Day 139 (10/2): Home to Coney Island, NY

Mileage: 8.0; 4,530 total

This morning Leslie joined Matt and me for our bicycling breakfast ritual: good food, and lots of it. We went to Tom's Restaurant, a local hotspot, where Matt had Huevos Rancheros and two strawberry pancakes, and I had three blueberry/mango/walnut pancakes, two eggs, and an English muffin. Leslie ate more moderately.

In the early afternoon Matt and I left for Coney Island and the Atlantic Ocean, on the last segment of our ride. We were soon joined by Steve Libby, who came from Jersey City to join us. We cruised through Prospect Park to Ocean Boulevard and the nation's oldest bike path, which leads directy to Coney Island. See photos.

Steve was soon joined by a preying mantis. See photo.

Although I love being back in New York City, Dan, whom I met on the boardwalk, reminded me of one of the downsides of living here. As you can see in the photo, below, he is carrying his front and rear bicycle wheels, which constitute all that is left of his bike. He had parked for several hours in Manhattan (51st and 5th Avenue), and had thought he had run his locking cable through both wheels and the frame. But alas, when he returned he realized that he had neglected to run the cable through the frame, because all that remained were his wheels.

We went to Di Faras pizza, the best in NYC, for a late lunch. Then we biked back to Blue Marble, a new ice cream place that opened, while I was traveling, right around the corner from my apartment. It was, hands down, the best ice cream I have had this year!

Tomorrow morning I will weigh myself and determine who came closest to guessing my weight loss. There are 19 entrants in the contest, with guesses ranging from a loss of 50 pounds to a gain of 30 pounds. The average (mean)guess is a loss of 29.8 pounds; the median is 35 pounds and the mode is 33 pounds. I do not yet know what the actual weight loss will be, but I suspect it will not be as much as most people have guessed.