So you want to bike, huh?

Good! Soon you will see how it's cheaper than the subway, cleaner than the car, faster than a speeding bullet, and man are you looking buff all of a sudden! But I want you to survive it all, and I'm sure you do too, so here's to imparting what little, biased, tangental know-how I can inject into the mess...

On the road again...

Bikes

Really, the choice is up to you, as around the city you will see all manner of bikes, from mountain and dirt bikes better suited for weathering a pizza delivery in Borneo during an combination earthquake/flash-flood to those fancy racers that only consumptive anorexics in flesh-hugging spandex seem to be able to balance on in speeds well in excess of ludicrous. But for my tastes, something heavy (oh, c'mon now - keep reading) with front shocks will do nicely. New York isn't exactly up-to-date in road maintenance (ka-thumpa thump, ow!), and between a 15 lb bike versus a two ton Lincoln Towncar, I'd vote on the Towncar. But don't let that discourage you! Road bikes and mountain bikes are incredibly relisient beasts, and of them the manufacturers Trek and Specialized make great models for most budgets, in the range from $300 to $5,000.

Locks

In a way, the Dutch system of biking tends to work well: Either buy a 5 lb bike with 70 lb lock, or a 70 lb bike with 5 lb lock. Here, like any other major cities where people actually bike, bicycles are pretty much easy to walk off with, so you have to make it hard one way or the other! Anything that can be taken off with bolt cutters, power drills, or handsaws probably will, and if they can't saw through your lock they'll saw through your bike frame.

So what's an nice, healthy, environmentally-conscious fellow like you to do? Well, either never get off your bike long enough to bother locking it (ha!) or go get a 3-4 ft Kryptonite chain and U lock. Why Kryptonite? Because they're the best, and they've been at it the longest. They even have a ranking system for locks defensibility, with the highest being - you guessed it - the "New York" lock! While weighty, the chains won't be gotten through by anything less than an industrial blowtorch, and even then it's a messy job. The best way to lock up your bike outside is to:

1. Find a metal or concrete post that's stuck into the pavement. Not on the pavement, in the pavement. College campuses especially love to manufacture and place "bike posts" that are merely aesthetically-designed metal tubes that sit on the ground. Bike thieves can come up with a car, and take the whole post with all the bikes on it in one fell swoop, to deal with the locks elsewhere at their leisure.
2. Wrap the chain around the post, your bike frame, and through the spokes of the front wheel. Use the U-lock to lock the back wheel to the frame. For that matter, you should probably go to your local hardware store and buy a small chain to keep your bike seat securely fastened to your frame. I honestly don't know what bike manufacturers were thinking when they came up with "quick release" anything. "Quick release" is a liability!
3. Use common sense. Parking meters are bad, because the enterprising thief can just slide the locked bike right over the top of the meter. Thin planted trees are bed, because they're so very much easier to saw through than your bike lock.

Gear

For the love of all that is good and holy in the world, please buy a helmet! You wouldn't buy a car without airbag, and they at least have an inch or two of aluminum between the passengers and the elements. A helmet should go without saying. Preferably one with padding. That fits.

Also, either roll up your right pants leg or wrap it tight, as getting your gears caught while in traffic tends to be a Very Bad Thing, or at least a pretty harrowing experience. Other than that, wear what you're comfortable with. Biker pants are definitely not necessary to anything but getting odd looks from bemused pedestrians.

Goin' places that I've never been...

New York is fun for biking in that bikers tend to have the least amount of actual regulation than either motorists or pedestrians. Cops will not stop you for running red lights, going down the wrong way on a one-way street, swerving through traffic or any number of moving violations. In fact, the only real rule they do enforce, and they do so only spottily (ie: only where the rich care to use the police to strongarm the hoy-polloy... *cough, cough* Madison Ave.), is that you are unable to ride on the sidewalk, tantamount to a $100 fine - $400 if you hit somebody while on it.

The drawback to this complete and unfettered freedom is that you basically do anything you want at your own risk. And no matter how wrong that driver was for cutting you off and forcing you into a crosstown bus, you're going to hurt more than the bus.

Navigating the City

Every local bike shops gives out free maps of all the bike routes and bike lanes in the five boroughs of the city, and the last two mayors have prided themselves in making un-cut, complete "greenway" paths around the entire island of Manhattan, with links to the outer boroughs and beyond. There is still no better way to reach the shore of the Hudson River than by bike, and you can follow it so long as there's land to bike on.

Likewise, the bike lanes cut paths up and down major and minor thoroughfares, so that you might easily enough find your way downtown, and by them most streets south of 59th St. are easily biked anyway thanks to the constant traffic jams.

Navigating Vehicular Traffic

Bike Lanes work, however, except when they don't. More often than not, they're taken up as an idling lane for delivery trucks, liveries and city busses, and while they are in theory connected to a city-wide array of bike routes, they cross major intersections very oddly, which leaves navigating more dangerous than just following your nose. Ignore them, and use the slow-moving vehicles to your advantage. Ultimately, it's the speed of vehicular traffic that's what makes New York bikable!

For example, take Broadway. It isn't necessarily a pre-ordained bike route, but with all the constant truck traffic from retail along the sides, bus traffic north and south, and traffic lights every 150 feet, biking is a snap! Trucks make big, easily predicted arcs through the traffic, taxis and delivery vans never get to speeds high enough to truly worry about thanks to the lights, and the preponderance of busses and parked cars slows all the peripheral traffic down even further. Since you're only but so wide, it's even easier than driving that very same street. Just look when you cross lanes, and you'll be surprised at how far you can get.

What? Cross lanes?

Obviously, as a biker you're going to want to sit in the right-hand shoulder as much as is humanly possible, but why? Sitting in the corner makes you hard to see by motorists, and ultimately puts you more in danger because to them you'll be popping in and out unexpectedly from parked and idling vehicles on the side of the road. If your route is blocked, use the next lane to your left. If that's blocked, repeat. So long as you look before you switch lanes, make eye contact with the driver of that trailer truck behind you, and be predictable, you'll be perfectly fine. Weaving in and out of lanes to get from point A to point B faster than Superman himself is why you're biking about, right? Of course it is.

What's that about being predictable?

Simple: Smooth turns, smooth acceleration, smooth deceleration, making your intentions blindingly obvious. Even more obvious than cars, you are, because to unaccustomed motorists, you're nigh-on invisible. Luckily, that's less of a problem, considering the location, except when it comes to those rotten bastards in Chevy Suburbans and Hummer2s with New Jersey license plates.

Of course, this isn't to say that you shouldn't be assertive. Of course you're going to cross two lanes right through the red light, cut across a stream of pedestrians who think that just because it says "walk" they get to walk, and fly down a one-way street the wrong way. You're just going to make sure everybody else knows you're going to, too.

Navigating Pedestrian Traffic

Now, if there's anybody more arrogant than motorists and bikers, it's pedestrians. See, motorists like to think they own the road. Pedestrians know it for a fact. New York law is such that, no matter the circumstances of an accident that involves a pedestrian - jaywalking drunk during the night, playing chicken with passing cars - it's the motorist's fault. This means that jaywalking is par for the course, more a showdown of will and sheer chutzpah than anything else.

But practically, it means that you'll have pedestrians who jaywalk whenever and where-ever they want to, who walk in jerky, unpredictable patterns, and look everywhere but where they're supposed to. And there's nothing you can do about it. Give them wide, wide berth, no matter how satisfying it is to terrify one who didn't expect you to be coming in from that angle, which is any angle, including directly in front. Seriously, don't hit them. They hit back. And then sue you for the privilege.

So whad'm I going to run into?