The Tour du Brooklyn, and biking around Brooklyn (and eating) afterward.
Date(s): May 25, 2008. Album by Deborah Kosnett. Photos by Deborah Kosnett, Jeff Kosnett. 1 - 40 of 40 Total. 1914 Visits.
1 We stayed at the Hotel Le Bleu, in Brooklyn. Great hotel, comfiest beds!
2 Jeff, all ready to go!
3 Me, too!
4 Lining up at the start of the TduB. Yes, it was a mass start (and a lot of mass stops, unfortunately).
5 Me and 'Stella,' a WW friend. Her Monopoly jersey was cool! Easy to spot in the crowd. We biked together a good part of the way.
6 I tried taking pics while riding - got pretty good at manipulating the camera with one hand.
7 This was one of the lighter clusters in the ride. We actually stopped fairly frequently.
Every time I came upon a good hill shot - with a sea of bikes clearly visible ahead of me - I could not get the camera out quickly enough to snap the scene. Drat.
8 Cruisin' down a wide avenue (Jeff is at left).
9 Jeff moves ahead of me.
10 Snap, snap, snap. Good thing I never dropped the camera.
11 Ah, one of our stopping points! We stood here for maybe 20 minutes. The ride had a police escort, but it was so massive, we had to stop occasionally and let traffic through at major intersections.
12 A better view of the crowd - the road is awash in bike helmets.
13 An even better view of the crowd - Jeff's taller than I am, so he got this shot.
14 This standing around's getting old.
15 Jeff sure thought so.
16 So he took a picture of me taking his picture.
17 This is where we stood. And stood. And stood.
18 Finally, we were moving again.
19 Rest stop! Only we didn't go in the park. We were inching (and standing) for maybe 15 minutes, and learned that the portapotties were 'round the side. We used those, and eschewed the park.
20 Another view of the line to just get IN the park.
21 And here we waited 20 minutes outside the park, just to get moving again. I pulled an energy bar out of my bag and ate it.
22 This park was not the best section of Brooklyn. Even parts of Baltimore don't look this bad. (or maybe they do, but I've not yet seen them.)
23 Close-up. The not-so-good, the bad, and the truly ugly.
24 Finally, we were off again.
25 Apres ride. We bailed about 2 miles from the end, when it started jamming up again.
Now I know why there is no J Street in DC -- it went and defected to Brooklyn. (It is rumored, rightly or wrongly, that there is no J St. in DC because the city founders did not want it to appear to be named after John Jay.)
26 Ah, the DUMBO Starbucks! A great place to end the ride.
27 We found a lovely Turkish place to have lunch. Here's Jeff, just seconds before I managed to douse his bike map with my knocked-over Diet Coke.
28 View from our table.
29 The restaurant. There's a hookah bar in the back garden. We were well far away from that, though.
30 Jeff made sure we knew where we were going. NYC's bike map is actually quite good.
31 After lunch, we took off toward Bay Ridge. This was a semi-industrial street.
32 This place was selling live chickens. Yes. Live. Chickens. In cages. They were halal.
33 These houses in Brooklyn very much reminded me of Baltimore's swell-front rowhouses.
34 Anapoli, a lovely little Greek restaurant, where we sat at the counter and had ice cream.
35 View from a little park in Brooklyn, looking toward the general direction of Manhattan and Staten Island.
36 View from the edge of the park.
37 Close-up of Lower Manhattan.
38 We happened upon the 69th St. Pier, which was very busy.
39 View from the pier.
40 Close-up; Lady Liberty is on the left.
We ended the day with dinner at Buzina Pop, a Brazilian place on Lexington at 73rd, in Manhattan. They had very good caipirinhas.
Just want to say I think it's nice that you are willing to share your photo albums with everyone on the WW messages boards. I caught some of the others as well.
You look FANTASTIC ! The Rome pictures were great too. - jeanne, Mon, 26 May 2008 6:57AM
