Wed 9/2 21m
Started riding with Rusty at 0800 at the Bastille in an attempt to beat the heat. (We should have started earlier for that).Rounding the bend at the Science Center we saw LST-325, a Navy landing ship from WW2 (which put 20 Sherman tanks ashore at D-Day).
I lived on a Navy ship for two years and the sight of a "haze grey and underway" hull pulled at some strings. Mostly, it pulled at the string that reminds me of the smell of a warship - a mix of heavy oil smell, welded hot-metal smell, and the smell of sweat - and I didn't feel any need to go onboard and have the visceral olfactory nostalgia. The only place on a ship I like the smell of is the lazzarette, the rope locker, with its smells of wet rope and tar and something more organic than metal.
With a great desire for caffeine we rode out to Lawrenceville and the soft-opening of Caffe D'Amore at 5400 Butler Street. I had attended a coffee briefing from owner Sareh last year during Pittsburgh Coffee Week and I thought her shop would hit the target and it is spot on. (new website: CaffeDAmorePgh.com/.
I had a iced coffee and it was tremendous. I had a major caffeine buzz going for a while. We got into a discussion about coffee processes and soon Sareh was talking about Total Dissolved Solids Ratios and I was way out of my league pretty quickly.
We rode uphill through the Allegheny Cemetery, rode Liberty, Aiken, and Ellsworth to Oakland, then the Junction Hollow Trail down to the Hot Metal Bridge. Stopped at REI. Continued north-west on the SouthSide Trail, took the Smithfield Street Bridge, Blvd of the Allies, and the Ft. Duquesne bridge back to the southside.
Pleasantly surprised to encounter G. riding opposite direction on the trail. He had errands to run downtown so he parked at the perimeter and biked in; I think we're going to see a lot more of that in Pittsburgh in the next few years.
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