Prologue: an atypical start

Things never happen the way one plan them. This is something I learned a long time ago while working in science. One plans, organizes, prepares an action plan and it always ends up being different to what it was thought. And that’s exactly why it’s interesting!!!

I would never have thought how the circumstances would play out as I’m starting this trip. The logical step would have been to catch a plane in Buenos Aires directly to Alaska and then start the odyssey. Well, it wasn’t like that…

Life turns took me to postpone for a year the beginning of this adventure, which was planed for 2006. In its place, I spent the year in Antarctica working as a scientist working on the global worming theme, so trendy these days. It wasn’t a typical winter in Antarctica: with Sebastien Roy, a biologist from Quebec, we were in charge of a scientific project shared between Canada (ISMER_UQAR) and Argentina (Argentine Antarctic Institute), on board of the documentary Canadian ship SEDNA IV. Thirteen people isolated for eight months near the Argentinean base Melchior… Interesting, isn’t it? (Check the official webpage of the expedition at www.sedna.tv).

During that time lifetime friendships were forged: Mariano (the psychologist), Serge (sailor and diver), Fracois (the Doc), Stevens (mechanic), Amelie (movie editor)… and particularly with Marco (sound man) and Sebastien (my scientific partner).

Coming back from Antarctica, the ship first stopover (to great extent thanks to the never-ending effort and persistence of my mom Alicia) was in Mar del Plata. What a nice opportunity to use the stopover and load the bike and camping gear for the trip, wasn’t it?

The moment I took Maira on board of Sedna IV I knew that I was starting a new stage. That there was no turning back… I was going beyond the point of no-return. What has been mostly talked over was starting to seem real!!!

The sailing back to Canada was far from being the idyllic image that could have been ‘The Love Boat”: intense work, heat, constant movement (with the seasickness that comes along), lack of sleep… Nevertheless, seeing Maira in my stateroom recharged me to keep going. Who would have thought that my dear bike would be sailing the path that we will be undoing riding?

Maira and my gear ended up under custody at the home of Marco’s parents, in Montreal. Once my working commitment in Rimouski ended, and a year after leaving for Antarctica, I returned to Argentina to organize the trip and other pending matters.

Those were two crazy months!!! Preparing the details for the trip, getting supporters, designing the webpage, organizing the job situation at the University, training as mush as possible after a year of scarce physical activity, seeing friends and family again… so I could say good by, this time, for two years.

Nerves, happiness, stress, joy, anxiety: my feelings got all mixed up in an incredible way those weeks…

And it went flying!! When I realized it, I was going back to Montreal. The wheels kept turning. In parallel with my preparations, Marco was organizing what it would be my first incursion with Maira in the Northern Hemisphere: The Five Boro Tour around New York City.

Well, you may ask yourselves, as I did myself at that moment, what a heck is that???  It’s an annual event that gathers more that 30,000 cyclists to ride the streets of Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island (the 5 boroughs). It’s a unique way or touring the imposing city of New York and surroundings.

The trip to New York

I Arrived to Canada on May 4th at 10:00 am after a layover in Washington DC. Marco and Sebas picked me up at the airport and it was unreal to be back with my friends in the northern lands. A few hours later we started our trip to New York in a rented van.

Of course, and Argentinean entering a Country twice in the same day will take all the prices with respect to the security paranoia… Without waiting we had to go to the immigration office to explain a bit my situation. The last drop in the glass was when the skeptic officer asked me where I knew my friends from… “From spending a year in Antarctica”, I said smiling. Wrong answer!!!! He gave me an unfriendly face (I believe he thought that we were kidding him). It took us a while to explain that, no, it wasn’t a joke and that I wasn’t a Latin smuggler. Finally, they let us pass….

We got to New York at night, in the middle of an impressive light show drawn on the innumerable skyscrapers that characterize the “Big Apple” Frank Sinatra couldn’t be missing in the background with his famous song “New York, New York”, that we were butchering altogether and almost screaming…

The vehicular chaos devoured us until we were able to get to the apartment where we would spend those nights. Marco’s contacts delivered their magic and thanks to a friend of him, we ended up staying on a 24th floor in the heart of Manhattan, a mere block away from Time Square. Amazing!!!

Aside form other Marco’s friends that would be in out party (Stephan, Elise, Christian, Karine) a great friend from Argentina, Gabriel “el Guga” came along. He was in Houston for work and took advantage of the trip to come and see each other again. An unthinkable meeting just a few months ago!!!

It’s hard to describe a city that has been described endless times and captured in countless movies. Nevertheless, being here surpasses everything expected: the people, with their fast pace carrying the new gadgets called Bluetooth and talking to themselves like if they were out of a scene of “Star Trek”, tons of them addicted to their ‘Blackberries”” which actually looks like it’s controlling their destiny, taxicabs flooding the streets, painting them yellow and making one believe that that’s the only color cars come in because there are so many of them, drains that spew mysterious vapors during the night, buildings that produce stiff necks and fight for being the most impressive, the highest, the most imposing and luxurious, oversized cars (including those “Hummers” that look more like armored trucks than city cars), limousines everywhere clogging the avenues (including the Hummer limos), tourists tha look like they are passsing the stable population, colossal bridges tha hold the isle of Manhattan to the continent and thousands of cars circulating their concrete arteries, stores with ridiculously high prices, gigantic pretzels, hot-dogs overfilled with toppings, the energetic waste that Times Square lights and signs generate: all are an impact to the senses no matter how you look at it.

And in the middle of all this wonderful chaos is Central Park.  A green oasis created by men that lies in the heart of the island, where nature is triumphant against a urban mass that haunts it and is absorbed by the trees foliage, the birds singing, the traveling musicians…

A city where everything is gigantic. The world Metropolis. Simply:  New York!!

We toured Manhattan from one end to the other, feeling the different neighborhoods, admiring the architectural details that seem to have no end. Next to a gothic-style church, a glass skyscraper can be seen, like keeping each others back. The lavish facades take the breath away. One asks who might live there. How much would the rent be…

The touring without bearing took us to different environments. From being in a commercial street, of bohemian atmosphere and full of small bucolic bars, we happened to walk into the hart of a clandestine sale of “original” products, sold by street vendors that look like taken from a hip-hop music video, pushing people with shouts to buy their merchandise. I can’t say that I wasn’t a bit afraid….

Slowly we were getting into the great Chinatown, to the point of believing that we had been tele-transported to the Far East. You can only see signs in Chinese, people with oblique eyes, no English was heard and we looked like the only westerners there!!

Of course, we couldn’t avoid getting lost and instead of going onto the Brooklyn Bridge, we ended up under it. That’s the way of seeing places that otherwise would be impossible visit.

The Five Boro Tour

Sunday May 6th. It was 7:30 am and we were on our way to the starting point in Battery Park. The streets were almost empty. It was a clear day and it was colder than one would’ve liked it.

As we were getting closer to the starting point, other cyclist started to appear. Sooner, the red vests that marked the participants started to dominate the scene and color the grey concrete that abounds in the city. 
Finally the event presented itself in it full magnitude: thousand of cyclists waiting the start of the 60 km ride, were clogging the streets of the metropolis. The heads were lost among the columns of buildings that flanked 6th Avenue. The helmets upholstered the landscape as far as one could see. 32,000 people congregated for this sportive and recreational ride.

There were people of all ages, color, cultures and nationalities. The bikes were covered with all kind of gadgets. The groups made themselves note because of the elements on their helmets, challenging originality to avoid getting lost in the sea of people: flags, feathers, Styrofoam crocodiles… everything was valid. Also the types of bikes were many: racing bikes, touring bikes, foldable bikes, mountain bikes, tandem bikes, bike carriers for the small ones, and even and old bike, those that have a huge wheel in the front and a tiny one in the rear!!! The best was a couple on a tandem, with their children on a fixed tandem behind them followed by a baby carrier!!! Five people alongside several feet of bike!!!

Finally, and after waiting for almost one hour, the sea of bikes started to move.
It was a slow movement, a bit riding, a bit walking… until finally we could jump on our bikes and advance freely. What a sensation that was!!!

We rode without stopping for a few kilometers until we reached the vicinity of Central Park where there was a huge traffic jam. It was impossible to get so many bikes at the same time through the park narrow roads.

The ride stopped and the movement was so slow that even when walking, it looked like the bikes were only to support the anxious participants. The cold didn’t make things easier and with it came the need to go to the bathroom. It was a titanic task because at least a few hundred people had the same effect…

Nevertheless, the column advanced at snail pace, so it was possible to go to a classic “Starbucks”, order a tea and waited 20 min. to relieve the internal pressure. During that time the guys only moved just a block!!!

Finally we entered Central Park and even though we had a few more stops and where the people started to become agitated and the jokes about the bar organization of the vent were abundant, we finally exited to the streets of the Bronx.

One of the best panoramic views opened up ahead when we crossed the Queensboro Bridge, leaving an imposing postcard of skyscrapers of New York in front of us. It was also time for a break in one of the supply points along the way.

I have never seen such piles of bikes anywhere possible, while their owners run frantically to the bathroom lines or to fill their stomachs with burgers, hot dogs and some of those culinary delicacies of the US… I pass!!!

The human mass looked endless and even though it was a bit more disperse at this point of the tour, the passing of bikes was constant and continued. It was like that for the rest of the road.

The wide streets of Queens welcomed us, to direct us in mass to the huge bridge that would take us to the final destination: Staten Island. Along the way you could see cyclist invading every bar or store that was open and close by. We were a plague advancing through the city streets.

Along the way we were getting separated, but at last, at 3:30 pm we arrived with Guga to the final destination: a park inundated with people and bikes where the music was very loud and the scene with the bathroom and food lines repeated themselves. This time we were not the exception!!!

After we gathered again and a good nap to help digestion, we were woken up to tell us that the place was closing down. Mysteriously the people that filled up the place only an hour ago, was not longer there. We better get going too…


We rode to the last point of the tour: the ferry terminal to go back from Staten Island to Manhattan. The wait was long and going aboard with the bike was hard too. To kill some time, I started to bother my friends with the little bell that I have on my bike and amazingly everyone around me did the same, making it a very unusual chorus…

The ferry was packed with bike everywhere one looked and crowded with people in biker pants and Lycra t-shirts. Definitively it was not a very usual view for the “normal’ passengers!!


The presence of the traditional Statue of Liberty, plus the skyline of buildings in the heart of Manhattan reflecting  the sunset, was the perfect final touch for an intense day of activities and urban landscapes.


It was a great pedaling beginning for what it’s coming up, wasn’t it?