Day 297 - 305, New York to Columbia PA

Day 297, 25 km

When i left the library in Brooklyn it was snowing again. Although the snow did not stick on the grond the city buses were equipped with snow chains!

I decided to visit the famous Museum of Natural history. 

I had heard that it was good but it was even better than i thought. People were going around taking pictures everywhere, so I decided not to take any inside. I only enjoyed it and can warmly recomend you to visit it.

When it became dark I contacted Lynn, a warmshower-host, who told me that I could stay in her appartment although she had four sick puppies to take care of. It was a very convenient and nice place, where I stayed the next four days.

Day 298, 0 km

Next day I decided to explore New York without my bicycle. First I took a walk to Ground Zero, where they were building four new sky scrapers

 A sign remembered the tragedy of 9/11 2001

 The highest sky scraper is planned to become more than 500 meters!

After that I decided to test the Subway. I took trains in several directions and visted Bronx and Brooklyn just to get an experience how big NYC was.

I left the train not far form the Museum of New York, which had several interesting exhibitions about the history of NYand how people live today.

In the staircase there was a huge painting of the Grand Central Station.

It was amazing how detailed and naturalistic it was!

Day 299, 20 km

I decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum and started with the exhibition of Egypt. It was impressive that they had moved a whole Egypt temple inside a hall!

Here is the same temple when it was flooded in the lake of a power station near Assuan:

In another hall you could see a photography of a chamber in a cave when it was discovered more than 100 years ago.

And you could also see the figures in different booths around. They were in excallent shape, they even were not repainted.

 Here are some more figures

 The Museum was huge. I decided to explore only the ground floor and of all exhibitions there I actually liked the one of Africa and the Americas.

The statues above are from Central America, about the same age. I was surprised that the styles could be naturalistic and surrealistic at almost the same age!

 One of my favourites was this mask in gold.

In the evening I visited the Museum of Sex, which was also interesting. But I did no take any pictures there.

Day 300, 60 km

I decided that bicycle was the best way to explore Manhattan. My plan was to ride around the whole island and look at all ships along the piers.

 I also took a ferry to Staten island

 and passed the statue of Liberty again.

 On the westside of Manhattan there was a giant military ship called "Intrepit",

 containing a museum

 I was satified to see it from outside.
On the east side there was the UN building

which I wanted to see from inside. Many tourist were standing in a line to pass the security check. My host had warned me that they did not like bicyclers so I had parked my bicycle several blocks from the entrance. I had to take off my belt and empty all pockets, exactly as on an airport. When I passed the x-rays the machine still beeped and a guard looked at me very suspiciously. He asked me where I was going and I said that I only wanted to look inside but that I forgot my wallet in my pocket. He took my wallet and without asking me he took out all its content and asked me if I had an ID. I gave him my driver license an he ordered me to follow him to a special room. There he asked me if I had a passport, which I had. He looked at my visas from Mongolia, Russia and China, while I was trying to explain that I was riding around the world on a bicycle. He ordered me to wait and went out to fetch his supervisor. His boss was much more friendly and asked the guard why he was suspicious. I heard him saying "He has dirty hands" and actually my fingers were a little black from my bicycle chain. They looked at my American B2 visa and finally they thought it was ok for me to go inside.

 Here you see all the General Secretaries of the UN.

 One of the sculptures outside symbolises the New world breaking out from the old world

 and another "Knot Violence"

I also visited the Central Station and compared it to the painting I had seen two days before inn the Museum of New York

Day 301, 65 km

 I left Manhattan at noon and took a ferry to Jersey City. From there I had a last beautiful view of the skyline, then I went southwest, towards Pennsylvania.

In Jersey City I passed several "typical American" houses.

I stopped riding at dusk and found a good sleeping location in a wood.

Day 302, 130 km

It was a wonderful sunny day.

I passed Trenton and decided to follow the border-river west. Now I was in Pennsylvania!

The daffodils were opening in the sun

And along the channels there were a lot of people fishing this Sunday

Soon I found the first hills. I had not seen any since Texas!

The roads in Pennsylvania are mostly very good and have often WIDE shoulders

Day 303, 95 km

I came to a visitor center specially for the Amish district, but it was closed because of (Easter-) Sunday.

Even the Amish milk farms were closed on Sunday.

but they had nice buggies!

The shoulders around Lancaster were really worn out from all horse shoes.

Now and then I saw Amish buggies. The horses were trotting quite fast!

This is a church in Lancaster

In the evening I arrived at Kevin's and Diana's farm who had invited me to wwoof for a week.

Diana was a really good (professional) cook and made a delicious Thai-dinner for us.

Day 304, 15 km

This is the "Brick Tavern" where I am wwoofing.

They have a lot of different domestic birds.

My first task was to fix the door and the lock of the hens house. When I had done it, Diana showed me that I could fix another thing inside the hens house. Suddenly we discovered that the lock worked very well. The door had closed behind us and we were trapped inside the hens house! fortunately I had my cell phone so Diana could call her husband. He had to come home from work to release us!

At noon Diana showed me the office of her husband. He is dealing with old books about art and architecture.

In the evening I was invited to a couple of Waldorf teachers 15 km away. They also made a delicious dinner for me and then they took me up on a mountain with a wonderful view over the Susquehanna river.

I already had contacted Todd and Kim a month earlier, so I could use their address to get some important items from Ebay.

Here I wear my new Gore Tex jacket and right now I am writing on my own laptop, which I could not do since Miami, because the keyboard was broken!

Day 305, 10 km

Diana also works as a massage therapist and asked me that day if i could volunteer as a model/guinea pig, when she was teaching her methods to a friend. It was a very pleasant job!

In the afternoon I visited Susquehanna Waldorf School to tell about my trip. It was a beautiful school and a wonderfu atmosphere, but i forgot to take pictures!

Then Diana showed me the Roots Market, the largest open air market of the of the eastern coast. She was interested to see the animals which were auctioned.

 But you could not only buy animals. A lot of Amish people were selling vegetables and all kind of stuff there. Diana told me many things about their rules and traditions. One thing I did not know was that they were very offended if you took pictures of them. (that's why I did not do it...)
I decided to buy a book called "20 most asked Questions about Amish and Mennonites".

 I was also allowed to take a picture of paintings of the surroundings. There are many beautiful covered bridges which I would like to see!