There are 3 or 4 posts in the drafting box, but I wanted to share my first day of spring!

It’s been a rough winter, but it ended decisively today, with temperatures rising into the 50s. The warming trend the past several days allowed much of the remaining snow and ice on the approaches to the bridge to slink off into the ground, and daylight savings finally allowed me to use the span for the return trip from work, as the bike-pedestrian portion had been closing at dusk.

After a couple months of hitching rides and borrowing cars, I thought it might take time to get back in the bicycling groove. It can make you mentally and physically lazy, getting behind the wheel and enclosing yourself in several thousand pounds of steel. Turn up the heat and the radio, turn the key, put it in gear and flex your ankle slightly and away you go! It’s so easy! We humans like easy, don’t we?

But riding a bike is so easy, too! And so much more fun! After the first breath of early March morning air I was over any mental resistance, and was enjoying the feel of the bicycle running over the pavement. Pedaling up an incline by extending my leg muscles and filling my lungs makes me feel so much more alive than slightly increasing the pressure of my foot on the gas pedal while breathing air warmed by a combustion engine. Even the newly minted potholes on the Newburgh side weren’t as numerous as I had imagined they might be, though the ones I did come across were impressive in both breadth and depth.

The Bridge Authority may have decided to keep the pedestrian-bikeway open until 9p.m. for a trial period

As loyal readers know, I’ve been on a quest to get the bridge to stay open later year-round, as closing it at dusk makes it a recreational path, but not a useful part of a transportation network, especially during the short days of winter. Now it appears the Bridge Authority may have decided to keep the pedestrian-bikeway open until 9p.m. for a trial period. I will investigate and get an update in the next few days. (I wish they instituted this in the fall, but better late than never.)

I snapped a few pictures both coming and going and assembled a slide show of my first full day back in the saddle in quite a few weeks. In the captions (a little hard to see, but they are in the traditional place, under the photos)  you’ll find snippets of history as well as apparent proof of a theory of mine. But mostly it’s photos—some that show amazing river melt in just eight hours. Enjoy.

More on Wigwam: Why Bicycling in Winter Sucks

Today’s cycling tip: Fenders are a necessity for an every day transportation bike, particularly in the spring, when they protect both the drive train and your clothing from puddles, snow melt, runoff, and general road schmutz kicked up by your vehicle’s tires. Get some. The ones on this bicycle are SKS chromoplastic, somewhere around $40-50 is a fair price. Peoples Bicycle can probably hook you up.

Bonus tip: Watch out for sand in corners, and don’t ride through puddles if you can avoid it— a potential hiding spot for lurking potholes!

Click on an image to enter the slideshow. Use the arrows or click a photo once you’re in to move to another photo. To exit back to the blog, click the x in the upper left corner.