New York, New York

 

The first ride in my Road Biking NJ book is a ride across the George Washington Bridge into New York City. New York is a crowded and congested city and not the easiest place to try and ride a bike but there are a few cool places that you can ride that can be a fun change of pace. One of the cool places to ride is the GW Bridge. It is relatively easy to ride across the bridge into NY and ride along the Hudson and check out the skyline. 

I haven't ridden in New York city for at least 10 years so when Dave posted a ride up there I decided to give it a try. The main attraction for me was riding over the new Tappan Zee bridge. A pair of new bridges has replace the old bridge and there is now a bike path across the Hudson. We did this route which heads up route 9W on the NJ side of the river to the town of Piermont and the over the Tappan Zee bridge. 

9W is a busy road along the Hudson but is has a wide shoulder most of the way and there are so many biker riding the road that the cars are use to sharing the road. 9W is the main escape route for people biking out of the city. One of the most popular ride for people in the city to do is to head across the GW bridge up to Piermount for lunch and the head back to the city.

When we rode through Piermount all the street side restaurants where filled with bikers. It looked like bikers took over the town which is what they actually did.

In Piermount we got a look at the new Tappan Zee (which is really call the Mario Cuomo bridge now but nobody is every going to call it that). 

 

Its hard to tell from the picture but there are actually two side by side bridges. Until the past year I drove over the old and the the new Tappan Zee once every couple of months for work and enjoyed watching the progress. They did a really good job with the bike path.

Its a nice wide path with plexiglass on both sides to give some protection from the wind. There are 4 or 5 observation bump outs along the path where you can stop and look at the views or take pictures.

I stopped at a few of them to try and few pictures of the Hudson Valley but with the flat light of the overcast skies none of the pictures really came out that good.

We had a quick rest stop at pizza and bagel shop on the other side of the bridge before climbing up the side of a hill to get to a rail trail along the Saw Mill parkway. 

The trail was tree line and somewhat scenic. It was 15 miles long and got us most of the way back to the GW bridge. The main problem with the path was the surface. It was paved and had the usual cracks and bump caused by tree roots which wasn't too bad. However there were a bunch of spots where the pavement was a total washboard with large bumps that rattled my frame and teeth. I actually hit a few bumps so hard I thought I would crack my frame. 

The 20 of us got spread out on the path and ended up meeting up at the end of the path by the golf course. By the time I got to the end of the path we were missing 4 people including Laura and Jim. We got word that Laura broke a seat post and didn't know exactly what happen until she showed up 15 mins later and explain that the bolt that held her seat on sheered off. Luckily Jim had the brilliant idea to try a bolt that was holding his head tube cover plate on which fit well enough to keep Laura seat on. 

From the golf course we made our way along the streets in the Bronx's toward the GW bridge. Although there was a bike lane there were a lot of cars double park in it and so we rode as safe as we could in the Sunday traffic. I went into bike messenger mode and swerved around parked cars and people and even had to ride on a side walk or two to get to the bridge. This was the worst part of the ride but something you just have to deal with when riding in the city. 

We were got split up again getting to the GW bridge. The bike path on the GW is no where near as nice as the one on the Tappan Zee. Its more like a narrow sidewalk with a couple of 90 degree turns that go around the metal bridge towers. With bikes going in both directions there are many places for a head on crash if you are not careful.

I did manage to get a picture of the city from the bridge. 

After making it over the bridge it was only a couple of miles back to the start. I'm glad I did this ride as it was a fun adventure but it may be a few years before I do another urban ride like this.