Sunday the 4th of May, 45 past noon, Staten Island, NY: A moment of immense physical and emotional accomplishment. I had completed the 42 mile (67 km) Five Borough Bike Tour. I was well and truly stoked! 🙂

4 hours and 45 minutes earlier: The northwest corner of Duane St and Church St in Manhattan – I wait for the flag off along with 29,999 other cyclists. We are four blocks away from the starting line and the mass of bikers behind me stretches for another 15 blocks south. I don’t feel so bad any more for having awoken a little past 5 that morning!

Continue reading “High Five!” →

May is ‘Bike Month NYC’ and the official start of the cycling season. But the first weekend of May also hosts the largest urban recreation event in the US – the 5 Borough Bike Tour – so most cyclists are out training a whole month before. And I was no exception! More on that in my next blog though. For this one, I focus on a relatively short but most interesting 10 mile ride in Brooklyn, the day before the tour.

The Brooklyn Greenway Initiative or BGI is a non profit body working towards building a continuous 14-mile long waterfront Greenway (or bike path) from Green Point to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. Each year they conduct a tour of the route to showcase their plans and progress on the same. On Saturday, the 3rd of May, I joined a hundred other cyclists on that tour.

Continue reading “Fringe Benefits” →

The very fact that I was attempting a 25 mile (40 km) ride was daunting enough for me. A subway car packed with over zealous bikers only added to my nervousness.

But I convinced myself that this ride was all about participation – not about competitiveness and certainly, I hoped, not a test of fitness!

Continue reading “Tour De Bronx” →

Quite unlike the previous weekend, the night prior to Stage 3 (as I like to call it!) had been peaceful and sober. Whether I had company or not, I had no excuse but to continue where I had left of.

Having covered the better part of the island’s West Side previously, it would only have been fair to cover as much ground on the East Side as was available. So I set out by myself that Sunday morning to ride north along the East River till the end of the bike path at 125th street and back to Long Island City. Covering a length of about 7 miles to and fro, the ride would be a lot shorter than those done over the previous weekend.

Continue reading “Measuring up to Manhattan – 3” →

4 hours later I was up, had a quick shower (if that were ever possible!) and jumped on to my bike for the second stage of our bike trip around Manhattan. Sure I felt a little ‘drained’ from the night before and I was completely sleep deprived but other than that there wasn’t even a hint of alcohol in my system! On any other day, the ill effects would surely have told on me.

I met John at 10 after cycling over the Queensboro Bridge and all the way across to the West Side bike path on 57th street – effortlessly beating cross town traffic on the way and doing all of this in less than 20 minutes.

Continue reading “Measuring up to Manhattan – 2” →

Saturday morning and I was out on my bike a little past 9 – some feat considering I don’t surface before 11 on most weekends. What I was about to get myself into over the next few hours was to be part 1 of an even greater feat – at least by my fitness standards!

33rd street on the East River is where the bike path resumes south to the tip of Manhattan after being truncated for almost 30 blocks thanks to the UN building. I had covered a little over 6 kms or 4 miles from my house in 22 minutes and looking back, it sure seemed more impressive than it probably was.

Continue reading “Measuring up to Manhattan – 1” →

It’s probably best known for it’s Orange Ferry. It’s the starting point for the NYC Marathon. And it’s infamous for its Fresh Kills landfill – where garbage from the 5 boroughs of New York City was once collected. The landfill was reopened soon after 9/11 to receive the debris from Ground Zero.

Until recently, I was one of many who knew nothing more about the city’s third largest borough (after Queens and Brooklyn) – Staten Island – than what has been stated above. My previous encounters with the island have literally been alighting from the ferry, stepping into the ferry terminal only to board again a few minutes later. I did this as a first time visitor to the city and in more recent times, as a guide to first time visitors to the city! I’ve also, on occasion, driven through the island en route to destinations in neighbouring New Jersey.

Continue reading “The Island less trodden” →

Other than Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, which are all part of a larger land mass, everything else in the NY Metro area is an island. The borough of Manhattan included! In fact there are many more islands than boroughs in New York City. To me, it’s what makes the city and its surrounds all that more interesting and has also recently spurred my interest in and fascination for bridges.

While some of these were covered in my last blog, we travel north today from Queens into the Bronx via Randall’s Island, then back into Manhattan ending at Roosevelt Island. This also effectively serves in documenting my first cycling trip this summer.

Continue reading “Islands Abound” →