A little exploration along the Hudson

No, not like Henry Hudson...but on a bike

How did it take our family so long to discover biking? We always had a bike or two in the basement of our buildings, but except for spurts of riding in the parks, they languished. C.Z. didn't even learn to ride until she was about nine, because it required special trips to the park with an adult for her to learn--she couldn't just go outside and bang up her knees in the driveway the way most kids do. But no matter, we've become a biking family with a vengeance during the past week.

Last Saturday, Bob brought home an adult-sized hybrid bike for C.Z., and we immediately went on our first family bike ride. I rode C.Z.'s bike, because I wanted to see if I should get the same kind of bike, and also, I'm too short for a full-sized men's bike. C.Z. rode the larger, borrowed hybrid, and Bob rode his old mountain bike. (We felt we had to handicap him somehow, or we'd be left in the dust.) We were just going to go down as far as the Intrepid on 46th St., to see if I liked the bike.

Off we went to the river walk beside the Hudson, in Riverside Park. It was a hot, sunny day and people were out in full force. I wasn't used to cycling through crowds, so I was preoccupied with keeping up with Bob and C.Z. and also trying not to run over any toddlers, dogs, or old ladies. If you know our family, you might guess what happened next. About the time I felt that we should certainly be past the Intrepid by now, I looked up and saw a sign that said...30th St. Of course, Bob and C.Z. were way ahead, so I couldn't ask any questions; I could only try my best to keep up. So I kept pedaling through little cross walks with flashing bikes on them, past roller bladers, past kids on dirt bikes, past tourists walking four abreast on both sides of the path, past women in five inch heels darting across the path with shopping bags, and occasionally stopping for traffic, until we got to a very circuitous detour at the World Trade Center--twice the distance from home as originally planned.

(It might help for distance purposes to know that 20 blocks equal one mile, and for direction purposes to know that the block numbers increase as you go north.)

"I thought we'd go see Battery Park," was Bob's explanation when I finally caught up with him. Within minutes we were navigating a tight circle next to such a long line of people that it could only have been for the Statue of Liberty with its newly reopened crown. There Bob disappeared, I took a wrong turn, and then sat for a while drinking water on a bench. I finally found him (and C.Z.) on the other side of a crowd of saris. They were standing on a low wall watching a clipper ship go by in the sparkling afternoon sun. The people in line were being entertained by the usual Carribean steel drums, the air smelled of sweet roasted peanuts, and people kept taking photos of a sculpture right behind me. Just across the water in the haze stood the Statue of Liberty. It was worth the 14 mile round trip.

This morning, C.Z. and I went out on our own while Bob biked up the Hudson on the New Jersey side. C.Z. and I went north along the Hudson, too, but we stayed in Manhattan. We went as far along the river path as we had been before, which was to about 150th St. There we seemed to lose the path, which was disappointing because we could see the Little Red Lighthouse gleaming in the distance. But we backtracked a bit and found that the path had simply taken a sharp right around some ball fields, so on we went, and within a few hundred yards we found the Hudson lapping at our feet again.

The Little Red Lighthouse under the Great Gray (a.k.a. George Washington) Bridge, this morning

Soon we were peddling up to the Lighthouse itself, on a gorgeous, low-humidity day. "I feel like I've actually accomplished something," announced C.Z. "I've always wanted to see the Lighthouse." We watched some stunt planes fly sideways over the Hudson, and catching their spirit of daring, we decided to see if we could go as far north as Fort Tryon Park (190th St.). It took some daring, because we immediately had to climb a mountainously steep hill, but then we had smooth sailing to...where? We passed the highway exit for Ft. Tryon and the Cloisters, but there seemed to be no way to get to the park by bike, we didn't see any lookout points, and we were now high above the Hudson, so we eventually turned around and went home. We felt slightly wimpy at the time, but it turned out we really didn't miss anything, because the bike path ended just around the corner.

We got home just as Bob did, and I made a bacon and egg breakfast with raspberries and coffee for lunch. Then we found out about the small plane colliding with the helicopter along the bike path we'd taken last week. Not right on the path, of course. But no doubt it was just as good that we were heading north.

I hope to get a bike of my own next week, and let C.Z. have hers back. Now that I've figured out how easy it is to get around the city by bike, I think our whole perspective is going to change. It's not a car, but I think it will still take us to New Jersey!

The view north along the Hudson from the lighthouse.