Originally, I was planning on mothballing this blog the day I broke even on my Citi Bike annual membership cost. After all, I know my posts started sounding redundant. One needs to wait for a bike in the morning at Penn, but rebalancers are pretty good so you generally don’t have to wait more than 5 minutes. One cannot get out of work after 5:30 in Midtown and expect to find a bike anywhere. Bike docks suck. The City’s attempt at creating bike lanes in midtown is a joke. And so on, and so forth.

So I’m shifting the emphasis of this blog to finding THE perfect bike route to commute to work (I’ll work on finding the best route to work and then once I find that I’ll turn my attention to the best route going back to Penn). I’ll try a different route each time and let you know which one I like the best.

Today’s Route: Up Eighth Avenue, East on 38th, up on Sixth, East on 40th, up on Madison, East on 50th, Up on Lexington, East on 50th
Best Thing About It: Perfect 66 degree weather in September. Pretty sweet ride up Eighth (on the bike path) and Madison (no bike path, but well-behaved traffic)
Worst Thing About It: No bike lane on 38th means weaving and tight squeezes. Bike markings on 40th is largely a joke with all the construction.
Route Rating: 5 of 10

I had tickets to the men’s finals of the US Open, so I left work a little early again at 3. Lots of bikes avaialble, ride to Penn was sweet down Ninth, and then the LIRR to Mets Willets Point was easy, almost as easy as Cilic’s defeat of Nishikori.

Cost per ride: $95/42=$2.26 per ride
Stress: 8 of 10
Aggravation: 3 of 10