I am making a list about the Brooklyn Bridge on my trip over it this morning while riding Mr. Wabi Classic. I am in regular disbelief about this new bicycle path. When you look at the slight turn-off, it feels like an afterthought or hastily put together workaround, like mysterious forces coalesced and carved out a not-so-secret passageway over Mr. Roebling’s structure. Like I am sneaking. Sneaking. I have heard so much grumbling about the width and unpleasantness of this bike path. I love it. After living in Brooklyn for nearly 28 years and cycling over this bridge that whole time, I am elated every time I make this new passage. The pedestrian pathway on the bridge is overrun with people admiring the bridge’s magnificence and clogging every corner, making a cycling trip a harrowing and unpleasant one.  It was not always this way though. I have good and wonderful early memories of the cycling and walking over the Brooklyn bridge walkway, and how it was a respite from NYC streets when I passed from Manhattan to the Brooklyn. My top five things about the Brooklyn Bridge that come to mind at this moment:

1. This brand new fancy bike path. This one right here. I turn right. I cycle in traffic, separated from the auto traffic by some jersey barriers and chain link fence. It is horrible looking but I am moving carefree, accelerating forward. I have broken free of the yoke of the tourist trade and selfie sticks and narcissistic camera maneuvers playing out overhead on the pedestrian walkway. 
2. The Watchtower sign. It’s no longer enticing bridge visitors to borough of Kings with the promise of meeting the savior. It was replaced with a Welcome sign.  I miss the Watchtower sign. I always played a mental game that the Jehovahs had designed the temperature display to always display Celsius when I looked at it. They were that powerful.
3. The guy who always seemed to be cycling over the bridge that winter of 1997 at the same time of the morning as me. The pedestrian walkway was sparsely attended in those winter months in the 90s. And I would keep seeing this guy. It happened all the time. I called him fat ass. His butt was not actually large or big. I just was always looking at it as he flew past me on his commute. 
4. That time I cycled to Nyack in April 2009 with LB. It was early on in those trips. It was on my old Giant road bike. We hit the bridge and I felt so accomplished, like a real cyclist who knew things.
5. This dog. He was walking himself over the bridge on his way home to Brooklyn in the summer of 1996. He knew things too.