2017 Green-Wood Cemetery

2017 Green-Wood Cemetery


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First word of the day: Ornithology 
late 17th century: from modern Latin ornithologia, from Greek ornithologos ‘treating of birds.’
derives from the ancient Greek ὄρνις ornis (“bird”) and λόγος logos (“rationale” or “explanation”)

Definition: the scientific study of birds

Intro Lesson:
Here we are on our ninth ride of summer 2017 – time really flies. Our riders also couldn’t believe that we were already in August of 2017. It seemed like yesterday when we celebrated New Years, when the summer break started, and when we all were awkward at our very first orientation day. Today, we were trying to get on the road as soon as possible, because we were going on a new ride! The Green-Wood Cemetery is a National Historic Landmark located in Brooklyn, and it is the nation’s greatest tourist attraction – second only to Niagara Falls. With its magnificient beauty and scale, it became a prestigious place to be buried by the early 1960’s. Today, many families of old, famous people like magician Houdini, composer Leonard Bernstein, and inventor Samuel Morse, and war veterans rest in the Green-Wood Cemetery. BUT! That’s not all! Cappy told us that families of green Monk Parrots of Argentina have created their home at the entrance. In addition, other species of birds such as herons, egretsn, and hawks live inhabit the cemetery. After listing all of the birds that we have seen on our rides, we were excited to see these loud, extravagant parrots.

Green-Wood Cemetery:
Perhaps we attract rain on our Monday rides, but it rained AGAIN! Thankfully, today’s was not as bad as our Bronx River Ride. We all said that the wind made it extra chilly last time. Plus, it was just drizzling today. It wouldn’t do any harm to our riders who have been through more intense hot and cold. After gearing up, we made sure as we were walking down 2nd Avenue that everyone was comfortable with or without their jackets. When we arrivdd at 2nd Avenue, we were off! Since we’ve been riding on streets too, riding on the protected path was a piece of cake. Cruising along, we went all the way from 96th street to Grand Street where we passed Chinatown. From here, we went onto Manhattan Bridge. Interestingly, the bridge was really warm! Maybe it was the train that was passing by, but we really enjoyed the toasty-ness of the heat. On Brooklyn side of the bridge, we made our way to Dean St. on Jay St. Once we were on 5th Avenue, we rode straight down the streets to Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Green-Wood Cemetery was SO BIG! It was so much bigger than we had expected. We got off on our bikes at the gates, and headed to the entrance of the cemetery. As soon as we locked up our bikes, Cappy yelled, “WOW! Do you see the PARROTS?” We were all wide-eyed and looking around for the parrots, but saw none. HE TRICKED US. We couldn’t actually see the parrots because they were probably hiding out and cuddle in their nests, but we definitely saw the awesome house that they had built for themselves. Cappy said that they were probably watching movies in there. We passed the entrance and the parrot nest and walked to the chapel where we would find shelter on its doorstep to have lunch.

While we were having lunch, the rain let up and we think we saw a parrot flying. Either way, it was a bummer that we didn’t get to hear them singing or see them up close. After lunch, we walked around the cemetery, collected water sample from the pond where we saw an egret, and looked for a geocache. The geocache was so complicated because the clues were on a memorial that commemorated a crash between United Airlines Flight 826 and Trans World Airlines Flight 266 that happened on December 16, 1960 over Staten Island. Eighty-four people on the United flight and fourty four people on the TWA flight, in addition to the six people who were on the ground passed away that day. The geocache asked us to take a certain letter from names and create a coordinate that showed the location of the cache. Once we solved the puzzle, it turned out to be a few blocks away. OOPS.

After looking around a little more, we headed out and found the geocache that was at the gates of the Green-Wood Cemetery. At this point, we were all ready to ride to warm ourselves up. So, we headed back up 5th Ave, and turned left on Bergen St. then onto Brooklyn Bridge Blvd. If it was a common sunny, summery, New York day, we would not have taken this path, but because we thought that it would have less people on it, we decided to take the Brooklyn Bridge! This was also the first time for Cyclopedia to do the Brooklyn Bridge on an official ride! To remember this important day, we took multiple group pictures. It was a beautiful ride, and we could tell why people want to walk the Brooklyn Bridge on a nice day, especially if you’re a tourist.

From the Brooklyn Bridge, we started heading North. to Grand Street again and then onto 1st Avenue. On our way up, Maria got a really bad flat tire. Thankfully, Maria caught that something was wrong with her bike and stopped riding. After fixing the flat tire, we had a smooth ride to 96th Street, where we walked our bikes to the school on 3rd Avenue. Today’s ride was a lot of riding. We didn’t stop for many breaks, but all of our riders kept up and kept going, despite the inoptimal weather conditions. GOOD JOB CYCLOPEDIACS!

Participants
Candia, Adriana
Galinda, Maria
Navarro, Alexis
Navarro, Daniela
Nararro, Omar

Coleaders
Cappy Collins, JiaMei Huang, Judy Lee, Alberto Rivera

Ride Statistics
Miles biked: 23.1 Miles
Program time (hours): 7 hours
Ride time (hours): 5 hours
Calories burned*: 576

Water Quality Monitoring Results
Nitrate:
Nitrite:
pH:
Hardness:
Chlorine:
Lead:
Pesticides:
Bacteria:

*http://www.mapmywalk.com/improve/calorie_calculator/
Estimates based on 100lbs, 5′ 2″ ht, 13 yo, average between male and female.

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