What with our very late arival at our motel I gave up on the thought of riding New York City. We had over 400 miles to get home and I knew we would not get out of the motel until late. I just figured on getting on the road at 11 and heading home.
Around 10 i got a text from Mark asking if NYC was still on. Something snapped in my brain and I checked the route in my laptop. It said we could do NYC and only add 30 miles to the trip home. In a fit of brainless reaction, I texted him back that we were,in fact, going to ride NYC.
We actually got back on the road at 10:30 and took the Palisaids Parkway to the George Washington Bridge. It was $7 to cross this bridge! Welcome to NYC!
Once into the city our first destination was Times Square. The Sunday traffic really was not very bad. I got into the spirit and blew my horn at people. I saw a transvestite hooker. I saw the ball.
New York has a lot of construction going on, yet their roads are in pretty sad shape for the most part.
Here is Mark in Times Square.
I could spend a lot of time in this city, and I hope I can go back soon when I have more time to explore. It is a real teaser when you are on a tight time frame and you are having fun and watching the time fly. In some ways riding NYC is like riding the Gap. It sure is compeditive.
We made our way south to Battery Park, passing by many things I have seen in pictures before, including the site of the World Trade Center. We stopped for lunch at Battery Park where they served me the biggest crawdad I ever ate.
Above you will see our waiter. He was either pretending to be French or he may have actually been French. I think he was pretending because he handled my silliness far better than a real Frenchman would. He actually had a sense of humor, so I suspect he was faking.
It was great hanging out and watching all the boats, ferries, helicopters, and whatnot going about. Eventually we had to get back on the road. Our path out was to be the Holland Tunnel, and just as we left Battery Park my GPS quit on me. This was a huge problem. I was coubnting 100% on the GPS and had absolutely no idea where I was going. I had to fake my way through and this is where the driving got super compeditive. The great thing was I was getting excellent video, or so I thought. It turns out I never stopped the video at Battery Park and my memory card was full so I got none of this great stuff on video! You can’t imagine how much it bummed me out when I discovered this.
Eventually we found our way through the tunnel and then got lost in Jersey. It was a real struggle since my GPS kept dieing on me. Eventually Mark took the lead with his working GPS and got us out of Jersey.
We basically took 80 all the way home. Ran into a few rainstorms on the way. A ways out we decided to split uop because Mark wanted to take his time home, and letb me tell you 80 is a lonely road on the eastern side of PA at night. Not much but trees and darkness.
I kept the throttle pinned and tried to ignore the pain in my rear end and ended up making it home a little after 11PM.
All in all it was a really great ride. I saw many new things and put a few places on the list to return to and explore in more detail. My only regret is that my tiome was so limited, but no matter how much time I have it never seems like enough.