We love Fresh Kills. It brings us back to those bad old days when the site was a notorious, noxious landfill, periodically catching fire, and visible from satellite. Now it is thoroughly top-soiled, manicured, tamed, and importantly, for us, bikable. At nearly three times the size of Central Park and the largest park to be developed in New York City in over 100 years, we'll bike car-free roadways, scan the hills, the views and sites (at one of the highest points, a 360 view never seen before!), and kayak in and around the Arthur Kill's tidal waterways.

Going out, we'll follow the Kill, westerly, on near-abandoned roadways to the park. (And, yes, we'll avoid all those Staten Island inclines on the way out, and, with a new route, on the way back as well.) So instead of climbs, we'll hug the coastline and dine at Denino's, on Port Richmond Avenue, rated the best Old World sit-down brick-oven pizzeria in NYC.

UPDATE: And instead of making a trek to Broadway, we'll stop at the site of the little-known St. James Hotel, notorious for being the last residence of American patriot Aaron Burr, who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Towards the end of his life, Burr remarked: "Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me."

We will be taking the 9:30 AM ferry; so arrive early.