It was a colder day than it is today. I’d hardly slept -- waiting, as I was, for word on whether there would be a transit strike. Negotiations went up to midnight, and then beyond.  I was quite sure there wouldn’t be a vote to strike. How could there be? And then there was. The trains and buses -- hundreds and hundreds of miles of them, had stopped. Stations were locked.

My assignment: cover the Mayor, then as now, Michael R. Bloomberg. So sometime before 5 a.m. I was up and out, pulling on the layers. I rode my bike on dark streets over to the Brooklyn Bridge, looking to lock it up before crossing the East River into Manhattan. This was pre-PlaNYC, and there were almost no bike paths. No one but messengers and the insanely devoted rode bikes on New York City streets in those days. Especially not when it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  

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