Rode from the Bastille up to Route19 via Woods Run Road and Mairdale Ave, and that was a really effective way to wake up. Serendipitously encountered this mural on the side of the West View borough building.
Navigated around a bit and arrived at Center Avenue Slice to see the West View Park mural:
Continued north and got a photo that's been languishing on our "to-do" list for too long, at 1001 Perry Highway.
I was feeling a major tug to reverse course and descend via the I279 HOV lane, so S. wisely counseled another route and we descended into Millvale. Saw this bench at the bus stop at Pamela's Pancakes:
Millvale is about to open a Community Library, which is exciting (all the more because it's asynchronous with the zeitgeist) and the entrance is guarded by one of James Simon's creatures. This dog is named Paige. (books, page, Paige)
A few months ago we had the chance to walk around inside the space, and there's functional ironwork bracing the ceiling beams from Red Star Foundry and there's some remarkable iron artwork in there.
Rode around the north side, crossed the 16th Street McCoullough Bridge, stopped at Market Square Starbucks for restrooms and a snack: a cold doubleshot and a blueberry scone.
Rode south along the Jail Trail, crossed the Hot Metal Bridge, rode northwest to Station Square. As you come out of the northern end of Station Square, the sidewalk teardrops up to the Ft Pitt bridge but there's been a lot of overgrown bushes and trees and it's been pretty suboptimal up there.
Today at the top of the ramp, between the Incline Overpass and the bridge, we saw that the bushes and trees had all been trimmed, and at the far end we saw a man working on the foliage. We stopped and said hello, he was working with a small one-hand pruning scissors, really something the size of a pair of pliers. He had done a tremendous amount of work with that tiny clipping tool.
We stopped and thanked him for his efforts, and once he was comfortable that he wasn't getting into trouble for trimming the public's bushes, he explained that this week his wife is starting a new job that will involve her walking along that sidewalk, and he was out there on Sunday morning trimming the foliage so she wouldn't have to deal with the jungle. He left one bush relatively untrimmed because he said it was unusual and shouldn't be touched. Wow wow wow.
Husband of the Year. Probably Citizen of the Year.
29 miles before most of the city woke up.
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