Today is Day 3 of the MTA strike that has wiped out public transit in New York City, and I’m working from home again.
Yesterday I was supposed to have a meeting (although of course it was cancelled 10 minutes after I’d set off), so I joined the massed throngs and cycled into work. Cycling in was OK, and even quite exhilarating at times on a crisp cold sunny winter’s morning, but it was also quite dangerous, as I had to weave through crowds of people and thick, aggressive traffic to make any headway. Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge was also a pain (despite the spectacular views) because it was super-crowded.
I also had an incident. Just before I arrived at my work, I somehow managed to take out another cyclist at the intersection of 6th Ave & 14th Street! We were pulling up parallel at the junction with him slightly ahead and to my right when he suddenly decided to take a sharp left and cross the street with the pedestrians, right across my path. I jammed on my very loud squeaky brakes, at which point he looked around with a “rabbit in the headlights” expression and fell on the floor — even though I never actually hit him! I apologised profusely, and he admitted that he should have looked behind before cutting across the street like that, but I think he hurt his leg, so that was unfortunate. There were a LOT of people on bikes who didn’t really seem to know what they were doing yesterday.
Anyway, the novelty of this strike is definitely starting to wear very thin.