NYC Five Boroughs Ride This Weekend
If you ever wanted a great way to see NYC, try riding a bike on closed roads with 32,000 like minded people at 14 MPH.
This is my 7th tour and I can't help testifying how much fun and how interesting the weekend can be, especially for those who life far away and NYc is a vacation destination.
Here is my edited Wikipedia version.
The tour starts at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan and ends with a festival in Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, (the car free route continues from Fort Wadsworth to the Staten Island ferry allowing participants to make a complete 42 mile loop back to Manhattan). There are three groups of 11,000 doing a staggered start, which is a vast improvement from the mass start of the past.
The tour runs north up the Avenue of the Americas, past Macy's, before entering Central Park. After exiting the park the tour heads north through Harlem on Seventh Avenue, crossing into the Bronx for a short 2-mile (3.2 km) section before re-entering Manhattan via FDR Drive. The FDR portion of the tour runs south through Manhattan under Gracie Mansion before crossing the East River via the Queensboro Bridge into Queens. The first major rest area of the tour is at Astoria Park, Queens.
From Astoria Park the tour crosses south through Queens, over the Pulaski Bridge into Brooklyn, where it follows the waterfront, past the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After crossing under the Brooklyn Bridge, the route follows up and onto the elevated Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Before 2012 it dropped onto the Shore Parkway; in that year it continued on the below-grade Gowanus Expressway and climbed over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge into Staten Island.
Once in Staten Island the tour makes a stop at Fort Wadsworth for a festival, before continuing the last three miles (5 km) to St. George where most riders take the Staten Island Ferry back to Battery Park in Manhattan. Some New Jerseyans return home over the Bayonne Bridge instead.
The tour sells out very quickly and this year is closed, but for a unique fun weekend, the Five Boroughs Bike Tour is a good item to add to your bucket list.