New York City on a bicycle

October 4th.

"Check out my cooking set," I say to Monkey as I open my pannier, which is suddenly filled with oatmeal.

Oops. The box lid fell off. Now I'm short breakfast food.

Not to worry. Monkey takes us to the supermarket where he works so we can stock up on supplies. We also have the privilidge of meeting Sam the baker and he's got donut holes for sample. Nicole and I each grab one, pick up some fresh produce, all in one soap and a new box of oatmeal and we are on our way. We bid farewell to Monkey and head out towards New York State.

Kevin feels the need to flout his mascunlinty crossing a state line on bicycle.

Shortly after we cross the state line it starts to rain. No problem. We take Metro North into the city. When we arrive at Grand Central we take an elavotor. Instead of letters there are bizzare acronyms that make no intuitive sense. We see PH with a star next to it and figure that's the ticket. It takes us to "The Apartment," a ridiculously upscale restaurant. From a window we can see the Grand Concourse. We've seen it before, so we shrug and head out towards the streets of New York.

With Broadway closed to traffic we can actually enjoy
Times Square without being hit by a car.

We ride through Times Square and then north into Central Park. The weather is gray, it drizzles on and off, but somehow everything appears beautiful. A bicycle is just the right pace for exploring the massive Central Park. We can cover so much ground so easily that the inherent beauty of the landsapce is overwhelming. We ride past the reservoir, past the Gugenheim, all the way to 97th street. Unfortunately, all but the main roads are closed to bicycles, so we have to do some periodic walking to get around when we see something of interest.

A barge floats south towards New York Harbor and beyond.

Afterwards in onto to Fort Washington Park. The George Washington Bridge is nearly five miles away. Then four miles, than three miles, until we finally reach the Little Red Lighthouse at the foot of the bridge. We get off the bikes and look northward with childlike wonder. It's cloudy and foggy, but majestically beautiful at the same time. Virtually all of the immediate landscape of the banks of the Hudson are the same as when the first European explorers set eyes on them over 400 hundred years ago. Its beatiful.

But beauty cannot last. From the foot of the bridge, we have to climb nearly 150 vertical feet just to reach Washington Heights and another 40 minutes of confusion just to find the pedestrian overpass. Once we actually get on the bridge, Nicole is terrified that the bridge will collapse or a gust of wind will blow her off the bridge. I reassure her that none of this will happen. Her fears dissipate as we resume riding. Although the skyline is hazy, we are able to make out the outline of the Statue of Liberty far away in the distance.

Gotta smile in the face of adversity.

We feel a sense of accomplishment as we roll onto the New Jersey side. This is quickly overshadowed by a sinking feeling as I feel the air escape from my rear tire. I get off the bike. I rain over a screw. It's lodged so deeply in the tire that I literally need to unscrew it. I quickly change the tube with relative ease and use duct tape to mark where the hole was. Once I get the tire and tube back on the wheel I have some trouble getting the darn thing back in the dropout.

Welcome to New Jersey . . .