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Sorry for the post-midnight send, but it’s still Monday to me. It is good to be back. I’m something beyond flying by the seat of my pants…warping? Teleporting? The contradictions are everywhere. My life is too big and too small.

I spent part of my week in the DMV. To quote my friend Katie, when you move here, you turn 30. I hate how careerist D.C. is, but at least I can stare at row houses when my eyes aren’t rolling. I stayed at the Watergate Hotel, a hotel I’m only naming because it’s the Watergate. I did not commit espionage.

I went to a friend’s birthday at Rockaway Beach this weekend, and a completely unrelated friend texted me as I left the train station that, according to Find My Friends, we both just got off at the same stop. As I went to find her, I ran into a third friend (also unrelated from the other two). ‘

I have taken to voice note-diarying my past week. One time I talked at myself about myself for over an hour. Am I an expert on processing things or one diagnosis away from narcissism?

I thought I would do some of that yesterday on my walk. I’ll tell you everything else that happened.

Woke up mad. I have not had quality alone time in days and woke up mad. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go as far as I can. How far can I go?

I haven’t walked from my apartment to Manhattan yet. I’ve never walked over the Manhattan Bridge. Let’s start there. God, it’s hot out. The sun is oppressive, so I put on my all-Spanish playlist. It’s huge, spanning genres and eras. I know that reggaeton will help me sweat and bachata will center me after. This ended up being the only thing I listened to on my walk, no other playlists, podcasts, or calls. Woke up mad.

After braving the Downtown Brooklyn bleakness, I approach the bridge path from the wrong block and, like a lemming, follow Apple Maps’ roundabout street path instead of taking 20 steps through freshly trimmed grass. The Manhattan Bridge’s pedestrian entrance is a lot nicer than the off-highway openings of some other bridges I’ve crossed here.

Great view. Bridge doesn’t shake. I like the graffiti as I get closer to Chinatown. I follow a dad crossing with a strollered kid and another young one by his side. This boy keeps turning around and staring at me, not in the inquisitive way kids do when you’re cute but in the protective way kids do when you’re evil.

I’ve already felt multiple waves of energized and depleted, all based on how much shade I’m getting. However, in my dreaminess, I wonder if I can make it to the top of Manhattan. I ended up being out of town for what would have been my third-annual Manhattan Top to Bottom walk with friends, so I owe the universe my steps. My first top to bottom was alone, so my bottom to top should be, too.

It wouldn’t technically be a bottom to top anyway. I’m starting from Chinatown. I also didn’t want to give myself the expectation too early in case I couldn’t go that far. Walking should be fun! And it is. Part of why I like walking great distances is because it shows me how spontaneous I am and how much I’m capable of without herculean effort.

I realized here I also like walking for the opposite reasons: I like remembering that I can set and achieve goals. I like knowing myself enough to know how to plan. When things feel turbulent and the world is open to me, walking down a specific path proves that I am in control. If it’s hard or hot or long, I am the one enduring it and knowing what I can handle. Basically, I have fun walking no matter how much thought I put into it because it makes me feel like I have control.

When I arrive to Manhattan, I know I want to go far but don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. It’s a little after noon, and I haven’t eaten anything yet. I also remember that the first cardinal rule of my big walks is to wait as long as you can before the first time you sit down. It’s the walking equivalent to breaking the seal while drinking. Things get slower or maybe uncomfortable once your body has to keep moving after a break. Alas, I am hungry.

I looked at my bookmarks and decided to try Santo Taco. It’s in the square (triangle?) at Lafayette and Spring Street, the one with Jack’s Wife Freda (least favorite name type because it’s in the family of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse (the worst name of anything)). I remember thinking this area was the center of the coolness universe before I moved here. I wanted something fortifying but light so I wouldn’t feel too sleepy when I continued walking, so I got a mushroom taco with a squash blossom and a steak taco whose meat overflowed past the tortilla on all sides. A family of tourists behind me decided they were going to try the Tenement Museum. Good choice. Then they want to try Justin’s Salt Bread. You’re visiting New York, and this is what you want to try?

I’m up and feeling fine, but I haven’t really walked an insane distance yet anyway. At least I can’t let myself think that yet. I guess have to prove something to myself today. I want a beverage and see I’m near 12 Matcha, a place I’ve wanted to try. I walk towards it and forget that this is a viral sweet treat joint on a summer Sunday afternoon. I nab a coconut matcha from a place down the block that hopes to capitalize off of similarly disgruntled matcha drinkers. However, people love waiting in lines, and this is one of many lower Manhattan people snakes I encounter.

It’s so hot that even Washington Square Park and its trees feel like a respite. I feel like I’ve already made it a great deal because I’ve traversed horizontally so much, but I decide here that I really want to hit the top of Manhattan. Inwood is such a hug of a neighborhood, and I want that congratulatory hug. I have to keep reminding myself to be compassionate if I can’t make it, but I never set impossible goals.

I felt like I’ve already walked so much, but I’ve only just hit West 4th. I finish my matcha while debating which avenue I want to stay down. Although I have dreams of the more commercial avenues in Hells Kitchen and the Upper West Side, I opt for 8th Avenue. I know I can make it to Central Park, and it would be to my right with all the museums and apartment buildings of Central Park West to my left. If I can keep going past the park, it will turn into Frederick Douglass Boulevard, which I haven’t been to much. Plus, it will be easier for me to cross further uptown to my left up there.

All of this ends up happening. I keep having moments while smelling the Midtown smells of darting in a different direction but ultimately stay the course. I peed in Penn Station. I grabbed a granola bar and a Poppi at the 50th Street Whole Foods. I hate that I like these soulless sodas now. I hate those Mommy’s Little Meatball shirts they sell at souvenir shops. I know people think they are being subversive when they get them, but too many people have them. If too many people like the subversive thing, it is no longer subversive. The buildings are shading me, but I am now a part of the Times Square-adjacent organism made of sweat.

I won’t let myself crack the Poppi open until the park. Why are there so many beer bellies all over this borough? One of them belongs to a man in a father-son finance bro duo that is wearing matching navy On sneakers. I maneuver Columbus Circle and find a patch of grass in the park that isn’t too dusty so I can collapse. Someone on the bike path is playing old cowboy country music. I, too, feel like a cowboy but remember I am a lifelong northeasterner with Alo shorts on. I take a few minutes to sprawl.

Walking the next forty-some blocks until the park ends feels slightly daunting. Harlem would be a great place to stop, anyway. This would already be an incredible cap off a crazy walk. I started in Brooklyn! But I didn’t want this parkside walk to tire me out. I certainly had my moments, though. The sun by the museums makes me feel delirious. “Moscow Mule” by Bad Bunny comes on and brings a tear to my eye.

I spend this whole segment competing back and forth with another guy walker, sometimes passing him and other times getting passed. I wanted to say something, but he was on the phone. An older but spry woman asks for directions to the zoo, and I tell her that I’m not sure but I think she’s really far away. She doesn’t believe me, but I just searched it up as I’m typing this and was correct. I pass a lawn where my friends and I would eat Mama’s Too pizza, drink a bottle of wine, and get bit by daytime mosquitos.

The park ends, and Harlem opens up. I made it! I need to eat again and hope Frederick Douglass Boulevard can show me what I need. A few blocks in, I see this famous southern restaurant called Melba’s. Although comfort food sounds like the worst thing for my walk, I can’t help but go where my feet take me.

I sit at the bar for my 4 p.m. nosh and start reading my book, Beloved by Toni Morrison. Real Gentrifier Olympics readers know that I read a different Toni Morrison book every summer, but I tried hiding the cover so I wouldn’t look like a performative white person alone at a Harlem institution. Then I remembered that no one is looking at me or cares. God, just eat something. I want fried chicken but know I can’t stomach a full meal with two sides, so I go with the fried chicken soul rolls, which are egg rolls with fried chicken, greens, and sauce. I pound them as “Love on Top” plays on the speaker for the second time, and people still dance and hum along as if they didn’t hear it 10 minutes ago.

I’m on airplane mode for the majority of this walk so my phone doesn’t die, and I’m now at 37%. I have a charger if I need it, though. The sun’s beatdown subsided, and I don’t feel as sore as I thought I would. I’m starting to feel it in my hips, but I think I can make it to Inwood. It’s worth a shot. Lots to look at in Harlem. There’s a Levain Bakery location here with an ad for itself outside featuring a smiling Aryan woman holding a cookie cookie. Am I too woke that this feels racist? Whatever. There are too many different apartment styles to gawk at. I’m near one of my favorite streets anyway.

I turn in the opposite direction of Strivers’ Row (influential Harlemites lived here during the Harlem Renaissance) to hit one of my favorite streets in New York: Edgecombe Avenue. Since I don’t have many people trying to coax me uptown, I only go on this street during long walks. It is such an exquisite residential slope made more beautiful by whatever heightened emotions I feel this deep into a walk. I pause my music as I pass by a DJ blasting “Groove Is in the Heart” from Charles’ Pan Fried Chicken and sing along to myself as I pass Jackie Robinson Park.

Edgecombe overlooks the park with benches lined along the fence. All sorts of people are hanging around enjoying the summer night, so I keep my music off. What is better than an overlook? This is one long park, too. Below me I watch kids laughing and splashing in the pool. Above me I see the Yankee Stadium sign in the distance. I take a break on one of the benches and watch a mutant bee hit into a wooden block over and over. Every time I’m here I wish I could show someone because I doubt the majority of my friends have ever been here. Then again, I like having somewhere that feels like mine.

I’m definitely starting to feel really sore. Edgecombe is fractured by the busy Harlem River Boulevard intersection, and I haven’t seen the part of the street past the split before. Instead of a park being below the sidewalk, Highbridge Park is now right next to me. The other side is still residential and quiet. I eventually pass the Paul Robeson Home where a lot of other important Harlemites lived (Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, and even Jackie Robinson a few blocks down from the park that would be named after him) and the Morris Jumel Mansion where Abbi and Ilana stopped on Broad City’s top-to-bottom walk episode.

Highbridge Park gets more lively once we hit the 160s because we are certainly in Washington Heights. I can pause the Romeo Santos in my earbuds because I hear a speaker playing him few feet away from me. I’ve never seen so many camping chairs in one place outside of a suburban baseball game. The most gorgeous mom with her adorable young daughter wave goodbye to their family at the birthday party as she tries getting the attention of her husband, and of course he looks trollish.

I love the parks on the edges of Manhattan because they feel like the end of the world, especially high up like we are here. To my left (for awhile actually) I see huge inclines heading to the busier blocks and pray that those hills won’t hit me soon. They don’t. Everyone in the park has the calm you have on top of a mountain and simultaneously the serenity of staying in the valley. On this street, both are true. There isn’t anything steep for you here — you’ve made it. When I resume my music I hear a song Anaïs showed me two summers ago while we baked on the roof called “Cartagena” by Reyna Tropical, whose name shows you exactly how the song sounds. Soothed.

Edgecombe bids me farewell as it curves onto Amsterdam Avenue, a street I’m only familiar with far lower on the Upper West Side. This part of Amsterdam feels quite Heights-y until it passes over the infinite traffic lanes heading towards the GW Bridge. I suddenly feel like I’m in a different neighborhood once I pass the bridge because I have hit Yeshiva University. Aside from one, the buildings are ugly. Why do so many old American Jewish structures look so crappy when there are so many Jewish architects? I stare into a few Kosher restaurants and pass a plethora of young Orthodox families. I wonder if they like living up there or are jealous of the bigger Jewish enclaves in other parts of the city.

I head up the hill to St. Nicholas Avenue. I’ve been seeing a smattering of teens throughout the day wearing Dominican flags or clothing with the flag on it. I learned later that this was the day of the Bronx Dominican Day Parade, which I had to look up as I saw even more flag wearers here. I stopped in a bodega and tried my first Coco Rico, which is a coconut soda. This will not be my last.

Although I avoided most hills this trip, I now had to walk down a big one. I crushed my Coco Rico while I tried not to spin my legs down the Fort George Hill like a cartoon character. It’s a different kind of ache than what I’ve been feeling, but it’s not that bad because I know I’m not done. I know where I want to eat once I get to Inwood. These huge hills feel so uncharacteristically New York but might be part of why being uptown relaxes me so much because it reminds me of Pittsburgh.

I’m nearing the bottom of the hill as I see the elevated 1 train line. I could stop my journey here and say I achieved my goal, but I needed to eat. I had to adjust my expectations: the quiet Inwood I thought I’d be seeing on a Sunday was nowhere to be found.

I forgot that I’m on Dyckman Street, which is very Dominican and even more so on this Dominican day. Sunday doesn’t stop for Dyckman. There are swarms of teens on every block, high schoolers and maybe a little older roaming in groups or strategizing their next moves. Sometimes ending my walk somewhere quiet feels like a sad whimper; I certainly did not have to worry about that today. This was a party, and I was invisible in all the right ways. There was a circle of teens on the sidewalk, so I looked to see what they were surrounding — it was a turtle! Not some little fish tank friend, this was a zoo-sized tortoise. Where did he/she/they come from? Is the turtle Dominican?

I needed to eat somewhere celebratory, so I ended my walk at Mamajuana Cafe. This place has hookah, a DJ, and young families eating. I wait eons for each step of the meal process, which gives me a lot of time to read.

I house my chicken mofongo and feel accomplished. Why do I feel like I could keep walking? Nice to even pretend. I watch drunk 40-somethings sing and smoke. I see a bad kid running around his table. A guy tries picking up a single girl at the bar and is unsuccessful.

This meal did not have to take two hours, but I’m happy it did. I was such a fun sore throughout my back and lower body. Time for a long but easy commute home for me to, you guessed it, keep reading Beloved. My phone is at 15%, and I don’t look up from my book except when a guy gets on the train at Columbus Circle for showtime.

Hi my name is [whatever] and I am a professional dancer. I assume that, like showtime usually is, he is going to swing from the subway handles like an acrobat. I stare at my book as “Folded” by Kehlani loudly announces itself. This is such a weird choice for showtime, a sensual, slow, sad song. When I look up, I realize he is more dancer than acrobat. He is somewhat contorting himself (not even as impressive as an 11-year-old girl with a backyard and free time) and posing in what I assume is an interpretive dance. I have to close my mouth to stop myself from laughing. I look up again in front of me to see two teens also unsuccessfully trying to hold in their snickers. His arms vaguely flirt with the pole, but this was as acrobatic as we got.

After over an hour commuting back to Brooklyn, I emerge from my stop ready for a cozy night. It’s not even that late yet. I could skip home if I wanted to. Earlier this year I had sprained my ankle and felt like I had lost my identity as a mover. Now over 15 miles in, and I’m still kicking.

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