My ride started at 8:45 in the morning , in Astoria, Queens. Twenty minutes later I entered Brooklyn via the Polanski Bridge (from Long Island City, Queens, to Greenpoint, Brooklyn). At 9:33 am I crossed into Manhattan via the world-famous Brooklyn Bridge:
At 10:06, 13 miles into my trip, I left Manhattan for Staten Island on the Staten Island Ferry. So far, so good. "Goodbye, Manhattan!"
Staten Island is relatively beautiful. I found large, beautiful parks, spacious streets, and nice homes, etc. There was also a killer hill on the north end of the island that offered me my first real challenge of the ride. A beautiful road in the middle of Staten Island:
Staten Island is large (14 miles to ride across it) and hilly, and took me about an hour and 15 minutes to get across. It gets a lot of bad press for being separated from NYC (geographically and in spirit), but it's a nice place. I would be more generous with my praise, but after riding all the way to the southern tip of the island, I got a nasty surprise that sort of ruined my day. The southernmost bridge in New York City, the Outerbridge Crossing, connects southern Staten Island with New Jersey (Perth Amboy, NJ). As the crow flies, it's about 1/3 of the way to Philadelphia. And though it was designed with a bicycle and pedestrian path, bicycles and pedestrians are forbidden from crossing it. Locals didn't help. I asked a few people how to cross the bridge and they looked at me like I was nuts. Ok, maybe I am nuts, but they didn't have to be so nasty about it.I had wasted about an hour trying to figure out the fastest way to New Jersey when I realized I had to go back the way I came, head west toward Newark, then south, adding about 40 miles (and at least 3 hours) to my trip. There was no way I could get to Philadelphia in time for the concert - or for dinner, for that matter - on my bike. So I rode a couple miles over to the nearest Staten Island rail station and headed back north on the train, then took the ferry to Manhattan...exactly where I had just come from 2 hours before.
To make a long story short, I caught a train to Trenton, NJ, then rode to Philly from there (about 25 miles), but by that time it was a race. I had to get to the hotel where Tay was already waiting, shower, and dash to dinner in time to make the concert. The urgency of the situation diminished my enjoyment a tad, but valet parking my Trek made up for it a little. There's no souvenir photo of that moment, but the one where I'm claiming my bike back from valet is good enough:
Tay and I enjoyed a fantastic dinner at Bellini Grill in downtown Philly (escargot, linguini pomodoro, lobster ravioli, and a desert called Tartufo that you simply must try if you ever go to Philly). Then we visited the amazing new Kimmel Center for the arts and watched the Philly Orchestra play the hell out of Mahler's Fifth Symphony under the direction of their new music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin (we missed the first half of the concert - Haydn's "Military Symphony"). As you can plainly see (even though the photo is lousy), Tay and the Kimmel Center are beautiful:
We enjoyed a truly fabulous night on the town, and Sunday morning Tay and I took a walk around downtown and stumbled upon a great hole-in-the wall diner for breakfast. All-in-all, we had a great weekend. I rode about 65 miles and Tay & I had a great date night in beautiful downtown Philly. But as we rode the train back to NYC Sunday afternoon, all I could think was, I didn't ride my bike all the way to Philly. It's still on my list of things to accomplish, and I promise I will do it one of these days...
