Thanks Rapha for motivating me to round out my miles for the year and finally start documenting some of my favorite routes. Well, it was December 23rd and I wanted to put these 500 km into my legs as quickly as possible. Too bad all this holiday stuff was about to get in the way. By the end of the 500km I hope to have a photo journal all the way out to Orient Point, and then some.
My ride today began, as they usually do, one block from the East River in Brooklyn:
Check out that tail wind. For once, nature was on my side!
The challenge for today was to get the hell out of NYC, or Brooklyn, to those of you that only consider Manhattan to be New York City (New York City is made up of five boroughs, three of which you’ll see photos of in this post). I rode down to the water–I use the term loosely–and started heading north. Here is about as good a view of Manhattan as you’re going to get in this part of town (I could’ve adjusted the exposure or not put my finger in the shot, but I like the way it all comes together):
Unfortunately I was going this way:
And so I began to make my way out:
Yep, East.
Eventually I hit the Grand Central Parkway. Once you get here, the city begins to change. I followed the parkway (who comes up with these stupid names? Oh) south for a bit, and hit the elevated 7 subway tracks.
At this point I made a left under the tracks, followed by a quick right into Flushing Meadows Park, home of this place:
…and very close to this place (which I only noticed once the leaves fell off the trees this year):
I passed near the Kissena Velodrome:
…and hooked up with the remnants of the Long Island Motor Parkway for a brief moment. Where did the city go?:
Oh, there it is. The Long Island Expressway. Looks like a good day to be biking east rather than driving:
Suckers.
The service road directly to the right of the LIE would be my way out:
I think of this as the last traffic light in Queens. Whether it actually is or not, I do not know:
Ok I just looked it up. That is actually the last traffic light in Queens.
Things get significantly more enjoyable around this point.
Try to figure out how I managed this self-portrait:
Now that I’ve gotten this blog out of Queens and so out of New York City as defined by yours truly, I’m going to go to bed so I can continue this mileage (kilometer?) challenge tomorrow. I’ll put up GPS data and write up part two of day one next.
Posted on December 24, 2010
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