Illini 4000

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Manhattan

It's almost time!  We are all together in New York finally!  Our place to stay at fell through on Monday, so half the team is staying at one rider(Zernyu)'s apartment in New York, and the other half is staying at a different rider(Tim)'s cousin's place.  I am at Zernyu's which is way south of Central Park, we will be taking the train about 100 blocks all the way up to Central Park tomorrow morning, where we have to be at 7AM to kick off the ride. 

On Wednesday my mom, my sister and I drove into Philly to meet with family, and today, I got into New York at about 1PM from Philly, where I had a great dinner and night with all my family members on Thursday.  Once we got to New York, I moved all my stuff into Zernyu's and then Justin, Z and I went to get pizza from this apparently famous place called Artichoke, which was pretty good, then just walked around the city for a while and went into a few bike shops, went to a local bar to hang out for a little, saw a guy walking around with a live cat balanced on his head, then headed back to Zernyu's to meet up with the group.  Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to go to Times Square with the rest of the group since I didn't get to New York in time, but I have already been there, so it's not that big a loss.

Once the whole group met up, we all went to check out the river, so I can say that I saw the Atlantic Ocean (or something that runs directly into the Atlantic) and then headed to an alumni event.  We also got to go up on the roof and get some pictures with the Empire State Building, which was awesome. PIctures of my bike and gear are on my Flickr page, http://www.flickr.com/photos/8300819@N03/,  thats where I will probably be posting most of my pictures.

Next up is some crazy city biking to get out of Manhattan, and tomorrow we will be in the middle of New Jersey.