Out and About!

At last, Spring has sprung in the city.  It just so happens that yesterday was the one day of unremitting sunshine in the midst of a week of overcast skies.  Anyone with even an ounce of sense was outside, enjoying the temperate weather.

No fool I, I climbed on my bike (which I'd not had the chance to ride all week), and biked into the city.  I went up the east side and cut across to Central Park, and actually looped around it a couple times before collapsing in a heap at Sheep Meadow, which is, as you know, my favorite place in the park to sun myself.

 I took my camera along, but the only place I really pulled it out was on the Manhattan Bridge, at the beginning of my journey.  I stopped in the usual place and snapped a couple of quick shots of the Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan in the distance.  It's funny how, even after three years, I still notice that the World Trade Center towers are missing from this shot.  They should be towering over everything else here.

Alas.

Anyway, the thing that was most noticeable was how much green there was in the parks, both at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge which can be seen in the picture above and the one to the right, and the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge , seen below.

Granted, there's still a lot of brown in some of these shots, but I can't tell you how great it is that at least some green is beginning to show through.  It's enough to give a wee bit of hope to those of us who were beginning to believe that winter was never going to give up the ghost.

So the day was beautiful, and I rode hard around my adopted city, trying byways and streets I've never had the chance to ride before.  You know, for all the talk about how crazy and dangerous it is to bike on the streets of Manhattan, I have yet to see it.  I've only once come close to getting hit (and truth be told, it wasn't that close) in almost a year of biking in the city.  And in that instance, I was more to blame than the guy who wasn't paying attention to what was going on around him... I should have been more cautious.

So the ride around Central Park was great, even if it did kick my ass.  The spotty nature of my bike riding the past few months left me really wiped out, and so I crashed at Sheep Meadow for a while.  It was crowded, but not nearly as crowded as I'd expected it to be - though I guess that couldn't be too surprising, since it wasn't exactly sun-bathing weather.

After I rested myself for a while, I made my way over to the West Side, and worked my way south along the bike path over there, which I'd never done before.  It's quite a nice ride.  I crossed back over via the Brooklyn Bridge (which I'd not done since the first day I rode my bike, last August).  I wish I'd have whipped out my camera on the Brooklyn Bridge, but by that point I just wanted to get the hell home and crash!

The rest of the evening was swell, and very relaxing, as you can imagine.  I ordered a pizza and sat around reading.  And, though this may seem a little lame, I dropped off to sleep pretty early.

Hey, whattaya expect?!?