https://tourdequeens.org/about_the_ride

About the Ride

Sunday 10 July 2011

The Tour de Queens starts in Flushing Meadows Park by the Queens Museum of Art. Check-in begins at 8 am. The ride begins at 9:00 am.

The Tour de Queens is a leisurely paced, 20-mile ride open to cyclists of all ages and skill levels.
The course is mostly flat and will go through the parks and neighborhoods of eastern and northern Queens.
We will visit the neighborhoods of Corona, Forest Hills, Glendale, Ridgewood, Maspeth, Sunnyside, Woodside, Jackson Heights. There will be a rest stop in Forest Park.
Registration is required; limited day of registration will be available at the Start on a first come, first serve basis, beginning at 8am.
Helmets are required for riders under 14 years of age.

Getting there: The Tour de Queens starts in Flushing Meadow Corona Park between the Queens Museum of Art and the Unisphere.

How the Tour Works
We ride rain or shine.
The tour is 20 miles of Queens's finest biking.
This year's tour features a ride around eastern and northern Queens.
You'll have a police escort and safety marshals riding with you.
The ride will have a family-friendly pace ride (in other words, slow). This is not a race.
The ride is a rolling parade and there will be occasional stops while the police and marshals secure intersections and gather the mass of riders at crucial intersections.
You'll enjoy light snacks and water at one rest stop approximately half-way through the tour.
There is no SAG vehicle for the tour. If you have serious mechanical troubles or become exhausted on the tour, marshals will help you reach the nearest subway or direct you to a bike shop.
We will be riding down two way streets. Please stay on your side of the road while riding in the tour.

Yes, signed up and ready to roll! Should be an easy tour.

I would, but it's my wife's BD weekend so we'll be doing other stuff. And I used to ride through a lot of these areas regularly.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here & say that there's no way the Forest Park rest stop is "approximately halfway" as they suggest. It's less than 5 miles away from the start point on a 20mi ride. I'd bring extra water bottles, or cash for one of the many street vendors in Woodside / Jackson Heights.

On the plus side, if you get hungry at any point during the ride you can get some really interesting food from a few different cultures if you walk up to the curbside window. In Jackson Heights there's Taquiera Coatzingo (most amazing beef sandwich I ever had in my life, the Milanesa del Res) plus a few Indian / Pakistani bakeries for your honeyed doughball fix (gulab jamun). Further along, in Ridgewood, there's a Bosnian cheeseburger (a little underwhelming, but definitely different) @ Bosna Express on Fairview near Forest Ave. In Forest Hills, Eddie's Ice Cream (homemade) is on Metropolitan Ave, close to Forest Park. You walk in there & it's like stepping back into the 1920s. Surreal.

Okay, I'll stop... But yeah, it should be pretty flat except for Forest Park, that has one or two little rolling hills.

If anybody maps out the route you guys end up taking, please share it! This would be a fantastic food tour by bike...

Should be fun! Doing it with my gf and a few beginner friends on MTN bikes. (Hopefully they'll like road riding).

Should be fun with a beer stop thrown in there in the middle.

I plan on participating. It was a lot of fun last year.

Got back from it today. I'm normally not against slow moving rides since that's what these family rides are for, but this ride was frustrating. Numerous sudden stops everywhere during the 1st half of the ride (up until forest park) and the extremely slow congested bike path surely tested your cycling ability (cycling really slow is actually much much much harder than cycling fast).

The Marshalls were excellent and very helpful as well as encouraging the riders to keep going.

Based on today's experience, I don't think I will be repeating Tour de Queens next year. However I still look forward to Tour de Brooklyn. And is it just me or did a lot of people drop out of the ride midway?

Highlight of the Tour: Riding inside Forest Park, a beautiful "Central Park" of Queens, and participating in 2 "waves" during 2 long waiting stops. And getting rewarded with beautiful sprinklers under the unisphere after the tour.

Disaster of the Tour: the many stops and slow moving pace

Even though this is only my 3rd NYC tour, from reading other
folks experiences with these kind of events; I already had an
idea of what will take place. So I didn't expect things to run
smoothly; long bathroom lines, late starting time, etc. But
then again most of the time I volunteer as a marshal for these
tours, my main objective is to help other riders. So I have
different expectations than say a couple with children. In any
case I always have fun and will continue to volunteer as a marshal
for TA's tours, even though things don't turn out perfect most of
the time


unisphere by 1nterceptor, on Flickr


2011 Tour de Queens by 1nterceptor, on Flickr

I abandoned about an hour in after we'd only gone 5 miles and went back to Flushing Mall for lunch. Beautiful day for a ride, but not this ride.

That already happened - there's the Tour de Bronx still coming up, though.

I found a route here if I ever wanted to do the TdQ: https://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/40895994, too bad about all the stoppages. Probably better to do this on your own, or w/a small group & take nearby residential streets.