Bike 40 miles of NYC with no cars at the 5 Boro Bike Tour

The 48th TD Five Boro Bike Tour will be wheeling its way through New York City on May 3 on 40 miles of auto-free streets, an annual event that draws 32,000 riders from 50 states, 40 countries — and Long Island.

Among this year’s local entrants will be Jason McGowan, 53, of Lindenhurst, who first participated two years ago.

“Riding a bicycle in Manhattan without any cars — it’s surreal,” said McGowan, an Amityville High School special education teacher and East Islip High School  varsity girls softball coach.

This year’s tour will be especially meaningful for McGowan because he’s riding with his daughter, Jayde, 15, in memory of his 9-year-old daughter, Laney, who died in December of Dravet syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy.

The bike tour, first held in 1977, has become a world-class event attracting riders from as far away as Australia, said Ken Podziba, chief executive of tour organizer Bike New York, a nonprofit bicycling education and advocacy group. Podziba, who grew up in Oceanside, said the “non-competitive” event draws cyclists aged “4 to 80” who can ride at their own pace and stop along the route to take photographs for social media. “It’s absolutely the best way of seeing New York City,” he said.

The first wave of cyclists leaves at 7:30 a.m. from Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood. They’ll pedal uptown through Central Park, passing by cheering crowds, landmarks like the Empire State Building and entertainment by a gospel choir in Harlem and an Afro-Puerto Rican band in the Bronx. Energy bars, fruit and water will be available at rest areas along the route, Podziba said.

After a midway rest stop at Astoria Park in Astoria, Queens, the ride continues on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — also closed to auto traffic — across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in Brooklyn to finish at Fort Wadsworth, part of the Gateway National Recreation Area on Staten Island.

Chris Westad, 72, of Kings Park, who said he has completed approximately 30 tours since the 1990s, will return again for a ride that he said brings back childhood memories of “the feeling of freedom being on a bike.”