This past weekend I had the opportunity to ride in the 2012 Five Borough Bike Tour. Held annually in May, the TD Five Boro Bike Tour is America’s largest cycling event, with over 32,000 riders cycling 42 miles though a very rare traffic free New York.

While I’ve considered myself a recreational mountain biker for years I’ve never really done any road biking. With the arrival of my son Alex and dreams of our new family riding the carriage roads in Acadia National Park the next few years I figured I should give it a try. Since EMS is a presenting sponsor I was lucky enough to get a ticket to this lottery style event.

But first I needed a bike. A few weeks ago Michelle and I headed down to EMS Portsmouth to shop for some Hybrids. I wasn’t quite ready to get all lycra’d up on a high performance road bike so the resident well known Bike Tech, Rog, suggested the MARIN Seadrift Hybrid Bike, and we were sold.

All techno jagin aside, this bike is just comfortable to ride. With only a short 6 mile warm up ride around my neighborhood I left for NYC and road it 47 miles in 5 hours. Not bad for a first real road ride!

Hard to say what the coolest part of this experience was. The empty (of cars) NYC streets? Riding through dozens of red lights? The camaraderie of fellow riders and the company of the co-workers I shared many of the miles with? The gospel bands cheering us on while we went through the Bronx? The views… the list goes on. I’ve got to say it’s definitely one of the coolest things I’ve done lately and I think I’ve been bitten by the bike bug. A Facebook friend has already mentioned I should join his crew on a similar tour in Montreal in June… hmm… that sounds interesting!

Since my helmet cam saw no action please check out the official video: