New York City, Rockaway, N.J.

were determined to set out early. The night before, Eric and I had gone down to Katy's studio to take our bikes out of their boxes, rebuild them, and ride them back up to the apartment. So the morning of our departure, Katy's and her husband Randy's apartment was just crammed with bikes.

We ate some cereal and then started schlepping all the bikes and gear down to the sidewalk. Eric and I decided Katy didn't really need to buy panniers. Instead, I just emptied my front panniers, and let her use them as back panniers. Then Eric and I gave a lot of stuff we didn't need to Randy, who was going to drive out to Pittsburgh July 31.

So, we were out on the sidewalk, setting up the bikes, when we had our first mishap. Somewhere between Katy's kitchen and her front stoop, her front tire got a flat. Amazing. So we were already patching a flat, and none of us had even mounted a bike.

I had this brilliant idea, which I still think is brilliant, that we should all ride through Times Square on our way out of the city. Actually, it wasn't on our way. It was about five blocks out of our way. And it's jammed with traffic. Katy and Eric were hoping to avoid traffic, by just riding down the western avenues to the Javits Center ferry terminal.

But I wanted photos of us in Times Square. Why not? When's the next time you're going to ride a loaded touring bike through Times Square? Katy tried to convince me that she could just use Adobe Photoshop to mix photos of us on the bikes with separate photos of Times Square. Those digital artists. I wanted the real thing. Eventually, I convinced them. So we went. It was great, being there with all those taxis and all those flashing lights. We have lots of glorious pictures to commemorate the event.

After that we zipped over to the ferry and had a completely easy ride out of New York over the water. It was a bright day. The skyline looked great.

I wish I could say we had excellent riding in New Jersey. Eventually, we did. But the first half of the day really sucked. It started out OK, with a riverside road that wound up over a huge cliff. Then we found a few nice roads that brought us past great places like "Pappy's Texas Weiners," a diner we had to go to just because of the name. The waitress inside was incredibly surly.

But as we got closer to Paterson, N.J., the roads morphed into urban mayhem, worse than anything I've seen in Manhattan. At one point, we got funneled onto a four- or five-lane freeway. We were riding on a shoulder, which was pretty wide, but the whoosh of speeding trucks and vans was unnerving. I kept thinking about how I had told Eric's mother not to worry, since we would be riding on rustic back roads.

[ERIC: By early afternoon it was hot. Really really hot. We played in sprinklers. Most of the day we were in sort of trans-urban-burbs. I just made that term up because it sounds busy, bland, metallic and souless. Occasionally it was suburban housing plans, sometimes industrial wastes, sometimes strip mall hell, sometimes urban sprawl. Rarely did it have much character. It likes this on the out skirts of all cities, from Bordeaux to Surabaya, Java, but it lasted a lot longer in New Jersey.

There were a few interesting things. Near Paterson we were crossing a short but high bridge and looking out over the guardrail I couldn't believe what I saw: a truly impressive waterfall with lots of water and a vertical drop that must have been almost 100 feet. It set in a strange place right among the buildings and houses but seemingly forgotten by the town. Not a single person had thought to build a home or business that looked out over this impressive falls -- though they did not miss the opportunity to build a power plant to make some energy out of it.]

Finally it got so bad we pulled off to take a look at our crappy road map. If you're going to ride in New Jersey, make sure to get a super detailed map of each county. Otherwise, count on spending your whole time in the state on a freeway. Our crappy road map didn't shed any light on alternate routes. We had thought about buying some good maps while we were in Manhattan but we didn't think it was worth it to buy a map that we would use for a half day. In retrospect, it would have been worth it.

While we were looking at our too-vague map, a UPS delivery man ran up to help. At first he wasn't much help at all. He came up with suggestions like, "Try I-80" (that's Interstate 80, one of the biggest highways in the whole U.S., which would be horrible to bicycle on, even if it were legal, which it's not). I was really disgusted. But eventually, the UPS guy did remember a less clogged road, and he told us how to get there. We thanked him, and he gave us ... religious tracts, with a number we could dial to save our souls. He didn't go obnoxious on us though. We threw away the tracts.

His directions worked. After only a little more horror, we ended up on a really busy road instead of a freeway. From there, things got a little less busy. Finally, in the afternoon, we got on a gorgeous back road that wound through the woods: highway 202. Check it out sometime.

The only problem was, we didn't know where we were going to sleep. There weren't any campgrounds marked nearby. I was thinking that maybe we'd end up sleeping in a park or something our first night touring in the U.S. I was actually thinking I wouldn't mind that. But I really wanted to camp. So at one point, near Rockaway, we were all looking at a road map when a guy rode up to us on his road bike.

His name was Les. He asked if we needed directions. We told him we were looking for camping. His advice was basically not to ride in that section of New Jersey. He was right, but at the time, it didn't sound particularly helpful. He tried to give us directions to a few places, and then he asked if we minded sleeping in a park or something. I said no problem, but we really did want a shower. So Les invited us to follow him home and camp in his backyard. He said we could even use his shower.

I warned Les that we couldn't bike that fast, and he said not to worry, he was riding home from work, so he wasn't that energetic either. Then he just took off. I had a hard time keeping up with him, and Eric and Katy brought up the rear. Several times, we stopped so Eric and Katy could see us making a turn. We were all kind of wrecked by the time we rolled uphill into Les's driveway.

That was an awesome way to start the last leg of our bike trip. All over the world, I was struck by how friendly people were, and I thought people in most of the U.S. wouldn't be nearly as nice. Eric kept disagreeing with me and he was right.

Les set us up in his backyard. We offered to buy him pizza but he didn't want any. He said he could order one for us, though. I figured we were paying for it, so I asked him to get the biggest pizza they make, with pepperoni and mushroom. Les did. Then the pizza came, and Eric went running to the door with money, but Les wouldn't let him pay. It was on Les.

Les didn't even mind when Eric walked through his screen door. Eric didn't break it, he just made it pop out. We were horrified. Les laughed. As we put the screen door back in place, Les said that Eric had probably fixed its annoying squeak.

Les was so nice we were sort of wondering, at least I was, if anything was wrong with him. I mean, when we asked him for scissors so we could cut our huge tent tarp in half (half for Eric and me and half for Katy), he offered to lend us his tarp instead. (We really did want to cut the tarp, so we used the scissors instead).

As we took turns filing into Les's shower, Les's 20-something son walked out. I think he was a little shocked that his dad had brought home three strangers from the street. We looked pretty dirty before those showers.

Over the course of the evening, we figured out why Les was so nice. He and his wife Harriet had just been bike touring in the Southwest. People had been really nice to them, and had even put them up for the night. So Les and Harriet were anxious to pass the favor on. We were the first charity objects they encountered. We loved it.

Harriet was great too. We spent the whole evening talking about bike touring in the U.S. Then Les brought out about three, highly detailed New Jersey maps that would take us from the Pennsylvania border. He said he was giving them to us. I think Harriet was as surprised as we were. We only needed them for a day, so we told him we'd mail them back.

We also told him we'd never say anything bad about New Jersey again.

That night, it rained, but not too bad. We were totally cozy in Les's backyard.

Next: U.S. Chapter 3, Diner Fantasy

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