Neighborhood Proprioception in the Burgh

9.25.14 30m #224

Rode with RC today, starting at the Bastille. There was felt a keen need for caffeine, so we made out to Lawrenceville and Espresso A Mano. (always a good choice)

So RC and I both know where a lot of neighborhoods are but sometimes you have a need to get between two neighborhoods that you haven't had to connect before - which calls do mind, JRA's recent eloquent phrase neighborhood proprioception meaning the relative location of neighborhoods.

But before we leave that behind, let's point out that proprioception is the perception of relative position of body parts, considered to be one of three types of sensory input: proprioception (knowledge of relative body part position), exteroception with which one perceives the external world, and interoception in which one perceives internal-body experiences (pain, hunger, movement of internal organs). It strikes me that our Information Science is largely based on exteroception-centric theories and there would be an interesting inclusion of the others.

But I digressed. So we're in Lawrenceville, and we realized: we're really not sure of an effective route to Squirrel Hill. So we asked the Goog, and it worked pretty well. On Friendship Road I was in the right-side bike lane, with a large truck adjacent to my left, and a police car behind us sounded their siren. The HGV truck responded to the tocsin by immediately pulling over to the right (like a good Homeland Security drone should) and dang near squished me, which I suppose would have been Death In Service To The Cause.

Felt a sigh of relief at not getting squished. Then felt a rapid shift, thinking the siren was for me. Felt a sigh of relief at not being the subject of official attention. Resumed my happy place and we went to a meeting at 61C Cafe (iced coffee, yes!)

Departing Squirrel Hill, we had a need to go to Homestead and we don't often travel Squill to Homestead. Again with the unfamiliar proprioception, and this time we went Forbes-Braddock and a new fave shuffle through Rankin to the Rankin Bridge. That worked pretty well.

The Homestead mission complete (the phrase Mission Accomplished has been deprecated) we rode through Sandcastle and approaching Keystone Metals R saw a young man, not a cyclist as much as somebody who uses the bike to get to work, who was having trouble with his bike. R stopped and performed a major good deed, and sometimes a Bicycle Repair Man is a SuperHero.

Saw YC and got to say, Happy New Year 5775; saw Marko and got to see his nifty U-lock holder which I think he should turn into a kickstarter project. Went across the Hot Metal Bridge and ran smack into the back of a crowd of people participating in the Aerie 'Run for your girls' 5K. Great event, nice crowd, maybe organizers should tell participants not to stay five across. (please insert several grouchy old man noises here, like harumph harumph).

Back to the Bastille, 30.04 miles, an excellent afternoon.