Tag Archives: Queensboro Bridge

Throw caution to the wind

Do it. Just go for it. Do you have a dream? Live it. Don’t think about it. Don’t give yourself any time to come up with all of those excuses and reasons for why you shouldn’t do it, or why it might not be responsible, how much money it would cost, who might get hurt along the way. Just get out there and go.

Live a little. Live as recklessly as you want. I used to have this dream where I’d climb to the top of the Queensboro Bridge. But you know what happened? I didn’t do it. Why? I think that I thought about it too much. And now it’s already cemented in my brain, all of those thought processes, the whole scenario playing out in my head to the point where, even if I decided to go ahead with the climb, I’d immediately have a dozen or so very real visions of how it would go down, what I’d have to do to avoid all of those potential problems.

No, it’s all too premeditated by this point. I’d just wind up psyching myself out. You know what I should have done? I should have just started climbing the very second that I had the idea to climb it in the first place. Obviously it would have been convenient if I happened to be right underneath the bridge when the idea first popped into my head.

But it didn’t. I think I thought about it first when I was watching the third Batman movie, that scene where he climbs to the top to look out over the city. I was like, wow, that’s awesome, I want to do that. But then I got lost in the rest of the movie, and by the time the whole bridge idea finally resurfaced in my conscious thoughts, I was already too busy thinking stuff like, what are the police going to do when they arrest me? Am I going to get fired for missing work? If I apply for a new job, how am I going to explain this when I have to answer “yes” to that question that asks, “Have you ever been arrested?”

Just go for it. Throw caution to the wind. Has anybody ever said that to you in real life? To throw caution to the wind? I think I’ve only read it, it’s one of those cliché pieces of advice that everyone has floating around in their heads. But here it applies. Like at a restaurant. Don’t look at the menu. Just order. Just look at the waiter and say, “I’ll have the steak.” If he comes up to the table and says something like, “Would you like to hear about the specials?” just say, “I’ll have the special.”

If he continues, if he says, “We actually have several specials tonight,” don’t listen to him, your whole game is going to be shaken. If he tells you about specials one, two, and three, it won’t matter which one you’re ordering, because you’ll be thinking about how good the other two dishes would have been. And how do you know you made the right choice?

Just tell the waiter, “I’ll have the steak special.” No, better yet, go into the restaurant with really heavy duty earplugs, hand the waiter a piece of paper that says, “I’m not going to listen to you, nor will I look at the menu. Just bring me something awesome.”

Just live a little. Just go for it. Just throw all caution to the wind. Did I say that already? Well I’m saying it again. And if you’ve never heard that expression before, here it is, read it again. Now you’ve heard it twice.

Self-appointed bike lane enforcement guy

It’s not my job to tell people what to do, I get it. I keep telling it to myself over and over again every time I ride my bike across the Queensboro Bridge. I’ve written about this before, but there’s a shared lane fenced off from traffic on the North side of the bridge. It’s about the width of a single lane of normal car traffic.

Only, this lane is divided by a white line down the center. The inside side is clearly labeled every twenty feet or so with these stick-figure graphics of a guy on a bicycle, while directly opposite, there are images of pedestrians. It’s easy enough, biking on one side, walking on the other.

But I don’t understand why people can’t just follow this very simple system. If you’re on a bike, why do you have to bike in the pedestrian lane? If you’re walking or running, what are trying to accomplish by taking up space in the bike lane? Why can’t we just respect the system?

But like I said, I’m not in charge, OK, I get that. It’s not my job to tell people to follow the rules. I’m not a cop. People aren’t obligated to listen to me. And so I try to just bite my tongue. I really do make an effort to not let myself get angry just because other people make decisions that I wouldn’t make.

It seriously drives me crazy though. I’ll be biking on the bike side of the lane when I see a runner coming right at me. What do I do? Isn’t it easy enough to just swerve out of the way? Yeah, I guess in theory there might come a time where there could potentially be a traffic issue, multiple bikers trying to pass each other at the same time at the same spot, a situation that could be neatly avoided if the runner would just stay in his designated running lane.

But most of the time it’s not an issue. It’s certainly not my issue. The guy’s in the bike lane, it doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. I should just ignore it, bike around him. Why do I have to let the actions of a complete stranger dictate the state of emotions inside my head?

But I’m not always thinking the same way every time I cross the bridge. Sometimes I might be in a really good mood. I’ll see that runner, I’ll say to myself, hey Rob, just focus on your own life. Don’t worry about what other people are doing. It doesn’t matter.

Sometimes it works. Other times I might be running late, I might have just gotten into an argument with someone. Maybe I’m just pissed off for no reason at all. That happens, I can wake up on the wrong side of the bed. And look, now I’ve got some idiot running right at me from the wrong side of the lane. Well you know what? I don’t feel like getting pushed around, not today, not by these people just blatantly disregarding the bike lane and the pedestrian lane.

And I just want to put it out there, when I get bent out shape, I know that I’m in the wrong. Every time that I take this shit personally, every time I choose to react to something like this, I get it, I’m the idiot here. Yet sometimes there’s nothing I can do. Something about it just drives me off the wall. Like why do I have to get out of your way? Why don’t you just stay on your side and then nobody will have to get out of anybody else’s way?

There are several ways of me going about being a self-righteous bridge asshole. If the runner is running all the way to the side of the bridge, I might meet him head on, a classic game of chicken. Eventually we get to the same spot, and I kind of put my hands in the air, like what the hell man? And he does the same thing, like come on dude! And that’s it.

Other times I might get verbal, like, “Come on man! Bike lane!” and then I’ve basically lost, because now I’m the crazy person yelling at random strangers on the bridge. It’s all nonsense. I don’t want it to bother me anymore. I just want to ride my bike across without feeling like I’m being one-upped by anyone. Maybe I should start commuting blindfolded. When I get in someone’s face, it’s pointless. There’s going to be another pedestrian in the bike lane like thirty seconds later. What am I going to do, yell at every single person? Is that going to be my thing, like self-appointed bike lane enforcement guy?

I hope not. I hope that eventually it won’t bother me, like I’ll learn to not let it piss me off. But I’m still far away from that day. Because even if I do restrain myself, even if I politely get out of everyone else’s way, it still pisses me off. Just stay in your lane, all right, it’s really not difficult at all.

Get out of the bike lane

The Queensboro Bridge links Midtown Manhattan with Long Island City. I cross it every day on my bike to get to work. There’s a dedicated lane, totally apart from traffic, for pedestrians and cyclists. It’s wide enough for everybody, so on a purely theoretical level, there shouldn’t be any problems. But there are always problems.

People don’t know how to follow the rules. This dedicated lane has a line drawn down the middle. On one side, there are stenciled images of people on their bikes, on the other side, ones of people walking. That sounds simple enough, right? People on their bikes are riding fast, and people walking or running, not as fast. Terrific.

But it’s like, maybe twenty five percent of people on the bridge at any given time are either not understanding this very clear line of demarcation, or they understand it, but they’re thinking to themselves, fuck this line. I’m not going to get bossed around by a line. I’ll do whatever the hell I want.

I know it’s really lame for bike riders to complain about people being in the bike lane. Even though it’s true, it’s a tired argument, and Fred Armisen made fun of this trope at length on Portlandia. But come on, why are you going to walk in the middle of a bike lane? Riding downhill, bikes are flying. It’s like some people are thirsting for a collision.

And so every day I cross the bridge and there are always at least one or two people doing their thing, walking in the bike lane. Most of the time it’s … whatever, it’s annoying to me, but I’m not going to do anything. Normally there aren’t tons of people in the way, and it’s really no big deal for me to do a little swerve and avoid that guy with his head down (looking straight at the stenciled bikers spaced twenty feet apart) with his headphones on, or texting on his cell phone.

I really try to prevent myself from getting annoyed. I know that it’s crazy, that there are a billion people in this city, and I can’t let myself get upset at stupid trivialities like this. If I indulge even one urge to yell to somebody, “Hey man, this is the bike lane,” as I zip by, even if it does do something, which it most likely won’t, there’s just going to be somebody else doing it five minutes later.

And so I just try to stay calm, tell myself that I don’t have any control of this world, of other people, that this is probably like a metaphor for life, for my existence on the planet, me trying to do my thing without getting all bent out of shape about other people doing their thing.

But sometimes I’m not so patient. Every once in a while I will yell out, “Bike lane!” at some clueless pedestrian. Sometimes I’ll try the passive aggressive route, cutting right in front of the walker just inches after I pass. Did you feel that gust of wind when I passed? Yeah, that’s because you’re in the wrong lane buddy. You’re going to get hurt. I’m going to get hurt.

The lanes aren’t there arbitrarily. They’re an attempt at maintaining order, at facilitating the bridge crossing for a large number of people using different methods of transportation. Why do some people ignore it? It’s like life, why are some people just so opposed to everything?

“Hey, maybe things would run a lot smoother if we did it this way.”

“You think you’re smarter than me? Don’t tell me what to do! You can’t tell me what to do! This is America! I’ll do whatever the hell I want!”

The other day I was crossing and this guy and girl were walking their bikes, taking up the entire bike lane. And as I was trying to cross, there were other pedestrians going the other way in the pedestrian lane. And so I actually had to come to a stop because there was no way for me to pass. I made eye contact with the guy in the bike lane and that was all it took to set him off as he got instantly super aggressive.

“What the fuck are you looking at, bitch?” he screamed. And so I probably should have just ignored this and pedaled on, but I responded to the aggression with my own surge of adrenaline. I shouted back, “Get out the bike lane, you’re in the way!” His response to that was to throw down his bike and start walking toward me. I didn’t want to throw my bike down, but I didn’t want this clown to think that he could scare me away, so I placed it down, but did it with dramatic zeal.

“What are you going to do, beat me up?” I said, wildly mimicking his chest thumping and arm flailing, “You’re going to be a tough guy?” at this point the girl he was with started pulling at his arm, and me, having absolutely zero interest in getting in an actual physical altercation with a complete stranger, I picked up my bike and continued my ride to work.

It was pretty stupid. That guy could have been nuts. He could have totally attacked me. I don’t know what I was trying to prove. I felt like an idiot on the rest of the way over. What if he punched me in the face? What would I have said to my boss if I showed up to work all bloody and bruised? “Sorry boss, you see, this guy was walking in the bike lane, and we got into a fist fight …”

I just don’t see why we can’t at least try to follow the rules sometimes. Not every line is a challenge to your personal liberty, an invitation for something to be crossed. There are a lot of people on this planet, and sometimes these rules just help everything to run a little smoother.

We’re all doomed

I get so paranoid sometimes, like way too paranoid. It’s overwhelming, crushing, really. It’s all stupid crazy stuff, and it sounds just like how these blog posts sound, only out loud, in my head, with no word limit, just this constant stream churning a million different detailed scenarios about how I’m going to die, how, yeah, things are going pretty well right now, but it’s just a matter of time before everything takes a sharp and dramatic turn for the worse.

Like this morning, I was feeling especially on edge, I couldn’t find a comfortable spot, not sitting down, not lying down, not standing up. So I thought I’d go for a long run, get into that soothing rhythm where I focus on my breathing. Only this backfired. As I got maybe a quarter of the way over the Queensboro Bridge, I noticed how windy it was.

Specifically, I could feel the wind coming at me from the other side of the bridge, taking all of that gridlocked traffic, accumulating all of that slow, idling exhaust, and shooting it straight into my lungs in concentrated bursts. I tried to ignore it, to just deal with it, to tell myself that, hey idiot, you live in a big city, this problem probably isn’t limited to being on a bridge.

But then I started thinking about all of the bridges and tunnels in the city. I started thinking about all of those bridge and tunnel workers, the cops that stand there and do whatever it is they’re doing, the maintenance guys, the toll collectors. They always have these crazy World War I style gas masks on. And here I am like an idiot running across the bridge, getting my respiratory system into such a state that I’m actually taking in more air than necessary, I’m taking in as many large gulps of pollution as I can.

OK this isn’t helping. I needed to put that out of my head also. What am I going to do, never go outside? Never run across the bridge? It’s not always this bad. Sometimes the wind comes from the other direction and I get to enjoy what it feels like if there were no cars around. But that taste. I could taste exhaust on my tongue. And I wanted to wipe the taste off somehow, but there was nothing to do, I kind of just moved my tongue around, rubbed it on my teeth. And now I was totally going crazy, because I swear I could feel like a film on my teeth, like the inside of my mouth was just covered with this grime.

I was getting out of control here. Clearly this had to be at least somewhat in my head. New York isn’t that dirty. It’s not like how people describe Los Angeles during the eighties, or Beijing right now. All of those other human beings are making it through OK. I’ll manage just fine. And that calmed me down for a second, but then another image flashed through my mind. I remembered I went for a similar long run like a year ago, the same route, the across the bridge, but it was a little longer, I ran along the East River and down the to the Brooklyn Bridge before turning around and heading back to Queens.

And when I got home and collapsed and took off my sneakers I could see it, a clear line in my socks, white below the ankle line, but above? Where the sock didn’t have any sneaker to cover it? It was stained, browned, just being exposed to this city for a couple of hours had somehow done actual damage, like there’s enough dust and grime at the foot level to somehow make its way into the fabric.

And I run a lot, over and over again, back and forth across that bridge, I’m breathing in and out. All I can think of is tiny micro-particulate, the smokestacks to my right in Long Island City, the smokestacks to my left by the FDR Drive, all of that exhaust, the kind of dust that’s so small it takes decades to float down to the earth’s surface, and I’m breathing it in, giving it that powerful inhale, letting it get all the way inside my system, deep in my lungs, into the tiniest crevasses of my alveoli, accumulating run after run after run.

And someday ten, twenty, thirty years from now, I’ll develop this weird post-post-post industrial cough, and the oncologist will be like, “Yeah, we’re seeing that from a lot of guys your age. Nobody really knows any good answers, but here, we’ll give you a bunch of chemotherapy and hope for the best.”

This is crazy. This is a crazy way to spend a Wednesday morning. It’s too much for me. I need a drink. I need some more coffee. And another drink. We’re all doomed.

I’m going to climb to the top of the Queensboro Bridge

Whenever I cross the Queensboro Bridge, I always get this urge to get off my bike and climb to the top. It looks so easy. Batman did it in The Dark Knight Rises. He’s just standing on top, staring at the city, planning out that whole part where he makes that line of gasoline that goes all the way from the base of the East River to the top, where it’s shaped like a flaming bat. I want to do it too, minus the flaming bat. It doesn’t even look that tall. Like, if I could just get past my fear of heights, if I could just focus on one step at a time, like a ladder, or not one step at a time, but one rung at a time, I’m sure I could be standing on the top in no time.

A couple of years ago there were like three guys that climbed to the top of the New York Times building. The whole thing is wrapped in these bars, something to do with green energy, I’m not really sure. But it’s also shaped exactly like a ladder. And so first, this guy who’s famous for climbing buildings, he did it. And then some other guy did it, and then another guy, until they had to remove the bars from the bottom floors.

So there’s definitely that urge. Sometimes the urge is barely there. Sometimes it’s all I can do to block it out of my head. When it’s at it’s strongest, I’ll look up from right underneath and picture myself doing it, where I’d start, at what pace I’d have to climb. I look at gaps in between some of the larger expanses of cable and steel and imagine how I’d realistically be able to make it across.

I’m confident that I could make it to the top, no problem. But will I ever get the chance? New York’s a pretty tightly guarded city. There are cameras everywhere. I don’t doubt for a second that if anything ever goes even the slightest bit off on one of the bridges or tunnels, the police must know about it almost instantly. One time I was riding my bike across and there were these weird graffiti tags spaced about every ten feet apart. I got to the middle of the bridge and there were like twenty cops surrounding this guy with cans of spray paint. If that guy couldn’t get away with his stunt, I doubt I’d be able to get away with mine.

Or maybe I’d be able to at least get started. I’d get like a quarter of the way up before someone notices what I’m up to. I’d have to travel light, so as not to give an impression that I’m carrying any sort of bomb or weapon. The crazier part of my imagination is cooking up some scenario where the police commissioner is staring at a TV screen somewhere, barking orders into a walkie-talkie, “Take him down! Now!” and some lieutenant would be like, “But commish, he doesn’t look like he’s up to no good … he’s just climbing.” But nobody wants to take that type of risk, not post-post-9/11, and so maybe they’d off me, cover up the operation, I’d die in obscurity, not ever having made it to the top.

Getting all the way up would be easy. And once I got up there, I’d bask in the view. I’d do a Batman pose and pretend like I’m reenacting the moment right before he took back the city from Bane. And then I’d probably just wait, frozen. Because while going up seems easy, climbing back down, that’s got to be tough. Making sure you have a controlled descent. I don’t know why, I imagine climbing up and I’m fine, but I imagine coming back down, and that kind of gets my palms all sweaty.

I’ll definitely do it someday. Maybe I’ll definitely do it someday. Probably. I always think, what’s stopping me? Fear? Of what? Getting in trouble? What are they going to do, lock me up? For how long? I’ll get out eventually, and I’ll never have to think about what it would be like to climb up, because I’d have already done it. And so I won’t have that nagging sensation in the back of my brain, every time I ride my bike to work, come on Rob, just do it, it looks so easy, you’re going to be an old man someday and you won’t be able to then even if you wanted to. You can totally make it up, come on, don’t be a weenie, just do it.