Debrief: 5 Boro Bike Tour (Part I)

As you may know already, it was raining on the day of the 5 Boro Bike Tour. All day!!! The tour was held on Sunday, May 3rd. We lined up at 7am... it drizzled while we waited... the tour started at 8am. The nice thing about lining up so early is that you are pretty near the front and get started within 15-30min or so. My friends who showed up later (closer to 8am) had to wait for a couple of hours.

The ride was much longer and harder than I had anticipated. I am not in great shape, don't do much at the gym and I thought it would be a breeze. Going out drinking until 2am the night before and being hungover and dehydrated probably didn't help! But let's just say there were quite a few uphills (for those of us not in shape) when you were approaching the bridges. The approach to the Verrazano Bridge at the end is the worst because there's a hill that you think is for the bridge... it's not. Then there's a bigger one and that's not it either. Finally, when you are good and tuckered out, there's the final one and it's a doozie. Just to give you some perspective, my boyfriend who works out much more consistently had no problems.

So yes, it was consistently raining all day. The roads were pretty slippery and we saw quite a few people wipe out. They have a ton of bike marshalls though, so as soon as someone went down, there was a person there to help them. If it was sunnier, we could have gone way faster... in this case, they made us slow down at every downhill because it was so slippery, so we couldn't really use that momentum. There was a lot of riding your brakes.

This post is getting pretty long, so I'll continue it in Debrief: 5 Boro Bike Tour (Part II).

Debrief: Metro Bicycles Rental Experience

Here's the lowdown on my bike rental experience with Metro Bicycles: it was painless, for the most part. The staff was pretty harried when we got to the store this past Saturday around 2pm... the best way to describe the scene was organized chaos. No one was directing you as to what to do or where to go. 

There appeared to be two lines - one for regular customers and one for rentals. We made our way up to the rental line and grabbed someone's attention. There wasn't really any recognition that they understood what we had just said to them or that they were helping us. We were second in line to be helped, but it still took about 15-20 minutes to get our bikes and helmets. We gave them a credit card to pay for the rentals and were sent on our way.

I had expected that they would spend some time with you adjusting the bikes for your height and comfort, but no, it was really just hand over the bikes and out the door you went. Not to say that they wouldn't help you if you asked, but it definitely wasn't part of the process.

Returning was really easy, just brought the bikes back and turned them in. This time (5pm on Sunday after the 5 Boro Bike Tour) there was no one in the store, but the guy was still really confused and took a while to find our information and accept the returns. The receipts and documents for all rentals were clipped to a clipboard willy nilly... I guess they're still working on paper rather than on a computer.

Overall, it was an okay experience, nothing went horribly wrong, but they didn't blow me out of the water either. I would use them again, but would much prefer to use Bike and Roll, if they had rentals available.