Brooklyn Chinatown Bike Adventure!

Decided to do a little biking today. Somebody cracked me up a long time ago by saying "It's not an adventure 'til something goes wrong", so by that standard, I think today was an adventure.

It wasn't anything bad, just me still learning my way around the borough by bike. I had set out to get soup fixin's in Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown. Earlier in the week, TQ had brought home a roast duck from one of his favorite Chinese restaurants in Queens, where he works, and yesterday I'd used the carcass to make broth. I was originally going to use that to make just your average duck soup with carrots and celery and onions and such, but the restaurant (sorry can't remember the name!) seasons their ducks really nicely, and the broth came out delicious - and very much like something you'd get in a Chinese restaurant! So good that I decided that the rest of the fixin's needed to come from Chinatown.

There was a certain place, Fei Long, that I decided to go to because a long long time ago they had had frozen lau lau. Lau lau is a Hawaiian food with different kinds of meat (the ones Fei Long used to have had pork and butterfish) usually with some extra fat in there to make it succulent, wrapped in taro leaves and then the whole thing wrapped up in a ti leaf to make a neat little package. It was traditional luau food, the lau lau would be put into the imu (pit oven) to cook with the pig that would be the main course. Best that way but of course you can also just steam them on the stove top. I've learned how to make some of the dishes from da 'aina that I love (spam musubi, kal bi, kalua pig and cabbage for starters) but lau lau is a little complicated, so when I found out from a high school friend that Fei Long had them, I was SOOO excited!

Unfortunately after a few that were as onolicious as I'd hoped, I got a package that must have thawed out at some point - they'd gone rancid, and that was disappointing enough that I didn't go back for any more after that. But since I specifically wanted to go to Chinese grocery today, I figured why not go there?

I wasn't counting on them still having lau lau - that was a long time ago and I'm suspecting that even if they did still carry them, supply chains from Hawaii are probably messed up right now - but I figured if they had them, I'd give them another shot.

Google Maps said it was 3.6 miles to the store and would take me about 22 minutes to get there by bike. Unfortunately Google Maps totally failed to include my failure to pay attention to certain aspects of the route in their calculations.

I knew where I was coming from, I knew where I was going, and hey, it's easy to navigate in NYC - it's a grid, right?

Yeah. It's a grid. Until it isn't. And that explains how I ended up going from just south of 18th Avenue to 8th Avenue via 5th Avenue. Oops.

I'd neglected to note exactly where I would need to cut west to not run into the VERY LARGE Green-Wood cemetery. I did that once before on a long walk and ended up just going for a walk in the cemetery (that may sound weird but it's beautifully landscaped, features the highest point in Brooklyn and incredible monuments from the Victorian era, the heyday of mortuary art...ok that still sound weird but trust me, it's a great place for walking). This time I just flat out got confused and ended up going the long way around, making the outbound leg of this 3.6 mile ride more like 6 miles and also sending me up some pretty serious hills. I think I met the slope in Park Slope and the ridge in Bay Ridge personally today. Oof.

I did eventually get to the store, and I'm not that sorry about the detour because I saw a couple of interesting things on route - but next time I would take the more direct (and flat) route.

I had to stop for a photo of the Seeley Street Beach, which I thought was just charming: 

I also had to stop to take a photo of this temporary COVID-19 memorial on the fence by the main gate of the cemetery. So sad. 

On a happier but still sort of poignant note, I rode by some young people sitting out on their stoop, next to signs posted on their building congratulating them as members of the class of 2020. I smiled at them as I realized they were the graduates and they saw that and smiled back and waved. 

Finally made it to Chinatown, phew!

And here's Fei Long, yay! Actually I was a little worried when I first pulled up because gates were down and I wasn't sure if they were open, but they were - you can only get into the store from the parking lot, though. The food court is open but that entrance to the store is thorough barricaded with tables and chairs, I'm guessing because grocery stores need to keep track of how many people are in the store and that people are wearing masks. The store wasn't very crowded today. No lau lau but I did find everything else I was after - including a pretty brilliant request of TQ's! 

And I think I'm going to continue this tomorrow - long enough already and it's late and I'm going paddling again tomorrow. Hooray!

I did get home by a much more direct route, but I'm actually getting a lift to the club tomorrow as both TQ's bike and I have had enough biking for one weekend. The hills I ran into ended up requiring way more active shifting than I've done on any of my previous rides and in there somewhere, something went awry with the shift mechanism. I got home fine but I think my next bike destination needs to be a bike shop. :(

Final mileage for this 7.2 mile ride - around 10 miles. Live & learn!