The Disappearing Trail

So my some of my hopes for this morning were dashed: 1. To take the combination of the East Coast Greenway and the 9-11 Trail into New York City. Which included 2. A ferry ride from Jersey City, NJ to NYC, at the Battery Park ferry landing and 3. hopefully a sunny blue-sky day. 

It was a promising start under overcast skies, and early on the ECG and 9-11 Trail were well marked and I traversed a number of residential neighborhoods on the first half of the planned 27 mile ride. 

But somewhere in the outskirts of Newark things began to go wonky. A little bit of rain never hurt anyone, and so it began. Then the slaughterhouse smells — there’s an actual livestock processing plant in this area of Newark — and the smells weren’t the most pleasant.

Then the 9-11 Trail continued through some desolate, trash and glass strewn wasteland beneath a knot of half a dozen major highways intersecting at one of those massive cloverleaf interchanges between the Jersey Turnpike and NYC.

It seemed the type of place bodies might be dumped by nefarious types. And there were some large black garbage bags all about one area. I jest, but it was the sort of area that fills one with dread. And I wasn’t off route, according to both Ride with GPS and cycle.travel I was on the 9-11 Trail.

I think it’s still in need of finishing touches.

So I hightailed it back back to Newark Penn Station and jumped on a New Jersey Transit train the two stops into NYC.

I was quickly greeted by a deluge — New York City in the rain is pretty cool, but the food delivery guys using the bike lanes are absolutely insane drivers — veritable kamikazes launching themselves at traffic wily-nily. Keep your distance if you’re biking thru, give them leeway.

I arrived at the hotel so early that I waited a couple of hours in the lobby to get into my room. 

But I was happy to sit out the torrential downpour. I secured a ticket to the Yankees v Blue Jays at 7:05 tonight, so one of my hopes for today remains alive.

The other is to see an experimental film somewhere like Anthology Archives, but the only screening of a rare experimental film before the game is at MOMA, and so I catch Teo Hernandez’s Maya (1978), before heading out to Yankee Stadium. 

I’m going to the Whitney tomorrow so I’ll get my fix of postmodern art the Whitney Biennial 2026.

So it was half bike tour / half vacation and all fun today — except the desolate garbage netherlands near the Jersey Turnpike. I could have lived without that. 

Day 21:
Start: Clark, NJ
Finish: New York City, NY
Miles: 20.07

I had a great time at Yankee Stadium and th rain stayed away as forecast.  I happened to come on  cap night promotional giveaway. And saw a decent game.

Alas, the Yankees lost 2-0 to the Blue Jays — here’s Paul Goldschmidt making the last out of the game.

I’m trying to sort out some creative way of riding out of NYC on Saturday — which is forecast to be soaker of a day with highs in the 50’s. Oy!

What I’m Reading:

The Museum of Modern Art isn’t hungry
Each wall is perfection
Leger says hello to Picasso
Matisse defines red and green
The paintings are testaments to an achieved order of delight
There are no hot dogs here
No sad sacks

— Jack Galef / “The Museum of Modern Art Isn’t Hungry”