D6 NE City Escape

Having a year or more worth of geometry in high school is too much geometry. However, most people, having had that much geometry, would recognize that traveling along three sides of a rectangle is a lot further than traveling along one side. Apparently, my geometry teacher wasn’t very good.

It appears the people that built the Empire State Trail had similar geometry teachers. It isn’t straight, but I will say it is amazing.

We have now ridden about 100 miles from the city of New York. Those 100 miles have almost completely been on trail: paved, beautiful, uncrowded, no cars, Trail! They must have spent millions on building this much trail but since there are millions of people stacked on top of each other in the skyscrapers of NY city, I guess there are enough taxes collected. Thankfully almost all of those taxpayers seem to stay in the city. Even riding on a beautiful Saturday the trail was uncrowded.

There were a few interesting things along the trail. Much of where we rode was rail trail. Everything on either side of the trail is private. Rather than simply posting “no trespassing” signs, they have gotten creative. We saw various signs along the way telling us to not go off the trail because of ticks, snakes, railroad (not operational), security (there was a prison), and even a “shooting range”. One sign said: “no trespassing, posted, and patrolled”. I envisioned a bunch of crazy men wandering through the woods in camo shooting at bikers peeing in the woods. Speaking of peeing in the woods.

NY is very safety conscious. Knowing what is best for everyone, the government has passed a number of safety laws. One NY mayor, you might recall, try to outlaw large sodas. At our hotel on Friday night we had a lifeguard – no joke! On the road, there was a sign saying you would be fined $50 if you weren’t wearing a helmet. And apparently, going to the bathroom is dangerous because the state has not put in a single toilet – that we could find – along the entire 100 miles of trail.

Unfortunately, despite the guys in camo, Gloria had to go into the woods. The smile in the picture above was her last as it was just before she slipped and fell on a steep hill after finding her own bathroom in the woods. She twisted her ankle, trying to protect her knee I suspect, and that wasn’t fun. Gratefully it didn’t hurt to peddle, but I’m getting suspicious she might be looking to go home early. Next thing you know she’ll be looking for a section 8 discharge – look it up if you don’t know it. Even if she can’t get a section 8, she will likely need some counseling for PTSD after this trip.