How COVID-19 Made Me An Urban Cyclist
Pushed onto a bike by the pandemic, I discovered it makes navigating NYC a joy
Imoved to New York 23 years ago, and quickly discovered that one of the best parts of living there was riding the subway. It’s a gorgeous riot of life — one of the best people-watching venues on the planet. As a tech nerd, I also loved the subway’s steampunk engineering, a turducken mix of modern flat-panel displays and Victoria-era relay switches. Even though I worked from home and didn’t need to commute, I still rode public transit several times a week while meeting friends for drinks, running errands, or doing interviews in my job as a journalist.
I owned a bicycle, but I rarely used it. I was a lifelong cyclist, having grown up in Toronto, a pretty bike-friendly place. But when I moved to Brooklyn, I mostly used my bike just for occasional recreational jaunts with my family. It wasn’t a main mode of transportation. For getting from point A to point B, I rode the subway or took cabs and Ubers.
Until last year, when COVID-19 arrived.
When the pandemic first began in 2020, the coronavirus raged in New York City. The death toll rose every day; it was terrifying. So I stopped taking the subway entirely — being fortunate enough to work from home, I figured why risk things? The…
