Motorcycles for kids, wrenching & parking in the city, and the best rides in the Catskills

Where do you park & wrench 🔧 in the city?

Riding in the city is tough (I may be the only one that doesn’t mind it) but finding a good reasonable parking garage is tougher. And wrenching on your bike in the city is damn near impossible.

I had a pretty good setup in my old garage on 55/Lex (thanks, Lincoln!) but now that we’ve moved closer to the river, I’ve had to find an alternative.

I need a garage to be able to store my bike securely, allow me to wash it, and give me enough space to work on it a bit with some tool storage. I was pretty spoiled at my previous garage.

I found out about Ryders Alley through a few friends and reached out for some info. Honestly, for $250 a month and all of these perks, it makes a ton of sense:

1. Dirt bike / atv / quad rental

2. Your own reserved secure parking spot

3. Communal tools to wrench with

4. Bike lift to wrench on

5. Optional motorcycle maintenance class

6. Work benches, tire changers, air compressors, hose and bucket for washes

A friend of mine asked about repair shops and maintenance classes in the city and honestly, Ryders Alley sounds like a fantastic option.

Check out the locations and reach out to Demian for more info.

Peak Design makes the best motorcycle phone mount. Fight me. 🥊 

For anyone that’s used QuadLock and SP Connect cases with mounts on their bike, I salute you. Also, I’m sorry.

They’re both infuriating. I’ve struggled with QuadLock for damn near a year and finally moved to SP Connect. In the beginning, it really seemed far better than its QuadLock counterpart but things fell apart pretty quickly. Almost literally.

The spinner thing on the case would constantly get cranked off position every time I used the case which made it frustratingly difficult to mount every. damn. time. For both the QuadLock and SP Connect, I used the vibration dampener and wireless charger.

Enter Peak Design. I’ve used their bags for years and apart from the zipper breaking twice (the same zipper), they’re phenomenal aerodynamic bags.

They’ve released their phone mount solution and let me just say:

🧲 MAGNETS 🧲 

The solution is fantastic. Incredibly easy to place and super easy to remove. Only problem is that they’re still missing the wireless charger but I’ve been told it’s coming soon. Keep an eye on these mounts and try one locally before you buy.

Get out to the Catskills and have a pint

Get the hell out of the city and hit up the Catskills for fantastic views and curvy roads. Take our recommendations for some fantastic breweries and thank me later.

We’ve got 5 amazing rides on deck, all of which we’ve done ourselves and thoroughly enjoyed. As a group, we ride these roads every damn weekend and never left disappointed.

We’ve also been through a ton of breweries and cafes in the area so I felt like a guide to riding the Catskills wouldn’t be complete without a section on the breweries that have helped us finish so many of our rides.

I hope you enjoy these roads as much as we do.

The entire guide with ride descriptions & routes, food & drink options, the full routes with Google Maps link is available here as a downloadable PDF for $7.97.

While you’re there, check out our other guides including a castle tour in NYC as well as the top roads in Pennsylvania.