This was inevitable. With cities like Chicago and New York increasingly going out of their way to roll out the red carpet (or, in Gotham’s case, painting a chartreuse lane) for cyclists–you half expect Mayor Bloomberg to bypass his beloved 4 train for a Huffy mountain bike–the biker backlash has begun.

Some San Francisco zealots have argued that squeezing cars into fewer lanes to make room for cyclists is bad for the environment, reports the Wall Street Journal. Reporter Phred Dvorak (uh, listen to Phish much, “Phred”?) said the anti-bikers, spearheaded by unemployed activist/blogger Rob Anderson, are arguing that the bikers get way too much leeway in an era when everyone’s concerned with saving the environment and assuaging our national addiction to gasoline.  

Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It’s an “attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy,” he wrote in his blog this month.

Anderson likens San Francisco’s substantial pro-cyclist community to Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombers.

Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles have teamed up to oppose a plan to put high-rises and additional housing in a nearby neighborhood. He continues to blog from his apartment in an old Victorian home. “Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings — because they are politically motivated to do so,” he wrote in a May 21 post.

That’s just not going to win Mr. Anderson much support.

I had five minutes before I had to hop on the bike this morning, navigate the sleepy streets of Hummerville, and make my 8:16 train.

I sat with Little G as we set up yet another “Big Car Party,” which sees 8-10 of his larger cars and trucks (White Hummer, Green Monster Truck, Kitty Cat Car [don’t ask]) arranged in a circle, talking about Big Car/Truck things (bad gas mileage, their mutual irritation with small cars and light trucks).

The skies darkened. The Missus suggested I hit the road a little early to avoid potential rain. I considered the suggestion and kept playing.

The skies darkened some more, and it looked as though the clouds were about to burst. I said my quick good byes and bolted the Big Car Party.

A drizzle fell as I stepped outside.

“Do you want a jacket?” The Missus asked.

“No,” I said, reasoning that I could beat the heavy rain in the time it took to retrieve a jacket from the front closet.

Just as I exited the driveway, the hard stuff came. Large drops soaked my shirt and pants. Puddled water kicked up off my back tire and soaked my ass, which is a wonderfully fresh feeling with which to start the day.

Twice I jammed on the brakes as I decided to return home, my wet brakes squealing loudly and unpleasantly. Twice I decided to forge ahead.

The rain actually slowed back to a drizzle within a minute, but I was good and soaked.

I pulled into the station parking lot and, for the first time since pestering Town Hall for a bike rack, opted for one of the makeshift spots under the overpass to provide a little shelter for my graphite horse.

I’d forgotten about the giant puddle–aspiring Great Lake, more like it–in front of the overpass and felt the water soak through my left shoe.

With a wet shirt, soaked ass and drenched left foot, I stepped onto the 8:16–the A.C. a constant reminder of every drop of water touching my skin.

Unlike White Hummer and Green Monster Truck, at least I’d saved a few pennies on gas.

That’s a Post-worthy headline, eh?

I wheeled my bike up to the Hummerville station this morning and made my way to the bike rack. The man who runs the taxi stand at the station was smoking a butt up against the station house.

I recognized the guy from News 12 a few months ago, when he commented on one of his employees sacrificing a rabbit on the front step of the cab stand. With shaggy gray hair and a few days’ worth of stubble, he looks like the kind of guy who used to go see Jimmy Buffett each year, then stopped going about 10 years ago.

“Thank God it’s Friday, huh?” he said.

“Yeah, looking forward to the weekend,” I said as I locked my bike.

“Of course, it’s only Thursday,” he added, “but it feels like a Friday.”

It was quiet as I walked toward the stairs.

“I gotta say,” he added. “You’ve got some serious gonads–”

At this point, he held his hands about a foot apart, as if to display gonads the size of volleyballs.

“–to ride your bike around here.”

“I hope for the best,” I said, hustling off to catch the 8:16. “I wear my helmet and hope for the best.”

[image: dailyhamster.com]

None of this would’ve happened if the 6:10 hadn’t been five minutes late pulling in to Hummerville.

For the second time in three days, I studied the darkening sky as the train lumbered through White Plains, North White, Valhalla. I prayed we’d get to Hummerville before the skies opened up and soaked my sorry ass as I pedaled home.

The moment we pulled into Hawthorne–several minutes after the scheduled time  after much too much dawdling amidst the South Bronx rubble–the rains fell like God’s swimming pool had sprung a massive leak.

I gingerly made my way up and down the stairs and over to the shell of our former station house, finding an overhang that afforded me a glimpse of my sorry cycle. I waited for a slight break in the downpour, and even found a positive–unlike Monday, I was not wearing a suit. (Rocking the suit while riding the bike…a.k.a. pulling a “John John.”)

A man of about 50 took a spot next to me, eyeing a car that was parked over by the overpass, a couple hundred feet away. We made small talk, a few jokes: Why did I think riding was a good idea, where’s The Missus to pick us up, with a fresh martini in hand.

The rain showed no sign of subsiding.

Five minutes passed. I called The Missus to see it it was Code Red on the homestead. It was, for once, not. She said the rain was slowing up at the homestead, all of 9/10ths of a mile from the station.

Sure enough, by the end of the call, the rain occupied a much tamer volume level.

“I can give you a ride,” said the man next to me.

I stammered…No, really, I’m fine, it’s OK.

“I’ll give you a ride,” he insisted.

As if that wasn’t a grand enough gesture of kindness, he then said he’d run to his car, and swing back to pick me up. I stammered some more: Not really necessary, I don’t mind getting wet, OK.

Sure enough, he sprinted off, then pulled in two minutes later. The rain was merely a steady drizzle now, but my spongy bike seat held enough water to sate a third world nation. I left the bike on the rack.

We made some more small talk as he drove me home. He lived in Briarcliff, he was a mile from the Pleasantville station, but there was no sidewalk and the route is perilous for pedestrians.

We pulled up to my house. I offered my name and my hand. We shook. He was Bill or Jim or something with three letters. If only for a moment, he reinforced my faith in humanity.

A martini would’ve been nice though.

As we’d hinted at earlier this week, motor scooter sales are through the roof, reports the NY Times, as commuters seek ways to avoid paying $4.40 for a gallon of gas. Getting as many as 100 miles to the gallon, scooter sales were up 24% nationwide in the first three months of the year–before petrol prices truly started going through the roof.

Others see it less as an alternative to the car and more as an alternative to the cumbersome buses and crowded subways. Maya Corneille, 27, a student, said that on $5 a tank of gas, “I’m spending less money than I did on MetroCards.”

The scooter, she said, is more efficient for traveling from her home on the Upper West Side to Hunter College in the East 60s than on mass transit, which involved getting on a crosstown bus. “Everything is getting more efficient — 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes,” she said.

Speaking of new scooterists, I haven’t seen the Black Rider all week. Perhaps he’s on vacation, or one of the “students in crisis” from Cedar Knolls stole his scooter (sorry for the stereotype), or he took a tumble on the thing and lost his nerve–much as I did with my Honda Spree back in 1985, which resulted in me selling the thing for a cool $325 to Bonnie Raitt’s niece.

[image thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/pict/1802283047698080]

I’ve often lamented the fact that few cyclists opt to use the bike rack that I’d painstakingly (OK, it wasn’t that painful) lobbied Town Hall to install at the Hummerville train station.

I did, however, share the rack with a handsome silver mountain bike a few weeks back, and pulled up to the rack (sorry, it’s just fun saying “rack”) today to find a most curious rack resident.

It was a gleaming black Vespa motor scooter, its front wheel chained to the bike rack.

It was easily the first time I’d ever seen the motorized variety of two-wheeled transport drop anchor at the bike rack.

Seeing that motor was like watching Dylan plug in his Fender Strat at the Newport Folk Festival in ‘65.

Spying that Italian make was like Roberto Baggio showing up for your rec-league soccer practice.

My rusted Trek was, needless to say, charmed to be in the Vespa’s company.

[images: thehappeningmovie.blogspot; nst.blog.hu]

The Times has an interesting story on a bike parking lot planned for the Penn Station neighborhood. The 34th Street Partnership is looking for corporations to foot the bill, around $200,000 a year.

“We want this to be the premier bike parking facility in the country,” said Partnership President Daniel A. Biederman, presumably meaning something better than what Mount Pleasant erected for its two-tired residents last summer.

The site, on 33rd between 8th and 9th, measures 2,600 feet. It’s slated to hold 100 bikes; the 26-square-feet-per-bike ratio is probably better than most Manhattan residents get.

The city is not officially part of the venture, but reporter Patrick McGeehan says the Department of Transportation has been installing tons of bike racks–800 last year alone.

There’s an interesting article in the Times today about Mayor Bloomberg getting serious about making life easier for bikers and encouraging them to bike to work. He’s bullish on building bike lanes–200 more miles by 2010!–and erecting bike racks.

The reporter gamely points out that Bloomie has only built two miles of lanes this year. But to be fair, the guy was tied up building that football stadium on the west side these past few years.

So lengthy was my mini-vacation that I noticed a spider web had sprung from my bike to the lawnmower in our garage. Not having to commute for all of five days, I got a little perspective on the game, and in a mad flash of optimism and good cheer, came up with five whole things I like about my commute.

1. I don’t know a soul on my train. No husband of wife’s friend at the station to pretend I don’t see, no one from work I get stuck riding next to when they board in White Plains, no friend of a former friend I have to pretend I don’t see when they get on in Valhalla.

 2. 1-3/4-Seaters!  

3. Unlike Stamford or White Plains, or even Hartsdale, Hawthorne is a small station. That means, in the rare event that the Missus picks me up after work, she can pull right up to the stairs, grab me, and drive right out, instead of getting jammed up in big-station traffic.

4. The option of having a beer on the train.

5. On that topic, the pubs one sees from the Harlem line, including JC Fogarty’s in Bronxville, Harry’s of Hartsdale and Valhalla Crossing.

6.  The new bike rack at Hawthorne station! 

Geez, that’s 6. I must really be relaxed.

Got a call from Town Hall yesterday telling me the bike rack was up and functional. “Tell your bike friends they can park there,” the woman told me. (As if my “bike friends” and I sit around in our free time, sipping Power-Ade, wearing Lycra shorts and discussing our rides to the train station, and the heretofore substandard bike-parking situation there.

I thanked her for helping make the world a slightly better place.

I parked my bike there this morning. It was the only bike on the rack, with three others parked in the old spot along the fence. Perhaps they think the rack is an abstract sculpture.

Trainjotting will now cease writing about bike racks–no subtle digs at Town Hall, no clever pun headlines (Nice Rack!). You’ve heard enough.