I DID IT!!! :)

and it wasn't even very hard!!


So, the 42-mile New York City Bike Tour was yesterday. I guess its official name is the 5-Boro NYC Bike Tour. Anyway, it was a loooooong day filled with lots of waiting, mixed in with a little bit of biking. Or at least that's what it felt like. We had to wake up at 4am, took the 5:00 train (with our bikes, of course), were at Grand Central by 6:00, biked down to lower Manhattan, found the start line by ~6:45... and proceeded to wait. and wait. and wait. Until we finally got to leave at about 8:30! Well, that excitement only lasted for about 20 minutes, when we made it to 48th St. and everything was backed up. We ended up walking our bikes all the way up to 59th St and into Central Park. That took an hour and a half. I guess trying to fit 4 lanes-wide of people onto a one-lane bike path in Central Park is a little tricky. The ride through Central Park was a lot of fun -- beautiful!! :) Next stop was Harlem, where some people had to use the bathroom. Then the route took us into the across a bridge (at this point I've forgotten a lot of the names) into the Bronx. Back to Manhattan after that, where we got to ride on an express way! :) and through a tunnel (with sweet acoustics!). Then across another bridge into Queens for a ways (sweeeeet views of NYC across the East River!!! -- I'll upload some pictures when I get a chance). Then down through Brooklyn (more sweet views across the river), onto another express way. After awhile on here we knew it was close to the end because we could see the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge -- which would take us to the finish line and festival on Staten Island. I have some great pictures of this beautiful bridge. Now whenever I see it, I can say I biked across it!
The ride across the bridge was fun, and it brought us directly to the festival. So it was kind of a cool finish line. We took some pictures at the festival, bought a t-shirt, then made the 3 mile journey to another side of the island to catch the Staten Island Ferry. Well, this process ended up taking over 2 hours (I guess when you and 10,000 other people want to get on a ferry that only holds in the 100s of people, it's going to take awhile). We got really, really sick of waiting throughout the day. There was a couple of other times during the day that we had to wait to get onto a road, or bridge, or something else. (:S = not cool) We found out from other bikers who have done this tour before that you usually don't have to wait that much. In other years the only waiting is at the line-up and starting line. They usually "only" have 30,000 people. But yesterday there were 42,000 people. So I guess 12,000 more people make a big difference!
My overall impression of the day was: The biking was great, fun, not hard, but all of the waiting took away from that.
I'm glad I can tell you all that I did it! :)
Now today I'm very sore! I had a hard time sleeping because I was so sore. I know that doesn't make much sense, but I woke up many times because my legs hurt.
I'm not promising, but I'll try to put up pictures soon!