I’ve been making the occasional appearance at my office for a few weeks now, and I’ve noticed that there are signs of NYC groaning back to life after our COVID-forced slumber. While the paper has been talking about it, a much more visceral metric has been experiencing the steady uptick in crowds at brunch and passengers in subway cars. Steadily, morning commute-hour trips have seen ever-fuller train cars — nothing like the packed train cars I once knew, but the seats are full and the standing areas are occupied.

“I don’t want to go back to that,” I thought.

So I’m not! Instead I ordered a beautiful Elliston three-speed from the good folks at State Bicycles in Tempe, AZ.

This last Sunday was a beautiful early Fall day here in Manhattan. We took our bikes down to the recently opened Midtown West / St. George ferry line down at pier 79. As it just so happened, another person waiting for the boat was from SI and gave us the tip on “Snug Harbor” as a wonderful park to check out. We decided to go with his plan. It was a short two miles or so to the ferry, then a pleasant 40 minute ride out to SI via a stop in Battery Park City. After that it was about a 20 minute cycle around the northern edge of the island to the park.