On the road again
NYC >> Hopewell Jctn | 148km | 946m | 6h10m
September 2, 2024 | 24ºC, partly cloudy
Leaving New York
Two days is by far not enough to really explore New York. I’ve been in this city many times and each visit is unique and always too short. But we’re on a bike trip; moving on is part of the whole idea. The longer you stay somewhere, the harder it gets to leave.
We had a long day of cycling ahead. Our planned route showed almost 150 kilometers and close to 1000m of climbing, while generally following the same path as three days ago, only north-bound. Knowing that we’d spend long hours on the bikes and not knowing how challenging downtown cycling would be, we started extra early today and left the hotel at 6:30 in the morning. It was Labour Day in the U.S., and the streets relatively quiet. And yet, it took us forever to cover the 15 kilometers to Washington Bridge, where we planned to cross the Hudson River into New Jersey. Closed bike paths, bike lanes blocked by cars (including permanently parked police vehicles), and red lights at each and every intersection.
Meeting the local roadies
When we finally crossed the bridge to the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, we found ourselves surrounded by numerous other cyclists, most of which on road bikes and apparently parts of cycling groups. It seemed like we came across a popular local cycling route! We did not hesitate long and just followed the crowed who happened to also be moving north-bound, just not on the exact road that I had plotted on the map. You can’t go wrong sticking to the hive! We had plenty of fun zooming among hundreds of ambitious hobby cyclists following the otherwise pretty trafficked highway 9W on it’s rolling way along the river (without any remarkable views, though, which were blocked by a major parkway between us and the Hudson).
We spent more than 30 kilometers on that route, and 45 in total, before we crossed the river one last time on our trip. A safe bikepath led us across an incredibly long Tappan Zee Bridge (5 kilometers!) into Sleepy Hollow, where we had our first breakfast of today.
Back on the trail
Once we crossed the river, we were back on the original Empire State Trail track. At this point I was very happy about our decicion to take a somewhat different route out of town and avoid having to re-ride the entire section. And now, after an hour through downtown and two more hours on busy streets, we felt ready to return to the bikepaths closer to nature. While on Labour Day the paths were much more frequented by weekenders than last week Friday, it was still an enjoyable ride.
We rode the section that we decided to shortcut on our way south (see day 07) and did not regret adding those extra kilometers. This part of the trail really resembled what the whole route was generally about: a calm bike path following old train tracks and canals. Far enough away from towns or tourist attractions the number of people on the path sank drastically, too. Or may this have been related to that continuous uphill riding for a very long time?
In turn, today’s final 20 kilometers treated us with a constant downhill and made that day appear not too difficult amidst the overall distance. We ended up staying in the same shared AirBnB as a we did three days ago.
Back to top | Previous Day | Next Day
South-bound: Day 01 | Day 02 | Day 03 | Day 04 | Day 05 | Day 06 | Day 07 | Day 08
North-bound: Day 09 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15