A week without biking

Somehow I lost one of my gloves on a ride home one night. Wasn’t I wearing them? How do you lose a glove on your hand? I don’t know… maybe I wasn’t wearing them. No matter, now I only have one.

I’m not one for shopping. And I don’t really know where to buy a nice pair of black biking gloves (Craft large, to be precise. They were very good gloves.) So I ordered a pair online and only then realized that I would be a while before I got them. In fact, I still don’t have them. And I can’t really bike long distances in 30-degree-weather with one freezing hand.

So I did like a normal New Yorker and took the subway to and from work and around down.

Oh, the subway. I sure do like knowing it’s there. But I don’t normally take it that much because I like biking. Here’s my critique:

Advantage Subway: You can read. That’s really nice. It’s tough to read on a bike. And page turning can be a bitch.

Advantage Bike: Time consistency. When I leave on a bike. I can pretty much tell you exactly when I’m going to arrive anywhere in NYC without about 100 seconds. Subway is plus or minus 10 minutes during the day and 20 minutes at night.

Advantage Subway: You get to look at a surprising number of cute girls

Advantage Bike: You get exercise.

Advantage Subway: You get to or have to walk more. It’s nice to walk around New York. You don’t walk much when you bike everywhere.

Advantage Bike: You get to bike more.

Advantage Subway: I even had one rare wonderful late-night trip on the G back from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The N wasn’t crossing the river because of some problem with a subway, a fox, a chicken, and a bushel of grain. There must have a been a full moon because the endangered G pulled up just as we entered the subway. And And it must have been a blue moon because the damn thing was running through to Continental Ave like it never does. Before you know it, we were at Steinway and a little walk from home. I’ve always said, be nice to the G train and the G train will be nice to you.

Advantage Bike: It’s free… at least once you have one.

Winner? Biking. But mostly just because biking is fun. I’m almost always happy on my bike. My pleasure on the subway is entirely dependent on what I have to read. And if I never biked I assume I’d get very fat.

Today was warm. So I biked to Manhattan. And for tomorrow, my wife found my old, torn-up last pair of gloves I must have been saving just for a situation like this.

Oh, I also can’t find my earmuffs, either.