Glad to see you joined, Richard! Rich and I rode for an hour in prospect park when it was about 35 f and absolutely pouring rain. Hopefully our next ride wont be as hypothermic! 

RobertMullen said:

Glad to see you joined, Richard! Rich and I rode for an hour in prospect park when it was about 35 f and absolutely pouring rain. Hopefully our next ride wont be as hypothermic! 

Hopefully! Pretty sure there's still street sludge hidden somewhere on my frame .

@RichardKaufmann

The higher the misery index, the more memorable the ride. (and the better cyclist you become.  ?)

mugwump said:

@RichardKaufmann

The higher the misery index, the more memorable the ride. (and the better cyclist you become.  ?)

Type 2 fun is the best fun

Welcome, Matt!

Welcome to the club Matt.

Hello! Jeremy here. Stoked to join the club after five years of riding solo in the city (and thank you Michael for a welcoming and friendly intro ride).

I started my cycling career in the Bay Area, riding down to work (best commute of my life). Though I've since traded that for a subway ride/working from home, I can see that NYC has an incredibly strong, broad cycling community, and I'm excited to be more of a part of it.

As Covid begins to recede I hope to start racing. Growing up I swam (club/high school and a little in college) and very much miss the competition. In the meantime, I'm always up for some Prospect Park laps or a little friendly Zwift racing.

Looking forward to meeting the fine folks of KCC and to some memorable rides together!

Welcome Matt and Jeremy! Stoked to have ya'll on board

Also! I would love to post some bios of our fantastic new members. If you're interested in sharing some info about yourself and are a new member, check out this form below! 

https://forms.gle/ZNXUt9Tm7QaJmikp6 

I'd recommend using your phone if that is where you store your photos of yourself doing sweet skids and wheelies. 

Welcome guys!!

Welcome Jeremy!!

Greta to see you on board Jeremy! 

Hey everyone, name is Tom Wasko. I just joined the club after riding solo around Prospect Park for the past year and seeing many Kissena group rides go on, figured I should join in on the fun.

I was born in NYC and lived in Brooklyn as a small kid, but moved and grew up in Buffalo, NY. I played ice hockey for the past 20 years and would play Saturday mornings at Lefrak ice rink before COVID, running and cycling have helped me stay active over the past year with hockey cancelled.

Currently live in Park Slope so do most of my riding around there, look forward to seeing many of you. I ride a blue LeMond with Campy wheels which hopefully will be upgraded with a Shimano 105 r7000 groupset. I had parts ordered in 2020 but supply chain issues with COVID caused my parts order to be canceled.

Welcome to Kissena Tom!!

Woah, lots of new members. Welcome all!

Hello everyone,

My name is Lennox. People call me Oxx for short. I am a newbie cyclist. Here to meet new people and become a better cyclist. I'm also interested in racing but i am very nervous about that. So, I shall see how this goes.

Stay safe.  

What's up Oxx, glad to have you here!

Welcome Oxx!

Happy to have ya on board! 

Whoa, I'm having trouble keeping up with this thread.

Welcome new members John, Richard, Matt, Tom, Jeremy and Oxx! I also know there are a few other new members who haven't introduced themselves yet.

Great to see new members excited about riding and/or racing. Looking forward to riding with you all as the group rides become safer. In the meantime the board has plans for some virtual events to bring members together. 

Also, don't be shy! There is lots of accumulated knowledge about all aspects of things to do with bikes in the club and the forum is a great place to ask questions and have discussions about interests (especially since we aren't doing it on group rides at the moment). Don't be intimidated

RobertMullen said:

Also! I would love to post some bios of our fantastic new members. If you're interested in sharing some info about yourself and are a new member, check out this form below! 

https://forms.gle/ZNXUt9Tm7QaJmikp6 

I'd recommend using your phone if that is where you store your photos of yourself doing sweet skids and wheelies. 

and if you're a new member this year interested in sharing a bit about yourself to be posted on our social medias, fill out this form! 

Holy New Members Batman!
Welcome all! You've joined a one-of-a-kind club. Take advantage of this forum and the mentors you find here; there is a wealth of experience and bonhomie for you all here.

Also, we have gifs

Good morning everybody!

First I apologize about my late introduction. I was busy with the COVID pandemic (I live in France).
I am a new member from late january 2021.
I am 43 years old and live in France where I work as a doctor.
I am a proud and happy husband/father of 3 children aged 9, 6 and 2.5.
Passionate of endurance sports, I've begun running at 14 yo (after playing soccer).
I came to cycling quite late in 2016 preparing Boston marathon 2017 (3h12mln) and following an injury.
I mostly ride intensive training, and when I can , in mountains.
I hope to ride with the group soon.
My passions: architecture, engineering, science and new tech,reading, USA.
A film: Lawrence of Arabia/ The wire
A book: back to Matterhorn

Cheers everybody!
Best and take care.

Pierre

Bienvenue Pierre!!!

Hi All,

New member, old man (aka a Master). Inspired by a dear friend here, Monsieur Bonnaire, I've worked my butt off riding every which way for the past year and half, inching closer to my long held dream of racing. So, very excited to join the Kissena family. 

Being a Master, I have a long biking history which goes as follows:

Here is me with my first bike pushing hard in Zone 1. I always say, 4 wheels are better than 2!



At age 11, I lucked into a bike like this and rode it on dirt backroads in rural New Jersey. I distinctly remember riding it several miles through 2 feet of water during a flood once. It had drum brakes, which seemed very futuristic at the time. Mine was not so pristine, but you get the picture.  



At the end of high school, in 1982, I saved up all my shekels to buy a Lotus Supreme (see below). It was a dream bike which I took everywhere for the next 15 years. I bought it initially to go on a 2 month bike trip through Europe with two friends. This was an epic trip through Wales, Brittany, Provence, Tuscany and Croatia loaded with racks and bags. We camped on any farm that would have us, despite never bathing and fueled our riding with cheese and sausage. I loved the respect we got as bikers in Europe. The trip ended ingloriously when I got destroyed by an ear infection and wound up in a hospital in Titograd. Long story.



Here is my trek mate Mike doing our favorite method of ascents, crisscrossing back and forth to lessen the load. No helmets, no gps, no shirts, no sunscreen. Best shape of my life:



The Gorge du Verdon. 4 hours up, 4 hours down. 



The following year I rode the Lotus in the hills around Jerusalem when I wasn't herding sheep on Kibbutz. Magical riding, especially in Spring. Never saw another road bike in Israel at that time. I'm sure it's different now. The world looked kinda like this:



Upon return to the states, I enlisted as a bike messenger in DC to earn my keep. The less said, the better about those dark, and very sweaty times. After 8 hours on the bike each day, I would take an exhausted recovery ride out to Great Falls for some fresh air. All in all, a near death experience. 

Between 1984-1988, the Lotus accompanied me to Ann Arbor, Michigan for college. Weekend rides kept me grounded while my head floated in academic clouds. Who wouldn't enjoy this during the fall:



In 1989, I landed in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and, sadly, the Lotus went into hibernation. NYC was not a friendly bike town at that time. An old friend of mine's girlfriend had recently been run over on her bike riding on Canal Street. This screamed like a dire warning not to ride. Still, somehow the city had a certain broken down mystique.  



My biking spirit was not entirely crushed. Having been a messenger, I was OK being aggressive in traffic with a heavy duty cruiser like this:

  

No bike lines. No respect. I survived. It was better than jumping the turnstyles on the subway, where I always got caught. Naturally, that bike was stolen locked up one night outside of the Film Forum. I cried. I kept looking everywhere in the months that followed hoping the bike would magically present itself. It didn't.

In 1998, I came into a little cash and splurged on a Bianchi Trofeo, hoping to get back into road riding. As a filmmaker and long-tim fan of Breaking Away (best biking film ever), I had the Italian bug and still fantasized about riding in the Tour de France (haha). But it was a chore to get far enough out of the city to relax on the open road. Sadly, I didn't end up riding the Trofeo all that much. Eventually, it started gathering dust in my sisters basement.

It was now time for a long biking hiatus. It was a good thing because I fell in love, started raising 2 gorgeous daughters (a work in progress), and developed a myriad of other hobbies to keep me sane (cooking, fly fishing, yoga, wood-working and walking my dog). I still rode everywhere in the city on my clunker, because a bike is like my second legs. But it was family time for awhile. As with wheels, 4 legs are better than 2. It turns out 8 legs are even better!



Then, in 2019, I suffered a debilitating back injury trying to impress someone with my non-existent golf swing. I had never been golfing and will never go again. I couldn't stand up without pulling myself up. Had spinal injections, PT, anti-inflammatories. Nothing worked. But I noticed that if I could manage to get onto the bike, my back could tolerate pedaling. I decided to see if it could deal with longer riders and busted out the Trofeo from storage to investigate.

Luckily, my back did not complain and I started doing longer and longer rides until I was fine chugging up and down 9W feeling my lungs finally working again. That old steel frame and the fit was not the most comfortable for longer pot-holed rides, so I decided to pull the trigger and buy a new best friend, my current ride, a Specialized Roubaix with the Ultregra set along with all the latest tech to advance the cause. My new Garmin and power meter told me I went from 170 ftp to 270 in a year. My biking had come along way from that 4 wheeler. Best thing was, my back was not complaining. Success!



I figured it was time to join a club and enter a race. Not the long race that is life, but the short one that lasts no longer than a day. So happy to have Kissena to guide me to my first finish line. And that's my story.   



P.S. After my last ratty city bike got stolen I decided to give the Trofeo a second life. You'll be happy to hear she now rides as a gleaming new single-speed. The Italian dream never dies! 




Hope to see folks out in the world this season! 

So well said! Welcome to Kissena, my friend.

Wow @AdamYaffe that post has to win an award for the most thorough new member introduction ever, and also 

Welcome to all the new members. I look forward to seeing you all on the road in the near future. 

Welcome Adam!
Impressive!
Thank you Thierry and everyone!
Thierry, do you come from France?

Cheers,
Pierre