It sounds fun, thinking of 30,000 riders, the streets of NYC closed down, see the sights! But they did a poor job with the route. It was ugly and we weren't in the best of neighborhoods at times. But when planning a route, why put us through areas where you know people will bottleneck? Something should have been done about that, it was SO frustrating to ride a few blocks and then have to stop and walk. And all those stops caused a lot of crashes because you'd come up on them suddenly. The Astoria Park rest stop, while scenic, was rediculous to get out of. Funnel all of us down two narrow (think two people side-by-side) paths? Really? It took forever to get out of there!

But the worst were the riders themselves. I've never seen such poor riding. People that looked like they hadn't been on a bike in years and were wobbling all over the place. Why did you sign up for a 42 mile bike ride? People stopping randomly and you literally have nowhere to go to get around them. NYC is as flat of a route as you could possibly ask for, but still, people were struggling on the few minor hills and again causing near-misses. Please move to the right if you know you're slow. At one point I saw a woman walking, her friend explaining to her that the gears on the left move the big gears and those make hills easier. Why do you show up to a huge ride if you don't know the basics of riding? I also love the "Where's the person I was riding next to?" slow to a crawl in the middle of the path move And just as bad were the too-confident riders, cutting and weaving through the crowds. Racing through everyone, squeezing through spaces they had no right trying to get through. They caused nearly as many issues as the inexperienced riders.

Even just starting took forever. We showed up at 7:30, the start was at 8. It was 9 when we started moving. But at one point, starting at my block, they held us and we couldn't go. So even though by 8:30 the block in front of us was moving, they made everyone from my block back wait another 30min (in the rain) to start moving. Just dumb.

Looking back, when I told people I was doing the ride, most gave me a "good luck with that" response. They'd done it, usually only once, and never returned. Others that hadn't been there had heard the horror stories and weren't surprised when I came back with bent spokes and bruised legs. So now I'll join the group of "been there and never going back" riders, and will laugh when someone excitedly tells me they're doing the ride for the first time. Good luck with that.