From one botched photo (finger in shot of Manhattan and the East river–the western geographic boundary of Long Island):
To another (finger in shot of one of the eastern ends of Long Island):
So I started cycling in Brooklyn, New York, a few hundred feet from the East River. About as far west as one can go on Long Island. A few days later I was on the very other end, at the eastern-most tip of the north fork–with what would become one of the largest blizzards in years about to come from the northeast and decimate the area. You can’t ask for a much better ending to what could easily be a one day bike trip in nice weather (provided you can figure out what to do after you’ve biked 120+ miles and need to head home).
I’m especially proud of day one, because it is amazes me how the metropolis can give way to roads that lack street lights without me really noticing. Trying to capture that change was a lot of the motivation for starting up this blog, but I think that I would need a lot more photos. You might be able to get some sense of it if you flip through my day one posts just looking at the photos. Maybe I’ll try again in the future.
I split the trip up into three parts. Here are google maps of each leg of my journey, without the return trips:
East River to central Suffolk county.
Central Suffolk to Briermere Farms, near Riverhead, NY.
Briermere Farms to Orient Point.
Now I thought that this was the end of it. Challenge over–just get the rest of the 500 km in during the week. Well, mother nature had something to say about that. Churning out those miles in the wake of this blizzard has been a true challenge, what with stuff like this:
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and this:
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…going on. That is only a bit of the trouble that I witnessed!
I must admit that this was more difficult than I thought it would be. Hats off to the folks at Rapha for planting this idea in my head. And since this was a Rapha inspired week, I’d also like to thank the Belgian cap and Winter bibs that got me through every day of this week. I’m getting in bed now, and I think I have a fever. Expect my medical bills within the week (kidding).
Day 1: 106.5 km (Part 2) (Garmin)
Total distance travelled: 509 km.
Bones broken? None (and with that out of the way…)
Days of work missed? One.
Laws broken? A couple. The stand-out crime being jumping onto the automobile roadway of the Queensboro bridge to get into Manhattan post-blizzard on Tuesday.
Hours in the snow? A few.
Hours on the snow? More than a few.
Bicycles used? Three.
Fun? Yep!
If you read this and have any questions about routing (or anything, really), feel free to get in touch with me. It took a bit of asking around and some trial and error to figure out routes that I liked.
Posted on December 29, 2010
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