Atlantic City Ride

Down the shore for the holiday weekend. I woke up early Saturday morning intending to ride to the end of the island and back along the boardwalk before the crowds appeared. Riding parallel to the ocean appealed to me. The early start I intended became pushed back an hour and a half. As I was ready too leave the house, my cell phone rang. WTF? I thought. But it was Jackie calling from the bedroom upstairs. She was feeding Ben and Sam was in his room crying for someone to take the gate off. I retrieved the crying two-year old, brought him down stairs, made him a bagel and we watched a few episode of Thomas The Tank Engine together until the rest of the house came down to start their day.
On another old bike, Jackie’s 1960 woman’s three speed beach bike, I departed from mid-Margate, rode north on Atlantic Ave until I hit the ramp to start the boardwalk. I glided onto the boardwalk around 9, an hour before the ban on bikes begins. The first few blocks I encountered moderate pedestrian and bike traffic, but as I rode farther north through Ventnor it became downright dangerous to even steal a glance at the ocean. The boardwalk was packed, but I decided that rather than leave the boardwalk in favor of a faster ride, I’d take my time, slow down and enjoy just being here on a beautiful morning. Also, I was on an old woman’s three speed far too small for my body so I couldn’t really get a fast ride in even if I took to the streets. But, other bikers were not content to slow down. The Margate, Ventnor crowd, AKA the “Mainline by the Sea” take themselves pretty seriously. I don’t know why people in their mid 50’s believe it appropriate to don their spandex riding gear and go 100% on the Atlantic City boardwalk the middle of a holiday weekend, but there are many who do. It must be unbearable to work in an office with these people back in the real world. My throat starts to constrict just thinking about such a life. I witnessed three crashes, none of them serious, all of them happening when one maniac was passing a slower, older, female biker. I made it to the Absecon inlet in under 30 minutes and stopped only long enough to observe the slack tide and think back to my last visit to inlet. That was in early December. I was on a small fishing boat with a dozen old friends and we were fighting a flood tide, crashing through four foot seas into a rising sun. But now it’s still summer. The end of summer, but still summer. I turned around and rode a few blocks back through AC on the boardwalk, and then once at the south end of AC I left the dangerous boardwalk and rode the street back home. I googled the ride and it turned out to be a 12.2 mile trip. Not bad for a holiday weekend on a girls bike. What’s bad is that I haven’t been on a bike since.