King of the Hill

This morning we set off to ride the 15 miles to our friends in Yonkers. As the quote goes "a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step," (or something like that) well, a bike trip from Manhattan to Yonkers starts (kind of) with a single hill -- and keeps climbing,

Today it was Little Squid's turn to conquer the hill leading from the base of the George Washington Bridge to street level. Notice the bike. It is his "new" Specialized Dolce Allez. Kind of, sort of. And with it, he conquered the hill. Go Squid! That said, Squidette and I wound up walking part of it. Oops!

We all, then, managed the rest of the hills, including the nasty Riverdale Avenue, and had a lovely afternoon hanging out with our friends in Yonkers.

Coming home saw a series of small mishaps including a flat on Little Squid's bike, due to glass, just after descending the G.W. Bridge hill. While Mike changed the tube the kids and I noticed these swimmers. Going nowhere. Yup. We watched for a few minutes and realized that a few of them were caught in the current and were swimming in place. Eventually they got the clue and swam sideways to the bank and climbed out a bit before the end point, a nice cove a few meters "down" stream. The Hudson River is a tidal estuary down by NYC and the tide must have been going upstream.
There were at least a hundred swimmers emerging from the river and no, we have no idea what the swim was all about. It might have been the annual swim around Manhattan. We used to see it every year when we lived on the East River.