New York Biking

I was up in New York to bike with my sister two weekends ago.  She lives in downtown Manhattan.  I drove up after work on Friday and after slogging through rush hour traffic and an hour delay from a highway-closing multicar accident/truck fire, we just got a quick dinner and went to bed early Friday.  On Saturday we did a 62 mile ride to Nyack and back , and then a shorter meandering ride Sunday before I headed home.  The weather was perfect both days.
On Saturday we went from Erin's apartment in Manhattan across town to the trail that goes up the Hudson.  From there we continued up to the GW Bridge, then went across.  It was something like 400 feet to go from the river to the bridge, and that happened pretty fast which was tough.  We continued up the west side of the river along roads that are signed as for bikers up out of New Jersey to a little town called Nyack that's apparently where all the bikers go.  There was a many biker filled bakery where we had a little lunch and then headed back.  I also bought a cookie and a pecan bar for after the ride.  Both were delicious.  The way back was a little tougher as there we worked from the river elevation back up to bridge elevation over a long stretch, and we had a killer headwind the last stretch home in Manhattan, but we made it. 

On Sunday we just kind of went all over south Manhattan.  We started out going to the West side of the island and stopped at the donut plant.  Great donuts.  From there we went down South to go see the new (and extremely tall) Freedom tower that's going up.  It's now taller than the Empire State Building.  We tried to go to the 9/11 memorial but it turns out you need to get tickets in advance (they're free, but you have to reserve them).  We continued down through battery park at the southern tip of the island, and then took a ferry over to Governor's Island.  Governor's Island apparently used to be a coast guard station, but they moved out a few years back and the city has been turning it into a big park.  It was about 2 miles to bike around it, which w did once before going halfway back and having some lunch and a beer.  After ferrying back to Manhattan we continued up the East river and then back home.

Some things were different biking in New York.  First off, Manhattan street biking is a little terrifying.  Around here I am pretty much always on car-free trails, and when I'm not they are wide suburban roads.  But I was surprised that Manhattan street biking wasn't as terrifying as I had expected, given how driving can be there.  We stuck to the E-W streets for the most part which have lower traffic, and only a single lane.  One lane of traffic makes all the difference.  On the west side of the river there aren't so much bike trails as wide shoulders.  Most of this felt plenty safe, but there was a section where it was two lanes each way, with not a huge shoulder.  Biking on the side of two lanes is always worse than on the side of one, because despite the extra width, people are much less likely to slow down or move over into the other lane, particularly when there's a car there but even when there's not.  With one lane, people can see the oncoming traffic better (and vice versa) so people get over a little as they go by, or at least wait until they can.  There wasn't too much traffic on the dicey stretch though and plenty of other bikes so we made it.  The roads were actually marked as bike routes because I guess thats how they want to go.

The other different thing was that we didn't run into any wildlife, but we did see a lot of wilddeath, aka roadkill.  My sister is terrified of birds, and deathly terrified of dead birds.  She counted 8 on the Saturday ride, including at least one duck, a bright red cardinal, a couple pigeons, and a few other less descript mashes of crushed flesh and feather.  In addition to the birds, there was a ground hog, cat, squirrel, and a couple of reasonably sized snakes.  I guess that's what you get when you're biking on roads more, particularly highish speed parkways through forest. 

Anyways, all in all we had a fun weekend, and hopefully it helped Erin finish up her training for her century ride next week.  Good luck to her!