Arlington Memories, Stevo in Olympia Park, Point of View Descent

5/23 20M

Started at 0620, moving toward the summertime "new normal" of a 0600 start, from the Bastille.

Crossed the Ft.Pitt bridge and rode toward Southside and started climbing at 18th Street. At the top, we turned left and rode east into Arlington searching for a series of murals on Arlington Street at a former bus turnaround that we've heard about but have had trouble finding.

We rode out quite a ways on Arlington Ave, through Arlington Heights (never want to ride through a neighborhood with Heights in the name, you just know it has hills) past Loretto Cemetery out to Devlin St and Devlin Park, which is such a wide, level elevated area I thought it might have been a former Nike site. (Turns out it's not.) No luck, no murals. Turned around and rode back.

Inevitably, we found the murals which had been on the back side of a building as we rode out and they were just as described: on Port Authority property where busses used to turn around at 2405 Arlington Avenue.

There was a good bit of climbing involved in getting to this location and it was nice to find a reward up there. I haven't been able to find any other info on the murals.

Reversed and rode back to Arlington and South 18th Street. Turned left and rode Brownsville Road into Knoxville looking for a restroom, ended up at McDonald's. Rode over to Allentown, which can be a complicated ride with the trolley tracks still in the roadway and continued to Grandview Park which has a tremendous view of the city and a great, cold water faucet.

Rode over to J&J's Family Restaurant at 300 Shiloh Street (very good) for something to eat. Got directions from the waitress to find Olympia Park in Chatham Village which was close at hand. In the park we found a mural by Steevo Sadvary (map) who does such excellent work:

Rode toward the edge of Mt. Washington and found ourselves at Point of View Park, which I'd never been to before. It's got the scuplture of Washington with an Indian, and a neat perspective of downtown:

From there, S. plotted a new route off Mount Washington. We took Grandview Ave and Greenleaf Street down to the West End Circle and crossed the West End Bridge. The descent was tremendous fun and crossing the West End Circle was much better than I'd imagined, it's really well provided for in this direction. It's now my fave way off Mt. Washington, much more fun than McCardle.

20 miles, new neighborhoods explored and new murals, a great ride.