Nina and I went on an epic bike journey over the weekend, the longest ride I think I've ever taken by any measure. Our goal was to see how far we could make it up the West Side Highway. We didn't think we'd be able to make it to the George Washington Bridge, but we'd heard tell of a pretty boss picnic area right across the river in Fort Lee.
We decided to take the Brooklyn Bridge into the city and then cross lower Manhattan to get to the West Side Highway. It turns out the Brooklyn Bridge is a bad bridge to bike across because the city's made it all stupid and pretty for people crossing on foot: The stone towers are huge and elegant, and the hardwood boardwalk feels good under your feet. So everyone crosses very slowly. Sometimes they stop to take pictures, and they mostly don't pay attention, even when you're a foot from them and about to run into a kid and you're ringing your $30 bell brrrring brrrring! Peds. There was a little guy wearing army fatigues and a backpack jogging stoically in front of us for most of the length of the crossing, contending just as we were with the pedestrian gridlock but going maybe a little faster than we were. The hardest parts to pass through were the areas around the suspension towers, where the lanes squeezed down to a fraction of their size and more than once I had to just get off the bike and let oncoming bikers go around me, muttering their frustration. Finally we got to the other side and onto Chanbers St., where we turned west and headed for the highway, bumping over cobblestones and braving the frightening speed of the traffic on West St. We walked our bikes down the ramp to the little marina at River Terrace, remounting when we reached the entrance to the greenway.
We passed the heliport at 30th St., where a helicopter was idly spinning its blades.
We passed the Intrepid at 48th St.
We passed a huge queue of people waiting to get into something happening at Pier 97. A banner on the wall of the stage came into view: Lorde. I looked back at the people: Excited young women; warped, frustrated young men. Ah, okay, I thought.
We passed the Hustler Club.
We stopped at a public bathroom on the Upper West Side, more for the information kiosk (which told us we were near 72nd St.) than anything else, but I went to take a piss for good measure. There was an older dude in there washing his hands and someone in one of the stalls. The guy in the stall said, "Hey, how ya doin'." I thought he might be talking to the old man, but I couldn't tell. He stepped out of the stall a moment later, wearing a full bicycle get-up -- spandex shorts, aerodynamic shirt. He might have been changing into them or just taking a little toilet bath, I don't know. He was a young guy, looked maybe a little like the kid with the freckles from The Sandlot. I washed my hands and left. The guy in the cycling costume walked out and unchained his bike. "Hey folks, how's it going," he said, to no one in particular.
We walked our bikes up the hill and out of Riverside Park into the little plaza where Riverside Blvd. turns into at 72nd St. We texted KT and Chris and met them in the lobby of their building on Broadway, where we chatted for a while. They recommended we cross Central Park and exit off West Dr. at Central Park South (to avoid having to take Center Drive all the way up to 66th St.) on our way to East River Park and an unbroken stretch of bike path. It was late afternoon, late in the summer; I began to worry about the fact that I wouldn't have a head or tail light for my bike in the dark. (I'm a rule-follower, you see.) Nina had a spare set of lights from a previous bike that she'd jury-rigged to her new one with duct tape. We'd passed a bike store right off 72nd St., but by the time we'd said goodbye to KT and Chris, it was closed. The sun was setting rapidly. I was balking at the idea of hauling my bike down to the subway, and so I was settling into a good, deep sulk. Nina rescued the situation, as she always does, with pluck and resourcefulness. She geolocated an Eastern Mountain Sports outlet on 76th St., and called to make sure they were still open. In no I'd acquired a cheap set of bike lights, and we were squatting in the murky darkness outside the store, that unusually deep darkness under the trees on Broadway in the 70s.
We set out across 76th St. and rode past a shuttered townhouse with a fire engine parked outside, firemen trudging up the steps in no particular hurry. We entered the Park at 72nd St., and quickly merged from Terrace Dr. to West Dr., which sloped downward towards 64th St., and I rode the handbrake to control my speed. We exited at 7th Ave. as Katie had suggested, zipping around horses and piles of horseshit. To find a bicycle-friendly street to take us east, we had to round the southeastern corner of the Park, past The Pierre and The Metropolitan Club (where they held our high school prom? Nina thinks so, but she didn't go. I honestly can't remember) onto 62nd St., which we followed until it became clear that it would take us onto the FDR Drive and not a bike path. A couple of hasidic families waited for cars outside the entrance to the Bentley Hotel. We walked the bikes back to York Ave. and up to 63rd St., where we found a pedestrian bridge over the FDR. An old tramp and a young tramp were crossing the bridge toward the river like us, the old guy pushing a shopping cart with some bedding in it. I thought of The Fisher King, inadvertantly. I looked up at the skyway that connected the Rockerfeller University dormitory building on our right to the Weiss lab on the left. It was 8 o'clock on a Saturday night. The Weiss café was empty, I could see through the big windows. We started biking down the concrete walk that met the far end of the bridge, but by the time we got to about 60th St., we found that it was curving back up to 60th St. Frustrating!
We rode down through the 50s on Sutton Place, goggling at the grotesque stone cottages in which New York's rich sequester themselves; the absurd, pointless NYPD surveillance kiosk at 57th St. Heiresses in sweatsuits entered and left the buildings. (What is it with the upper class and sweatpants?) We turned right at 53rd St. and pedaled west to 3rd Ave., which we took south through the hell of Murray Hill (traffic and yelling and I might've broken someone's rear-view mirror) down to Stuyvesant Town, where Nina made a pit stop to pee at her mom's apartment. 20th St. led us to East River Park and the bike path we'd been hoping for. We zipped downtown, taking the winding promenade around man-made rock formations, passing multiple encampments of homeless people sleeping on benches a few feet from the water. Somewhere around Corlears Hook, we passed through a recreation center under the FDR, with semi-enclosed basketball courts and a space for skateboarders to practice their tricks. A group of middle-aged and elderly Chinese people were gathered (it looked like) to celebrate the pleasant evening. Some of them were dancing, ballroom-style. We turned right and found the greenway that took us down Delancey and then down Allen, and then onto to the Manhattan Bridge.
The bicycle onramp to the bridge was so steep that for a moment I wasn't sure we were supposed to be riding up it, but we shifted into our lowest gears and puffed our way to the top, where the incline became less severe. But it didn't level off -- the bike path on the Manhattan Bridge is like a gentle concrete hill, cresting -- it seemed -- towards the far end in Brooklyn. It's less inviting, more industrial than the Brooklyn Bridge, and there's no aesthetic reason to linger on any single part of it, which makes it much easier to cross by bicycle. I thought all the gray was beautiful, though, and I pedaled and pedaled; the unbroken line of concrete in front of me, the metal fencework forming a cage created the feeling of an intense and enveloping dream. We stopped pedaling once we came to the inflection point of the bridge, and let gravity and momentum carry us all the way down to Tillary St.
I don't remember the details of how we got home. It was after ten o'clock, and we were both exhausted. My butt, in particular, was real sore. But it was a great day!