I had always set it as one of my New York City goals, that one day I wanted to walk around the entire perimeter of Manhattan. I realized it was no easy feat, but I wanted to be able to say that I've done it. Time passed, and it was always in the back of my mind. Then I graduated and Manhattan and was set to go to Georgetown for graduate school in August. This made me realize that my time was limited. I tossed it around in my head for the first week of summer or so. Then I realized the later it got, the hotter and muggier it would get, so the earlier I tackled this feat, the better.
Facebook is a great way to get people together, I really enjoy using it as an event organizer. So I went ahead and set a date, Saturday, May 19th. I created a
Facebook event and invited people in the area who I would like to join me. I determined that the walk was going to be about 32 miles because there is a group,
the Shorewalkers, who do this every year. They call their event
The Great Saunter. They do it in just over 12 hours they say, which makes sense seeing as people walk on average 3 miles per hour.
They start at the south tip of Manhattan and go clockwise. I decided to not go about it this way. First off, I waited on the Facebook event for a little bit to see who was going to do it. I realized that a good chunk of the people were from Roosevelt Island, or were staying there for the weekend in the case of Jed and Jailu. 59th Street and the East River seemed like a good starting point because that's right by the tram, and also by the 59th and Lexington stop which has the 4/5/6/N/R/W trains. I decided on counter-clockwise mainly so we could get Harlem out of the way in the daylight. I realize that we'd have to be in the Alphabet City area late at night in that case, but there's no perfect way to do it.
Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating. The weather.com report was fluctuating between 10% and 70% precipitation. I wasn't sure what do about this. I didn't want to put this walk off, I had already put so much planning into it, but on the other hand, walking around for 12 hours in the rain is begging for pneumonia. Because of the fluctuations, I told people to go ahead and plan for it being on, and I'd call at 8am if thing's changed.
Thursday I walked down from the Tram to campus to go to lab, and then to the South Street Seaport to pickup a pair of Spamalot tickets. According to Google Maps, that was a 6 mile walk. I was by no means in pain, but I could feel it in my feet, that they would soon be hurting. So I went to Sports Authority the next day and picked up a pair of gel insoles. As for finishing up preparations on what to bring, I brought what I later found out is called a Sackpack. It holds about as much as a medium sized backpack, however, when empty it weighs practically nothing. I had an extra one as well that I lent to Rick. I brought a few pairs of extra socks, and planned to periodically throw away the pair of socks that I was wearing. I packed two 20 ounce bottles of Vitamin Water, and one 20 ounce bottle of water. Bringing too much liquid would have been a mistake in terms of bathroom breaks. I brought 24 Trader Joe's Peanut Butter Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola bars, along with about 8 Airheads, and 4 apples. I planned to make two meal breaks as well, so too much food wasn't necessary. Obviously I brought my camera as well.
I planned a ton of potential stopping points around the perimeter. Mostly Duane Reade, CVS, Riteaid, Starbucks, and other such stores for bathroom and drinks and other things which could come up, but we didn't end up going to any of them. I also planned some places to eat, but we also didn't go to those. Oh well, better to be more prepared. The night before I called people who were confirmed and reminded them to be there promptly at 9:00am, to bring snacks, and to stretch the night before, and the morning of. Bryan, Talha's boyfriend stayed at my house due to kind of funny circumstances. Dianna stayed over as well. I got about six and a half hours, which is somewhat above average for me, which is fine, I felt well rested in the morning.
I had planned to get there about 30 minutes early, and Rick, Jared, and Bryan all came with me then as well. I brought my pair of two-way radios and Rick and I played with them throughout the course of the trip. I was Black Leader, because I was dressed in all black, and Rick was Green Leader cause he had some green on. Jed and Jailu came in from Jersey that morning, and went to drop stuff off at my apartment before the walk. I ended up shifting the starting point from 59th to 60th for some reason. Leaving at 9:00am didn't work out as planned, but I didn't really expect it to.
Approximate Arrival Times:
8:30am: Will, Bryan, Jared, and Rick
9:00am: Andrew
9:15am: Dustin
9:34am: Jailu and Jed
9:37am: Valerie
At 9:41am we marched out. We picked up Allison and Talha at 10:06am at around 83rd Street. Things were going great, the walk was really nice, we walked through Carl Schulz Park, all of our spirits were still very high. We were staying as close to the perimeter as possible, which worked out well for the most part at first. Dustin was acting as our scout and would run ahead and wave us on or shake his head and run back to determine the best route. The energy in that kid... Around 125th we had to make a detour. It couldn't have worked out better though, we found "Crack is Wack Park"! No kidding, it was pretty awesome. We stopped and took lots of pictures.
We continued on, and along the way Dianna called and I told her to meet us at 181st Street, where we planned to stop for lunch. This didn't work out too well because between around 140th Street and 200th we were trapped between the River and a highway. I was getting nervous. Once we could escape past the highway, we found a place called
Mirage on 200th a couple of avenues into Manhattan. We arrived there at 1:00pm. They started out by giving us garlic bread which was good. I left to try and go get Dianna. I was freaking out a little bit, cause I thought her phone was dead and she was waiting at 181st, but luckily not. The MTA was running shuttle buses between 168th St. and Inwood, which worked out great cause she had reception and I was able to tell her to stay on the bus until the Dyckman Street stop. In my search for Dianna, I missed lunch, but it was okay, because I had lots of snacks, and apparently the food wasn't that good.
We continued north, and we reached the Broadway Bridge at 2:51pm. We thought we were at the north tip of the island, but then as we reached Inwood Park, we looked at Bryan's GPS, and we realized we still had a ways to go. It was weird, it didn't really feel like Manhattan at all, cause you were in a forest. It was really cool though, I want to go back there at some point. We even got to see Shorakkopoch, which is marked by a boulder and a plaque, and it is the place where we bought Manhattan from the Native Americans in 1626.
After going south for a while, we got to 181st Stret at 4:30pm. Bryan's knees were swelling up, so Talha and Bryan went back to Talha's apartment, and Chris came and met up with us. At about 165th Street, Dianna bid us farewell. After over an hour of trying to reach us, Serena met up with us at 135th Street at 5:21pm. I don't remember exactly where it happened, it was somewhere in the low hundreds, Allison decided to bow out as well. During this stretch it began to rain on and off throughout the rest of the trip. Unfortunate, but it's better that it happened this late, rather than earlier, which might have made people not start, or quit really early.
By this point we were all feeling pretty tired. Our pace had slowed down, and we had been making a few too many rest stops. Despite our hunger, I decided we should keep going until 23rd Street to get some momentum. Around 8:30pm we arrived at
Don Giovanni Ristorante, which was recommended to us by Andrew. It was really good, Rick and I split a large sausage pizza. Other people split pizzas, and some got pasta. Although the food was good, our waiter was completely awful. She forgot about Chris' food or something, and she was not good about filling up water, bringing us bread, or... just being nice to us. This was a pretty major point in our walk, because after we ate, Chris, Jailu, Jed, Serena, and Valerie all decided to call it a night.
There were five left; Andrew, Dustin, Jared, Rick and I. The 5 Steak Club. Adam met us after dinner just to say Hi, and he gave me his umbrella as well. We almost lost Rick around 10th Street because his food wasn't agreeing with him, but he persevered. Not too much happened for the rest of the walk. Because there were just five of us, and we were all so determined, we were pacing ourselves pretty well. We still made a few more stops than desirable, but it was okay. For the last third of it, the only major event was our arrival. We made it there at 1:33am. Just under 16 hours from our starting time. Longer than expected, but it's okay, we made it.
Looking back on it, everyone did really great. Even the people who only stopped by for a little bit, still did quite a hefty walk when you compare it to how much walking we do in a regular day. I plotted the whole course through a website which mixes a pedomter and Google Maps. The link is
here. It turned out to be 33.46 miles, also just farther than planned. That's probably due mostly to the meal breaks, and a little bit due to slight detours.
I definitely plan to do this again next year, thank you to everyone who came!
Using the plotted out path, I'm able to determine fairly accurately how far everyone walked if you're curious.
Will: 33.46 miles
Andrew: 33.46 miles
Dustin: 33.46 miles
Jared: 33.46 miles
Rick: 33.46 miles
Dianna: 6.5 miles
Serena: 6.5 miles
Chris: 9 miles
Talha: 13 miles
Bryan: 14 miles
Allison: 16'ish miles
Jailu: 23 miles
Jed: 23 miles
Valerie: 23 miles
Click here for the album of pictures!
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[Tags:
new york,
events,
perimeter walk]
