My mom used to live in Long Island, and we visited every summer, often traveling into The City for a day to get an uniquely NYC experience. This trip we wanted to visit the National September 11 Memorial and Museum (very nicely done), hit the free Sony Wonder Technology Lab (mediocre but FREE), and then we wanted to tour Central Park on bicycles. We’d been to Central Park a few times before; we have walked down Central Park West and saw Strawberry Fields, visited the Central Park Zoo, and we’ve taken a horse-drawn carriage ride. But Central Park is so New York and so unique, that I wanted to see more of it. I wanted to see Cleopatra’s needle and the Alice in Wonderland statue, people playing Frisbee on the Great Lawn, the Tavern on the Green, and whatever that bridge is that people are always walking across in movies. I wanted to see as much of Central Park as I could and I had the idea that we could do that on bikes.
At this point I have to stop and say that I don’t know why I always thought you could ride a bike through Central Park. Did I see it in a movie? Did I have a romanticized version of NYC from the 1950s? Upon reflection, really, there was no reason for me to think that you could ride leisurely throughout the park’s paths, and it makes sense that you cannot. I can only imagine the number of pedestrian/cyclist accidents that would occur. But in what seems to be a recipe for certain doom for a group like mine, it turns out you can only ride bikes on the same roads that cars can drive on. New York City cars. And cabs. I did find out later that there are many car-free hours during which time no cars are allowed on specific roadways throughout the park.
Ignorant of all the path restrictions and car-free hours, I had called ahead and reserved bikes from one of several bike rental places near Central Park. Our group consisted of myself, a Grandma who hasn’t ridden a bike in 20 years, a 5 year old who was happily off kilter on the back half of my extremely unwieldy tandem bike, and an 11 year old who was just inexplicably tottery for an 11 year old. With this as our elite riding team, we decided not to risk cycling next to NYC traffic and so we stayed on the sidewalks and walked our bikes the four blocks over and two blocks up to the 7th Avenue entrance of Central Park. We walked them right up to the NO BIKES ALLOWED sign. Disappointed (and already having paid for bikes), we scanned the traffic going by and discussed our options.
“This is a bad idea, right?”
“Yeah, this is a bad idea.”
“Are we going to do this with the kids and everything? Those cars are going pretty fast.”
“Yeah. We already paid.”
“Well, yeah.”
And having thus committed the lives of three generations of my family, our wobbly contingency rode right beside New York City Traffic. We lasted about a quarter of a mile. I was seriously over-correcting every move Charlotte made on the back of my bike in order to keep her momentum from veering us into the cars alongside us while at the same time shouting over-protective motherly bike-safety advice to Livi (“Stay by the curb!”, and “Oh my God! You’re going to die! Stay by the curb!”). I think it helped. This, combined with the fact that my mom was practically learning to bicycle all over again, but with the added pressure of a possible critical injury if she made a wrong move, all led to the decision to abort the plan. We pulled off, agreed that our idyllic version of biking through Central Park had ended and we began Plan B; walking bikes through Central Park. Not as fun as riding bikes through Central Park. However, we did get some Central Park Experiences: we walked our bikes past a free open air concert, complete with the typical crowd found at a free New York City event. We found an ice-cream vendor, got Spongebob with bubble gum eyes, and ate on the top of one of the many granite rock outcroppings ubiquitous to Central Park while listening to a man on a bench play a Chinese string instrument, an ehru. We also found Heckscher Playground, a great little water play area that the kids ran around in. It has a set of channels and ramps that low-flow water runs through from a higher to lower elevation and the kids can run all through it. There are rocks to climb on and a play area for smaller kids, and larger fountain areas for kids to get soaked in. There are also places for the adults to sit in the shade while they lose sight of their kids, wonder if they’ve been kidnapped, contemplate the likelihood of a kidnapping vs the effort it takes to stand up and locate them, and then get a visual on their kids right before they have to actually stand up. After some time letting the kids run around the play area, and verifying non-kidnapping twice, it was getting to be toward the end of our two hour rental time period and we walked our bikes all the way back to the rental place. Although we did not see the Central Park we come to see, we saw the Central Park that we happened upon, which can be just as fun. However, I would imagine that it’s easier to do without walking bikes.
Fifty State Family 