Suburban Garden Update!

The summer is in full swing in our suburban garden in PA. I have been trying to post last week's garden picks but haven't gotten the opportunity until now. The apple trees have apparently been hit by the Cedar Apple Rust, I have had to apply some organic fungicides to get it under control. The rest of the garden is doing fairly well. The asparagus plants are thriving now, with 5 of the original 7 plants sending up fresh pine tree like shoots.



The peas are doing very well, now they have grown up to 6 feet tall. All the pea plants are yielding very heavily at this rate. I expect the rate of yield to sustain itself until early august. At any rate, the pole beans that I have sown in succession have begun to establish themselves at the base of the peas.





The Summer squash plants have gone crazy with growth. The entire bed is covered by their broad leaves. Underneath the canopy, there are scores of small baby golden squashes growing.
The peppers alongside the squash are also doing well, they have been flowering. I'm expecting to get squashes within a couple of weeks, and peppers within a month.




The tomatoes have been growing vigorously. I have seen over 100 small green tomatoes growing in the bio-intensive matrix that I've set up. One thing that I have noticed is that this style of gardening is very water intensive, even with heavy mulching.






The potatoes are thriving and will be ready for harvest within 2 weeks at the most. I can't wait!







So in any case, I harvested 6 lbs of peas and 4 lbs of onions and garlic shoots.

First Fishing Trip of the Year

For Father's day Weekend, I took my parents out for lunch. Afterwards, I went fishing with my old man. Fishing is a great way to bond with one's father. It provides a great sense of continuity as well as free food. In any case, we went to Marsh Creek and went to our business with great vigor. The conditions were perfect for pan-fish, the weather was hot and humid forcing the fish closer to the water surface. We caught 46 panfish, yielding 27 lbs for the freezer and 10 lbs for the compost heap.

mile 200 Montauk Point and Journey's end

I spent half a day on Tuesday riding around the shorelines of Montauk. Everything was so beautiful there, I didn't really want to leave. The effects of the sea air on a hot summer day was quite wonderful. Near the sea, the temperature was in the low 80s versus around 100 degrees inland. At the Montauk downs state park, I gathered some stones smoothed by the sea, they were very intricate looking. I think I shall give a few of them to my friends and turn the rest into amulets.

Near Montauk Point, I saw these strange looking sand dudes. The were basically hills of sand with ferns or perhaps dwarf trees growing all around them. It was like a scene from an alien planet, definitely very interesting. After awhile, I got a bit tired and the damages done to my body over the last 3 days had begun to catch up with me. I assessed the situation and came to the realization that I could not safely go on. My body has been thoroughly devastated. My stock of dried meat and fish were entirely gone and there were no sources of replenishment to be found in Montauk.

I knew that I had little chance of biking another 180 miles back to NYC, so I decided to call it a day and head home on the Long Island Rail. I arrived back home to the Upper East Side on Tuesday evening. And now, I'm still recovering. My legs were at first numb, and then under intense pain all of last night, and are now sore but flexible again.


While it's true that I didn't circumscribe all of long island, I had succeeded in crossing the entire length of it alone on a bicycle. One can only aim for the stars and do one's best. And I gave this journey everything that I had, and thus have no regrets. I had never gone so far on muscle power nor had I suffered so much for it. But I think this trip was entirely worth the pain and discomfort. I had pushed myself to the bleeding edge of my physical and mental endurance. I had learned a great deal about the practical side of bicycle travel and the scope of the fuel/food crisis. And finally, I have met many decent(and a few not so decent) people along the way. So I think I'll remember this trip for a long time. :)

mile 190 Downtown Montauk

After playing at the beaches for an hour, I rode around down town Montauk and got some food. My bicycle felt a little bit weird, so I took it to the Montauk Bike Shop. I told them of the purpose of my quest. Raj from the shop asked for the store's motto to be posted, so here goes: ride the wave! :-D

In any case, they gave my bike a performance tune-up. And I accidentally forgot my helmet there. To the pretty girl in the left of the picture, I know that you have already checked out my blog. If you're out there reading this right now, can you please send my helmet back? Just private message me and I'll send you my mailing address.

mile 186 The shores of Montauk!!!!

The last half mile to Montauk was a ride down a series of hills. At last, the cool blast of ocean air swept over my body, as the bicycle cruised into the other limits of the town of Montauk. The highway ran by the shore line, and I road onto the beaches of Montauk. My body was utterly broken. All of my food was gone. Yet nevertheless, words cannot do justice to the joy in my heart! Only when I asked someone to take my picture did I realize that I had been weeping uncontrollably. These were of course tears of happiness. Despite all the odds, all the pain, and all the warnings to go back, I had finally made it to the eastern shores of Montauk!!!!

mile 184 Hither Hills State Park

The last 2 miles since leaving Napeague Park had been a continuous climb uphill. I had no feelings left in my legs, shoulders, or buttocks. My back was feeling like it's are being stabbed by hot white blades. I just kept saying to myself that the pain didn't matter, that I was going to make it to Montauk after all. The final two files to Montauk was a series of steep hills, it was a cruel, back-breaking experience.

mile 182 Napeague State Park

As I sped through Napeague, I couldn't help but notice the interesting flora. There were forests of these dwarf trees everywhere. The land was real sandy, so I guess deciduous trees of greater size simply couldn't establish themselves there. I saw no sight of the ocean in that part, but the sound of distant waves and the smell of sea salt permeated this world. I only had 4 or 5 miles to go until Montauk!

mile 178 Amagansett

I left East Hampton early on Tuesday morning. I was trying to reach Montauk before the day's heat got to me. After 8 miles of riding, I had reached the Historic village of Amagansett. The village had a "pseudo-historic" touristy feel to it. As I biked through the settlement, I noticed a van ahead of me that was dropping of Hispanic people. It made at least a dozen stops before it drove away on a side road. I suppose this is a local form of concentrated car pooling? In any case, it was only 10 miles to down town Montauk. So I kept on riding.

mile 170 East Hampton

I arrived in East Hampton at around 8:30pm on Monday night. The last 5 miles were very tough on me. I had to stop 3 times to recover my breath and rub down my legs to get the blood circulation going. Once in East Hampton, I got a room in the Hampton Inn, and proceeded to get dinner. I walked over to the TownLine BBQ and ordered an entire rack of Ribs. I ate outside that evening. The ribs were awesome! But the real show-stealer was the scenery. Someone had planted a large field of oats right behind the restaurant. Being so close to the sea, there was the distant sound of waves, and a cool breeze that smelled refreshingly of sea spray. As the breeze swept pass the oat fields, the plants rippled and waved almost like the waves of the ocean. The diffuse, pink glow of twilight, the salty breeze, and the grain field "ocean" made everything seem surreal and magical. I felt as if I was no longer in this reality any more, but some kind of parallel universe found in Monet paintings.

mile 165 Bridgehampton

I arrived in Bridgehampton in very poor shape on Monday evening. A few miles outside of town, a blond teenager in a BMW convertible had chucked a half filled bottle of soda at me as he drove by. There were two girls in the car with him, and they all laughed as the car zoomed past me. I was too tired to make a fuss over it. I could barely keep riding due to saddle fatigue. As I rode into town, I saw a Carvel's Ice Cream shop on a small hill. So I did what any delirious cyclist would've done under the circumstances. I went and got me some ice cream! As I was eating my treat, I had the good opportunity of meeting up with Ruth, her daughter Patty, and Patty's son Matt. Ruth mentioned that she's afraid of going to NYC because of the summer blackouts. I thought it was a real good point, since the summer blackout of 2003 taught me just how quickly things could unravel in a large city without power.

mile 160

arrived in south hampton. mcmansions and nice cars everywhere. temp cooler now, im getting a 2nd wind! :-)

mile 155 Hampton Bays

There were a whole lot of yachts in Hampton Bays. Everything was so very posh in that town. Gleaming cars, huge houses by the shore, private yachts. There were mansions by the sea side where the owners hand artificially converted the nearby shoreline into a beach of their own choosing. One house had only round stones for a beach. Another had only white sands. Yet another had only shells. It was a feat of incredible opulence. I absorbed all of these images into my brain. I think the pain that was afflicting my body made me remember these things with more clarity. In any case, my body was near it's breaking point. I could no longer feel my legs or buttocks as I pedalled down the roads. My back was this giant mass of throbbing agony, and my arms and neck were on fire. My father called and asked me to quit. I got real angry and told him to stop bothering me. I regretted saying that almost as soon as I disconnected the phone. But I had to keep going, the day was near it's end and I had to make it.

mile 145 Don't grow up to be that bum!

As I was bicycling between East Quoque and Hampton Bay, I marveled at the surroundings. There was stretches of beautiful coastlines everywhere. The roads were magnificent, there was even a bicycle lane for me to ride on. As I road on the bike path, a huge Mercedes SUV came behind me. It honked like 3 or 4 times behind me for some reason. I was wondering why the car couldn't simply pass around me, since we were on a 2 lane road, and I was on the designated bike path. As I coasted to a halt by a stop light, the SUV came up right next to me and it's windows rolled down. Inside there sat a middle aged Asian woman with her son. She was actually pretty good looking as I recall. "Get off the road and let normal people drive" she yelled. I was very tired and in a lot of physical discomfort to argue, so I simply shrugged. Then the woman said something to her son in the Shanghainese dialect. Little did she know that I too was born in Shanghai. She told her son, "see him, don't you grow up to be like that bum." And with that, she drove the SUV past me.

mile 140 Westhampton

As I rode into Westhampton, my shoulders were feeling numb, as were my legs and buttocks. They felt numb because the nerves there were overstimulated by the pain and have by then ceased to relay additional information to my brain. Otoh, both my arms and my neck were badly sun-burnt and the skin was breaking own. I felt as if someone was stabbing knife into my spine every time I pedalled. There were lots of gated houses in Westhampton. The roads, the lawns, and municipal facilities, everything was exquisitely maintained. The cars were real nice looking too, lots of Mercedes and BMWs on the road.

mile 130 East Moriches

As I biked into the Hamlet of East Moriches, my back was hurting like hell. I must have twisted a muscle along my spine right before getting into Shirley. I was also running really low on food. I had consumed 4 muffins, all the beef jerky, and half of my dried fish. I still had 2 muffins and 6 Oatmeal bars left though. So with that in mind, I stopped at Cathy's Kitchen in East Moriches for some lunch. Her Eggplant Parm was really good. Cathy mentioned that she had to close the store early today due to the heat, that it was causing power outages in NYC. I had been pretty much out of communication contact with the city, and was real surprised to hear that. She told me to consider taking a break from biking today since the heat could cause more accidents for me. I thanked her for the kind words and kept going.

mile 122 "Homeless" in downtown Shirley

I rode for a few miles through the town and stopped by a 7/11. I really needed to get more water, I couldn't go on in this heat for much longer without it. As I entered, the store's Indian shop keeper looked at my bicycle and then at me and said "please, you have to leave the store now." I told him that I just needed to buy some water. He then told me to beat it, saying that homeless people are not allowed in his store. I left without another word. I understood how I must have looked. Sun burnt, dis-shelved, soaked in sweat with white rings of dried salt around my face and arms. In Eastern Long Island, I guess I really could've passed myself off as a homeless person! :P In any case, I stopped half a mile down the road and got 3 Liters of water from a hot dog stand.

mile 120 Shirley

I had barely limped into the town of Shirley. I was dehydrated and in great pain. I saw a woman mowing the lawn of a storage complex. I stopped right there and then and asked her for some water. Maddy was her name, and she came back with Jim and a bottle of ice cold spring water. Jim and Maddy gave me the spring water for free and warned me of possible heat stroke, they were really decent :). My scraped hand was festering under the heat. And after gulping down the cold water , I quickly applied alcohol patches and a band aid to the wound. Jim was telling me that he biked to work every day. He mentioned that people around here looked at cyclists as either crazy or as homeless people. I thanked them for the water and advice and was on my way once again.

mile 115 Caught in the heat

The 15 miles between Sayville and the town of Shirley was very hard on me. A combination of poor roads, 100 degree temp. had multiple muscle cramps forced me to stop often for breaks. During these breaks I drank prodigious amounts of water and took potassium tablets to reduce the intense pain of the cramps. I could no longer feel my calves. Even when I pinched my calve muscles, I felt nothing. The upper reaches of my legs, buttocks, and shoulders felt lanced through with pain. As I closed into Shirley, I had run out of water again. And near the outer limits of the town, a delivery truck passed very closely by such that I had to jerk away from the edge of the road. A piece of skin on my right hand was torn off by that abrupt move. I heard a small popping sound in my back, and my entire spine was suddenly arching in agony. It was so painful that I couldn't breath for a minute. But I kept on going.

mile 106 Sayville

I came to Sayville to refill my water empty water bottles. The sun was so hot that I had barely made it on the water that had on hand. While there, I met Carl, a fellow biker from Sayville. Carl had been bicycling for fun for the last 20 years. He said that we have plenty of resources, the government is just bullshitting us as usual. After getting water at a gas station, I was on my way again.

mile 105 West Sayville

I made it West Sayville as the sun really started to beat down on everything. This town had a lot of golf resorts and country clubs. I saw stretches of nice houses and cars. Not surprisingly, I was the only person out on the road. The weather was in truth too hot to safely travel in, but I still kept going.

mile 98 Oakdale

The town of Oakdale seem to be quite shabby. I didn't see much of anything besides residential houses there. The weather had heated up to 100 degrees and I was gulping down water like mad. I had started the day with 3 litters of water, by the time I reached this town, I had less than a liter left.

mile 87 Starting out on Day 2

On day 2, I left the inn at 8:30am. I had eaten 2 waffles for breakfast, and took 6 huge blueberry muffins along with me. The sky was pure blue...like sapphire. Within a few miles of riding, my calves started to hurt again. My buttocks felt really painful from the get go. I was initially able to ignore the discomfort.

mile 86 Bay Shore

I had made it to the Bay Shore inn for the night. My body was hurting so much that every step I took made me wince, but I was happy that I was still breathing. In any case, I had dinner that night at Happy Buffet, a near-by Chinese restaurant. The food there was in truth very plain, but in my euphoric state of mind, every morsel there tasted like ambrosia! I wolfed down 4 platters of food and like 7 ice cream cones. One waitress, Jin, came over and asked me if everything was ok? I told her of the purpose of my journey, and inquired about her experiences. Jin, like many Chinese immigrants, was working as a waitress and commuting to NYC every weekend. I asked her if she would consider just living up in Bay Shore someday on a permanent basis. She told me that the boredom of the town would drive her insane.

So later that night I looked over my bike. The earlier accident had damaged my frontal reflector and bell beyond all hopes of repair. The bike's rear gear-driller had been skewed out of alignment, that I was able to fix. Then I proceeded to check my own body for damages. The nether regions of my buttocks were bruised to the point of being blue and purple. My left butt-cheek had sustained a 2 inch wide scraping. Basically, when my bike crashed in the forest road, the friction of the seat mount had torn off a couple of inches of the skin on my behind. I applied antibiotic cream and band aid from my first aid kit, and went promptly to sleep.

mile 80 Battle with the God of Thunder

I was just several miles from bay shore as the thunderstorm descended with full fury. Riding alone through forested lands by the sea, I was hit by everything at once. The heavy rains caused a sudden drop in temperature from 100 degrees to around 60 degrees. I had been riding for 10 hours straight, and the sudden temperature drop caused my leg muscles to spasm uncontrollably. The darkened heavens sent bolts of lightening down all around me. It was a vision of fierce and untamed beauty. The winds of the thunderstorm were quite strong, and they somehow transformed the sound of the nearby sea waves. The sound of the wind and sea in concert was haunting, like the agonized wailing of hundreds of people.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightening struck a massive oak tree 30 yards to my right. At the edge of my vision, I saw the darkened silhouette of the tree's canopy as it was sheared off by the bolt from the heavens. The flash of lightening blinded me, the thunder was like a thousand rifles going off at once. An earth-shattering crack followed by the ringing deafness of my own ear drums. Something came a split second after the thunder, it was a blast of air. The air pressure was very strong and hot to the point of being painful. The air bubble enveloped the right side of my body and knocked me off balance. I fought for control as my bicycle skidded to a crash landing in a clearing by the side of the road. I took the picture then.

I admit now that I was probably hallucinating from fatigue, pain, and shock. But what transpired in my mind then seemed just as real to me as anything. I thought that I was fated to die just then. I thought that Thor, the god of thunder had wanted me dead. I imagined that the howling winds were the souls of countless Massapequa Indians calling me into the underworld. I got onto my bicycle and began pedalling hard. Pretty soon, both of my legs began cramping. The pain was savage and unrelenting, but I kept pushing onwards. In my disoriented state, I felt strangely disconnected from the pain, almost as if I was a spectator on my own plight.

A man should not be forced to contemplate his own mortality. Death, if it comes , should be swift and hopefully sudden. But there I was, on my bike, in the middle of nowhere, contemplating my own death. For one thing, life certainly did not flash before my eyes, that must be a Hollywood gimmick. But I did feel quite a bit of regret then, regret at not being able to keep some of the promises that I had made to myself and others. I would not be able to teach my kid cousin how to make arrows out of ash wood, obsidian, and turkey feathers. I promised him that two winters ago, when we crafted his first red-oak longbow together, but other things always took priority. I thought that I would not be able to give my mother a grandson as she wanted. I had promised her that last year when she was (falsely) diagnosed with cancer. I was greatly saddened by that thought. But most of all, I regretted never finding a woman who could love me in return. It was something that I had always wanted but apparently never had. The sadness soon turned into anger and anger became rage. I didn't want to die just then, and I pedalled even harder. Harder than I have ever pedalled in my life. I wanted life. I remember cursing aloud at Thor and Odin in the pouring rain, daring them to strike me down, promising revenge if they did.

It seemed like an eternity, but the worst of the storm passed as I came out of the woods in sight of the town of Bay Shore. To the Western Horizon, I can see the last rays of sunlight coming out of the edge of the storm clouds. I felt as if I had defied the will of the gods and wrested back my own life. It felt awesome!!!!!

mile 70 Babylon

As I rode through the place, I understood why most Montauk Century bike competitions began in the Town of Babylon. This place looked extremely prosperous! The buildings were as beautifully decorated as they were architecturally ornate. The roads were in superb condition, far better than what I had seen so far. Alongside of the town center, there were parks with a series of small ponds and walking paths through the pond. By this point, my leg muscles felt like pistons of blistering pain as I kept pedalling along. Storm clouds were converging overhead, and I saw a Free Mason's lodge by the roadside. I thought about just staying there for the night or to at least ride out the storm. But then I remembered that I had not yet passed the 2nd of 3 mysterious of the Masonic Guild. In any case, I rode on, ever mindful of the time and the approaching storm.

mile 65 Lindenhurst

There seems to be very little to the village of Lindenhurst. Basically just 2 rolls of houses on the sides of Montauk Highway. The roads were very poorly maintained, and my body was becoming unstable. Every pot hole in the road sent jolts of pain through my buttocks and up my back. I was riding in the forward control position. This position increases pedalling efficiency at the cost of back muscle fatigue. I knew I only had 15 miles to go before I reach my 1st night's resting place at Bay shore. So I really put my heart into it, I wanted to reach bay shore before night fall.

mile 60 Massapequa

My legs and buttocks were hurting intensely as I glided through down town Massapequa. Moreover, I REALLY needed to relieve myself at that moment. So I did what any reasonable person would've done in the situation. I went to the Massapequa Chamber of Commerce building and proceeded to find a restroom. While there, I grabbed a few brochures with local maps on them. Once in the restroom, I took much longer than usual to get the job done. I had been eating non stop for the entire day and thus had a lot of waste materials to purge. So I was quite bored sitting there and started flipping through the brochures. One caught my eye, it was something from the bureau of Indian affairs. Basically, the native American Massapequa tribe used to control a large portion of the Southern long island coast. At some point in the 1690s, European colonists basically passed on small pox to the natives and largely wiped that tribe off the map. The modern town was built on top of the old Massapequa main village. The brochure goes on to mention that the surrounding areas used to be Massapequa corn fields and settlements. The colonists basically just took over the Indian villages and fields that were cleared of Indians through the power of epidemic diseases. In any case, I was much intrigued with the story, but had to be on my way.

mile 50 Wantagh

When I made it to the village of Wantagh, my buttocks was hurting like a can of smashed assholes. Furthermore, my legs were getting a bit sore from a day of peddling. It started raining lightly, and I asked a nearby cyclist if there was a place to stop and eat. Greg, the cyclist asked me where I was going, and I said Montauk. At that, he told me that I was insane and that I was going to get myself killed. He said that the best thing I should do is peddle my way to the Massapequa train station and go home or to Montauk on the LIRR. I politely thanked him for his opinion and was on my way. A few miles of riding brought me to Marinelli's, a small family owned pizzashop. The owner Lou was working there along with his two sons and daughter. I got two bottles of spring water and a slice of pizza(which was fantastic by the way :D). As I sat out the rain, we talked about what I was doing on the trip and the pizza business in general. With Marinelli's the situation is much the same, Lou mentioned that the prices of everything seems to be inflating. With that, Lou asked his son Charlie to stop wasting electricity and gas, in the normal way that a father communicates to his son.

So I finished the pizza and was about to go on my way. I asked for the bill, and was surprised to find that the pizza was on the house. It was really good pizza made by a very decent bunch of people. As I was leaving, Charlie asked me to post this on my blog so here goes: "Buy more pizza less gas!" So seriously...if you guys are ever in Wantagh, give Merinelli's pizza a try!

mile 40 Merrick

I couldn't help but notice that the town of Merrick had a lot of shiny office parks filled with shiny cars as I rode through there. As I biked along the road, I noticed that a woman from the post office was staring at me from alongside the road. So I stopped and said "hi!" Now Karen who worked at the post office asked me where I was going and why I was riding a bicycle in a road filled with cars. I mentioned to her that I was riding to Montauk. She said that I was out of my mind, that I was going to be killed. I just smiled, told her why I was doing this, and mentioned that I had already ridden 40 miles and received not a scratch(not entirely true as my buttocks was scratched a bit then). At that Karen smiled and mentioned that she thought about biking to work sometimes but was too afraid of the car traffic. I told her that the greatest danger of riding in car traffic was the bicyclist's FEAR of being hit by a car. A person's fear of auto accidents creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. That made her laugh. She mentioned that I was crazy for doing this, but it was a good cause, and she thinks I can make it to Montauk alive! I thanked her for the compliment and was on my way!

mile 35 Between Oceanside and Baldwin

Riding into the sea side resort town of Baldwin was a hassle. The roads were not of high quality, and my buttocks were itchy and sore as hell in the heat. In the town center, I met Kevin and Marybeth. They were hardcore amateur bikers who had already done 47 miles that day. They mentioned that the weather was too hot and that I needed to take salt and potassium tablets to keep my muscles from cramping. I went with them into this nearby Italian restaurant called Seven Brothers to get some food. The people there were super nice and allowed me to keep my bike inside their store. Additionally, they let me recharge my smart phone in their kitchens. I talked with the restaurant owner about food prices, and he mentioned that his business was taking a beating from the cost of meats, pasta, and gas. More expensive food and gas means less tourists to the resort town. I told the store owner about my blog and thanked him for letting me use his kitchen's power outlet. He asked me to mention his restaurant on my blog. So here goes: Seven Brothers Italian Restaurant makes an absolutely awesome Clam Rigatoni, it was so good that it literally melted in my mouth as I downed the entire plate!!!

mile 30 Rockville Center

After several miles, I was literally burning up in the high temperatures of the noon day, and I was a bit lost. So I did what any self-respecting person would do in such circumstances, I went to a 7/11 by the road. There, I met Charlie. Now Charlie had just bought a new bike to commute to work with. He was really decent and gave me a detailed map of long island to follow. I was finally able to ditch my outdated bikely route instructions. After studying the map a bit, I decided to follow Merrick Road on to Merrick and then switch to the Montauk Highway all the way to the Eastern tip of Long Island.

mile 28 Valley Stream

The sun was heating up my black bike helmet to dangerous temperatures as I biked through Valley Stream. The traffic on Grand Ave was quite heavy and as I biked I noticed a trend. If you bike closer to the edge of the road(to feel safer), the car drivers will almost instinctively come closer to you, forcing you even further to the edge. This is a potentially very dangerous trend, so I biked far from the right hand edge of Grand, forcing the cars to go around me a bit. While this seems more dangerous in theory, it worked out real well for me.

In any case, the blazing sunlight was killing me and I was forced to stop at a watermelon stand. There I met Ezra. He's a produce farmer from Georgia trying to offload some of his watermelons near NYC. The man gave me a gallon of ice water for free. After I drank my fill and loaded my water bottles, I paid him 2 dollars for a quarter of a melon, which we then shared. Ezra told me about how the high gas prices were killing small farmers across the land. He mentioned that it now costs him 1300 dollars to ship a single truckload of produce to NYC as compared to under 1000 dollars just 4 months ago. He was wondering when the government will start rationing gas...since small truck suppliers like him can't take much more of this high fuel cost. I had no answer for him. In any case, I thanked Ezra for the ice water and went on my way.

mile 25 Parson Center

I arrived at Parson's center, on the edge of Queens. The sun was terribly bright and hot, and I scrambled to find a place of shade. I reached a shady bus stop and started guzzling water. There, I met Joe, a social worker. Joe had a car in queens but had to sell it since gas prices made it difficult for him to keep the vehicle. Now he is relying on buses and his feet to get around the area. Joe, in the picture, was asking me why we are sending troops and food to other countries when there are people without enough food and gas in queens? That is a damned good question, since I have seen quite a few of what appears to be homeless people in this area already.

mile 20 Near Jamaica Queens

I was lost in queens! I was trying to get to Jamaica ave, but apparently my pre-planned route had streets from 2006! In any case, I decided to ask for directions. The first person I asked was Simon, a fellow biker. Simon had biked to here from Staten Island(taking the ferry to Manhattan) his directions got me to the Interborough parkway, which is now named something else. And then I bumped into Rich and Flora. Rich was showing me his new bicycle seat in the picture. Rich is trying to switch to bicycling as his main mode of urban transport. That couple was really nice and pointed me along to Jamaica avenue!

mile 15 Central Queens

As I rode through Queens, I noticed that the landscape became successively more degraded the further east one rides. Williamsburg was replete with hipsters. But as I rode onwards, I noticed that entire districts seems to be in a semi-abandoned state with broken windows, collapsing roofs, and of course graffiti. Furthermore, the quality of the roads were going down. The roads here had way more pot holes and cracked pavement sections than in Manhattan.

mile 9 Williamsburg Bridge

Riding on the Williamsburg bridge was not as impressive in person. For one thing, you're constantly surrounded by these huge metal screen walls. The screens constricted the views of both Manhattan and Queens. At the apex of the bridge, I stopped for some water and beef jerky. On the down slope, the bridge was an absolute thrill to glide cross. I was able to glide to a speed of 25 mph or so before leaving the bridge and entering queens.

mile 2 Midtown Manhattan

It was 8:30 am on Sunday Morning, I had overslept the 7am starting time. Before heading out, I had slapped on some sunblock. Riding the bicycle through mid-town was quite pleasant. There weren't too many cars on Sunday morning, and the view of the city scape was magnificent to behold.

Long Island Bicycle Quest....Supply Gathering

It has been a long day. I have been running across the city gathering supplies for the trip tomorrow. I have mounted 2 side saddles to the hybrid bike to carry the supplies. After searching several farmer's markets and the local Chinatown, the following set of food supplies have been gathered.


1. 1 lb of concord grape raisins
2. 1 lb of beef jerky
3. 1 lb of smoked fish
4. 10 oatmeal bars
5. 10 vitamin supplement tablets
6. 10 potassium supplement tablets

As for equipment I'm bringing the following:

1. 1 Multi-purpose Swiss army knife
2. 1 Compact bike tire repair kit
3. 1 Compact First aid kit
4. 1 Bottle of Sun block
3. 1 Compact bike pump
4. 1 Liter rail mounted plastic water bottle
5. 2 Liter back mounted plastic water bottle
6. 1 LED flashlight
7. 1 miniature compass
8. 1 rain poncho
9. 1 Kryptonite U-Lock
10. 1 Smartphone+charger
11. 1 box of matches
12. Maps of Long Island

Fully loaded, I'll be hauling 25 lbs of gear on this journey. If truth be told, I'm a little bit nervous. This could be a dangerous journey. Still, it's something that I have committed myself to doing.

Long Island Bicycle Quest....Initial Planning

Every once in a while the spirit of adventure and wander-lust invades the heart of man. I'm no exception to that rule. A hunger in the soul demands a journey that will test the limits of my physical and mental endurance. This quest will not be one of ease and luxury. But rather a tough journey to explore the physical, social, and spiritual world around me. While the desire to go off the beaten path burns strongly within me, I will not be pitting myself against large tusked animals as in my earlier quests.

For this trip, I will embark upon a solo bicycle journey to circumscribe the entirety of long island. Through the trip, I am going to explore the feasibility of long range personal transport without the use of non-renewable fossil fuels. It is my belief that such sustainable transport systems will be critical to us in this age of depleting fossil fuels and natural resources. And as such, understanding the nature of sustainable transport paradigms is a core goal of Grown UP Permaculture. Thus, relying on muscle power, fueled by locally grown organic foodstuffs, I will be attempting a 300 mile journey from the heart of New York City to the Eastern shores of Montauk and back in 4 days. I will be riding through urban boroughs, suburban districts, farms, gated communities, shoreline towns, forested state parks, and rugged hillsides. My hope is to stop at the small towns and communities dotting long island and gain an understanding of people's grassroots responses to the global food, energy, and environmental crisis that is hitting our society.

A solitary bike journey of such distance requires a meticulous degree of planning and preparation. Going by muscle power alone, even a minor accident could have very serious consequences. Thus I'm leaving little to chance by factoring in a high margin of safety. Firstly, I have replaced my used mountain bike with a new hybrid road/mountain bike. The old bike has served me well, however, I fear that it's braking system and gear train will not survive such a long distance journey without a major failure. Furthermore, the bicycle's sub-optimal height and off-road wheels served as a huge drag on performance. The less than ideal height causes user fatigue, while the wheels reduced the cruising speed. The new bike will enable a comfortable cruising speed of 20 miles per hour.

I'm integrating the idea of redundancy into every level of my preparations. I have enhanced the vehicle's reflector plates with mounted back-up LED lights for night time riding. If those lights fail, there is a portable LED flashlight that I can mount onto the bike. For the bicycle itself, I have assembled a compact repair kit in case of minor failures. For navigation, I'm relying on GPS feeds and streaming Google Earth Satellite maps from my smartphone. But in case this fails, I have backup paper road maps and a compass. In case of minor accidents, a compact first aid kit will suffice. In case of serious accidents, I have cached pre-recorded voice and text distress messages and added them to a list of emergency phone numbers and email addresses in my smartphone. If worse comes to worse, I can notify half a dozen emergency contacts of my situation with the touch of a button or a single voice command. Lastly, I'm taking along a multi-purpose swiss-army knife. It has been by my side on a every major adventure that I have gone on.

I have planned my bike route in such a way that at no point would I ever be more than 7 miles away from a town and it's train station. I will be hugging the coast of Long Island for the entire journey. The terrain will be relatively flat along the coast lines. Nevertheless, I have acquired a bicycle train pass from the Long Island Rail System, just in case my body fails due to fatigue at some point. In any case, tomorrow, I will be gathering local food stuffs and additional supplies for the trip. So stay tuned!!! :D

Suburban Garden Update

My father has been kind enough to send over some photos of our garden in PA. Things seem to be going rather well there. The peas are now having sending forth beautiful white blossoms as they climb up the bamboo poles that I set up a couple of months back. This is the essence of vertical farming as every cubic inch of a space is utilized by the food producing plants.

The summer squash plants are doing very well, they are at the stage where they can cover much of the ground area of the garden bed. The pole beans have so far been unmolested by beetles, the lord be praised for that!!! The peppers have not been growing as fast as the squash, but hopefully it'll get enough height to tower over the ground cover that the squash plants will eventually create. The lone European eggplant seems to still be hanging on to life, though clearly the mould from last year seems to be striking the plant's leaves yet again. It appears that 2 of the 3 transplanted Bok Choi greens have survived so far.

The onions and garlic are doing much the same as before. They have been continuously producing lush green stalks that can be periodically harvested for the kitchen. It'll be a couple more months before we can dig up the delicious onion bulbs and garlic cloves that are as yet still growing under ground.


The bio-intensive garden bed looks like it's going crazy! The 4 tomatoes have matured very quickly and 2 of them are already bearing small green tomatoes. The cucumber plant has been growing rapidly as well but has so far fallen short of providing full ground cover. If the bio-intensive methodology espoused by Jeavons prove to be effective, this single bed could produce hundreds of pounds of tomatoes and cucumber this year. But we'll just have to wait and see!


The potatoes in both the garden bed and the containers have grown to their peak size. They have as of yet not flowered, but we're expecting it within the next couple of weeks. The container potatoes have grown especially vibrant. The plants tower over the containers, straining to absorb every last photon of sunlight around them. Life in the garden is such a beautiful thing.