These Blind New Yorkers Are Biking Across New York City

How a bold new organization empowers people with vision impairments to experience the five boroughs like never before.

Photos by Daniel Krieger

Throughout May, National Bike Month, our People of Interest series is spotlighting New York cyclists who are breaking the mold and making a difference on two wheels. It’s five a.m. at the Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It’s been a night much like any other, quiet and uneventful, until a group of fifty cyclists, many on two-seater tandem bikes, pulls up in front, looking like some sort of a quirky bike gang. They enthusiastically crowd into the small shop to make their choices among the cases of old-fashioned crullers and Bavarian cream éclairs. Many hit the bathroom – this is one of the last stops on their annual four-borough pilgrimage: the All-Night Donut Ride. The riders met in Central Park around midnight, went up through Harlem to the Crown Diner in the Bronx, down into Manhattan to try out the 53-year-old Donut Pub’s offerings, then cycled around the island’s southern tip and over the Brooklyn Bridge to Peter Pan. They’ll end after…