New York Overnight

 I recently did a quick, action-packed 1 night trip to New York. 

A lot of people really didn't enjoy high school, but for me it was a real blast, and a bunch of us were so close that we still get together every year for dinner (known as "Duck Night", since the dinner was originally held at a Chinese restaurant). I think part of it was growing up in the crazy semi-apocalyptic world of 1970's New York - the crime, the decay, the anarchy - we bonded sort of like war buddies. Also, the school had a special honors program called the Medical Science Institute, and those of us in the program traveled through school almost as a cohort, taking most of our classes together. Between that and some unique extracurricular activities like Sing, we were pretty tight. So, the main goal of my trip was to attend the annual Duck Night dinner, but to make the schlep up to New York worthwhile I packed in as much other stuff as I could.  

Friday morning I took an early morning Amtrak up to NY. Arriving in Penn Station always makes me feel at home, since I spent a lot of time in that neighborhood - my dad's office was just across the street from Penn Station. But so many people! I'm not as used to it as I used to be. I had packed my stuff in a backpack rather than a suitcase, which gave me the freedom to hop on a Citibike (bikeshare bike) and head to my first appointment - lunch with Charles, my oldest friend. Manhattan has become a surprisingly bike-friendly place. There are bike lanes on all the major streets, and it always seems to me that New Yorkers are more courteous to cyclists than are DC drivers. The biggest danger, I've found, is the myriad delivery guys on eBikes who cruise around at high speeds in all directions with no regard for lane direction, other bikes, speed, pedestrians, or traffic signals. Sometimes it feels like being in one of those WW II aerial combat movie scenes, with delivery guys flying all around you.

Hopping a Citibike to head downtown

That notwithstanding, I successfully made my way down Broadway and across town to McSorley's in the East Village. McSorley's is the oldest bar in continuous operation in New York. While its exact age is somewhat shrouded in mystery, they claim to have been open since 1854. It is well established that Abe Lincoln stopped there when he gave a campaign speech at nearby Cooper Union in 1860 and in general, the old-timey memorabilia with which the bar is decorated, fake in so many bars, is real in this one. McSorley's serves only two kinds of beer, "light" and "dark", and delicacies like the cheese plate, which consists of cheese, saltines, raw onions, and hot mustard. After a round (dark) and a cheese plate, Charles and I headed a few blocks over and got Indian food on E. 6th St. From there he headed back to Brooklyn, while I walked over to Soho and checked into my hotel, the Arlo SoHo. The SoHo neighborhood wasn't exactly centrally located for my itinerary, but the Arlo was the most reasonably priced non-disgusting hotel I could find - New York hotels are crazy expensive at the holiday season.

Two dark and a cheese plate at McSorley's

Friends since age 5

My small, but nice, Arlo SoHo hotel room

After resting for a bit I hopped on the E train up to dinner. I got off a stop early so I could walk a little bit of 5th Avenue and see the decorations, including the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

Dinner was wonderful. There were twenty-something of us there, including a couple of first-timers, people I hadn't seen since high school! One of those was Don, who I've known since Junior High and who, like Charles, was part of the Rugby Road gang I used to hang around with going way, way back. Very cool. Yeah, there are one or two jerks, like the guy who was sort of an outcast in high school but made a ton of money on Wall Street. He made sure to casually mention multiple times that he the sweater he was wearing cost $2,000. But overall, we pick up our friendships like we had just been hanging out in the lunchroom the previous day. I only wish I lived closer so I could see some of these people more often.

Duck Nighters

As Duck Nights go, this one wasn't a late night, and I was back in my room by 11. I have to mention that at 11 PM the NY subway is standing room only, and was filled with a mix of groups of young people on their way to go out clubbing, typical stone-faced New Yorkers, and the usual smattering of people who look borderline schizophrenic.

Saturday morning I got up and walked over to a bagel shop on Canal Street for breakfast. Back at the hotel, as I was packing up my friend Pete Facetimed - from Bangkok! Pete's another junior high/high school friend. He had Facetimed into Duck Night the previous evening, but it was loud and had been hard to talk, and he wanted to catch up one-on-one. He and I wound up talking for about half an hour, mostly about how his recent move to Thailand was going. Perhaps some day there'll be a blog entry for a visit to him.

I spent a little while strolling around window-shopping the trendy stores in SoHo, then checked out of the hotel and hopped a Citibike back up to Penn Station, where I stashed my backpack at the Amtrak luggage check. After quickly popping my head into Macy's Herald Square I walked up to Times Square, getting there (after a stop for pizza) just in time for a matinee of Maybe Happy Ending, a very inventive new Broadway musical about two obsolete "Helperbot" robots who find friendship, adventure, and maybe love together. Standing ovations used to be a very rare expression of supreme approval of a performance. These days they've been devalued; people give standing ovations at every damn event. At many shows I'm the curmudgeonly dissenter, stubbornly remaining seated while everyone around me is on their feet hooting and hollering, but for this show I eagerly joined in - the show deserved it.

My dad's office!

Genuine New York pizza - the best!

Outside the theater

After the show I walked back down to Penn Station. I had left a couple of hours after the show in case I wanted to have one more New York meal - but I was ready to head home and so I swapped to an earlier train and headed home after an action-packed thirty hours in the big city.

Weekend at Bernie's

I recently listened to a podcast where the son of internationally famous negotiator and bestselling author Herb Cohen described his father's stories from his Brooklyn childhood. In particular, he was impressed with the colorful characters who populated those stories. Herb's son said, 

"I grew up with stories. It was very romantic and exciting for me ’cause I grew up outside of Chicago, very suburban. And when I talked about my friends on my block, they were Todd, Mark, Dennis, Jamie, Chris. When my father talked about his friends on his block, they were Inky, Sheppo, Hoo-ha, Gutter Rat, who was called that even by his own mother, ..."

I smiled when I heard that, since my Brooklyn childhood friends include The Curl, Penaldo,  Goonobs and his younger brother Junior Goo, along with four Greek brothers, two whom went by their Greek nicknames, Kostaiykee (my transliteration) and Dmitri, while the other two were The Elder Statesman and The Walrus. The group of us formed a core of a more extended gang of neighborhood friends, hanging out in the Greeks' backyard (they and Goonobs lived next door to each other, so there was kind of critical mass at their houses), shooting hoops, tinkering with cars, playing drinking games, and so on.

I'm providing this history in an attempt to provide an idea of the depth of such Brooklyn street friendships. Herb Cohen stayed lifelong friends with his Brooklyn pals (who included Larry King and Sandy Koufax - what a group!), and even though I don't see my friend Charles (a.k.a. Goonobs) very often, when he invited me to his 60th birthday celebration, I immediately said yes even though it meant a six hour drive each way.

Charles is one of my few friends who has stayed in Brooklyn all these years, but he has also recently become the owner of a somewhat rundown farmhouse on 90 lovely acres in the Southern Tier of New York State - basically the middle of nowhere about a half hour from Oneonta. I will not go into the whole story of how Charles came to own this place, except to say that it was yet another well meaning idea hatched by his father Bernie, who has always been and at age 85 remains a major force in his sons' lives. You can see Bernie in his prime here.

The drive up through Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York was uneventful - it's a pretty non-descript part of the country - and before I knew it I found myself turning onto the steep gravel driveway that leads up to the house. I must say, the place presents well when you first pull up. The setting is lovely - the house and barn are sheathed in rustic native hickory planking, there's a pond, and just lovely greenery all around. Also, from the driveway you can't see the two derelict RV campers Bernie has dragged onto the property to serve as additional housing. For a Brooklyn-born Jewish guy, Bernie has a remarkably redneck sensibility.

The barn

The house

The pond

Bernie, who splits his time between New York and Florida, makes frequent trips up to the farm and is actively involved with renovations on the property (have I mentioned that he's 85?). Unfortunately, he tends to go for the cheap and quick over real quality - like I said, he's a city boy with redneck building ideas. As I walked up to the house I immediately stumbled across (almost literally) a Bernie-ism. To accommodate Charles' mom, who uses a mobility scooter, Bernie had installed a handicap ramp up to the front entrance - but not the sturdy metal or concrete kind of ramp I see around my neighborhood. No, this is some bright yellow plastic ramp which is slippery and sags when you walk on it, and which is also about a foot too short, so it's supplemented with some wood pieces. Both sides of the ramp have what are I guess are intended to be handrails, made of sections of aluminum fencing roughly sawn to the right length. Neither Charles nor his brother like this jury-rigged handicap ramp, but their dad is a force of nature who basically does what he wants.

When you enter the house you discover that (a) it came with the first floor fully furnished - in fact, overfurnished, (b) Charles and his family have moved a bunch of additional stuff into it, and (c) everything is moved around because parts of the place are under renovation. The result is that there's the feeling, at least for someone like me who doesn't like clutter, of way too much stuff crammed into the space. My understanding is that the place in its current state is much improved over how they found it, bt it's still pretty stuffed with stuff. Whew.

If this living room had less stuff in it it would be quite nice

While the first floor is in good shape and will be quite nice once the clutter is pared down a bit, the upstairs had basically been abandoned by the previous owner and is in a terrible state of disrepair. Up a very steep and narrow staircase you find yourself in rooms which have 1940's (or thereabouts) wallpaper - at least where there's still plaster on the walls. It appears that at some point there was significant water incursion which caused major damage to the walls and ceilings. In some places the ceiling has been stabilized with duct tape, while in others everything has just crumbled down to the studs. Add in the low gable ceilings and the overall first impression is pretty creepy. But if you take a breath (preferably through a respirator - I'm guessing there's mold aplenty up there) and look around, you see that with some work, it all could be lovely - and probably will be, after a period of work.

Upstairs bedrrom

The upstairs master bedroom

The barn is also interesting. You could say the old farmer (the most recent owner's father) was a frugal country guy, or you could say he was a hoarder, but boy, he crammed a lot of stuff into his barn. Old furniture, baby carriages, a TV set from the 1940's, .22 ammo, tools, and so on and so on. Parts of the barn were built as chicken coops, and there's still 70 year old chicken poop in them. There's a loft filled with stuff. The main barn is filled with stuff. The chicken coops are filled with stuff. Exploring the barn is one of those things that's kind of fascinating and scary at the same time. There are a lot of interesting and potentially valuable things, but also - omigod, So. Much. Stuff. But isn't it cool to have a barn?!

Barn - main area

Barn photo

The worst of the chicken coop area

In terms of sleeping arrangements, I chose to stay in the larger of the two campers - the one without water damage to the sleeping area. Staying in the camper was a little more civilized than my other alternative, the crumbly, moldy upstairs bedrooms, though still, Bernie-isms abounded. Power was supplied to the trailers by, in effect, a long extension cord running from the barn. The wire gauge seemed adequate for the load, which is good, but the cable just ran along the grass and had at least one big splice just sitting on the ground - potentially dangerous in the rain, or even if someone tripped over it! I tried turning the water supply (a garden hose run from the house) to the trailer on, but shut it off when water began to mysteriously appear on the trailer's kitchen floor (meaning no water or toilet without walking back to the house). The built-in lights  and fan in the trailer didn't work (maybe they're on the 12V power circuit?), but the outlets did so lighting was supplied by a couple of thrift store table lamps plugged into the outlets. I've got to say, it was still much more civilized than sleeping in a tent, but it was a few clicks short of a 5-star rating.

My accommodations

So, what did we do all weekend? Not a lot, but plenty. I rarely get to see Charles and hadn't seen his brother in over thirty years, so we had a lot of catching up to do. Friday afternoon we went on a walk around part of the property - he hasn't explored the whole place yet. Friday night Charles' friend Ed arrived. We made a fire in the chimenea and sat outside and enjoyed the evening (much cooler than in DC this time of year!). Saturday we had planned to go paddling at a nearby lake, but the birthday boy decided he just wanted to relax.

On our walk. You can see the house down below. We are a ways from the edge of the property.

When we were kids, Charles and his brother had the reputation of being klutzy - if there was a way to hurt yourself or break something doing any activity, they'd find it. So, Saturday when Charles decided to go outside and play with his new shotgun, it worried me a little bit. OK, maybe more than a little bit. Meanwhile, his brother was engaged with trying to jury rig a connection between a propane tank and the BBQ grill using various parts cribbed from the trailers and found in the barn. I sat there wondering if I was going to die by an errant shotgun blast or propane explosion. I'm happy to report that neither of these things happened, and kudos to Charles for having the sense to hold off on intoxicants until he was done shooting.

You have no idea how scary this is

Mid-day Saturday our friend Sheri and her husband Ken (and their dog) showed up. Sheri has had an interesting life - at one time she dated Arlo Guthrie's tour bus driver. She traveled on tour with Arlo and mingled with all those old-line folkie musicians. Pete Seeger was on the invite list to her wedding (he didn't attend, but Sheri has saved a lovely personalized note from Pete's wife Toshi). I met Sheri when I was in college and she was dating a guitar player friend of mine. Over the years she's become very close with Charles and his family. But it's been maybe seven years since I've seen them, so we spent a bunch more time just kinda hanging around catching up.

Charles, Gordon and me

The brothers, Sheri and me

At one point we all decided to see if there were fish in the pond by dropping in a fishing line (Louisiana-raised Ken served as our fishing expert). Fishing became pretty boring pretty quickly - no bites - so we propped up the fishing pole on the dock and just sat in our chairs and relaxed, enjoying the scenery and some beverages. Our tranquility was eventually disturbed when a fish took the hook and swam away, pulling the fishing pole (which no one was holding by that point) into the water, causing Charles to jump in after it. Unfortunately, the fish got away, but we successfully determined that the pond has fish! We got another little nibble later on, but again the fish escaped. Charles had better luck with a fishing net he dropped into the pond, which netted (literally), a bunch of minnows, a handful of slightly larger fish (juvenile bass?), and a turtle (which fortunately we freed before it drowned).

Turtle upon release from the net

Fish from the pond

Ken and Sheri headed home around dark. The brothers and I made another fire and spent yet more time relaxing. Sunday morning we all packed up and got on the road pretty early. I wanted to get a jump on the long drive home, and the brothers were scheduled to meet up in the afternoon in Brooklyn with their father.

All told, a very nice weekend. The farm is a place with amazing potential, though I think Charles has his work cut out for him for the next decade or so. It was nice to catch up with old friends, and - contrary to my usual nature - just slow down and relax for a weekend. 

New York

A little write-up of my trip to New York.

Every year a group of my high school friends gets together for dinner in Manhattan around holiday time. I try to attend when I can, and this year the stars aligned well: I was overdue to visit with my brother, and the weekend of the high school "Duck Night" dinner (so named because it's held at a Chines restaurant called Peking Duck) was the same weekend as my brother's birthday.

I took the bus up to New York, something I hadn't tried before. It probably took me an hour longer in each direction than driving would have, but I didn't have to worry about having a car in New York and at $30 each way it was cheaper than driving.

I took an early bus so that I could make it to New York in time to grab lunch and see a matinee of a Broadway show before heading out to Brooklyn.  I had recently bought Valerie some really pricey tickets to see John Groban, which made me feel a little less guilty about treating myself to a ticket to Hamilton (expensive, but still $100 less expensive than Josh Groban!). Amazingly, a couple of single seats to this extremely popular show were available days before the performance - I snapped up a seat in the second row of the balcony, which was sure to afford me a good view unless someone with a head like Mr. Met sat down in front of me - which is of course exactly what happened.

The bus leaves you off near Penn Station - a very familiar neighborhood for me, as it is where my dad's/grandfather's office was, and I worked at Penn Plaza when I was in college. My first action was to drop off my suitcase so I didn't have to schlep it to the theater. After 9/11 the Port Authority did away with baggage storage lockers at Penn Station, so private businesses have taken over bag storage. Not that there are bag storage businesses per se; rather other businesses now store bags. I dropped my back at Jason Office Supply on 31st St. How it works is that they give you a numbered tag to place on your bag and have you take a picture of it. When you come to pick up your bag you show them the bag and the photo to prove you're grabbing the right bag. Storage isn't exactly secure - the suitcases are all just sitting in a back corner of the store, not locked up in any way, but the tagging offers some security. Payment is based on the length of time you have the bag stored, which is driven not by an app but by a web site where you start and stop a timer. That part doesn't work perfectly. Two weeks after my trip I got an email from the bag storage company saying my timer was still running and asking if I had retrieved my bag. The good news is that there was no hassle when I told them what time I picked up my bag, and they charged me accordingly.

Having dropped my bag off, I walked uptown and grabbed lunch at Ben's Deli. Now, Ben's is not one of the classic been-there-forever New York delis, but the food is quite good and it's in the theater district and was the only deli I had time to get to before curtain time. I eat red meat very, very rarely, only on special occasions - the opportunity to get genuine New York deli pastrami counts as a special occasion (my other two red meat meals this year were sampling a Vietnamese colleague's homemade pho soup, and a burger after I got back from my Georgian Bay trip). I ordered chicken soup with a kneidel (matzoh ball) and a half sandwich - "half sandwich" being the deli term for "normal sized sandwich". Delicious! Having so feasted I continued on to the theater - again on foot.

A "half sandwich"

Hamilton!

What show did I see? Hamilton! It lived up to its reputation, though I have to say I'm glad I listened to the score in advance. There's no spoken dialog; the show is entirely in song, and most of that song is rap. It can be a little hard to understand. Hearing it in advance helped. Overall, it was great (at least what I could see of it around Mr. Met's head was). The quality of performances in New York productions is just a cut above, as is the whole of the production - choreography, sets, etc. A really good time.

As I started walking back down to retrieve my bag I realized I had somehow lost my scarf so I ducked into Macy's Herald Square to see if I could pick up a replacement. I was looking at a nice wool/cashmere scarf when a salesman came over and said, "Can I pay for that for you?" Then, realizing what he had said he laughed and said, "No, what I meant was can I ring that up for you?" He and I wound up joking about it, then talking about the holiday season and how we're both in the Hannukah camp holidaywise. He wound up giving me 30% off the price of the scarf - which is a good thing, because it was kind of expensive.

I picked up my bag and hopped on the F train to Brooklyn. Time between boarding the train and the first time a homeless person tried to hit me up for money? About 10 seconds. I love New York! Actually, the ride out to Brooklyn went without a hitch. I exited the train at Church Avenue (two stops north of the 18th Avenue Station, where people are seen fleeing in terror in the trailer from the recent Joker movie). This is my brother's neighborhood of Kensignton, which sits at the intersection of a Bangladeshi Muslim neighborhood, an ultra-religious Jewish neighborhood, a gentrified neighborhood with olive oil shops and gourmet coffee shops, and good old middle class Brooklyn - a typically New York crazy admixture of cultures. I wasn't staying with my brother - his apartment is already too full of people, dogs and stuff. Instead, I had booked an AirBnB in the Bangladeshi side of the neighborhood (though the host was Chinese). On looking at the building, an old two story multi-unit row house, I wasn't impressed. I walked in to a hallway filled with dozens of pairs of shoes all wrapped up in bags, and cracker boxes pinned to the walls as mailboxes. Hmmm ... Brooklyn hospitality is unique. Fortunately, the unit itself was quite nice, if a little bare bones. Quite clean, with Ikea-level furnishings. A full one bedroom apartment with kitchenette. Other than a very thin mattress, it was fine.

Creative mailboxes

What's up with the shoes and suitcases?

I visited with Henry and Colleen for a while, but I was pretty spent, as I had been on the go since 6:30 AM. Also, I was recovering from an intense if short-lived flu or bronchitis or something. I crashed and slept soundly.

When I got up Thursday I started my day by grabbing coffee and a bagel from a Bangladeshi corner bodega (only in New York would I refer to a convenience store run by Bangladeshis by the Spanish term "bodega", and only in New York would a South Asian convenience store sell bagels). I went for a run. I went down Ocean Parkway (America's first bike path) then across into my old neighborhood, past my childhood home, then back. I was pretty stiff from a day spent sitting cramped into the bus and a small theater seat, and my lingering bronchitis was aggravated by breathing out in the cold - but somehow I slogged my way through a jog. Then I went over to Henry and Colleen's. We didn't do much of anything. Just visited. Walked over and got lunch at Batata, a rather delicious Israeli/Middle Eastern restaurant, then lingered over coffee at Windsor Coffee. Yeah, chains have infiltrated Brooklyn to some extent and I'm sure there's a Starbucks somewhere (there's a Dunkin' Donuts in the heart of Bangladeshi Kensington!), but fortunately it's still mostly a world of local shops. Thursday evening I met my friend Charles - my oldest friend and my only friend left in Brooklyn - for coffee and dessert at a diner. That required a very expensive Uber (Ubers are pricey in New York due to some living wage law) but was money well spent.

My childhood home

Friday was Henry's birthday. We had plans to go out for brunch. Unfortunately, the place we had hoped to go (Hamilton's on Ft. Hamilton Parkway - named after, yes Alexander Hamilton) didn't serve brunch on weekdays so we wound up at a slightly less grand restaurant - but the food was still delicious.

In the afternoon I bid farewell to my family and took the subway back into Manhattan, getting off the train along the way to grab a picture at Astor Place - a station that figures in a song I wrote back in the 80's. I had booked a hotel in the city for Friday night. My room wasn't ready yet when I got there but I dropped my bags and went for a walk through the heart of New York Christmas - the tree at Rockefeller Center and the store windows on Fifth Avenue. It's very nostalgic for me. My grandparents lived in this neighborhood (up the street from Trump Tower!) and we always did this walk at Christmastime, ending up at FAO Schwartz toy store, which was an amazing place to visit as a kid). Sigh. Eventually I made it to my hotel and after waiting some more - and eventually throwing a fit at the front desk - I got into my room.

Rockefeller Center tree

Fifth Avenue

Bergdoff's store window (can you find the accordion?)

So nice to be somewhere where Gen. Sherman is considered a hero!

Duck Night dinner was wonderful as always. There's a core group that's always there, but there are also always surprises. There were a couple of people there I hadn't seen in person since high school. It was super cool to reconnect. The dinner always goes by quickly. We go out for drinks afterward. That goes quickly too. I stumbled back to my room around midnight.

Duck Night crew

Saturday morning I walked over to Ess-a-Bagel (Yiddish for "Eat a Bagel") on 3rd Avenue, where for breakfast I got a truly quality bagel and veggie cream cheese and a true New York "soup Nazi" ordering experience. Then I hopped the E train downtown and caught the bus home. Unlike on the ride up, the bus was fairly empty which made the ride a little more comfortable - but I still wound up a little queasy by the time I reached Arlington. Maybe long distance bus travel isn't for me.

Bagel!

Anyway, a great trip - family, old friends, bagels and pastrami ... but no pizza. Gotta leave something for next time.

Coffeeneuring 5.2: Celebrating Life By CitiBike

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed with what I thought might wind up being my final #coffeeneuring ride. I had been tired of sitting one short of the required number of rides and so I took a quick ride over to the Lee-Harrison Center and got coffee and a lousy donut. It was a coffeeneuring ride in the letter of the law, but maybe not in the spirit. I wanted to do better. My thought had been to do something grand: maybe break my previous distance record (which isn't that many miles, to tell ya the truth) or ride to someplace really special. Then, while I was staring with glazed eyes at the election results in Wednesday morning's paper, the phone rang. My mother-in-law had died. In short order I was in New York City, supporting my wife and her family. Family first, politics and coffeeneuring later.

I have written before about how natural biking is in New York. It seems that everywhere you look there's someone on a bike, and every street sign has a bike locked to it. Mostly cheap utilitarian bikes chained up with locks that weigh more than my road bike. I've seen some ingenious anti-theft hacks, like quick releases secured with screw-down pipe clamps to make them more theft-resistant while still keeping the quick release (making it a slow release, I guess), not to mention the spray-painted "is it a cheap bike or a good bike?" look. As a result of having grown up in this cycling city I often roll my eyes (and kvetch in this blog!) about the way we make biking a big "thing" in DC. To me it's like making a big F-ing deal about bipedal walking. But I digress ...

After the funeral we all needed a little time to decompress, each in our own way. My wife went back to her mom's condo to take a nap. Her sister went out for a walk. I saw an opportunity to celebrate my mother-in-law's life with a coffeeneuring ride through her beloved Upper East Side neighborhood. NY now has widespread Citibike (the NY equivalent of Capital Bikeshare) kiosks and Manhattan now has some pretty good bike lanes. I already had the Citibike app on my phone (forethought!) and so all I needed to do was purchase a day-use pass.

Citibike station

I didn't have time for much of a ride, but enough to get a taste of mother-in-law's New York. She and I were both raised in Brooklyn, and both had a great love for the vibrancy of Manhattan. Manhattan was always "The City", to those of us in the outer boroughs (those of us in Brooklyn technically lived in the city, but not "The City"). I picked up a bike on E. 76th St. & 3rd Avenue and off I went. Street clothes, no helmet - just like every other cyclist I saw (except for the delivery guys, who wear helmets and reflective vests). First I rode east on 76th St. There's no bike lane on this street - just pedal hard and play nice with the flow of traffic. I turned north onto 1st Ave., where there's a protected bike lane. Drafted behind a Domino's delivery guy for a couple of blocks until he turned left. Rode past a fruit stand loaded with luscious produce. Past the pizza place. And the other pizza place. Past maybe I don't know how many other pizza places. Past the guy standing in the middle of the lane shouting incomprehensible stuff to no one about Obama. Checking out the people, the cars, the stores, the energy.

The bike lane runs along the left side of 1st Avenue and so cars turning left onto cross-streets have to cross the bike lane. Three times on my ride uptown I encountered a vehicle turning left across my path - a car, a Town Car, and a truck. Three times I hit the brakes expecting to be cut off. And three times, to my surprise, the drivers yielded to me and let me continue. Drivers in New York are as crazy and aggressive as can be, but it turns out they respect cyclists!

Up I rode into the Yorkville neighborhood, turning left onto 89th St. then left again onto 2nd Avenue to head back downtown. 2nd Avenue has a nice protected bike lane as well, but after a couple of blocks the lane dead-ends due to Second Avenue Subway construction. For a moment I was stymied as to what to do.  I couldn't turn left or turn around, as that would have put me going the wrong way on one-way streets. Turning right would have involved crossing multiple lanes of flowing traffic against the light (New York drivers don't respect cyclists *that* much). That left one option: ride in traffic on a major Manhattan boulevard. Just then a cyclist bombed by me, flowing with the taxis and I spotted a delivery guy biking along the other side of 2nd. Heck, if they could do it, I could too! Off I went, mixing with the traffic. Yes, I took a lane in front of a tour bus to get around some construction. Yes, I got creative - looping left around the curb side of a double-parked UPS truck, then moving right back traffic. This was high stakes riding. I am Frogger, hear me roar! But the funny thing is, in a way it actually felt safer than driving on the same streets. In New York, when you're in a car, the other cars compete with you - it's a Roman chariot race. When you're on a bike, they actually give you some space.

Finally, I turned left onto 78th St. and returned my bike at the corner of 78th and 1st, where I also helped another renter return a bike. The Citibike kiosks work pretty much the same way as CaBi, and so I was the relative "pro" even though it was my first ride too.

From there I walked up 1st Ave. to the first coffee I could find, at Agata & Valentina. Nothing fancy - just a plain old decaf. I saw a nice looking chocolate biscotti displayed in a jar on the counter and ordered it. The woman behind the counter said that it was actually only half a biscotti and so she'd give it to me for free. Another tribute to my mother-in-law, who loved free stuff.

Coffee and free mezzo-biscotti at Agata & Valentina

An exhilarating ride capturing the energy and excitement my mother-in-law loved about her city.

As a postscript, I've got to mention that as a freshman in college I did a project in "Engineering Design 101" class about adding bike lanes in New York City. This was a pretty way-out idea back in those days, when we were all still riding high wheel velocipedes and cars were king. It's mind-blowing to me to see similar ideas actually come to fruition a mere 135 years later.

Mea culpa: when it was time to load up at the end of the trip I double-parked and blocked the bike lane, just like everyone else.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/771760532

Bay Ridge Run

Thomas Wolfe wrote that "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn." Well, it's certainly true that even most of its inhabitants don't know it all. I went out for a run while back in Brooklyn for a visit. I had never realized before how easy it is to get from the Hotel Gregory in Bay Ridge onto the Shore Parkway jogging and bike path that runs along New York Bay. In fact, I can't remember ever having explored this path before despite my having admired it a gazillion times while cruising along the adjacent Belt Parkway (never mind that I should have been watching the road, not the bike path). The path offers a gorgeous view of the harbor, punctuated by the towering visage of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. When it opened this bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world and it's still the longest in the U.S. (the latter according to Wikipedia).

There's a real difference in feel between Brooklyn and DC. In the early mornings the W&OD trail near my house is filled with people grimly set on accomplishing some goal - getting their cardio in, doing some mileage. Washington is all about goals, all about the ends, not the means. Everyone is decked out in serious exercise attire, the better to efficiently make their milestones - beating yesterday's time, going the distance.

In contrast, the Shore trail in Brooklyn feels almost like a party at 7 AM. Yeah, there are serious runners, but there are also people just strolling along enjoying the breeze and the view. One guy had set up a lawn chair and was reading the paper. People on bikes pedaled past at a moderate pace - wearing street clothes, no less. Such behavior would be frowned upon among the spandex-clad, breakneck speed "serious" bikers of DC. A group did tai chi with swords. A few people leaned on the railing and watched the ships go by. The people along the Shore trail were really in the moment, enjoying where they were and the experience of being there, not whether their heart rates were in the target zone.

I'm a Brooklynite by background but also an adopted DC'r, so I split the difference. Yes, I had a big grin on my face as I padded along the trail in my Vibrams - the sight of the bridge and the oh-so clearly Brooklyn people made me happy. But, I was also there for serious exercise. After overdoing it a bit on the run (I kept going after one of Achilles tendons screamed "Stop!") I did some exercises at a park bench - dips, squats, lunges, bootslappers, push-ups. This being New York, no one raised an eyebrow at my odd antics. The ground on the trail was a little too trashy to get down on the ground and do exercises so I passed for the moment on some of my routine. I walked up to a little park along the higher level path on the other side of the Belt where I had seen the tai chi practitioners earlier. The ground was cleaner there so I did a few more exercises. After this I thought I was done but my walk back to the hotel took me past Ft. Hamilton High School. I wandered onto the field, where I found a soccer team practicing some odd drills, urging each other on in Spanish. The field itself was artificial turf and badly needed vacuuming -- or whatever it is you do to clean the schmutz off of Astroturf, but still quite usable. I found a quiet corner away from the soccer team and did abdominal work. Finally, I headed back to the hotel and woke up the boys.

I miss that part of the New York attitude - life is a party, go out and enjoy! Washington is so damn serious. I like the (marginally) slower pace of DC, but can't we learn to have some fun?