I leave at 8:45 a.m. for New York City. It’s a good ride through the countryside, and then it’s time I stop traveling east and drop south. As I get closer to the city I spend about $2.50 on tolls, and use the Thruway to get me into town.
I pull off in the Bronx to check my map, and a police patrol car cruises up. He tells me that I don’t need to be here, and escorts me back to the Thruway and into Manhattan. I have no luck checking out the addresses I have, so I pull out my Youth Hostels Association book and head for the Silver Residence Hall at New York University. For 75 cents I have a cheeseburger and chip, and I hit the pillow at around midnight.
At 11:20 a.m. I head downtown on Broadway. Another bike, a BMW, is timing the light the same as me and each time, we stop and chat. Paul knows where I have to go to pick up my money, and asks me if I have a chain and padlock. When I say no, he offers to watch my bike for me. He owns a couple of carwashes in the city and his bike, a 700cc BMW, is the easiest way to get around.
I go into the bank—the American Express Travel Office—with my little yellow piece of paper. The teller looks at me in my scruffy riding gear, all wrapped up for the cold, and says I must go up to floor 20-something. He tells me which elevator to take and says, “I’ll tell them you’re coming.”
Up I go. The elevator doors open to a grand, all-carpeted reception area with a rather attractive young lady at an immaculate desk.
She says, “Mr. Rutherford,” and picks up the phone. “I’ll tell someone you’re here.”
It’s a big office; work screens disappear into the distance and, at the end, a man steps out in a suit, holding a piece of paper. He starts walking towards me, and as he does, lots of heads start popping up and around the sides to look at me.
He shakes my hand and gives me my $300 cheque to cash downstairs, along with a letter from ANZ, the Australia and New Zealand Bank. He says that they have been wondering about me for a while. I think they were probably running a sweepstake on me to see if I would make it.
Paul is still guarding my bike, and he says he has to visit his parents on Staten Island. He offers me a tour around and a bed for the night. We go there by ferry, past the Statue of Liberty in the haze, the Twin Towers full height but not completed.
We return to Manhattan by tunnel under the harbor, and then ride to his home in Brooklyn. We later do a walk around Times Square to see the sights, then return to his family on Staten Island, to dine on steak while it rains and thunders outside.