Reflections on Technology and Society

The Five Borough Bike Tour is an annual event in which tens of thousands of New Yorkers ride 40 or 50 miles from lower Manhattan up through the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Staten Island.  For the last three years I've supported a wonderful organization called Bronxworks ( http://bronxworks.org/ ) that helps families in need in The Bronx.  I ride with a number of friends, some of whom live in the Bronx, and all of whom have adopted this wonderful group. I rode with the Bronxworks team in 2011 and 2012 but a conflict prevented me from riding in 2013, though I donated to support the rest of the team.  Fortunately for me I will be riding again this year.  If you want to contribute to Bronxworks in support of my ride you may visit my fundraising page  http://www.crowdrise.com/BronxWorks2014BikeTour/fundraiser/marcdonner .  If you do so, I will be eternally grateful!  

Last year I rode in the 2011 Five Borough Bike Tour and blogged about it.  The photo service that took pictures of riders got three very good pictures of me, which I purchased and published on my Picasa page , suitable for blackmailing me in the future :-). I rode again in 2012 with the BronxWorks team (Tamara [unofficial captain], Jane, Declan, Julio, Josh, Cristina, and me).  We raised money for BronxWorks, a wonderful settlement house in the Bronx that runs programs to support homeless families with children.  Several of the riders on the BronxWorks team  volunteer in programs at the organization's facilities in the Bronx.  All of the riders raised money to support the organization's activities, including me . This year's ride was on Sunday 6 May 2012.  The weather was cool and overcast in the morning, clearing and warming by mid-afternoon when I got home.  Conditions were perfect for the ride.  Cool enough to help riders dissipate the heat o...

The day was perfect for riding. Not too hot, not too cold. Not too humid. I rendezvoused with my teammates Jane and Tamara at the corner of 70th Street and Columbus Avenue at 6:20 AM. After pumping up our tires and adjusting our bicycles, we headed downtown five miles to the starting line. Because we were riding for them, Noelle Ito of BronxWorks arranged for us to start near the head of the pack, enabling us to get moving soon after the starting gun (it wasn't really a gun, but rather big jets of flame emitted from the starting gate). The first few miles, north on Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas, for tourists) were slow, but we began to move more smoothly once we entered Central Park. We rode north along the eastern side of the Park Drive, exiting at 110th street and continuing north through Harlem to 138th Street, where we cut over to the Madison Avenue bridge and the Bronx. We didn't spend long in the Bronx, returning to Manhattan by the Third Avenue Bridge ...