Thoughts From a West Side Five-Miler

Can't help myself sometimes, gotta make my way out to the Hudson River and the paved bicycle and pedestrian pathway that runs from Battery Park north along Manhattan's West Side as far as I can imagine. Nothing grand to say about my recent run from 46th Street south, but some stray musings:

• The waterfront park along the river is really coming along. Parts still are under construction, but more is open now than the last time I ran this route. Which means it's easier to get closer to the river's edge for views of New Jersey and the Statue of Liberty. I also stumbled across a working water fountain — runner's gold — near Pier 50. The guy who was using it muttered, "Not very cold," and wandered away, but I found it to be quite refreshing.

• New York in the summer is populated by a whole host of familiar yet hard-to-identify smells that slap you in the face and then slink into the closest alley. Someday I'll figure out the source of these mostly putrid aromas. Some guesses: rotting garbage, plant fertilizer, illegal falafel stands, pizza shop body odor, fresh fish, rotting fish, decomposing human remains, animal feces, human feces, wet cardboard shelters, flat tires, greasy burgers, common sludge...

• Only 62 days until the re-opening of the Intrepid Museum.

• Meeting people in the city can be a precarious proposition. One missed message or misinterpreted direction and you're left waiting and wondering. I was supposed to run with a friend and thought we had it all figured out, meet at 46th Street and the river. He never showed. Turned out he was waiting on the other side of some bushes on the pedestrian path, while I was street-side waiting on the bike path. We were maybe 50 feet away and didn't realize until afterward.

• Big frustration with big-city running: the Garmin GPS can't locate it's satellites among all the skyscrapers. Eventually the device picks up the signal, but it's spotty until I make it to the river. So for the first mile or so I could be running at a steady pace but my speed will seem to fluctuate between Olympic Gold Medalist and Old Granny With Her Walker.

• The river south of 46th Street is a great run. But I wonder what I'd find if I were to turn north instead...