New York City

July 8-19

Strangely, I can't remember much about the flight from Amsterdam to New York. I do know that we were dreading wrestling our huge bike boxes onto a bus, or into a taxi. In the end it wasn't that hard, just expensive. We paid around $45 to rent a Supershuttle for just us. The bike boxes barely fit inside. We had it drop us off at Eric's sister Katy's art studio, which had lots of room for storing the bikes.

It was great being back in the U.S., but it wasn't shocking. The first time we came back home, in Christmas of 98, we had been away from the U.S. for 14 months, and we had spent almost a year of that in Asia. So it really was culture shock to be back home. This time, we had only been away for six months, and we had spent that whole time in Europe. So it wasn't such a huge, huge change.

We arrived just in time to witness for ourselves the effects of the greatest economic boom in history. It turns out that everyone we know is way, way richer than they were when we left. I don't mean they're rich. Let's just say they're a lot better off. They have better jobs, or they get paid more, or they've been buying houses and cars. People we have literally seen scraping the back seat floor of their cars for spare change, so they could buy a beer, are now driving new cars and taking us out to dinner. Just amazing.

Katy, our unpaid web mistress, was no exception. Since we left, she switched careers, from waitress to digital photo retoucher, and digital layout artist. When we arrived at her pad she was working three jobs--those two, plus she was helping to teach a university art class. So she was working, literally 15 hours a day. Katy's husband Randy was also overdosing on work. Strangely, they loved it. At least Katy did. They weren't anywhere near burned out because they were enjoying the cash. It was nice to see people working hard and liking it, since Eric and I knew we would both have to work hard at the end of the trip.

We spent 12 days in New York, and loved it. We ate out a lot, especially when Katy and Randy escaped from work long enough to join us (favorite spots: Pietrassanta, a yummy Italian restaurant at 10th and W. 47th and Arriba! Arriba!, Katy's former emplyer, at 9th an W. 51st. We spent entire days just walking up and down Manhattan. After months of finding just single shelves of English language books, we had a great time looking through Borders. And we went to non-dubbed English movies.

We also spent at least three or four solid days just updating this web page. We spent so much time online that Randy had a hard time logging onto to AOL just to get his email. Sorry, Randy.

The funny thing was, Eric was sort of looking forward to being back in the U.S., where people speak English. But New York is different. Our first day in town, Eric went to a photo store and a deli, and neither proprietor spoke much English.

One day I got this idea that we should be kind to a foreign tourist, to help pay back all those tourists all over the world who were kind to me and Eric. I tried to convince Eric and Katy that we should seize a tourist and bring them out with us to dinner, or something. This was after a margarita or two. Katy and Eric were lukewarm to the idea, at best.

We were going to the Empire State Building that day--prime hunting ground for tourists. I kept my eyes open. There were plenty, but they were traveling in large groups. There was a young Japanese couple, but somehow it felt too weird to just go up to them and invite them out. I did manage to strike up a conversation, in very bad German, with a video-camera toting western German, but he didn't seem approachable either. In the end, I gave up. Eric and Katy were right. Adopting tourists should be more spontaneous, not part of some seek-and-host mission.

Our most important mission in New York, besides recovering from Europe, was to get Katy's bike in shape. She was joining us for the last leg of our bike trip, from New York to Pittsburgh. Katy's bike was a solid steed, but it didn't have racks, bottle cages, toe clips, or any of those other things that turn an ordinary bike into a touring machine.

Since Katy had gone digital, she was totally tuned into doing errands over the Web. She had even renewed her driver's license over the Web. So when it came time to shop for her bike, we all went online to search the Nashbar bike site.

We highly recommend Nashbar (no, they don't advertise with us, or sponsor us in any way; this is just our honest opinion). They had all the parts we needed, and the prices were way lower than the prices Eric and I had scoped out in retail bike shops while walking around New York. In fact, Nashbar's prices for some things -- pedals and bar ends, for instance-- were so low, that we figured, no way can those prices be for two pedals. So we ordered two of everything, and received four! Whoops. We could have returned it, but it would have cost more in postage than it was worth.

By July 20, Katy's bike was in excellent shape, and we had scoped out the bicyclist's best western escape from Manhattan (take a ferry from the Javits conference center to New Jersey). We were ready to roll.

Next: U.S. Chapter 2, New Jersey Ho! and Les takes us home

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