Five Boroughs

It was a crazy weekend. Beers on Friday night, a half marathon early Saturday, night in a bar with friends thereafter, and too many cranberry vodkas and not enough sleep later up early again (with a hangover) to do the 43 mile/69 km Five Boroughs Bike Tour, which makes a giant loop through Manhattan, the Bronx (token bit), Queens, Brooklyn and ends at Staten Island. I rode with the weekend's partner in sports craziness, Marie, and Ryan and Mark from Columbia's Asian Studies Institute.

The tour was a great experience: most of the roads were closed, and it started off cool and misty, with a dream-like feeling of cycling down the canyons of Manhattan with no traffic light to stop you.

The cyclists took over entire freeways and used bridges otherwise closed to cyclists, like the Verazzano Narrows bridge. For me, a highlight was crossing the amazing (and spectacularly rusting) Queensborough bridge. We did it in about 5 hours, and then I got home, showered ... and went out again to meet friends.