Hike #994; Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens Loop

Hike #994; Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens Loop

12/11/16 NY Penn Station, Williamsburg, and Queens Loop with Kralc Leahcim (Lerch), Scott Helbing (Tea Biscuit), Amanda Lance, Jennifer Berndt, James Quinn, Michele Valerio, Jack Lowry, Sarah Jones, Serious Sean Dougherty, Eric Pace, Lyz Hagenbuch, Ric Giantisco, Mark Norman, Tom Vorrius, Bobbi Landrock, Sy P. Deunom (Martyn), Cory Salvesen, Linda Whiteford, Jas Kumpikevicius, Amanda Murphy, Gregg Hudis, Steve Sanbeg, John Pershouse, Dave Timpenaro, Rebeca Sage, Alex Gisser, Kenneth Lidman, Sarah Hare, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Jennifer Tull, Carla ?, Alex ?, Alex ?, Colin Webb, Jim “Uncle Soup” Campbell, Tamara Jennings, Kathryn Cataldo, Kevin Kowalick, Justin Gurbisz, Betty Fisher, Anne ?, David Pasmanik, Stephen Argentina, Jim Schlenker, Chris Kroschinski (Cupcake), Darlene Perez and Ariel, Krisanne Pederson, and apologies for those I may have left out!

It was time once again for our annual Holiday NY City Hike. It’s something that everyone it seems looks forward to every year, one of the best attended events Metrotrails hosts.
For me, Christmas is holiday that’s much been lost to me. The hike sometimes feels like an obligatory engagement, something I just have to do or people will be upset, and I do want to keep generating interest in what we do.
On the other hand, it is one of the few holiday season things I get enjoyment out of. It’s hard to stay in a bad mood when we have over fifty hikers walking through the streets, singing and having such a good time.

NYC hike

My aversion to the holidays is not for any one particular reason, but rather a downward spiral of events starting with my grandmother’s death in 2002, and then various other painful things over the years. Apart from that, I can’t stand the feeling of obligation and the entire corporate gift buying trash. It kills it for me. People just don’t realize that when they give a gift, that they may just be giving the burden of more stuff to someone. It might be something they don’t need or want, and tell themselves “Well I can’t get rid of this...such and such gave it to me..”.

The group in Penn Station

I typically don’t even attend family things because I know I’ll end up getting something, and then it makes me feel guilty. Even when it comes to the holiday feast, if I’m not feeling well everyone will just say “eat, eat, eat”. More obligation.
So, this was my Christmas.
There are lots of expectations on this hike that make it difficult to pull together. I always have to tell everyone to stay together, because I’m bound to lose people. We have to catch trains on time, try to stay together as best we can, and my phone is a mess of calls, text messages, facebook messages and posts, and voicemails starting before 6 am.
I woke up to tons of messages already in my phone. I got ready to go pretty quickly. I threw on an underlayer, followed by my grey sweater and a collared shirt. I should have worn a suit, because Sean, Lerch and Justin showed up in them, and it wasn’t as cold as anticipated.
I made it to Short Hills Station earlier than anyone else in the group, and just hung out on the platform. I helped a girl having trouble with the ticket machine, greeted people that came by, and just tried to get into the right frame of mine. My phone was already hard rebooting itself at least once every fifteen minutes because it was so inundated with messages. People were running late, asking where they could meet up, etc. This on top of the regular barrage of ridiculous memes and phrases I regularly share with my friends. I couldn’t even make an outgoing call much of the time.
Just before the train arrived, Serious Sean showed up in an awesome pinstriped suit with his white short neck electric guitar and amp strapped around him. Just seeing him already put me in a better mood. I helped him get his ticket and we were soon on the train to NYC.
Cindy and Kellie got one somewhere early as well, and Sean casually played chords on the guitar as we rode. More and more people boarded and the train was becoming packed. We started doing couple of songs, like “End of the Line” by Travelling Wilburys. Somehow, we got into doing a few songs I’d either never sung before or hadn’t in a very long time, first being Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman”. We then got into the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby”, followed by “Sloop John B.”, and the chorus of Styx’s “Come Sail Away”. The other passengers were thoroughly amused.
The train ended up being delayed. In fact, many other trains were apparently delayed at an area around the Meadowlands. The train stopped and we sat there for quite a while, but this was when we passed the time with music.
When we finally arrived, it took a while to get everyone together, out of the restrooms and ready to head out. We finally did get out there, and as soon as we were outside, Rebeca presented me with a gift of an envelope full of money she’d collected, quite a lot in fact, as thanks for organizing the hikes all year.

Being presented with a generous gift; photo by Mark Norman

I never ask for anything, nor do I expect anything, so this came as a great surprise. She didn’t say it was a Metrotrails donation or anything, just that it was a thank you for everything. I decided to use it as such anyway; I later used the first part of the money to purchase the entire set of maps of the Long Island Greenbelt.
In front of Penn Station, it was nearly impossible to try to keep everyone together. I feel like we lost people right from the start. It’s just not easy to keep together with this hike, so I had to make the executive decision to abandon the original plan of going southeast through the city and instead head to the waterfront and go south to Williamsburg Bridge.
I’m not sure how many we lost in this stretch, but some people were probably quite annoyed by it. At least one member on the meetup group had quit the group following the hike from what I can see.
We did detour to see the Macy’s display at the start, but that was about the only thing that went as planned until we reached Williamsburg Bridge.
When we got to the walkway, we started following it to the south. My brother had arrived in the city late and was to meet us at the bridge with his girlfriend Amanda.

Queensboro Bridge

We had a nice time walking along the waterfront with good views of the Queensboro Bridge, another that I’d never walked across. We had to stop a couple of times when we passed restrooms, but other than that it moved along at an alright pace.
There was lots of stopping and singing, probably again many singalongs of “Feliz Navidad”, as well as Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)”.

Silliness

Alex brought some of the group ahead to the right when we neared the Williamsburg Bridge, while I waited down below for my brother. It turned out he went up to the bridge anyway, so that was a bit of a set back that segmented the group a bit. I didn’t see some of the others that broke away here for the rest of the day.
When we realized he was up above, we made our way to the west a bit to get to the Williamsburg Bridge. It was actually a good distance through part of town to get to where we had to walk up there. Stephen knew the area pretty well, since he drives through a lot, and he took the lead as I recall on some of these sections.

Williamsburg Bridge

When we got to the deck of the bridge, it was not exactly how I expected it would look. It was surprisingly much more like the Brooklyn Bridge than I had thought. The pedestrian deck is on top, over the roadways, so one really doesn’t feel like they’re on a major highway bridge.

Williamsburg Bridge

The Williamsburg Bridge was completed in December 1903, and is unlike most other suspension bridges for how the structure is supported by the cables. It really did not strike me as anything like other bridges in NY, but then everything is sort of different there.

Williamsburg Bridge

The bridge was intended at one point to be the route Interstate 78 would take, but it was never completed across and through Manhattan.
It feels more apocalyptic than the other bridges because of it’s red colored pedestrian area and tons of graffiti.

View on Williamsburg Bridge

The view was unfortunately somewhat obscured because of a fence they have around the walkway. It was still pretty cool to see though.
When we got to the other side of the bridge, much of the group cut out and decided not to continue on. They went to have dinner or whatever at other parts of town, and only planned to go as far as the Williamsburg Bridge.
The rest of us continued off of the bridge into Brooklyn on the other side.

Old terminal

We ended up heading to the north, and the first waterfront park we made it to on the Brooklyn side was Grand Ferry Park. Everyone got together there, and walked the walkway to the north a bit, except me. I made my way around a small ledge that took me into a construction site. There was what appeared to be an old ferry terminal there, and the structure looked easy enough to climb.

View from old terminal

I couldn’t believe Justin and Lerch weren’t up there with me. I had gone ahead, and Lerch was looking for a place we could all stop for lunch or something. From on top of the old rusted metal thing, I could see Lerch behind me, by himself on the corner of Kent and Grand. I shouted out to him a bit, but not too much as not to be noticed up there myself. It was very obvious that I was there if anyone were to look up.
I made my way back down when I saw an NYPD police boat speed by in the East River. I wasn’t about to stay put because I’m rather sure they saw me.
It was quite amazing how much we were actually able to stay on the waterfront through this area. On the Manhattan side, it’s all shown as bike paths and such, but there are many pedestrian only routes that made this really something very cool.

Transmitter Park

We did take a side trip with the idea that we were going to get lunch, and my brother found the Brooklyn Brewery. That sounded like a must to most everyone, and regardless of what I wanted to do, they were all going there, so I followed.
I ended up trying one of their stronger IPAs as I recall, but the place had no food. Some of the group went off to a pizza place nearby too.

Brooklyn Brewery

The place used tickets that were purchased at the door, and then you had to wait in line to get whatever you wanted. Most were one token, except the strong one which was two. I tried the stronger one because I think it was Sean gave me tokens.
Some of the group wanted to continue, some wanted to hang out. I really wanted to see more of the waterfront, so I decided to get moving, and pretty much everybody that was at the brewery went on with me. We followed a nice section of waterfront park, and at I think it was at WNYC Transmitter Park north of the Bushwhick Inlet that Lerch and I climbed up onto an overhang thing.

At Brooklyn Brewery

We remained along the waterfront for a bit, but also had to come out to the streets a few times where waterfront park was non existent. We had to head up hill to cross the Newtown Creek on the Pulaski Bridge as we made our way into Queens.
Once on the other side of the Pulaski Bridge, we turned let to head back out toward the waterfront. Stephen gave Lerch a piggy back ride for a while, and while we were on the bridge my brother took over doing the same. It was incredibly silly.

Brooklyn Brewery

By the time we got to the waterfront, Lerch wanted to stop at a bar to get food and drinks, but I really didn’t want to stop in Queens before dark. We had a good stretch of waterfront left, and I wanted to see a bit more while we had the time.
This next section was outstanding, part of some sort of old river ferry terminal. There were tall black metal frames towering next to the riverside, and behind them little pieces of railroad tracks worked into the landscaping. I figure they were probably not authentic; they were probably replaced at the site for ambiance. The ties had been filled in between, so they could actually be original.

Tracks at Gantry Plaza

The area was shown on maps as Gantry Plaza State Park. We walked the waterfront north through here, and then had to head back inland again when we got to Eleventh Street Basin.
From that point, we no longer followed the waterfront. It was going to get too dark, and I figured it would be cool to go across the Queensboro Bridge as well. Then I’d have covered all of the East River bridges finally. Lerch wanted to stop for food on the Queens side, but I convinced him to try to get across the bridge. It’d be better to find something in Manhattan.
We made our way to the bridge and began crossing, with some good lights all on the river. I’ll have to do this bridge in the daylight again, because it seemed like there was a lot to see.

My flask Carolyn gave me!

While we were going across the bridge, I saw a figure blast by me very fast. It turned out to be Jason K, who came running, and I think Ric was there too. The group that went ahead of us had apparently stopped somewhere, but also followed much of the nice waterfront that we had too. Krisanne was there too, and I hadn’t seen her in like a million years. We continued together, across the dark bridge back to Manhattan, and before we reached the other side we met up with Cupcake, Darlene, and Ariel. Kind of late to show up after dark, but they were there at least. Others dropped out around here too.

Gantry Plaza

Justin says that he decided it was time to cut out when Lerch twisted his nipple (LOL).
I’m not sure where everyone else went off to and at what time, but I continued through Manhattan until we got to Rockafeller Plaza. It was decided by someone that they wanted to see the big tree.
It was a mob scene just approaching there. It was hard to keep even our smaller remaining group together. By the time we got to the last crossing before approaching Rockafeller Center, a mob of people lay before me and I was last in the line. I tried for a couple of minutes to push through to the rest of the group when I said “screw it”, turned left and started heading back toward 34th St.

On Queensboro Bridge

There was really no need to continue on. I saw the tree as I walked by from 6th Avenue.
I continued walking south, through the mob scene until I finally made it back to Madison Square Garden.
It was probably the earliest I’d ever decided to be done with the holiday NYC hike. It was just too much of a crazy crowd and I wanted nothing to do with the tourist trap of Rockafeller Center with a big group. A bit earlier, I was amenable to sitting down and eating, but it was getting later and I had to be to work at 7 in the morning, which means at the absolute latest I would have to leave home at 5:30 am with my current transfer to Washington’s Crossing.

I managed to find the correct train, and boarded to get back to Short Hill pretty easily.
The train was extremely crowded coming out. More so than usually on this hike. Maybe it was because I was leaving earlier. I ended up having to stand for the entire ride back.
In the coming week, my work would have it’s holiday party, and Jack would have his Strikesound Party in Linden. I attended the Strikesound event, which is always a fun time. It’s pretty much the same type of attitude as the hike, only with a greater focus on the music. It makes me think I should really attend more of his Gypsy Funk Squad events.
The work party I would not attend, because that would mean dealing with reminders of why I’m stuck driving three more hours every day.
It was overall a really good hike save for the end at Rockafeller Center. I decided when I planned this one that we would do more NY City hikes and work on connecting east into Long Island in January, which leaves a lot more good stuff to look forward to.

Justin's holiday MT logo