From: Christine W <christineweir@hotmail.com>
Subject: Kiwis crossing USA: bye from New York
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 19:47:28 PDT
Hi everyone, from hot and humid New York!!
We made it! Today we rode across the George Washington Bridge and crossed
the state line into New York State, and went through Central Park and some
of Manhattan, so we have been into the Big Apple!
It was an exciting and emotional moment again, standing on the top of that
huge bridge, looking up and down the Hudson River, across to the big city
buildings, back towards the New Jersey side. It hasn't really sunk in too
much that the journey is completed, I guess it will hit home once I get on
the plane on Thursday.
It's just on 6400 km, 4000 miles, 12 weeks today (Monday 28 June) since we
started at Los Angeles Airport, with a lot of apprehension about the
enormity of the journey ahead and wondering if we had enough time to do it.
We are staying with Jon and Susan, who contacted me via email and invited us
to stay in New Jersey. It's about 2 hrs to ride into NYC from here, over
some rather nasty NJ type of short steep hills, however it was good doing it
unloaded today and tolerable because there is only one more time to do it
again when we ride into town with all our luggage and stay at a hostel for
the next 2 days. Madi will ride her bike to JFK airport, and I will send
mine back to Jon who has kindly twisted the arm of his local bike shop to
ship it back home for me.
The support we have received from people throughout this entire journey has
been incredible. As you have read, we have been treated with so much
kindness and generosity everywhere we have gone. It's pretty humbling to
receive this without being able to reciprocate, although many people have
said that they are coming to NZ so I will be keeping them up to those
promises.
Wow, New York City is such a blast! We first went into North Manhattan,
rode around a few streets on the way to Central Park. I thought that it
looked pretty quiet, not what I expected. My picture of NY is yellow taxis
tearing around, traffic jams, lots of people and lots of noise. Where was
all this? It just looked like a normal city scene, people strolling around,
not very much traffic and not very fast. Hmm, this is interesting. We
bought some fruit for lunch from a fruit stall on the street, stood around
watching people for a while and continued on our mission to go to Central
Park.
We went into Central Park, had lunch and did more people watching, it's
certainly fascinating. How come these people are strolling around and not at
work? It looks like some people go into the park for lunch and they roller
blade around or bike around, it's a great place to be. A few people sleeping
on park benches or carrying their possessions around with them, and frequent
police cars patrolling through.
We eventually found the hostel we were looking for, the street it was on was
a 2-piece street, split by a large building in the middle so we went this
way and that and finally found it and booked in.
Then we proceeded towards Times Square, riding on the special bike lane that
is so thoughtfully provided and that nothing but bikes is supposed to use,
however there was a bit of zig zagging required occasionally as cars or
police were parked across our path. We were riding down Broadway, passing
theatres playing Cats, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon. Suddenly the bike path
vanished, we looked up, and we were in Times Square! Now this was what I
thought NY was all about - absolute mayhem. Cars bumper to bumper, honking
horns, screeching brakes, wall to wall people. But where is Times Square -
it's not a square at all, no trees or seats, just the 1/2 price ticket booth
to get the tickets to the shows.
For the next 2 days we will be doing the touristy thing - riding around a
bit, go to see Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, whatever else we
can find. Our finale will be dinner and a show to reward ourselves for a job
well done!
We fly to Amsterdam on Thursday, where Madi has 2 friends meeting us there.
I will hire a bike and we will do some riding around in that lovely FLAT
land, then I will head home on 7th July. Madi and one of her friends will
ride up the River Rhine to Basle in Switzerland, having more adventures on
the way I'm sure.
So it's goodbye for now, until I put the whole story on a web site and let
you know where it is. We have both appreciated so much all the support and
encouragement we have received on the journey, and want to thank everyone
for their virtual presence. It was helpful at times to know that people were
thinking of us and wishing us well. For me it was a huge stretching of my
comfort zone and somehow I think that life will be quite different when I
get back to "normal" whatever that is.
Bye for now, and thanks for coming along
Christine and Madi