Forty-five miles northwest of New York City, up near the tippy top of the state of New Jersey, off the Greenwood Lake Turnpike, take a turn at the sign advertising where to sell scrap metal, and you’ll find an empty four-lane highway leading to an archway entrance that looks like it’s made of two-story Lincoln Logs. Behind the giant timbers are padlocked gates, and beyond the gates, four more empty, rolling paved lanes.
On a recent August afternoon, Kathy Tynan sat in her Honda Accord just outside those gates, driver’s side door open. A mountain bike was strapped to the roof of her car. “Do you remember what it was like then?” Tynan asks me as she puts on her mountain biking shoes. “I do.”