Type 2 Diabetic. Cyclist Flâneur.   Coffeeneur.    Errandoneur
A bike / map geek with a gadget obsession and a high-viz fetish.

Monday, February 27, 2012

A Blowy Monday

02/27/12 #236 28m
Rode 28m in 48F with R and S.

Mild tempts, mostly cloudy and quite windy, the clouds were blowing by at a good clip.

I met S and R at the Bastille, and we rode the trail along the Casino and along the Allegheny. The trail surface was better than I expected, not really mushy at all. We crossed the river using the 40th Street Bridge.



Coming off the bridge we noticed a brief trail segment along the south bank of the Allegheny, shown here in Google Maps. This looks like an outpost of the eventual Point-ConventionCenter-Strip-Lawrenceville trail.


(to see bike trails in Google maps, click Directions, then Bicycle)

We took Butler Street to Espresso a Mano. As we were locking up the bikes I commented on a poster in the window, "Pittsburgh: 3 Rivers, 6 Rings, 19 Libraries" about a recent budget brouhaha and I really liked the placard, and I found myself in conversation with the coffee shop's poster maven who was sitting outside with her dog. The place was pretty filled with people sipping lattes and laptops sipping wifi, but we found a few seats in the back. Very good coffee.

After we came out of the coffee shop we rode to the river to see if we might intercept the trail segment but we had already ridden past it. We rode to Smallman Street and Railroad Ave to the Cork Factory and the Convention Center Trail, then the Ft. Pitt Bridge where we encountered Bob Miller of Grupetto Pittsburgh. A nice day brings riders out in February. We continued to SouthSide. It was very windy and it seemed to be coming from a variety of directions.

At Southside we decided to continue down to Keystone Metals, just short of Sandcastle, and we also decided to eschew the ride up Junction Hollow. We reversed at Keystone Metals and turned north into the wind. It was a bit of work to get back to the Ft. Pitt Bridge.

Took the Ft. Pitt Bridge (passing a diamond-frame and a 'bent rider), the Ft. Duquesne Bridge, and home via the Casino Trail.

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