Citi Bike: Cobblestones and Sweat

In my last post I wrote about trying Citi Bike. This past Thursday night, I downloaded the app and familiarized myself with bike docks near my usual destinations. On Friday morning, I was ready to try it. At 53 degrees and sunny with no wind, conditions were perfect.

Upon my arrival at Penn Station, I checked the app and saw that there were six bikes at the dock on 8th Avenue. Fantastic! This is going to work out well.

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New Adventures In Commuting

Trains, trains, trains. Buses, buses, buses. Subways, subways, subways. Blah blah blah. When you read TTIV, do you feel like things get repetitive sometimes? Nah, me neither. Every day is a new experience when riding the rails. But how about we try something new? TTIV has decided to embark on a new commuting experience, Citi Bike.

The Citi Bike program has been around since 2013. When it started, the bikes were terrible and the program received lukewarm grades at best. A newer fleet of bikes have been introduced and many people are happier with the program now.

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Going Off The Rails Again

TTIV published a post​ a few weeks back, containing random musings. Thanks to all the positive responses, we're doing this again. As I sit here watching game 4 of the NLCS between the Mets and Cubs, my mind has wandered, as it often does, to commuting. Let's get right to the sound bites in another edition of "Off the Rails."

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Subway Characters

Quite the morning on the subway today, saw some interesting characters.

All the way from Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn to Park Place in Manhattan, this woman made her nails hot pink. By the end of the ride, I had a nail polish headache.

It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, people are wearing pink. And then some are riding pink and rocking the purple.

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Commute Off-Peak At Your Own Risk

Earlier this week, a friend who doesn’t often ride the LIRR took the train home from meetings in Manhattan. He found himself surrounded by numerous amateurs, which is no surprise since it was 3 PM, and certainly not rush hour. Amazed by the plentiful rudeness, he gave me real-time text updates for the duration of his off-peak trip.

TTIV takes no pleasure in what he endured. However, there's a sense of vindication in knowing that I’m not the only one who gets frustrated by lack of self-awareness. General disrespect of others in the shared space of a train car is unfortunately the norm.

Today's post is a cleaned up transcript of our conversation. TTIV protects the identities of contributors with Shakespearean names, and today's contributor is "Borachio."

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Open Door Policy

Hey! Remember TTIV? It's been a few weeks since I've shared any musings. I could say I've been too busy to write, but that's a copout. The truth is that I've looked at my backlog of ideas and have been less than excited by them. Combine that with an unhealthy obsession of binge-watching "Dexter" on Netflix, and I've gone radio silent.

Well, not completely silent. I've posted on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, so if you're on those sites, can you please throw TTIV a like? Or a follow?

That was shameless. Let's get back to the core business of TTIV, which is to point out the weird, wacky, and unusual things that present themselves on the commute. Today, we've got an interesting one.

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