remains of the L running over Snediker Ave. (until 2003).

6/

For the most part, the streets were still quiet.

7/

I took a pit stop at Pitkin Ave. and 76th Street, but couldn’t find anything. :)

I also took a short loop around the block to see one of the remaining stretches of Old South Rd. (whose right-of-way Pitkin Ave. uses east of here), but still exists in three segments.

8/

Also of note are these tiny stubs of an unfinished Linden Blvd. through Ozone Park.

Between Conduit Ave. and Cross Bay Blvd., a through-Linden Blvd. is still on city maps, except for one block here that was demapped for a NYC DOT garage.

9/

I reached the end of Pitkin Ave., right where the A (which also runs under Pitkin Ave.) passes by on its way to the Rockaways.

But Aqueduct Rd. was closed as the “casino” is now being used as a COVID-19 drive-in testing site.

10/

I knew I could also get to JFK via Lefferts Blvd., but that required a short ride on stroady Rockaway Blvd.

After that, but a nice ride through residential South Ozone Park, I found myself at one of the other segments of Old South Rd and continued on sharrows on Lefferts.

11/

The ride along Bergen Basin was nice, with the sounds of birds and bugs for a few minutes.

I was glad that the thing that had looked like a sidewalk along the Van Wyck the night before was actually a sidewalk along the Van Wyck.

12/

The terminals at JFK were largely abandoned and I could still hear the birds from Jamaica Bay except when the occasional car passed by or a helicopter hovered overhead.

13/

It’s not at all clear how to walk between the terminals and it took me half an hour to figure it out.

14/

It was quiet other than the sound of the wind and mechanical equipment.

15/

I know it’s cliché, but walking around the terminals and passing nobody for ten minutes at a time felt post-apocalyptic.

16/

as I left JFK, I was treated to beautiful views of the sun setting...and realized that I still had 2/3 of my journey ahead of me.

17/

As the sun set, the number of cars on the street began to fall.

Everywhere I went, I saw plenty of bikes, but few cars, even on the Belt Parkway.

18/

I was nervous about riding the gap between the Jamaica Bay Greenway and the Shore Parkway protected path, but traffic along Emmons, Neptune, and Cropsey Aves. was incredibly tame.

There was some double parking, but few cars and almost nobody going faster than 25 mph.

19/

Once again, I used trains to pinpoint exactly where I was. This D train in the photo is pulling into Stillwell Ave.

Again, barely any cars on Neptune Ave.

20/

I stopped to take a picture of this bizarre sidewalk parking and moments later found myself ten feet away from a fight, as the unleashed dog at left spotted another dog coming down Neptune.

21/

By this point my Achilles tendons we’re exhausted and I was grateful to be off of streets until Bay Ridge.

22/

I made my way back via the quiet industrial streets of the Brooklyn waterfront, preferring the railroad tracks of 1st Ave. to the stop lights on 2nd Ave.

I steeled myself for the ride up 3rd Avenue, but once again, there were few cars.

23/

44 miles, after having not ridden in two months, felt like a century.

On top of that, I did the whole ride in an old N95 mask.

Since I had spooked myself about putting my mask back on, I hadn’t had food or drink in seven hours, and I was exhausted.

24/

It felt great to be back out on a #bikenyc, but bizarre to see so many things out of the ordinary: so much reckless driving at 5 pm, but little and calm traffic after 8pm on some of the streets I fear most, and above all, a quiet JFK.

25/25

For anyone who's unfamiliar with 76th Street...:

· ltvsquad.com/2007/01/21/76t…
· secondavenuesagas.com/2011/10/19/the… by @2AvSagas
· nytimes.com/2003/01/21/nyr…
· columbia.edu/~brennan/aband… (April Fool's joke)

Here's the @NYCPlanning street map with amendments.

I like that they include archaic street names: Boyd Ave. for 88th Ave., Old South Rd. for Pitkin Ave. 135th Ave. for Dumont Ave. and (paper street) Linden Blvd. Dumont Ave. exists in no fewer than five separate chunks.

Even after the surrounding areas were developed, this part of Queens didn't get paved streets until the 1960s.

The part of Dumont on the other side of Conduit Ave. is in the Hole, which @joby_jacob referenced earlier today.

https://twitter.com/joby_jacob/status/1258803624995627009?s=20

It looks like few other places in Brooklyn or Queens.