Brooklyn Center begins gradually to look like her big sister Manhattan. Skyscrapers grow there like weeds and the Chinese have opened Chinatown’s branches all over. We had already noticed during our last visit how Little Italy had also succumbed to the yellow peril.

This town is a gem and I’m having difficulty in where to begin, what to describe, pictures to put in the article. There is not a street that does not deserve its picture, almost every building has a special charm that deserves a detailed description, each neighborhood is a symbol of this city. I will try a more comprehensive description by neighborhood.

Everyone has heard at least once the name in a movie or a TV series of each neighborhood of the city. It is a museum, a living museum that moves, teeming, who plays 24/7, a huge melting pot, a unique architectural marriage. The looks are all drawn up in the depths of the rectilinear avenues. The business district south of the island of Manhattan is probably the most messy in terms of urban planning and traffic. The streets are crooked, sometimes paved, often pedestrian around Wall Street, the famous New York Stock Exchange Street, heavily guarded.

Amid these business centers, these huge buildings, a church, lost but enhanced by its position embedded between two glass and steel towers. I drive 2 minutes to reach the World Trade Center. During my last visit in 2006, there was a huge hole where we saw the subway at the bottom. Today it stands the tallest tower in New York, as if nothing had happened.

Not far away, the platforms offer a great view with the statue of liberty and Ellis island in the background. Across the Hudson River, Staten Island I did not go but whose towers would rival any European city. All this in less than one kilometer, and it is far from finished.

To go into Central Park, take one of those immense avenues. Madison, for example. Every corner is an opportunity to stop and discover an architectural wonder to see that more and more high buildings make you feel almost dizzy.

Along the way, the magnificent building of the central station is here, surrounded by the towers. The interior is equally imposing. Broadway is not far. Its gigantic advertising screens rotate day and night. The sound and permanent light, atmosphere, emulation of this place has a better interest than Las Vegas.

Leaving Broadway by the North, Columbus Circle, local CNN and Central Park are waiting for you. Central Park is constantly animated by joggers, cyclists and horse-drawn carriages for tourists but there is always a relatively quiet place. The park is huge, measuring from the rest of the city. From South of Central Park, I missed the Empire State Building, we must go back. Up close, it is difficult to see the top and yellow taxis swarm like insects from its panoramic balcony. And not far from here, the Chrysler building and its magnificent peak that we hardly distinguishe from below.

 If you do not look all the time everywhere, you inevitably miss a remarkable building in the corner. Luxury stores also excel at their front and blend into the mass with French bistros, Japanese restaurants, pizzerias, major banks, Indian shops, and street vendors burgers.

North of Central Park, Harlem and the Bronx. District so famous for their sulphurous reputation that the second is even passed into the vocabulary of the French language. Anyway, by day, it looks there is no risk at all. The buildings look a bit like Brooklyn and the population is black and poor in majority.

We discover along the way the Yankee stadium, and a view of the various bridges linking New York neighborhoods. The prettiest is the Brooklyn’s one, in stone, almost medieval style.

In two days I cycled 100 km in New York and I still feel to have missed many things. I love this city, it always happens something unique everywhere we are. And we have already said in other articles, but the Americans are friendly, sometimes very eccentric. It’s fresh, it’s alive, it evolves. On the spot, I remembered pictures of the ugly Paris’ Montparnasse Tower, his embittered people, lifeless streets after 1 am (we even turn off the Eiffel Tower)! City of Light? In short, you understand that I am a lover of New York. Connoisseurs may find that I forgot to talk about many things. Who could make an exhaustive description of this place? I just add a few pictures here that I did not know where to insert before :

In the evening, I returned to Brooklyn to go to the Barcklays’ Center to attend a NBA game : Brooklyn Nets received the Toronto Raptors. Not that I’m a big fan of basketball, but I wanted to know once the atmosphere of these games. The show is very american, Cheerladders come and show their bodies every 5 minutes to fill the many time-outs and the speaker is trying all evening to inflame a public, oddly enough individually but very noisy in little group. The opposite of France. The game itself is a whole other level than in Europe, much more fun to watch. In short, it is the world class basketball.

This visit to the Big Apple was not planned at all and it has been one of the highlights of my trip, one of the most exciting places I have (re) seen. And then I accidentally discovered that my Brooklyn hosts had lived two years in Zambia. For a guy who wants to travel in Africa, I’m pretty lucky here. Next step, the African continent!

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Hitchiking time

After that we were looking for some motivation, something challenging to forget San Francisco’s easy life. The Highway 1 along the coast is a nice ride, but it wasn’t enough. We decide to try the polyphasic sleep without really knowing how it works. We both had a vague idea of the thing, so why not cycle all day and night with small naps here and there ? Sounds like a really stupid idea, let’s do it ! First break at 8pm, we don’t even take time to put up the tent of inflate a mattress and we sleep on the floor before cycling again. We discover that the road is climbing. We are around Big Sur. Hills are never fun during day light, but when it’s nightime and you are exhausted, it’s quite unbearable. Second break at 1am, time to meet an alien, a guy from Alabama working from north to south USA, no bag, during the night, alone. We said Forrest Gump ?

Third break at 5am, day time. This time we opt for a bit of comfort with the tent and sleep a couple of hours. We are zombies when we wake up. We just cycled 40 miles during the night… great start.

An hour later on a road finally flat we meet 2 french couples including one cycling (tricycles) with their Rottweiler in a trailer. One day of cycling where we have met more cyclists than the rest of our trip. Nevertheless we decide to keep going with our little experience and start a new nap at 8pm after Cayucos. We wake up at 6am the next day ! Our healed brains then decide to end all this.

En route for Las Vegas, you can choose between the Mojave desert or the Death Valley. Both seem very attractive for cyclists isn’t it ? As we have no intention to drag and because it’s flat, we go the the Mojave. Motivated by this choice we go 90 miles a day. In Mojave city, Virgin Galactics doesn’t open their doors to errants like us. We take a nice picture of their door. For their credit, we do look like homeless people sometimes. One day on a rest area, while we were cooking, a woman came to us and gave us a dollar each !

Right after the Nevada border we discover Primm, a casino city. 2 giant hotel-casinos, a McDonald’s and a ridiculous tiny food shop. No one is here for the sightseing. 20 miles after, Las Vegas. Tourists everywhere. It is an impressive city, Disneyland like. Those nuts reproduced famous buildings from all over the world. Mini New York City, small paris, Venezia, Egypt, etc. That’s for the outside. Inside (hotel/bar/casino/night-club/casino/strip-club) you walk among plenty of streets with fake buildings and underneath a painted fake sky. You have no clue if it’s day or night outside. Venezia even have channels and gondolas.

Decoration : 10/10, people : 0. A bunch of zombies on slot machines, no human interaction and no particular crazyness. Everyone stay in his bubble sipping a beer and sadly pushing coins in an ungrateful cold machine. We spent 0 cents there despite what we planned.

Next step : Grand Canyon. In between we have a look at the Hoover Dam. A nice beast build in 1935, and 111 deads during the construction. We read later the dam is 200m thick. Too easy.

We leave Nevada with a poor idea of the local police. They kept barking on tourist around the dam for nothing and the day before while we were wild camping on an empty field a cowboy kicked us from there just before we were heading to bed, treating us like dangerous criminals : “Get in front of the car” “Hands out your pockets”, etc. We have to put that in perspective though. The french cliché about americans (fats and stupids) couldn’t be more disconnected from the reality. The locals we’ve met are way ahead of us on a professional or personal mindset. A lot take classes after work and speak different languages. You can feel the famous entrepreneur spirit in whatever topic you bring and their hospitality and positiveness are always refreshing.

Back on the road, we are in the desert and the temperature drops while we get close to the Grand Canyon. We regularly find our water bottles frozen in the morning. 13°F last night ? That’s why I had cold feet. Hopefully we have good tents and sleeping bags. Once arrived to destination we discover one of the greatest place we’ve seen during our whole trip. It’s almost as amazing as China’s great wall. A few pictures can’t do justice to the Grand Canyon, you have to go there and experience it.

We keep going on the shortest road to Mexico : Flagstaff-Phoenix-Tucson-Nogales. We do Thanksgiving under a bridge just before Phoenix and stay in a WarmShower in Tucson. We also took this road because highways are comfortable to ride thank to the huge shoulder on the side. Arizona’s police doesn’t share our enthousiasm and kicked us out of one of them. Gently.

Ending bonus :

Imagine the happiness of a blind guy and his dog who end up finding this sign

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Nous sommes un peu perdus, cela fait bientôt 3 ans que nous roulons à gauche et nos vélos zigzaguent sur les voies avant de se résoudre à rester sagement sur la file de droite. L’autre changement notable est d’entendre parler des locaux avec un accent chicanos ou asiat’ très prononcé. Ce melting pot nous met tout de suite à l’aise, on se sent moins étrangers. Nous traversons la ville de San Francisco depuis l’aéroport, l’occasion d’apercevoir ces personnages excentriques que seuls les productions américaines savent nous montrer : le dealer en costume flashy, chapeau et dents en or, les bandes de blacks qui trainent au coin des rues, jouant de la musique, les Mexicains tatoués avec le bandana sur la tête. Quelques voitures de police noires et blanches “SFPD”, des camions de pompier éclatants, nous sommes dans un film. Mais cette fois le Pont du Golden Gate est intact : pas de singes guerriers, aucun monstre ou tremblement de terre pour le détruire et James Bond ne crapahute pas dessus. Ce qui n’enlève rien à la beauté de l’ouvrage finalisé en 1937. C’est une des conceptions humaines les plus impressionnantes que j’ai pu voir. Un peu de brouillard pour masquer son sommet et la scène devient parfaite.

D’une manière générale, j’ai du mal à m’extasier devant un paysage naturel mais je trouve ces constructions sorties de la main et du cerveau de l’homme renversantes. Et San Francisco offre ce spectacle régulièrement : outre le Golden Gate Bridge, les Bay bridge (l’ancien en cours de démolition suite au séisme de 1989, et le nouveau anti-sismique), le centre-ville aux gratte-ciels qui faisaient déjà lever les têtes des Gendarmes à New York, Chinatown, les églises encastrées entre les buildings.
D’ailleurs, concernant ces églises “encastrées” (que nous avions déjà observées à Montreal), elles prouvent bien que toutes ces normes restreignant les constructions autour des bâtiments historiques sont complètement débiles. Le moderne et l’ancien pouvant très bien se marier sans règles d’urbanisme ultra-restrictives, l’intégration se fait de façon naturelle, et le contraste est harmonieux.
En revanche, Alcatraz présente peu d’intérêt, noir de monde, les photos sur internet seront plus belles que les vôtres.

Les Américains sont polis, avenants, souriants et c’est très agréable. La caissière de supermarché peut très bien vous demander comment s’est passé votre week-end, l’employé du Subway pourquoi vous semblez fatigué, etc. jusqu’au clochard vous racontant une blague pour vous demander 3 sous (cette dernière anecdote s’était passée à New York il y a 8 ans mais on ressent la même ambiance aujourd’hui). On a par contre rencontré un blocage avec l’humour français, sarcastique. Ça n’est jamais très bien passé. Quand on voyage entre frères, c’est un de nos sports favoris.
Ce qui est très américain c’est d’employer des adjectifs démesurés. Rien n’est juste good ou very good. Non, c’est awesome, amazing, delicious! Si on vous demande si vous aimez un plat, good n’est vraiment pas suffisant, on doutera de votre réponse. Et il ne faut pas dire qu’il manque de sel, les autres invités vous contrediront… avant de reprendre du sel. Les relations entre “étrangers” (personnes qui ne se connaissent pas) sont cependant beaucoup plus amicales qu’en France.

Il existe cependant quelques zones grises à San Francisco :
-Les bars et les pubs ferment unanimement à 2heures du matin (ou s’ils ne ferment pas, ne servent plus d’alcool… donc ferment) ce qui rend la vie nocturne beaucoup moins attrayante qu’elle ne pourrait l’être. J’aime ces villes asiatiques où l’activité se poursuit quelque soit l’heure du jour et de la nuit. Bangkok a depuis longtemps surclassé Paris en qualité de “ville lumière”.
-Le contrôle des loyers rend ces derniers hors de prix. Un propriétaire ne peut pas augmenter son loyer tant que le locataire reste dedans, même après 40 ans. Forcément, le propriétaire envoie la sauce du départ. Les permis de construire sont également très dur à obtenir et sont apparemment délivrés la première quinzaine de janvier, aux amis.
-La nourriture est de meilleure qualité qu’en Australie ou en Nouvelle-Zélande mais il manque toujours quelques classiques comme les fromages non pasteurisés (qui peut décemment se passer de reblochon?) ou le foie gras interdit pour cruauté envers les animaux depuis 2 ou 3 ans. Je n’ai pas encore rencontré d’Américains en faveur de cette loi… Ah, et les saucissons sont vendus dans un sachet papier de façon à ce qu’on en voit pas la couleur.
-Les vélos se font fauchés régulièrement et tous les cyclistes ont un cadenas métallique rigide. Nous avons conservé les cadenas que nous traînons depuis le début du voyage, des cadenas renforcés de 8mm d’acier au milieu. Résultat : deux cadenas cisaillés et un vélo volé pendant que nous découvrions les règles du baseball. C’est ennuyant, le base-ball.

Il y a des sports plus amusants à San Francisco. À notre deuxième jour et lors d’un détour par Baker beach, nous découvrons les jeux olympiques nudistes au pied du Golden Gate Bridge (le mouvement nudiste semble assez développé dans cette ville). L’occasion de participer à un combat de lutte à poil, arbitré par un sympathique illuminé : George Davis. Vous ne le connaissez sûrement pas, tout comme moi, mais une rapide recherche sur internet permet de constater qu’il est un des chefs de file du nudisme aux États-Unis et s’est présenté comme maire de San Francisco en 2007 et 2011. Mon diplôme olympique en poche, nous découvrons amusés ce petit monde du nudisme et notamment le photographe officiel, un Danois qui couvrait déjà des évènements nudistes en URSS dans les années 70.

Concernant le vélo volé, nous avons contacté la marque que nous utilisons depuis 3 ans, Montague. Nous avions opté pour ces vélos car ils se plient et permettent de facilement prendre un bus, un train ou faire du stop quand le besoin se fait sentir. En échange des photos de leurs vélos plein de boue pendant notre voyage, ils nous ont envoyé gratuitement un vélo pour nous permettre de continuer.

NB : les informations que nous fournissons sont généralement le fruit de discussion avec des locaux. Nous recoupons parfois rapidement l’information sur internet ou par d’autres locaux mais nous ne faisons pas de longues recherches pour confirmer nos propos. Cela permet aussi de représenter l’état d’esprit des locaux et non pas forcément une situation exacte.