412Flock! Christma-Hannu-Kwanzaa-Ka Ride

Fri 12.18 12m

Tonight's 412Flock! ride was really the first cold ride I've had in Pittsburgh this year. Started under the Birmingham Bridge, rode to Oakland to start at Dippy.




This may look like the burning-tire image from Back to The Future, but it's just my taillight shining around the audio trailer.


Celeb sighting: we saw Mayor (and Senate hopeful) John Fettermann driving with his family when we started. I hope the playlist was good, it included the Royal Guardsmen, RuPaul, Twisted Sister, Run-DMC, Eartha Kitt, the Kinks, Tommy Tutone, KT Tunstall, The Pretenders, Frank Sinatra. I think this was the most inclusive song on the list:


This was a retro-classic Flock route, into town on Fifth and into Market Square (which was occupied with the Christmas Village so there wasn't room for us), and thence to Point State Park


We had a Healthy Ride Pgh in our pack:


Then we rolled through the Armstrong Tunnel and took East Carson Street to OTB. It got quite a bit snowy, sort of a mini-squall. There's a video of us on SouthSide here

We had a nice end-of-year session at OTB. Note the Christmas tree on Marko's bike.


(photos by and GerryD and LuciaA).

Pittsburgh's New Angle on Christmas Homeless Giving

Wed 12.09.2015 5m
Thurs 12.10.2015 28m
Fri 12.11.2015 26m

Wed was a short ride, just around Squirrel Hill but it prompted a concept by YaleC about localized sharrows markings for Squill:

The Roberto Clemente Bridge and Millvale have already implemented customized sharrows and bike lane markers. I think Yale's idea would be a great contribution to the Squirrel Hill bike-ped plan.

Friday I started riding with RC. We rode around SouthSide, the Bluff, Duquesne Univ. As we rode out along the north bank of the Allegheny River I was startled to see an implementaion of back-in angle parking which is a fairly new concept and bleeding-edge by Pittsburgh standards.


Under the 31st Street bridge, on the North Shore Trail side, there's a Christmas Tree for gifts for the homeless. Along the top of the photo you'll see some cases of PopTarts, granola bars, trail mix, a bag of apples, bottled water, and other gifts.



There's another one on the SouthSide Trail, under the 10th Street bridge. The initiative for the project comes from a small business called The County Line. I think it's an excellent concept.



"new angle" for "Christmas giving", I see what I did there.

Tour de War On Christmas

Nov.30 2015 15m

I thought I'd take a Tour de  War on Christmas , just to check the zeitgeist. Started with my wife Karen at the Bastille. Saw a utility boat manuevering to dock, stopped to check out the small flight deck by the bow; they had a large octo-prop drone on board. They said they were using it to inspect the nearby railroad bridge. The future keeps arriving.

It looked somewhat like this, except the one we saw was bigger and more heavy-duty.



Checked out Heinz Field and Point State Park.




Took a look at PPG Plaza, and Highmark (nee Hornes):




Steel Plaza and the City-County Building:




Rode out to BikePgh to buy a jersey at their Cyber Monday sale. Espresso a Mano for coffee goodness. 15 miles, nice day.