Day 78 - Tour de Bronx

It was a gorgeous day to be on a ride in the borough I've conquered least--the Bronx. Today was the annual 40+ mile Tour de Bronx ride sponsored by both Transportation Alternatives and the office of the Bronx Borough President.

With my time off, I assumed I'd get to see more of the Bronx to round out my knowledge. (I actually thought that abbut a lot of places in the city and have been surprised by how much less of it I've done; I imagined being out and tramping in a new neighborhood each and every day.) But on this ride, I realized I'd really seen quite a lot of the Bronx already. There were only a few legs for a few miles each that I hadn't really seen and said "oh wow" to myself on realizing I was riding through an area new to me. (Though nerdy and a little obnoxious, there aren't a lot of places in New York City left that I haven't seen before. It's a wonderful surprise when I can still be surprised by a street or a row of stores I hadn't seen before.)

For fun, I'll let folks try to guess which neighborhood was truly new for me.

The crew I rode with was as crowd-averse and anxious to get started as I was, so we set out ahead of everyone at all the different checkpoints. It was, for the most part, a benefit not to be caught up in the scrum of riders for the whole way, especially as they were delayed by over an hour beyond their scheduled times. But, to my great disappointment, being early meant that we were not able to ride along (on top of!) the Sheridan Expressway. The cop at the entrance wouldn't let us on until the main body of the ride was there. Rather than wait 90 minutes (though we did sweat it out for about 30, hoping we could sneak on), we found a parallel route and headed to Soundview. I'll be back next year to get a shot at that.

A modified version of the route I rode on appears here.