I Love Riding in the City
NAME: Zachary (left) Nicholas (right) and Keith Snyder
LOCATION: Northern Manhattan, NYC
OCCUPATION: Kindergartener, kindergartener &
novelist/filmmaker
Where do you live and what’s it like riding in your city?
Nicky: We were riding our bikes to P.S. 178. I live in 6F.
Zacky: In 6F! In New York! It’s fun! And I like to ride bikes in the sun and the rain!
Keith: I got doored on Queens Boulevard when the boys were two (they’re twins—obviously not identical), so we moved to Washington Heights/Inwood to have work, preschool, and home all accessible by the Hudson River Greenway. Now I tow the boys to kindergarten every morning in a Burley trailer, and we spend Saturdays riding around, usually with a trip to Dyckman Fields, which has a lot of flat paths along the river. There’s also a nice hill for little ones to learn climbing and descending, and the place is deserted in cooler weather—which is when we like it best.
What was your favorite city to ride in, and why?
Nicky: I like taking pictures!
Zacky: New York! Because I like to! Because it’s very pretty and I love to see the leaves shining up in the sun!
Keith: I do love riding in New York City, though sometimes that’s because it lets me feel all macho about tangling with the cabbies on 2nd Ave or the psychotic livery cab drivers in the Heights. I also love having the greenway at my doorstep and 9W to Nyack or Bear Mountain is just over the bridge—and it’s not too far to where the NJ Randonneurs start their brevets. NYC cycling figures prominently in my next novel.
But I also have to admit a soft spot for Montreal. I occasionally take the train up there for inexpensive writing retreats. Amtrak won’t allow my road bike aboard, but they let me put my Xootr Swift (folding bike) in the luggage area. Looking down at the fog on the St. Lawrence river, riding past the Biosphere in a dedicated bike lane, spending no money to get from the Gare Centrale in Montréal to the cheap hotel in Brossard—those are nice things.
