How do you end a weekend of errand running, apartment cleaning and other mundane activities? With a harrowing adventure, of course! Actually the events were pretty much par for the course, with my usual brand of luck showing up to visit. Enough introductory bullshit already — let’s get into details.

Last Sunday afternoon and I was over at my cousin Erin’s place, borrowing her phone line to help set up my newly purchased TiVo (side note: odd that you can run the thing over a home network without a phone line, but you still need one to set the thing up). We made plans over a lunch to go for an early evening bike ride up from Weehawken to the George Washington Bridge, over into New York and then down to the ferry to cross back over. Leaving by 6:30 or so, we planned on being home some three hours later.

The first leg of the ride — from Weehawken, down the palisades to river level and through Edgewater — was easy enough. Time was split between River Road and the river walk sections along the Hudson, which have some breathtaking views of the Manhattan skyline. Quite a leisurely ride and one that I highly suggest to any urbanite who lives in the general area.

Then we hit Fort Lee and “the hill”. This beast, pitched somewhere between 25 and 35 degrees, proved just how dreadfully inadequate my training has been up to now. On top of me sucking wind, my bike fought me every step of the way with the derailleur choking on the chain ever three or four rotations until finally what little forward momentum I had built up ceased to be.

I gained a whole lot more respect for those Tour de France riders. I mean, they treat hills like this like speed bumps and here I felt like I was trying to scale Mt. McKinley.

Resigned to get to the top one way or another I walked my Wal-Mart bought piece of aluminized crap up to a more forgiving portion of the slope and we continued up to the George Washington Bridge. I was quite shocked at the openness of the pedestrian walkway — more shocked than when I first heard a pedestrian walkway even existed on the span. I was half expecting some kind of chain link enlosure to keep nuts from leaping from the dizzying heights.

Once on the New York side of the Hudson we began looking for the path to the next leg of the bike trail on the waterfront. Of course, Manhattan is well known for its abundance of well placed signs, especially in the reaches past Central Park.

Sarcasm…gotta love it.

We did find a nearby street with designated bike lanes and began to head downtown and downhill, looking for a suitable place to cross over the West Side Highway and the rail lines that stood between us and the trail. This was a grand chance to check out some of the fantastic architecture that this part of the city holds. It’s amazing to see some of the buildings that actually survived the “urban renewal” craze that damn near killed New York.

We even passed a group of people shooting a movie. I swear this town is becoming Hollywood East — no corner of it is safe from the camera lens and the catering truck!

Finally Erin spotted a crossover that she remembered using on a previous ride, so we headed down to it. The road led down under the avenue we had just been on and to the most frightening part of Manhattan I’ve ever seen. Seriously, a decade ago I would have expected to be shot and left for dead for even coming within 100′ of this underpass bathed in the darkest of black my eyes have ever seen. The sole glimpse of light came from the doorway leading to the foot bridge over the rails.

Over the rails and under the West Side Highway, we finally found ourselves on the banks of the Hudson River. A quick break for some H20 and oxygen was in order for this momentous occasion. Now all that was left was a nice leisurely ride at sea level along the river’s edge.

Then I tried to ride my bike — something about the ride felt different. I hopped off and looked at my back tire. Yup, flat as a pancake. Just my luck.

I’ve been through this whole ordeal a few times before, but never so far away from my destination. We were sitting somewhere around 155th and our daylight was fading fast. Our destination was down in the 30′s. How fast do you think a human can walk 120 blocks? I was slightly vocal in my displeasure, cursing a blue streak that would make a sailor cringe. I came quite close to tossing my bike in the river, but since I have a thing against litter I decided to make the best of a bad situation.

The next 40 or 50 blocks I split time between walking and riding the bike on the flat tire as much as I could. The experience was nearly as brutal as the hill, but in the never-ending exhaustion kind of way. No steep incline, but a riding in wet sand feeling that was murder on the legs. We kept this up until the inner tube finally committed ritual suicide by jumping out of the rim and wrapping itself around the rear axle.

With the rear tire now completely immobile, I had to turn the bike over and try to rip the tube out. But it was at this darkest of moment that my wretched luck turned for the better, when a group of young kids stopped and offered to fix all my tire woes for $5. Seems these teens from uptown make some extra bread on the side by helping stranded bike riders. True to their word they had the bike good as new in under five minutes.

The rest of the trip went off without a hitch. We even got to take in some fireworks as we made our way down to the ferry port. A short wait and a quick boat trip later I was back in Jersey and on my way to my apartment. The whole ordeal had only cost about an hour of extra time.

Lessons learned: Invest in a couple of tubes and a repair kit so you don’t have to keep writing these damn flat tire stories. Investing in a quality bike probably wouldn’t hurt either.

I found myself on a stormy Wednesday night floating on the murky waters of the East Hudson surrounded by pirates and mosh pits, decisively out of my natural musical element. Rocks Off show number three in four weeks was with New York hardcore band Murphy’s Law, by far the wildest of these boat cruise shows I’ve been to.

I’ll be the first to admit that my musical tastes have mellowed over the years, so when good friend and newly minted blogger Brooklyn Vegan offered to hit the show together I knew I was going to be stepping into a scene the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since that Anthrax concert where I got my brains scrambled. Still, I have yet to be out on one of these boat cruise shows and not have a good time so I said waht the hell and grabbed my ticket.

The Vegan boy has a much better recap of the show details, along with some decent pics of the band and the whole mix for those interested in the musical side of the evening. I was more interested in the general scene and trip observations myself, along with taking as many pictures of skylines and statues as I could on our three hour tour.

Mother nature certainly made her presence felt buy turing the rain on and off throughout the trip and giving us a nice light show with streaking lighting bolts all around. But for all the dampness and fury shown, the waters were quite calm for the trip. That’s not to say that someone didn’t almost go overboard, but pitch and roll had less to do with that than the drunken crowd surfing one enthusiastic fan a little too close to the edge of the ship.

Now THAT would have been photo worthy!