To Inwood and Beyond, or Lost! in Harlem

A simple idea gone quickly awry, stereotypically: a small white girl with no food, water, map, or Spanish capabilities, lost in upper Manhattan. Who knew there were woods up there?

I rode my bike up the Hudson River Greenway yesterday afternoon; I wanted to see how far it went. I went as far north as Inwood, the narrow northern tip of Manhattan, just above where the George Washington Bridge connects New Jersey and New York. I wanted to ride down the Harlem River (assuming there was a path; there wasn't), cutting a diagonal across the city to 125th Street, where I could jump on the Triboro Bridge and make it easily back to Queens.

Hot, concrete neighborhoods eventually gave way to some kind of forest, what I later learned is called Highbridge Park. I carried my bike under bridges, up numerous flights of stairs, in and around woodsy trails; I rode over gravel and dusty, grassy paths. I asked for directions from people who either didn't know or couldn't speak English. I eventually re-emerged into the city at 190th Street, and thanked the Dutch for building this city on a grid. (To give you an idea of how far north this is, Central Park ends at 110th Street.)

So my plan failed, but I did get to see a lot of Manhattan that I've never even tried to explore before. Beautiful, wooded parks are juxtaposed with wide, gray boulevards; music is constantly playing (depending on what neighborhood it is, it's either merengue or Rihanna); merchants line the streets, fruits and t-shirts and radios spilling out onto the sidewalks. Riding past these places at such a high speed was like reading a quick summary of each neighborhood -- I got the smells, sights, and sounds for a couple minutes, and then moved onto the next.

Highbridge Park