Thursday, April 28, 2011

Craigslist and the 5 boro bike tour

The tulips are out which means biking season has started again. I sadly missed the sign up for my usual first ride, the 5 boro Bike tour. This ride is 42 miles on car free roads in the 5 Boroughs of NYC. I realized that the ride is the Sunday and I had no plans so I went to craigslist to assess the selling of the bibs situation.

Since the ride is 32,000 people, there are tons of people who can’t make it last minute and want to sell their bibs to get back the cost of the ride. Some people suck and were selling their ride packets for well over the $80 it originally cost. I emailed a few of the more reasonably priced offers. I noticed there was one by where I live and he was selling it for $65!

I emailed back and forth with the guy and told him I would meet him at 7:30 on a street corner. Of course President Obama decided that he would like to visit NYC at that exact hour so I had a bit of a difficult trip driving home. I parked the car and decided that the subway would be a fast way of getting to the meeting spot. I was right but as soon as I got out of the subway I realized that the street he had picked was the street Obama’s motorcade was driving down. There were barriers up on both sides of the road and tons and tons of cops milling about. Then about 7 cops cars, sirens blasting, screamed down the street. Pretty intense.

I texted the guy and we met on the corner and did the exchange in front of a group of about 20 cops. That was the safest craigslist exchange ever!

Wish me luck on my ride on Sunday!