June 28, 2020
You couldn’t stay indoors all the time of course, at least not now in June when the number of virus cases had dropped so much. So we went on another bike ride. This time we headed towards Battery Park and the most southern tip of Manhattan. We started off by biking across Manhattan towards Riverside Park (from the east side to the west side). There we had a breakfast bagel, from one of the famous bagel shops I don’t remember the name of before we headed south. The bagels were no sensation, but they tasted good. The whitefish topping was definitely the go to at this place, quite suprisingly since I always love the lox option. It was the end of June, and just like any other day it was hot. Very hot.
Up north on Manhattan we didn’t really have any bike traffic, but as with everything it started to pick up as we made our way south. Or that could maybe also be explained by the fact that the bike trail narrows here and there down there.
Eventually we arrived to an empty Battery Park. It wasn’t until then we actually felt how hot it was. We both felt very exhausted and went to some of the park benches in the shadow to relax a bit. To my surprise it seemed as if the boats that take you to Ellis Island had started to take customers again.
We started to move towards the east side of the southern tip, and started the long way home.
As we approached Brooklyn Bridge I don’t know what flew into me, but I yelled to W, - Don’t you think we should bike across the Brooklyn Bridge now when there are so few people in the city? I had been so tired, and I was still pretty tired, but the thought of finally biking across the Brooklyn Bridge energized me. Of course this was also in the midst of all the protest going on, and rightfully so. The case of defunding the police is very complicated but somethings got to change, seriously. If you haven’t already check the play by play of Breanna Taylors murder. It’s actually kind of disturbing and makes me so angry, but that is a totally different story, and what is even more disturbing is that there are countless of other stories like this one.
I guess that after the trip over to Brooklyn we really started the long way home. Not only did we do Brooklyn Bridge, but we also decided to take on Williamsburg Bridge while we were at it. I know, don’t ask me what we were thinking. It was a bit complicated to follow the bike route to the famous pink Williamsburg bridge but we finally arrived and got back to Manhattan.
At this point we were all out of water and the heat, talk about the heat. I was not in a good mood and needed some energy. Luckily we found a vending machine that carried Gatorade and the day was saved.
About 25 miles later, and several hours from the start in Riverside park we finally got to our street in East Harlem. I could hardly carry my bike up the stairs. But as I was laying on the floor in our cold apartment I silently promised myself to never ever do that again.
