Ok, this is going to be a lame first post, but before my selective memory kicks in and I start to forget how this bike ride went, I decided to post my first 'race report' here. :)

First and foremost, I will never do this ride again.  There it is.  No turning back now.

Not that there aren't pluses to this ride.  When you are riding, it was fun to ride really fast and not worry about traffic.  Riding across the bridges was fun since you could see up and down the East River (no stopping to take photos, tho a significant number people ignored this rule).

For the cons, there are many.  The ride starts at 8am, however at our position nearly a mile back, we didn't get moving until easily 8:45am or later.  That wait was agonizing.  After about 4 miles, and passing the start where they were already tearing down the stands, we came to another halt at 50th street.  This wait was the merge into Central Park.  The wait was pretty long, but we extended our wait a bit by hitting the Starbucks for bathroom and something to eat.  Bathroom was out of order (conveniently for them), so Cathy went back down the street to find some public restroom.  I got in line and ordered sausage, egg and cheese sandwich and the bacon, egg and cheese.  We all scarfed those down and biked up to Central Park.

Once leaving the park, the bike back down through the city was pretty smooth, with a couple of stops for cross traffic or turns.  The next major stop was the Queens borough ramp.  We were probably stopped there for 45 minutes (diverted here so did not get the out and back in Queens).  From here we biked to the Narrows and took the bridge to Statten Island.  From the finish we went biked to the ferry, there waiting 30 minutes for the ferry to arrive, then another 15-20 minutes to load the ferry.  Finally arriving in Battery Park at 4:40ish.  So this was a long day, taking us approximately 7hrs to go 40 miles.

I'm sure if our expectations had included the numerous waits, we might have been able to relax and enjoy the day.  However, we had hoped to finish by 12 or 12;30pm, so once that was not possible, we were somewhat bitter. :)