Day 1: Philly to New York (144 miles)

Day 1 Full Flickr Photo Set Here

None of us got much sleep last night. There were many contributing factors to this: lack of preparation, anticipation, tying up loose ends with work, saying our goodbyes... in the end we all suffered. I, personally, got 3 hours of sleep (2:15am-5:15am).

The morning began with a "walking punch" from Kevin. In 20 minutes we were on our way to meet the Bike Club of Philadelphia at the Art Muesum steps. In true form, Peter was chipper and raring to go!
















We met up with Jeremy and we were off on the first leg of our journey...
















The route was conceived by the late Peter Odell to include a diverse variety of terrain. This means that not only would we be traveling through city, suburban, and rural landscapes, but also that we'd be contending with more than one struggle with some pretty serious uphill climbs (read as mountains). That's all well and good on a geared bike, but we really earned our stripes running fixies, struggling uphill with a single gearing and fighting the downhill grades to not spin out of control (thank GOD for installing brakes!). Our valiant efforts did not go unnoticed by our BCP riding buddies.

The mountains being the most physically traumatic part of the trip, the flat lands were both scenic and agreeable...


























































We soaked in some ice cream and local culture in the 'burbs...































I'm all for beautiful scenery as much as the next guy, but after about 2 hours of nothing but, that stuff gets pretty boring and I need some excitment! We hopped the ferry from Hoboken NJ, to cross the Hudson River and then we were back in the thick of it. We thrashed through New York city and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. It was nice to be in our element again dodging pedestrians and weaving through traffic... so much more engaging than riding along flat, open rural roads.




























































We hit our mark in Brooklyn Heights, picked up our bags from the BCP luggage bus and then we STILL had another 10 miles to go to get to our crash pad in Astoria (Queens). Leaving the BCP riders behind, we blazed a trail to Queens using my Treo with TomTom GPS software. This was my first all out test of the TomTom GPS software in bike mode and in a foreign land with which it fared extremely well.

All in all, we rode further than any of us had ever ridden in one day, we made it to New York in 4 individual pieces, we had no mechanical difficulties, impeckable weather, and we met a bunch of new bike friends through the BCP. This trip has success written ALL over it. There's no possible way anything could go wrong from here... (crescendo of ominous music).