{"id":47108,"date":"2025-06-07T12:12:58","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T16:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=47108"},"modified":"2025-06-07T12:14:01","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T16:14:01","slug":"walked-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2025\/06\/07\/walked-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Walked It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday I walked the full length of the newly christened, newly ordained, newly sanctified pedestrian-only lane on the Ed Koch\/Queensboro Bridge. It was my second foray, after a first attempt that only got me a little of the way over. The first attempt was characterized by a motorcycle and two bikes rolling through the lane they are not supposed to be on. It made me ask, how could anyone have ever thought that bicyclists would follow the rules? At the same time I thought it was a little too easy for bikes to enter the path without realizing it’s not allowed. So that got straightened out at least on the Queens side of the bridge. Yesterday I found that a barricade had been erected, and the entry to the path is now an ADA-complaint curb cut. That is plenty of room for a bike to get through, of course, and I predict plenty of bikes will avail themselves of the pedestrian lane because crossing Queens Plaza and what feels like 200 lanes of vehicle traffic to get to the dedicated bike path is a pain in the ass, and the same goes for pedestrians who will use the bike lane because crossing over all that traffic can be scary to navigate. On the south side of the plaza you do have the option of using the new elevator to cross over the plaza but no such option exists for the north side, which is the direction from which I usually come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no emergency call boxes or garbage cans on the pedestrian path. The fence is quite high but still climbable, I would think. The view through the fence is pretty tight. The view from the bike-only path includes the Roosevelt Island tram in transit, stuffed with people. I always liked seeing that floating fishbowl of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have far less reason or motivation to cross the bridge compared to earlier times. But I’ll probably make it over that bridge once or twice a month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday the population of humans on the path was pretty sparse but that’s typical for the middle of a weekday. I used to cross this bridge two or three times a week so I knew when the crowds were to be expected and when not. The ped lane is much wider than the old lane I used to use, especially as you get to the Manhattan approach.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other news I made it to the Ridgewood Reservoir at Highland Park. I walked it, too. It was not quite what I expected. It is no longer used as a water supply but has been allowed to evolve as a wetland. I thought it would be something like Baisley’s Pond, where you can get close enough to the water so you can chat with a turtle. But it was not that kind of place. Everything was far away with large vinyl tarps occupying lots of coverage. I’m sure the tarp stuff is there for a reason but it was a pretty gnarly visual. Maybe I shouldn’t be so snooty about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the next day. The morning commute was a stressful mess. I thought I’d made a big mistake but in fact I got lucky as hell taking my old route, the N to 59th Street and, I expected, the 4\/5 express to Fulton. But no, there was no express, despite repated automated announcements saying there were express trains approaching the station. A piece of tape was intended to prevent people from going to the express tracks but people went down anyway, returning soon after upon discovering that the announcements of incoming express trains were all lies. One of the screens showing arrival times said it was 4:30am, which it was not, and it further said the next train was coming in 40 minutes. All this information was wrong, leaving one to choose what arrival time he wanted to believe in. I settled for the 6 local arriving in 8 minutes and, luckily, I was right. It only got me to City Hall, where I had to walk the rest of the way to this spot on which I sit at this moment. If I had taken the usual route, the R from Steinway, I would have been fucked because it is skipping a bunch of stations today and I probably would have spaced out on this and wound up in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting\u00a0 back to walking the walk, I made an epic fail of seeking out a destination in Rosedale on Thursday. Through mind-melting and not checking my notes and just going with the flow of things I ended up at Sunrise Highway, about 100 blocks from the original destination. All told the original destination was not even there. It did not exist. It’s a long story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve never really been through Rosedale before. That’s bus country and I got to know the Q5 and what I think was the Q86 to Green Acres Mall. I think I hit 4 buses, 2 subways, and almost caught the LIRR but thought better of it. I walked a long distance on Merrick Boulevard before hopping a bus to Francis Lewis Boulevard. That’s where my sense of direction failed sepectacularly, but it’s all good. I saw some parts of Queens that were new to me, and I was up early so had plenty of time. I was the only white guy anywhere in sight. I kinda like that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s a fun find from Rosedale. An old NYNEX sign jammed into a telephone pole as a Link5G monster glowers in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I walked the full length of the newly christened, newly ordained, newly sanctified pedestrian-only lane on the Ed Koch\/Queensboro Bridge. It was my second foray, after a first attempt that only got me a little of the way over. The first attempt was characterized by a motorcycle and two bikes rolling through the lane […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250604_125118-scaled.jpg?fit=1441%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-cfO","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47108"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47117,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47108\/revisions\/47117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}