A Cyclist Is Setting Out to Prove You Can Travel Around the U.S. by Bike and Rail

INWOOD, N.Y., 9:30 a.m. — At the corner of Broadway and Dyckman Street at the northern tip of Manhattan, Elena Studier is doing some final checks on her bike. She scans to make sure there’s air in the tires and that the brakes are working. Her backpack, a giant green Opsrey, is packed with the bare minimum. For the next 38 days, she’ll be traversing the country using only a bike (hers is named Stevie) and Amtrak, making 18 stops in various cities along the way.

The ten-mile ride down the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway from Inwood to Penn Station is just the first leg of her trip. I’m tagging along with representatives from Amtrak and the East Coast Greenway Alliance—an organization working to connect the major cities along the eastern seaboard by bike paths—to see her off. We cycle away from the sleepy streets of weekend-morning Inwood and over to the Hudson. The air is cool and salty; to our right, across the river, are quiet, wooded cliffs; to the left, the Metro-North Hudson line tracks.