As the Monty Pythons would say “now, for something completely different.”
Lancaster County bicyclists accustomed to riding out into open spaces and finding small back roads between farm fields have an opportunity to do a different sort of ride. BikeNewYork’s annual Five Boro Bike Tour will be held Sunday, May 4.
The 42-mile ride starts at Battery Park in lower Manhattan and progresses through Central Park to Harlem, the Bronx, over to Queens and Brooklyn before climbing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Staten Island. The ride is a rare opportunity to ride traffic-free through the skyscraper canyons of New York City on the largest organized bicycle ride in the country. Registration for the ride is capped at 30,000. According to BikeNewYork’s website, the ride is nearly full. Registration, at $55 per rider, must be done in advance.
From my own experience several years ago, the Five Boro Tour is less a ride than an event. There was a lot of standing around in a crowd, but the people were nice - even the police. And, when else can you be among bicyclists taking over the streets and have people smile about it?
