Arrival (Day -1)
Bus ride from Portsmouth, NH to NYC, 5 miles on the bike and a ferry ride across the Hudson to Jersey City for Jim and plane ride from Oakland, CA to Newark, NJ plus two short train rides for Len.
The day began at 4:30 am for Jim. Up, SSS, eat breakfast and put panniers in the car. I’d loaded the bike the day before knowing it was likely to be raining in the morning – it was. An hour’s drive found us at the C&J bus station in Portsmouth, NH. I was worried about there being enough space for my bike on the bus but as it turned out, there was plenty. The bus was due to arrive in NYC at 11:45 am. We arrived at 1:30 pm. The traffic was heavy, and the rain was heavier. As the bus driver approaches NYC and is trying to get to 42nd street, he consults GPS traffic reports and then decides how to get downtown. First, we crossed the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey then took the Lincoln Tunnel back into NYC to arrive at the 42nd St. Port Authority Bus Station. I unloaded my bike and my paniers but left my computer bag on the bus. Fortunately, the driver hadn’t gone far, and I was able to retrieve the piece of equipment that would allow us to create in real time (sort of) the masterpiece you’re about to read. I originally thought I’d need to take a train to Jersey City from the Port Authority but realized that if I rode my bike down the Greenway to the Battery Park ferry station, I could cross the Hudson in 7 minutes on the ferry and ride on the quay to the hotel and never be on a street in Jersey City. The rain had nearly stopped by the time I left the bus station and after riding 3 blocks on city streets (turns out NYC has bike lanes on selected streets), I turned south with a tail wind and easily rode the 5 miles to Battery Park.
Len departed San Francisco mid-morning and arrived in Newark about 6:30 pm. Len realized he had arrived at the Big Apple when he was too slow at the train ticket vending machine, and he got yelled at. Len thinks, “Oh boy, I’m back in the land of the impatient.” This was confirmed by the constant horn honking in NYC. We gathered at the hotel. Len was able to ship his bike to the hotel a couple of weeks early.
Jersey City (Day 0)
9/6/2022 – 9/7/2022
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After our first duty in the morning, breakfast, we unboxed Len’s bike and refolded the box for shipment to New Hampshire. We found a nearby FedEx shipping store, sent the box on it’s way and went across the street to the Post Office to ship some metal parts that couldn’t be shipped with the bike.
Those duties completed, we headed to lunch at the Taste of Northern China. We had soup dumplings and other delicious items. The dumplings are called “Xiao long bao,” in Chinese – given the chance, you must try them – a dumpling filled with meat and soup – there’s a trick to eating them without getting wet. Len will be going back to the restaurant when he returns to NYC at the end of the ride.
The rest of the afternoon was spent riding around to several bike shops in search of a new phone mount for Jim and gloves for Len. We visited the Jersey City Bike Company. The owner was one of the friendliest people we encountered on the entire trip. He had a used phone mount that he sold to Jim for half price. He was very interested in our trip, and we spent quite a bit of time talking to him about that. Unfortunately, he didn’t have gloves in Len’s size, so we were off to another bike shop, Grove Street Bicycles. There we found gloves for Len and the perfect bicycle accessory for Toby, a flatbed trailer that he could use for towing the BBQ and espresso machine we’ve long thought were essential for the perfect bike touring trip. We put in a down payment, assuring the bike shop people that Toby would be back to pick up his prize.
Later in the afternoon we stopped in Exchange Place near our hotel to view the Katyn Memorial, pictured below. The inscription has a familiar ring today: “On the seventeenth of September 1939 the Polish Army, engaged in fierce combat against the Germans, was attacked from the rear by the Soviet Army. In conspiracy with Hitler (The Ribbentrop – Molotov Pact) Stalin seized forty-seven percent of Polish land and annexed it to Soviet Russia. Two million Polish citizens including children, women, and senior citizens perished en route to Siberia and at torturous work in Soviet labor camps. From 1944 to 1956, thousands of Polish patriots — soldiers of the underground armies of the A.K., NOW, NSZ, and WIN — were heinously murdered by the Soviet Secret Police (the NKVD). This monument is dedicated to the millions of Polish citizens and heroes who offered their lives in the fight against communism for our and your freedom. Let them have honor and glory for all time.”
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