Originally Posted by noisebeam
jnbacon,
Have your cycled in both manhattan and phoenix? If so just curious how you compare the two. My guess is that one must dymanically deal with far more moving and stationary obsticals in M, but can better work with traffic flow and ride like a vehicle vs. dealing with high speed cars in P where it is harder to ride and get treated like a vehicle. A different kind of mindset, but likely more relaxing in P
Al
The only biking I did in NY was as a teen, mostly to the park or friends' apartments on my ten speed. My five-foot-nothing sister was a bike messenger for awhile, though, and by all reports, was pretty aggressive. That's my memory of it, staying with cars and the flow, being aggressive if you had to be. But I stayed out of super-heavy traffic, like on the West Side, and even <gasp!> used the sidewalks a lot. Like I said, I was teen on a ten-speed, and not particularly adventurous.
I'd say the main difference is that traffic in NY always seemed so interactive: a look, an engine rev, a lurch in a direction, tons of subtle and not so subtle cues that you need to read and give in order to successfully navigate the cars. In Phx, people seem to be either polite to the point of being scared, or just completely amoral/willfully unaware and lacking any regard for how bicycles fit into the traffic scheme. Those are exagerrated descriptions, but they fit pretty well with my experience.