what about the plastic animals?

Great Allegheny Passage

Yesterday's paper had a story about the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail that runs from McKeesport, PA to Cumberland, MD.  I was on that trail!  I had a very pleasant ride through Connellsville and up to Dawson and back one morning.  The arch greets riders as they head south into Connellsville.

Habits a Flyin'

Riding up the bike trail along the Hudson you come across this pavilion (or is it a pergola?) a little ways north of the George Washington Bridge.  I think it was a viewing/waiting area for a train station that used to be down by the river back when upper Manhattan was a weekend getaway destination for people in lower Manhattan.

The weather was a little drizzly when I visited on Sunday.  You can tell I was riding my bike because the pictures are fatter, meaning I was using the cranky point-and-shoot camera.

The greenway runs along the river until it meets the bridge.  There it shoots up a steep incline and over the railroad tracks, where the trail levels out alongside the northbound Henry Hudson Parkway.  I stopped under the bridge to catch my breath and check out the little red lighthouse.  As I started up the hill I was startled by three nuns speeding down the hill, habits and wimples flying in the breeze.  It was not a sight I was expecting!

Random:  Happy Birthday Buck and Porter!

Harlem Piers Park Opens!

View from the south end of the park

People on the pier

Fish cleaning station.

There are several of these unexplained signs

Bicyclists no longer have to divert onto 12th Ave.

Arriving home late Thursday night I noticed that the Harlem Piers Park opened while I was away.  It's a year or two behind schedule, and not all the park is open or finished, but it is finally open.

Currently the best thing about the park is that bicyclists can stay on the bike path and don't have to ride in the heavy and semi-lawless traffic under the Riverside Drive viaduct.  Fairway is across the street, so this is going to be a convenient spot to take a break.

There are plans to have a ferry from Weehawken (that's the ramp in the bottom photo) and to open the southernmost pier to kayaks and such.

Trivia question for the older New Yorker and/or Chuck Barris fan:  In the middle photo, what did those tall apartment buildings across the river replace?

Tangled Up in Blue

This was wrapped-up bicycle coincidence weekend.  Jeff sent me a link to a funny story about a USC honorary society wrapping all the bicycles on campus with plastic wrap.  They even managed to wrap a student, who was apparently too sleepy to notice that he was being wrapped as he unlocked his bike.

Unbeknownst to Jeff, I ran across this pink Panasonic on Saturday afternoon in Dumbo. 

Am I writing Dumbo correctly?  Has the abbreviation for Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass, made it's way from acronym (DUMBO) to word (Dumbo)?

Another question:  If you were to buy a computer and that purchase came with a $100 rebate on a limited selection of printers (some of which cost $99.95 and would therefore be free), would you get the printer even though you don't want or need it?

Holes Along the East River Bike Path

The bike/pedestrian path along the East River south of 120th St. deteriorated rather badly over the winter.  There's been small holes cordoned off the past couple of years but these are giant festering wounds. 

Over the past several years the city has been steadily extending the bike paths along the East, Hudson and Harlem Rivers.  Someday bicyclists and walkers will be able to more or less circumnavigate the island along the paths.  With completed sections in this state of disrepair I can't imagine that day will arrive anytime soon.

Offensive Orange Bikes

Orange bikes like this one in front of an Apple store began appearing in town a couple of days ago.  It is fashion week and DKNY is using the bikes to bring attention to themselves and their "Explore the City" campaign, which has something to do with bicycling.

While that is all well and good, chaining painted bikes to poles around town is misguided at best.   Since 2005, Visualize Resistance has installed Ghost Bikes, bicycles painted white, as memorials to bicyclists that have died in traffic accidents on the city's streets.  Since it's start the Ghost Bike Project has grown to a couple dozen locations in the United States and several other countries.

Regretfully, there are way too many Ghost Bikes in the city.  Forty-two are listed on the Ghost Bike website.  Some of the Ghost Bikes are in neighborhoods where designers from DKNY would frequent.  There are also two Ghost Bikes within a couple blocks of the DKNY offices.  Given this you have to assume they didn't come up with the orange bike idea in a vacuum.  Someone clearly saw the white bicycles and decided orange would make a great ad campaign. 

Adding to their cluelessness is the photo on their web page about riding in the city.  They mention safe bicycling and the city's free helmet program.  The accompanying photo shows a woman sitting on the handlebars while a guy in long pants rides a bike across a bumpy Belgian block street.  Neither rider is wearing a helmet.  What is the message we are supposed to take away?  Beautiful people do not need helmets?  Helmets are not necessary for models because they can't suffer brain injuries?

Although the NYPD usually turns a blind eye to it, it is illegal to chain bicycles to trees, and the police have been removing the DKNY bikes.

Mo Gridder's

Sticking with the barbecue theme, let's move from pastoral Vermont to the gritty side of New York.  If you are hungry for ribs and your car needs a new radiator, have I got a place for you.  Mo Gridder's BBQ is located at a car repair shop in the Hunt's Point section of the Bronx.  When the car repair shop is open, Mo pulls out the 35-foot long barbecue pit and gets cooking.  The waiting area for the shop doubles as the dining area.  A couple of picnic tables are set up should you want to eat outside and take in the auto repair shops, food distribution warehouses, and strip joints.

As a nod to the mostly Hispanic workforce in the neighborhood, Mo serves his barbecue on Spanish rice.  I went up to Mo's twice this past summer.  The first time on a bike ride.  The ride up was fun, but ingesting all that protein made for a slow return trip.  A second trip was made by car with several teachers.  The ribs were okay on the first trip and pretty great on the second visit.

Down the block, past the strip joint, is a small park containing a tiny cemetery.  The cemetery is the Hunt family burial ground, the neighborhood is on the grounds of the former Hunt estate, and contains the graves of several members of the prominent early 19th century Hunt, Leggett and Willett families.

The Big Apple in Iowa City

Metrocard festooned bike, downtown Iowa City

New York NY Fresh Deli, downtown Iowa City

Is there anything more enjoyable for non-New Yorkers than having a New Yorker discuss signs of New York they have noticed on travels far away from New York?  I think not!  The bottom photo reminds me of a photo project I've never undertaken:  Businesses that use the New York skyline on their storefronts.

Under Wraps

I read yesterday about how NYU has teamed with Times Up! to recycle abandoned bicycles on the NYU campus.  A small grant from the university pays for new parts.  Volunteers at Times Up! repair the bikes.  So far 39 bicycles have been recycled. 

The lovingly wrapped bike above was next to Lerner Hall on Columbia's campus yesterday.   Given the wrapping it probably isn't abandoned.

A Trip to Fort Lee

Palisades from the George Washington Bridge.  The park on the water is where the carnival scene in the movie Big takes place.

George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee Historical Park

Tasty cheese fries and chili dog at Hiram's.  The dog is deep fried in the north Jersey fashion.

Hideous McMansion under construction in Fort Lee.

Another Sunday, another 20 mile bike ride.  This time it was an indirect ride to Fort Lee, New Jersey.  Indirect because it went up around the northern tip of Manhattan before heading across the George Washington Bridge into suburbia. 

Cycling across the bridge is fun.  Taking photos while on the bridge is not recommended.  What you don't notice while riding is that the bridge bounces, a lot, as trucks drive across it.

Back to Ohio:  12 second video of a cow at Young's Jersey Dairy.