Parking in New York.

After yesterday gloomy weather, today was a beauty so I was back on the bike exploring my new hood. This is a cylinder of Sheep Meadow in south Central Park. Larger version here.

From Central Park I cruised 100-something blocks north to this - George Washington Bridge, the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge carrying approximately 106 million vehicles per year. The bridge spans the Hudson River and connects the state of New York to the state of New Jersey on the other side.

Looking south along the western shore of Manhattan Island. Downtown is way off in the distance there.

So I left New York and crossed the state line. I was hoping to see a "Welcome to New Jersey" sign or something but there wasn't one. They mustn't like welcoming New Yorkers hehe.

And looking south along the coast of Jersey. Once off the bridge I headed south, got off the busy roads, and just followed my nose. New Jersey is the fourth-smallest US state but its most densely populated. By comparison, New York ranks 27th (out of 50) in terms of size and 7th in terms of population density.

Jersey is also the third-wealthiest US state in terms of median household income, and some of the neighbourhoods I ventured through sure looked like it.

What should we have for dinner?

I heard some commotion down a side street and saw this winner storming out of a bakery ranting and raving as loud as he could at somebody in there hehe. It doesn't matter how wealthy an area is, there never a shortage of douchebags.

Nice neighbourhoods, nice parks, so far so good.

I got a good look at "little" Jim, and I think it's fair to say he eats a lot of his own product.

North Bergen - a progressive community, like the dude up the street there wearing his shorts under his ass with his nickers everywhere.

And after just two months since arriving in New York, I clocked up my first 1,000km on the odometer :) While in the UK it took an average of four months per thousand. I knew I'd been on the bike a lot lately but I didn't realise it was quite that much. My poor ass.

From that point on there was little of interest for the next while, except maybe this random tower that looked like it was missing its castle. I asked three passersby what this was and none of them had a clue hahaha good stuff. Then I noticed a plaque on the gate. It used be a water tower, opened in 1883 but decommissioned just 20 years later.

Then I finally arrived at one of my main reasons for coming here in the first place. This is Hoboken. I'd call it a neighbourhood but it's apparently a city. Given its proximity to both Midtown and Lower Manhattan, a lot of folk make the short work commute into New York from here. So far I've only heard good things about the place and I've been keen to check it out with potential future apartment hunts in mind. Kristina knows someone who lives around here and before I arrived we discussed this place as an option. In the end I decided not to pursue it because the appeal of coming to New York was New York, not living across the water looking at New York.

In a nutshell it's a pretty nice area! Nice leafy streets, cool old stone apartment buildings, and posh-sounding street names like Frank Sinatra Drive hehe (considered to be Hoboken's most famous son).

Hoboken lies on the west bank of the Hudson right across from the Empire State Building towering in the distance. This would have been the perfect spot to witness US Airways Flight 1549 ditch in the Hudson back in 2009 after a bird strike. That flight left LaGuardia (one of New York's three main airports and just a few miles from my apartment) and three minutes later struck a flock of geese just northeast of George Washington Bridge (i.e. the one I just cycled over). Both engines of the Airbus failed completely. When the crew determined they would be unable to reliably reach any airfield they turned southbound and glided over Hudson, finally ditching almost right here. All 155 on board were safely evacuated, and were quickly rescued by commuter ferries that run back and forth between Jersey and Manhattan.

A little further south is Hoboken's downtown area. I wish I had more time to check it out but I liked what I saw of it anyway - it had a very cool vibe about it. The city's population has grown 30% in the last decade and its character has apparently changed a lot from a blue collar town to something more upscale.

So yeah, maybe something to keep in mind. And if it's good enough for these guys... ;)

Further south again was my final destination of the day - Jersey City. This is the entrance to the Holland Tunnel - one of two vehicle tunnels built under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey to Manhattan and considered to be one of the most high-risk terrorist target sites in the United States.

Jersey City also has some posh-sounding street names (my last name for those who don't know me ;)

With its awesome redeveloped waterfront areas consisting mostly of residential towers, hotels and office buildings, Jersey City is New Jersey's second-most populous city and has one of the nation's largest downtowns (American lingo for a CBD or central business district). Being a weekend the place was dead-quiet. I didn't spend a lot of time here because UBS (my client) has an office here somewhere so I may end up over here again at some point and can check it out when it's a bit more chaotic.

The downtown area sits directly across the water from Lower Manhattan. If there was a 'perfect' spot to witness the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, this was it. In the aftermath of the attacks, many people were evacuated by ferry to Jersey City.

The view across the Hudson to Manhattan from downtown Jersey City, with the as-yet unfinished One World Trade Center towering high above it all. Larger version here. And with that, I threw the bike on an underground train, and was back in New York in just minutes.

Oh score!

This is right across the street from my apartment building. It's just one of many in the area and throughout the city. I take it for granted but apparently it's rare here for an apartment to have its own washer and dryer (I assume because living space comes at a premium in New York, and any space saved is worth it). While I was apartment hunting, the tenants of any apartments I looked at that had a washer and dryer made a big song and dance about it as a selling point. So, lucky us.

One of many green areas in Manhattan, this is the 10-acre Bryant Park just a short walk down Sixth Avenue from my work. The park backs on to the New York Public Library, and the entire park is built over an underground structure which houses the library's archives. The lawn (the largest south of Central Park) was cordoned off for regular maintenance but is normally chocker with office workers this time of day (lunchtime). During the winter months the lawn is closed to make way for a free ice skating rink - nice!

Surrounding the lawn there is seating aplenty, a little cafe up the back, table tennis, and...

...you can meet this guy. He's the author, of something. Nobody came to meet him during the time I was there hehe.

These shots were some of the first taken with my new beast - an upgrade to my other beast. Including this I've spent a total of $3,500 over the last few days upgrading my camera equipment. More on that (and the reasons why) later.

Blue moon! We all know the expression but do you know what a blue moon actually is? Well, it's the occurrence of a second full moon in a single calendar month. It's a regular but rare occurrence - the last blue moon was New Year's Eve 2009 and the next won't be until 2015. And this is my first seen from New York :)

This here is Citi Field, home ground of the New York Mets. The Mets and the Yankees are New York's two major league professional baseball teams, and if baseball is your thing then you're in love with either one or the other (but never both!). Despite the full parking lot, there wasn't a game on today. They were all here for...

...this - the US Tennis Open taking place right across the street at the Billie Jean (is not my lover) King National Tennis Center. Both of these venues are a short hike (or bike ride) from my apartment, right in the heart of Queens in Flushing Meadows.

Flushing Meadows is a 500-hectare public park which, aside from the baseball and tennis grounds above, also contains the New York Hall of Science, the Queens Museum of Art, the Queens Theatre in the Park, the Queens Wildlife Center, and the New York State Pavilion - phew! It also contains this huge thing on the left - the Unisphere, a 12-storey high, spherical stainless steel representation of the Earth. It was built as the theme symbol for the 1964 New York World's Fair.

And of course, the park wouldn't be complete without a whopping great American flag.

From Flushing Meadows I ventured into the neighbourhood of Flushing itself. I knew nothing about Flushing before coming here, other than The Nanny was from here hehe (watch this if you don't know what I'm talking about and see whether it jogs your memory). Despite knowing nothing about it, I really didn't expect what I found. The main commercial hub of it all can only be described as little Asia. The white man and his language are well and truly the minorities here. Furthermore, and whether this is the Asian influence or otherwise I'm not sure, it felt dirty pretty unappealing.

So I got the hell out of there and checked out the Flushing suburbia instead. This area is known as Broadway-Flushing, and is apparently considered to be one of the finest residential neighbourhoods in New York City. The area is "an excellent example of early to mid-20th Century development of a suburban enclave within an urban setting" according to Wikipedia, and part of it has been designated a historic district due its elegant, park-like character. So there you go.

This style of housing seemed to rule the day, not just here but in several areas I've passed through. It's like a house crossed with a barn, with a chimney slapped up the middle.

And to top it all off, the hood has its own park. Lovely. As nice it is, it must really suck that its nearest commercial centre is a dump.

It still amuses me when I see how many properties have an oversized American flag by the front door. It's the only country in the world I've been to where I've seen that.

And if it's not an American flag, it's either your state flag (especially in Texas) or the flag of whatever sports team you're obsessed with (the Yankees in this case).

From there I continued further into Queens and yet another large park - this one called Cunningham Park.

As I was riding along, I noticed this thing chilling in the grass hahaha! I got talking to this dude who owns him. He's a nine-year-old brown iguana which can be found all over South and Central America. This fella also own has a turtle which was wandering around hehe - what a guy.

Further into Cunningham Park I found this. Since arriving in New York, several folk have asked why I ride a mountain bike in the city as opposed to a road bike. The answer is that, despite its heavier weight, a mountain bike gives you the best of all worlds. It's perfectly fine on the road (and it can deal with all the pot holes a lot better), and when you want to take it off-road you can. The reply I usually get here is "Where can you take it off road in New York?!" Fair point. There are only a few real off-roading locations in the city for mountain biking and this is one of them. Although I knew about this place, I stumbled upon it by accident today. I spent about an hour going nuts (and bloody hell it was fun) but I had my road tyres on which are quite slick, as opposed to my off-road tyres which are textured. As such I was sliding all over the place but it was still a real good ol' time :)