Fried Chicken and Dance-Nik

Plot got into an argument yesterday with Lenox Avenue and was lucky not to have been smashed flat. De-leavened. Stupid stupid Plotnik.

That was at the midpoint of Plot and PD's epic ride across the Manhattan Bridge and into Manhattan, then through Soho and up the West Side Bikeway, then across into Central Park and up into Harlem.



They were heading for lunch at Aunt Maudie's Fried Chicken on 137th Street and when Plotnik found the little storefront he waved to PD who was riding a short way ahead of him. There was a lot of traffic on Lenox Avenue. As Plotnik waved he must have swerved a bit to the left, just as a large black limo roared up behind him trying to beat the traffic light.

Plotnik saw the limo at the last second, slammed on his bike brake. When you do that there is always one outcome: the bike stops on a dime and you fall over. So he didn't get hit by the car, but he fell into the street. Lenox Avenue concrete is good old fashioned hard as hell concrete. It is only through blind fortune that a taxi or truck was not also trying to beat that light or...well, let's not think about that.

The end result is simply a few scrapes and bruises, one of them moderately embarrasing but invisible, and a very sore right hand where Plotnik fell on it.



The fried chicken was amazingly good, the best in the whole wide world.

You'd think Plot and PD would have ridden back to Brooklyn somewhat more carefully but the opposite was true. Heading down Fifth Avenue was a sea of rush hour traffic using every lane to try and get...somewhere...faster, and Plot and PD weaved through them like they were a video game. It was SO much fun, and not really very dangerous because everybody was behaving normally, except for the cabs, but then their abnormal start/stop/weave, open car doors into traffic pattern is normal for them.

Passing home across the Williamsburg Bridge the centuries fell away as gray bearded Hasidic men and their wives and children walked across the bridge towards Manhattan, each family pushing a baby carriage. Plot and PD weaved through them and ended up at Steinberg's Bakery in Williamsburg, so they could buy two challas, one for themselves and one to bring to The Great Dance-Nik's new house as a kind of strange but delicious-smelling housewarming present.



Dance-Nik's place is on the 15th Floor and has a terrific view. Isabella played with Chloe who mostly sat on the bed as the adult humans ate apples and cheese and drank wine. Dance-Nik seems very happy in Brooklyn and Plot and Duck are ecstatic to have her only two blocks from PD, 5H and Belly.





Riding a bike is the absolute best way to get anywhere in New York. But you have to be determined not to be stupid. Stupid can cost ya. So can bad luck. Plottie was stupid but lucky yesterday. May we have a loud A-men, sisters and brothers.