Yesterday night I stepped out onto the road and questioned, “Who’s barbecuing?”
In fact it was not a barbecue in any respect; it was smoke from the Canada, the place I suppose they forgot to stuff a rolled-up towel into the crack of their dorm room door, and all over the place the panicked citizenry of New York was packing up and fleeing south:
This vendor shut his bubble tea hutch in such haste a buyer was nonetheless trapped in it:
Simply kidding:
By the best way, a avenue vendor utilizing a crosswalk to hitch his bubble tea hutch to his SUV is exactly the form of scenario that causes a typical livable streets advocate to short-circuit:
Although ultimately they get well and write 3,000 phrase Streetsblog editorials about how congestion pricing will repair all this by some means.
In the meantime, over on the Citi Bike rack the scenario was equally apocalyptic:
How does that even occur?
It’s like that scene in “There’s One thing About Mary.”
As for me, I took to the Brooklyn Bridge, the place the Manhattan skyline was barely seen by the haze:
For the complete impact, construct a campfire, sit very near it, and watch this video:
Sadly I began rolling “tape” after the worst of the motor scooters (I pray that each single one who rides a motor scooter within the bike lane zips up his personal ball, although for those who’re using a motor scooter within the bike lane as an alternative of the road you most likely don’t have any balls to zip up) and the man on the observe bike with the widest handlebars I’ve ever seen, so that you don’t get to see any of that. In case you haven’t been conserving observe (pun form of supposed), fixie handlebars have gone from >extremely slender< to <R I D I C U L O U S L Y F U C Okay I N G W I D E>. Apparently in some unspecified time in the future between the mid-aughts and now fixed-gear riders found the idea of leverage, and for some cause they’d quite trip round with what seem like Yakima crossbars bolted to their bikes than use a brake. This requires them to unfold their arms unfold very extensive and grasp their heads very low, which makes them seem like they’re attempting to sneak a peek beneath the door of a restroom stall.
Nonetheless, additional to yesterday’s put up, I nonetheless managed to seize the complete spectrum of bicyclist security conduct, from “overly cautious:”
To “Aw, fuck it:”
Alighting in Manhattan, a brownish pall hung over Chambers Road:
Between the smoke and the license plate in entrance of me I felt like I used to be in America’s most flamable state:
I’ve most likely talked about this earlier than, however till just a few years in the past you nearly by no means noticed a California license plate in New York; now they’re far and wide. I don’t know why that is. Often in New York you see the plain tri-state plates (NY, NJ, and CT), plus plates from the “registration rip-off” states (PA, FL), and a smattering from the “I register my automotive at my trip residence” state (VT)–plus the now-ubiquitous pretend paper ones. However why California? It doesn’t appear to be there’d be a compelling cause to fraudulently register a automotive in California. Are folks actually touring forwards and backwards between California and New York that ceaselessly? Definitely Californians and New Yorkers are by far essentially the most annoying folks within the nation, so is there a wormhole for unbearable folks I don’t find out about that permits them to journey immediately between the 2 states? Or maybe they’re simply right here to start out wildfires. What I do know is there are fewer extra boring topics than license plates, however if you trip a motorbike you wind up watching a variety of license plates and it’s exhausting not to consider them.
Additionally, that automotive had the identical actual warmth protect rattle that mine does. It’s the rattly 9-speed Ultegra shifter cap of automotive annoyances.
As soon as I’d made it throughout city I took to the West Facet Greenway:
They’ve been telling folks to not go exterior as a result of air quaility:
Yeah, proper, no matter. I don’t trip for my well being, I trip as a result of I like it. If using exterior for an hour had been the equal of smoking a whole pack of cigarettes I wouldn’t scale back my on-the-bike actions by a single pedal stroke. A few of us simply gotta do what we gotta do, penalties be damned. We thick-headed cussed varieties come from all walks of life, too, although the widespread denominator appears to be we gravitate in the direction of actions that contain carrying tights:
This isn’t to say I’m fully heedless, and I did be certain that I used to be seen by all of the smoke:
This consists of utilizing a taillight, in fact, since not all vehicles are geared up with a rattly warmth protect warning system:
Oh, I’m nonetheless getting good use out of my Two Wheel Gear pannier, by the best way, which was full as a result of I ended to hitch in on some wildfire-induced panic-looting:
Simply kidding:
I did choose up some bathroom paper although:
I do appear to spend an inordinate quantity of vitality schlepping bathroom paper, and maybe I ought to give critical consideration to a bidet:
Although I don’t understand how I’d match it in my pannier.
Additional up the Hudson I received to see a person catch a fish:
Although I didn’t get a great shot of the fish:
It ought to present him with ample sustenance as he flees New York on his electrical scooter. Higher but, will probably be pre-smoked.
In fact the issue with fleeing by scooter is that it is advisable to cost it, which may very well be why these persons are fleeing by outrigger canoe:
They need to make landfall on Staten Island by Thursday:
As for me, till the air clears up, I’ll be on high of Outdated Smoky.
