I’m going to stop posting on here for a long while. Possibly forever.
When I first started this site, my employer was the Annapolis Capital, a wonderful paper that (at the time) had no running or transportation blogs. Now, however, I work for the Baltimore Sun, which within the last year has launched both a wonderful transportation blog and, more recently, a very nice running section. Since these vastly outdo my blog in terms of quality and quantity, I’m happy to say that it’s now quite redundant.
That said, I’d still love to see you at a Friday meetup, as those will continue.
Check out this site for more information on biking to work in Baltimore for bike-to-work day 2009.
For people who live in the Hampden, Station North, Roland Park or Druid Hill areas and work somewhere near downtown, it’s pretty easy. The Jones Falls Trail and an abundance of bike lanes (plus some shared, hashed bike routes) get rid of a lot of the hassle. Other areas of the city can be spotty, though I know that the Pigtown/Carroll Park/Gwynns Falls Trail corridor is also developing nicely for bikes.
As usual, dress safely and don’t over-exert. Good luck!
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One more note: This is the first yearly iteration of bike-to-work day for which all MTA buses will have bike racks.
Since the Ravens-Steelers AFC title game this weekend will only take up a small slice of the evening, I figured I’d give a few tips for those whose non-football interest in the area might go beyond weird sandwiches. Here are some weekend options:
Walking/Transit
Growing up, watching the trolley on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was an unhealthy gateway drug into both jazz and rail geekdom. What I didn’t find out until a few years ago, however, was that Fred Rogers’ real neighborhood contains some transit that’s possibly even cooler (albeit sans theme music). Pittsburgh is home to one of the more famous funicular systems in the country, as well as some light rail, but it also plays host to a less famous (but nearly as cool) system of grade-seperated busways. One state legislative staffer even documented his daily experiences with the system as a whole. A (more-or-less-complete) map of that system can be found here.
Biking
Along with an emerging system of bike lanes, Pittsburgh has an older, more developed network of paved and unpaved trails. I could give a quick summary of those trail offerings, but these folks already did a much better job. One cautionary note: I don’t have any idea how/whether they plow or scrape these trails in the winter. For example, my run to work yesterday on the Jones Falls Trail was a mixed bag — snow was removed, but iced-over puddles remained. In a different (and more northern) city, your experience may be worse. Or it may be better. You have been warned.
Running
Along with the biking route options linked above, you can check out the usual online options for a bunch of improvised routes. There’s also a race if you’re willing to go out to the exurbs: I have to grant the organizers of the Bushwacker’s Nightmare Trail Run congratulations for choosing an excellent name. The race is Sunday at 10 a.m.
One more thing
If you’re not sure what non-game events to walk/bike/ride toward, and you’re short on time or morbidly lazy (the latter being unlikely for a reader of this blog), here’s an events link to get you started on your search. It’s been a couple of years since I last visited Pittsburgh, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
We just moved to Hampden, in the northern part of Baltimore.
It’s near a bunch of stuff including my workplace, a few farm markets, two grocery stores, JHU, MSU, Notre Dame / Loyola, an MTA light rail stop, two movie theaters, two public libraries in the Pratt system … etc.,.
Forgive me for sounding like a bad PR writer. I promise that this post should be the worst of my gloating.
Anyhow, almost as cool as all of the stuff I just listed is the neighborhood’s proximity to the Jones Falls Trail. I still have yet to explore the trail in full, but here’s a start — a loop through a bit of the neighborhood, including Druid Hill Park and the Maryland Zoo.
Check out the map to see details. Some of this may be slightly off, as I used an old city planning document to get the path of the JFT for my route map.
