There is a gym at work with showers, but unfortunately, it is only open in the evenings. I think this will be changing soon, providing an obvious solution. But what can others do?

On the bright side- Harlem and Sunnyside are each 5 miles from Midtown while Sunset Park and Bushwick are 5 miles from Lower Manhattan. There's no question there is growth potential for bicycle commuting. This doesn't even consider the non-Manhattan employment centers.

But as a longtime bike commuter, I like having the choice between the train and the bike. Some days, I don't want to ride. I have a lot to carry, it's snowing, my legs are tired, I'm sick, whatever. But, over the years, I'm always much more satisfied riding than taking the train. And that's having been caught in snowstorms and thunderstorms, slipping on slabs of ice, getting knocked down by another cyclist, you name it.

Pedestrians walking 10 abreast, flailing their arms about, screaming and swatting their purses at cyclists. It was an annoyance to say the least.

I ride into work everyday and with a 10 commute from Greenpoint to Nolita, I can't complain. It takes 45 minutes by train to get from door to door.

I still don't understand why MORE people don't just ride their bike everyday to work. At most, the average person's commute can't be more than 15 miles round trip.

Several posts mentioned this as another symptom of poor infrastructure maintenance, but I don't really think that is the case (the MTA already pumps millions of gallons of ground water out on dry days). Pumps and sewers are designed to accept certain volumes, and those are usually arrived at from design codes. Freak storms are just that, freak. Designing for this type of event would add hundreds of millions of dollars in cost to the system. I think in events like this we all need to freak out a little less, chill at home for a couple of hours while they pump the system out and then go to work. It's one day out of how many years of your life?

Drivers were crazed. Riders were crazed. I was crazed,
riding sidewalks (albeit at walking speed) between Canal
Street and Battery Park City (past cops on foot who
sensibly ignored me) when not riding the wrong way on
streets I ride other days, 'most every day, pretty much
obeying traffic laws. At Varick and Franklin I managed
not to get my legs severed above the knee only thanks
to the kindness of crazed drivers. This was not a proud
day for me or for NYC.

South Cove wasn't even where I'd had in mind to go but, after
stopping for a while to watch the folks who were getting
ready to load the Moondance Diner on a flatbed, reportedly
headed for Wyoming, scratch their heads, going the opposite
direction from where I'd intended suited the day's dynamic.

One more lower Manhattan low-rise block about to claw the
clouds. Marvelous big old ailanthus in the middle of that
block. Trinity Real Estate's remorseless frenzy to rid
downtown of every last vestige of funky charm differs from
Trump's impulses only in the fig leaf of charity Trinity
applies to its gentrification. The block where Trump's first
downtown monstrosity is rising also used to have a great
tree, but someone else murdered it before he got the chance.

Somehow, the weirdest part of the day was having missed the
cloudburst that brought down the subways. I went to bed on
any old hot summer night and slept through a meteorological
event whose nasty effects I easily might not even have noticed.

We need an effective traffic management plan in this city, and a coordinated plan for transit emergencies such as today's. Being on a packed full bus that had to yield to merging single occupant vehicles, and seeing masses of people turned away from bus entry was pretty frustrating.

If the subway fails, implementation and enforcement of bus priority on all major NYC avenues should be of primary importance.

I don't think it's necessary to get off your bike- but don't scream at the pedestrians. And accept that they are going to probably spill over into the bike lane. A gentle reminder works.

Don't hold your breath for the city or MTA to formulate an emergency plan.

Lee Sander and co. didn't create the city's drainage problem and 1900-era infrastructure that still characterizes most of the subway system, but they did inherit the moribund and brain-dead MTA customer service apparatus and have done nothing with it in 8 months on the job. It really wouldn't be that hard to create a low-tech apparatus to get information around to every subway station in the system and train station staff to keep straphangers from paying fares for trains that aren't going to come. Now we have mutes sitting there with a little scrawl on the white-board at best. There is a phone in every booth. Use it. Better still, give them a fax machine and send them comprehensive service announcements they can post on the booth glass, even if they refuse to leave it. The press wants to talk about the MTA's web site but it's the MTA personnel network that has no function, no one in charge, no urgency about telling us anything. Some committee of horrible bureaucrats is probably working on a fix for this system that is designed to be implemented in 27 years. Have any of the MTA lifers that let it get this bad been fired, demoted, put on car-cleaning crews? Has Sander moved the culture there one millimeter?

* * * *

Left at 6:45 for an early meeting. Still raining + business clothes = no bike commute. Disgusted looking people are already leaving the crowded G platform as I arrive - never a good sign. Station agent doing and saying nothing. Figure the departing riders are right and start walking down the bus route toward W'burg. One bus passes me 20 mins later as I'm getting to the Bedford L stop.

I was at this intersection during 9-11 trying to get into work and the scene is reminiscent -everyone's standing around the subway entrances talking on phones.

Now I know it's not a normal day and look for a car service. They're tapped out but finally a B61 comes along that has a square inch in it. A lot of people get out under the W'burg Bridge to try the J-Z but I figure the odds are better in downtown Bklyn and stay on. After some traffic congestion along the BQE service road we get to Jay Street station and it's open. A-C is toast but the F is running. I get across the river and debark at E. Broadway, then walk across downtown to the W. Side. Meeting has been canceled but I get to office by 8:40. Sounds a lot better than most but included long bus ride and about 40 mins of walking in two segments.