Started at the Bastille at about 0830 at 35F. Brisk, bracing, cold. Rode to the Casino, Ft. Duquesne Bridge, Ft. Pitt Bridge, Hot Metal Bridge, Junction Hollow, Fifth Avenue, Squirrel Hill, Murray Avenue, 61C Cafe.
My third coffeeneuring expedition of the 2012 Coffeeneuring Challenge:
drink: Latte w/extra shotte
shop: 61C Cafe, 61Ccafe.com
location: 1839 Murray Avenue, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA 15217
date: 10/11/2012
mileage: 39 miles
ride details: Rode with S and R, enroute to Braddock and E. Pittsburgh. Keith was on duty at the counter, very nicely done. Excellent shop, great coffee, great snacks, great wifi. The cafe is named after the bus route that runs by their door. Very bike friendly.
We had missed a local mural on our previous sweep of Squirrel Hill, so we continued down Murray Ave to catch the 2009 MLK mural on the side of the pet shop:
It may not come across in the photo, but it spells out "Squirrel Hill" while presenting various animals you might find in a pet store.
As we rode out of the neighborhood we saw a few canvas-sided sukkot in people's front yards in celebration of a Jewish holiday, that was pretty interesting.
We rode around Regent Square, through Edgewood and Braddock and into East Pittsburgh looking for a mural at Bessemer Ave in East Pittsburgh. My navigation took us on a very long, almost a Columbus-like route, and we serendipitously found this mural in East Pittsburgh at Linden Ave. and Electric Avenue:
Eventually (with the help of a mailman) we found 416 Bessemer and this mural, "Present Tense":
We were able to get back to Braddock without retracing our great-circle-route, and came across the Transformazium, an 1880's United Brethren Church repurposed as an artist's studio.
These are "street pastings" by the artist Swoon in a doorway:
Also by Swoon, on the rear facade of the building:
With the help of yet another mailman, we found our final mural target-of-the-day at Ajax and 4th in Braddock. This is an amazing little alcove of art, and if you didn't really need to be here you'd never have any reason to stumble across it.
The title mural proclaims the artwork as representing the "North Braddock Aviary - Hall of Male Birds in Courtship Plumage". Wow.
After that we departed Braddock and crossed the Rankin Bridge. We parted company at the south entrance to the Waterfront. I needed to make time back to the vehicles at the Bastille in hopes of keeping a coffee date with an old friend, so I stayed on 837 to the Hot Metal Bridge (noticed some new signage on the HMB), took the Jail Trail and scooted back. R and S took the Waterfront Trail, the Sandcastle and Keystone Metals route, and stopped SouthSide at ThickBikes, which is a pretty awesome place for indulging your inner bike geek.
It was a beautiful day for a ride. While it started off cold, it was about 50F when I got off the bike, sunny and blue.
As I drove away I realized we'd rode bikes all morning and never once had anybody mentioned the whole George-Levi-Frankie-Lance-brouhahaha. I like that.
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