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Near the top of Central Park, we headed farther west so we could walk up Broadway and/or Riverside Drive. Here's the blimp from 106th Street, headed to Yankee Stadium for the Sox-Yanks game, which was starting at 4 or so that day.

"Monk's Diner," as most of us know it from Seinfeld, at Broadway and 112th.

We saw Columbia U. at around 114th Street and decided to check out the campus. I immediately recognized the above view from Ghostbusters--the scene after the guys get kicked out of the university. The campus seems really cool, the way it's its own little world separate from the city streets around it. Yet surrounded by the awesomeness of New York City. Would be a fun place to go to school. I know, I know..."you never studied."

At the entrance to Columbia's physics building. We rested on the campus, and now I was thinking I must have broken a bone in my left foot. And the back of my right knee was a little iffy, too. But nothing was gonna stop me from finishing this lifelong dream of mine of walking the length of Manhattan.

Now we're going along the Hudson River on Riverside Drive, still pretty far south of the George Washington Bridge. I didn't even notice the "Going the Distance" billboard--or at least didn't think about its relevance at the time....

Now we're even with the GWB at around 179th, and I'm dyin'. Limping along and audibly moaning with each step. Chan had minor issues, not as bad as mine.

187th Street. You don't see many houses like these in Manhattan. Around this point, we were getting toward the very top. Our maps were electronic, and without a signal, we didn't know exactly which route to take. Again, there are two "northernmost" points depending on how you look at it. Both seemed to be in wooded areas. We then took a right turn at a fork, onto Fort George Ave instead of Fort George Hill. I thought we were entering Inwood Hill Park at the tip, but we were actually going around that big curve, and when we came out the other side, we couldn't understand why the streets were going down again, or how we could have possibly gone farther north. As you can see by the linked map, we were stuck in that little loop, and like Christopher Columbus before us, we mistook our destination for something else. I shot one last video from what I thought was the tip, which you can see on that Randomonium episode.

So we didn't technically make it. But we walked over 17 miles that day altogether. I made a map of our route, which is as accurate as I'm gonna get it based on my memory of the day.


View Length of Manhattan Walk in a larger map

It was about 5:30. Our goal was to get back to Saigon Grill on the west side for dinner. It was an excruciating walk to the subway (we didn't know where the nearest station was up at the top there), a long wait for a train, and more walking to the Grill, where I have to say, on the day in my life when I needed it the most, they were more on top of the water refills than any other group of restaurant waiters in history. I must have downed 20 glasses of water before the meal even came. And in another first--I just couldn't walk one more step. So I insisted on a cab ride from the restaurant to Chan's apartment, where I got off my feet for the night and had the best sleep of my life. My feet/legs were heeled within a couple of days. No surgery needed. The end.