Taking Your Bike Out of Town

Posted on August 9, 2017 by BikEWomeNRulE

By Maria Boustead

Are you itching to ride your bike in a place outside the city but not sure how to do it? See below for bicycle restrictions on a few of our railroad lines, as well as popular bike paths to try. Remember to bring a patch kit and lots of water with you on these longer rides. Looking for a companion? Post about your trip on the WE Bike NYC Forum on Facebook to find someone!

Metro-North Railroad (MNR)
You have to have a permit to bring your bike on a Metro-North train, unless you have a folding bicycle. Lifetime permits are available at staffed ticket counters for $5. Bicycles are allowed on trains except during rush hours (see restrictions), and there can be four bikes on each train on weekdays, and eight on weekends, as space allows. If you’re riding in a larger group, you can make arrangements with Metro-North beforehand.

A trip to try: Take MNR to Brewster and then ride the Old Putnam Trail south, where you can hop back on the train at White Plains to go home.

Long Island Railroad (LIRR)
You can use the same lifetime permit for LIRR as for Metro-North since they are both run by MTA. LIRR does not guarantee bicycle carriage if there is not space, and in general only allows 1 bike per car on the weekends, although in the summer they offer weekend bike trains that allow 2 bikes per car. See their website for more details.

A trip to try: Take LIRR to Massapequa station, where you can find the Massapequa Preserve Bike Path, which heads north through the Bethpage State Park.

NJ Transit Trains
You don’t need a permit to bring your bike on NJ Transit, and between 8 and 12 bikes are allowed per train depending on the day and the route. See full restrictions.

A trip to try: Take NJ Transit to Morristown, where you can bike to the Patriots’ Path, one of New Jersey’s longest rails-to-trails paths at 35 miles.

Amtrak
You can’t roll your bike onto any Amtrak trains in New York state, sadly. However, Amtrak does offer Trainside Bicycle Check-in service on a couple of lines that depart from Penn Station, including the Northeast Regional line. With an advanced reservation and a $20 fee, an Amtrak employee will meet you trainside and take your full-sized bicycle to the baggage car where passengers are not permitted, and will retrieve it for you when you reach your stop. Read more about this service here.

A trip to try: Take Amtrak to New Haven, CT, where you can hop on the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail north through Connecticut and then connect to another Amtrak station for your ride home.

DONOR THANK YOU: Trello

Posted on March 9, 2014 by Kristina Sepulveda

#WEBiketoDC has come and gone, but there is still more to come.

What started as a conversation, turned into a BIG PROJECT with a lot of moving parts, which all had to fit together just right for our trip to happen. How did WE do it?

Well, with a dedicated project manager corralling our efforts, plus all our donors, sponsors, and a super awesome Internet-based tool called Trello.

Trello is a collaborative project-management tool that WE Bike NYC has been using for the past year to help us stay organized. As we’ve grown, both in our reach and volunteer base, we found that email threads and facebook pings weren’t cutting it anymore. We needed something to help us keep track of what needed to get done, and that could scale from planning a simple social ride for ice cream, to working on bigger projects like our Annie Londonderry Ride, our annual WE Party fundraiser, and our biggest venture yet, #WEbiketodc.

Trello is intuitive and visual, and even though it’s pretty straightforward when getting started, its version for businesses and non-profits is also packed with awesome features that make it a very robust and rich tool. The support team is fantastic, and was happy to help us out in making our experience the best that it can be.

Thank you Trello! WE would have had a hard time doing it without you!

5 Things I Have Learned So Far

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Kristina Sepulveda

WE Bike NYC is organizing ten women from five organizations to ride 262 miles on bicycles from New York City to Washington, DC to represent their communities at the nation’s largest annual bicycle advocacy event, the National Bike Summit on March 3, 2014. WE are so pleased to be supported by WomanTours, Bicycle Times Magazine, Pearl Izumi, Velojoy, Bike New York, InTandem, and Transportation Alternatives. For more about the ride, check out our fundraising page HERE!

Kristina uses this post to bring us in on the some of the cerebral planning that she’s putting into this ride.

This trip to DC will be my first major bike tour, my largest athletic undertaking, and an overall BIG DEAL. You don’t go from biking 54 miles on a three speed cruiser to riding 260+ miles on a %#(@(*$ ^$*@($)@ road bike without learning a few things about yourself and the prep process.

1) Training is not just about building fitness – It’s also about trying out different clothing combinations to fight against the cold, what to not drink/eat the night before, and how to not lose your cool when your friend is flying up a hill in front of you. You don’t learn anything like that on a stationary bike. Spinning classes that say otherwise are a lie (and serve their own lovely purpose).

Climate control builds muscle but not necessarily character

2) Fit is important, but is not stagnant – When I bought my new bike, I had the seat dropped down as far as it could go. Because I have short legs and that’s what short legged people do. So when I developed this weird overuse pain on the top of my thigh, I took it back to the shop and we raised it substantially. The pain went away and everything felt great. Until mile 20 something, when I stopped being able to reach the ground with any kind of stability. So I will bring it back and we will try again until we get it right.

3) DRINK WATER! – I know I covered this one in my story of my botched century ride, but it begs repeating. That dead pain my legs after 90 minutes of riding on the equivalent of a moderately sized Big Gulp should not be a lesson I don’t need to keep re-learning.

4) Biking is my therapy, not a thing that should send me to therapy – I don’t think this one needs explaining nor am I able to without sounding like I am in need of actual mental health services. I tried this weekend and nothing came out of my mouth the way it was worded in my head. Granted, it was during my violation of Lesson #3 so I may not have made any sense. Once I left the friend I was riding with, I was starting to work through it and…

5) Falling is inevitable – On Sunday, I lost control of my bike coming up on a red light and connected with a cab barreling down the street. While the experience was terrifying, I managed to walk away banged but not broken. Walking home, sobbing heavily, I rehearsed my speech to my #webiketodc teammates, friends, and family to express my regrets about not being able to continue this project. A friend took me to the doctor and other than bruises speckled all over my body, I was OK. I laughed my way through the weird yoga positions they had to bend me into for the x-rays. I had a really nice “holy cow, I made it through that” dinner, talked it through with Liz, watched “Walking Dead”, and have now spent my sick day figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it. The speech is gone from my head. Let’s blame it on a combination of optimism and the light concussion.

I’ll forego this layer when it gets warm enough that I don’t need two pairs of pants.

DONOR THANK YOU: Swift Industries

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Kristina Sepulveda

Now that you have gotten to know who we are, learn more about us and our process. WE will be rolling out a series of guest posts from our riders and sponsors. Today, Katie shows us how Swift Industries answers the ever present “lugging” issue in long distance touring.

Swift Industries is a Seattle-based small business that makes customizable bicycle bags that are “fun, classic, and functional.” They are a woman-owned company and their bags come in a MILLION AWESOME COLORS. WE are incredibly grateful to have them as a sponsor for our ride!

Personally, I’ve always had trouble finding bike bags that I find both functional and fashionable. Both are important to me, and I have no interest in plopping down my hard-earned cash for a bag that doesn’t fully satisfy both of those requirements. When I asked the Women Bike PHL Facebook group for favorite pannier brands a few months ago, I distinctly remember Swift being among the strongest recommendations.

WE appreciate that Swift believes in our purposeful adventure.

Check out the Swift story below. My favorite quote? “They’re interested in people…not a thing. Their products are meant for empowering you to DO something.”

What’s New with WE Bike NYC!

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Kristina Sepulveda

The February newsletter is here! See what WE are up to this month!

El boletin mensual de febrero ya esta! Ven a ver lo que pasa con WE Bike NYC este mes!

English: http://eepurl.com/NVHOv

Espanol: http://eepurl.com/NVIGb“

5 Reasons to Winter Bike

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Kristina Sepulveda

WE Bike NYC is organizing ten women from five organizations to ride 262 miles on bicycles from New York City to Washington, DC to represent their communities at the nation’s largest annual bicycle advocacy event, the National Bike Summit on March 3, 2014. WE are so pleased to be supported by WomanTours, Bicycle Times Magazine, Pearl Izumi, Velojoy, and InTandem, and Transportation Alternatives. For more about the ride, check out our fundraising page HERE!

Now that you have gotten to know who we are, learn more about us and our process. WE will be rolling out a series of guest posts from our riders and sponsors.

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Transportation Alternatives

Posted on January 31, 2014 by BikEWomeNRulE

Transportation Alternatives has been advocating for safer New York streets since 1973. In the film by Luke Ohlsen, we learn why and how three brave New Yorkers tough it out and ride through the winter.

WE Bike NYC is organizing ten women from five organizations to ride 262 miles on bicycles from New York City to Washington, DC to represent their communities at the nation’s largest annual bicycle advocacy event, the National Bike Summit on March 3, 2014. WE are so pleased to be supported by WomanTours, Bicycle Times Magazine, Pearl Izumi, Velojoy, and InTandem, and Transportation Alternatives. For more about the ride, check out our fundraising page HERE!

Now that you have gotten to know who we are, learn more about us and our process. WE will be rolling out a series of guest posts from our riders and sponsors.

Transportation Alternatives has been supporting WE Bike NYC from the beginning. We are more than grateful that they are also sponsoring us as #WEBIKETODC.

The Wall

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Kristina Sepulveda

WE Bike NYC is organizing ten women from five organizations to ride 262 miles on bicycles from New York City to Washington, DC to represent their communities at the nation’s largest annual bicycle advocacy event, the National Bike Summit on March 3, 2014. WE are so pleased to be supported by WomanTours, Bicycle Times Magazine, Pearl Izumi, Velojoy, and InTandem, and Transportation Alternatives. For more about the ride, check out our fundraising page HERE!

Now that you have gotten to know who we are, learn more about us and our process. WE will be rolling out a series of guest posts from our riders and sponsors.

On this post, Casey shares a humorous tale of what happens when you combine the joys of adolescence and long distance bicycle touring…

The first time I ever rode my bike a really serious distance was when I went on my first tour at 14. As an awkward adolescent middle schooler, I went with a friend (Anna) and her family to Canada for a large supported tour. While I hadn’t done anything like it before, Anna’s family had taken bike trips as their vacations for as long as she could remember, so they were all old pros. But I was young and in pretty good shape from playing sports in school, so with little (no) training, off I went. The tour looped around the peninsula near Niagara Falls, averaging anywhere from 55-70 miles a day. We slept in tents in fields of local high schools, would break camp and stow our gear in a giant semi truck, and ride from early in the morning til mid-afternoon.

I managed to get through the first half of the tour with only minor incidents: one spill on the rail trail gave me some gnarly road rash that was remedied by sticking a maxi-pad to the inside of my shorts to cover the wound until it could be dressed properly. (There was pretty much nothing I could think of that would have been more embarrassing than that at the tender age of 14.) And, while messing around with friends trying to ride with no hands, I rode off the road, between a telephone pole and a tree, only to flop over into a bush full of burrs that I would be picking out of my hair for the rest of the tour.

Our rest day was in Niagara Falls, with wax museums, haunted houses, and tourist attractions galore, and with 3 days left in the tour to go, I was feeling pretty good about things. We awoke the next morning ready to ride, and were about 5 miles in when the weather started getting gross. What started as drizzling and breezy turned into downpour and a fierce headwind that lasted throughout the day. This is when I would hit the wall.

I have a distinct memory of climbing a hill, my shoes soaked, barely able to see from the rain blowing in my face, my muscles aching, and feeling like I was spinning and spinning the pedals and barely moving at all. I finally came to the crest of the hill and started down, which should have been pleasant but wasn’t, due to the headwind and the rain. I coasted into the last rest stop of the day at the bottom of the hill, found a patch of grass, dismounted, dropped the bike on the ground (Anna’s mom to this day says that I threw it, but that seems dramatic), and said I was done.

Where was the SAG wagon? I was ready to get to the next place we were sleeping, have a hot shower, and curl up in my nice dry tent. I did not want to ride the bike any more. I did not want any water. I did not want a snack. I was over it. I was DONE.

To their credit, Anna’s parents handled it really well. They reassured me that I had been doing a good job, even though I was kind of being a baby at that moment. They said that it was totally up to me if I wanted to take the SAG wagon the rest of the way, and that no one would think I was lame if I did that. And they told me how much farther it was, and how long they thought it would take to get there if we rode. They got me to eat a snack and have some water. And by the time they were ready to go the last leg, I was too.

Everyone hits walls. And sometimes, it does mean that you take the SAG wagon the rest of the way, which is ok. But sometimes, you need a pep talk, a snack, and some water to get you going again.

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: WomanTours

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Kristina Sepulveda

WE Bike NYC is organizing ten women from five organizations to ride 262 miles on bicycles from New York City to Washington, DC to represent their communities at the nation’s largest annual bicycle advocacy event, the National Bike Summit on March 3, 2014. WE are so pleased to be supported by WomanTours, Bicycle Times Magazine, Pearl Izumi, Velojoy, and InTandem, and Transportation Alternatives. For more about the ride, check out our fundraising page HERE!

Now that you have gotten to know who we are, learn more about us and our process. WE will be rolling out a series of guest posts from our riders and sponsors.

WE Bike NYC founder, Liz Jose, tells us about her relationship with one of our sponsors, WomanTours, and how they came to be such a vital part of the #webiketodc team.

WomanTours had us at “first all women bike tour company in America.” When Laura met Jackie at the Philly Bike Expo, WE knew this was going to be a great partnership, but WE weren’t quite sure in what capacity. Less than two weeks later, WE were calling them up to ask if they wanted to support a completely ridiculous, mid-winter ride from New York City to Washington, DC. While the weather might be a bit of a challenge, WomanTours was on board as soon as WE told them about our mission to get more women involved in the national transportation conversation. Their expertise in route planning, packing and their donation of a 14 passenger van with 14 bike racks and two amazing drivers made this trip go from a “what if” to a “why not!”

Thank you WomanTours! WE can’t wait to spend 4 days with you!

Click HERE for a great video about their tours. I chose this one in Moab because this is one of my all time favorite places to be in all the world, ever. Next year #WEBikeMoab?

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Velojoy

Posted on January 25, 2014 by Kristina Sepulveda

WE Bike NYC is organizing ten women from five organizations to ride 262 miles on bicycles from New York City to Washington, DC to represent their communities at the nation’s largest annual bicycle advocacy event, the National Bike Summit on March 3, 2014. WE are so pleased to be supported by WomanTours, Bicycle Times Magazine, Pearl Izumi, Velojoy, and InTandem, and Transportation Alternatives. For more about the ride, check out our fundraising page HERE!

Now that you have gotten to know who we are, learn more about us and our process. WE will be rolling out a series of guest posts from our riders and sponsors.

WE Bike NYC founder, Liz Jose, tells us about her relationship with one of our sponsors, Velojoy, and their impact on the female cycling community.

Talking with Susi Wunsch, the creator of Velojoy (http://velojoy.com/) always leaves me in a state of action!

I met Susi a few weeks ago to talk about our plans for 2014, as well as pitch our ride to DC and see if Velojoy was interested in being a sponsor. The conversation went everywhere from the best winter layers to the benefits of Citibike to the pros and cons of disk brakes to if gluten free cookies still count as training food.

Velojoy is a wonderful website because it combines hard core cycling knowledge about nutrition and technique with a style and grace that can only be called feminine in the best possible way. In a world where women’s cycling is constantly pigeon holed into “cutesy” or “butch, “ Velojoy provides another option. All you have to be on a bike is YOU!

And in case you aren’t quite sure about how to do that, Velojoy is there to help you do it.

Which commuter jeans are worth the money?

How do I stay warm on my winter commute?

Should I try cyclocross?

Where are my ladies at?

Thanks Velojoy for putting out great content, and thanks for being a sponsor of WE Bike NYC and #webiketodc!

WE Bike NYC

Women's Empowerment Through Bicycles

Tag Archives: webikenyc

Taking Your Bike Out of Town

DONOR THANK YOU: Trello

5 Things I Have Learned So Far

DONOR THANK YOU: Swift Industries

What’s New with WE Bike NYC!

5 Reasons to Winter Bike

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Transportation Alternatives

The Wall

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: WomanTours

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Velojoy