ROD-A-DAY: '62 Brooklyn Buick LeSabre

Almost every day during the summer months when the sun is out and I'm not hungover, I mount my bike and make the harrowing 7.9 mile commute to where I work in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (That's 7.9 miles one way, mind you.) That means this week I rode 47.4 miles, not including any detours here and there off the designated path or jaunts to the supermarket. Lets say I ride three days every week for the last month (that's 189.6 just in commuting) and then there was the day long bike trip to Red Hook last weekend (another 12 miles)... Jesus. You get the idea. I know there are probably plenty of people out there who are riding 40 miles a day or something, but try doing that during rush hour in NYC and we'll see how long you last.

My regular route to work is an exhausting forty minute, smog-hazed, pothole-ridden, death defying, asshole filled road ragin' ride that makes me question my sanity just as much as it makes me feel like I'm incredibly' hardcore.


See? Insanity. The route I take almost every day to work on the ol' two wheeler.
While the trip certainly is filled with interesting smells (the artificial scent factory on 36th street somewhere, rotting piles of garbage marinating in the summer heat) and sounds (cat calls, car horns) and obstacles (road construction, gravel pits, flattened pigeons, blind assholes with drivers licenses), it tends to be lacking in interesting things to look at.

This seems like a bit of an imbecilic complaint on my behalf, because as everybody who bike commutes in this city knows, the minute you stop thinking and looking at the road for one millisecond is the minute you meet your maker. So naturally, why in the world would I want things to distract me? I guess what I'm saying here is that I've found the fastest, safest route to work that I ride several times a week and it is getting SERIOUSLY BORING seeing the same factories, tenement buildings and civil service workers every single freakin' day.

There is one thing however that I pass almost every day as I head up 3rd avenue right around Caroll Gardens that lifts my spirits - the '62 Buick LeSabre.

It might not be the showiest of things, but in a city fof 8.3 Million people crammed into 305 square miles of concrete, asphalt, rats and roaches, it's a nice breath of fresh air to see something with some character now and again. I keep fantasizing that one day as I'm slowing my riding speed to take it all in that the owner will come out (from wherever he - presumably - lives) and tell me that for $300 in cold hard cash "that hunk of junk can be yours for the taking." One can dream.