NYC Round-Up

Two trips to New York a week apart, two bike shows, the largest organized bike ride in the US, good food, and lots of people meant a busy week and a half. Just two days after returning home from the New Amsterdam Bicycle Show, we ended up back in the Big Apple for Bike Expo New York. Here's a recap of the two trips.

New Amsterdam Bicycle Show

This show had a fashion/lifestyle focus for riding a bike in NYC. There were a variety of clothes, bags, helmets, and commuter bikes on display. The venue had more of an art gallery feel to it, which was a nice change compared to the usual convention center feeling of most venues. Eric and Michelle from Inside Line Equipment flew out from Berkeley to show off ILE bags and help with our booth. Katie's new Retrotec townie was on display and got a lot of attention. Those who stopped by the booth had the opportunity to try it out on a trainer and test the Rohloff Speedhub, Gates Carbon Drive belt system, and Schlumpf Speed Drive. As usual, the Rohloff and Schlumpf cutaway models were on the table and got a lot of attention.

We headed back to Washington, DC the day after the show, but not before putting the cargo bike through its paces. Katie wanted to see Central Park, but since she had come down with a cold a few days earlier, she was running low on energy. She opted to leave her bike behind and catch a ride on the platform of the cargo bike. We rode from SoHo to the park, made a loop around the park, and then back to SoHo. She had a blast and we got a lot of attention. Later that day, after having lunch with Eric and Michelle, the four of us loaded onto the cargo bike to get back across town. This clown-car-esque arrangement definitely caused some raised eyebrows. We dropped off Eric and Michelle, loaded all the gear back on the bikes and headed back to Midtown to catch the bus home.

Bike Expo New York

We met the promoter for this show at the New Am show the previous weekend.  He had a few spaces left that he needed to fill and offered us a good price, so we made a last minute decision to attend this show. This was the first year for this event, which was organized in connection with the Five Boro Bike Tour. Packet pickup for participants in the ride was located at one end of the venue, there was a stage at the opposite end, and vendors filled the rest. Outside there were demo bikes to test ride, bike maintenance, and a BMX stunt show. Inside, vendors spanned the range from large bike companies and component manufacturers to small softgood and lighting companies. Several bike magazines had booths and there were many food companies giving out samples (both real food and processed "fuels"). I thought the most interesting booth was parmesan.com, who had a huge wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano they were cutting samples from. It's not often that you see an Italian cheese stand at a bike event.

Our booth had all of the same things from the previous weekend - Katie's Retrotec on a trainer, Rohloff and Schlumpf models, product literature, etc.- plus my drop bar Independent Fabrication that had recently received a belt drive modification. Katie signed me up for the tire changing contest held on the main stage on the last day. I fumbled the steel bead tire change royally, but still managed to get the tire off and back on and inflated in about 2 minutes to win the heat - until it was noticed that the bead had crawled off the rim in one spot. Luckily the tube didn't explode with an embarrassing bang.

Five Boro Bike Tour

This is the largest organized bike event in the US.  Founded in 1977 as a small bicycle advocacy ride, the ride now gets over 32,000 participants. The ride takes place on 40 miles of New York City streets and bridges closed to car traffic. This year, the ride was split into three starting waves to try and address overcrowding and bottlenecks from past years. Katie and I bought spare tickets for the ride from visitors to our booth at the expo so we could see what all the excitement was about.

On the way over to the start, it was fun to see the subway gradually filling with bikes at each stop as we approached the final stop.  Once we arrived at the staging area, there were an incredible number of people on bikes - certainly more than we had ever seen. Our tickets were for the second wave, and we ended up near the back of this wave, so there were close to 20,000 riders in front of us by the time we started. This made for effectively a 40 mile bicycle traffic jam with various starts and stops and slow speeds. It was neat the see the various parts of New York and to ride on the busier roads and bridges that you would normally not find bikes on. However, after nearly 5 hours and only 30 miles, we cut off the course to ride over the Brooklyn Bridge (which was not included in the ride), grab lunch, and head back to DC. This way, we missed the longest bridge of the ride, the Verrazano-Narrows, but also avoided the long lines to catch the ferry from Staten Island back to Manhattan.