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.
While I won’t be using this much myself, I’m happy to see it. At five dollars, it’s a pretty good deal — not just for commuters, but for tourists as well, as The Gettysburg Blog points out.
It comes just a bit late for my personal use: I had some family friends from Michigan who lived in York, and it would have been great to visit them more frequently. Being able to pay less and read a book on the way there certainly would have helped.
Oh well. Maybe I’ll take it up one of these days to visit the weightlifting museum.
The sound of waves booming against the underside of ice in a frozen lake comes directly from childhood. With the memories of some great views and that haunting sound in mind, it is difficult for me to suggest this, but I’ll do it anyway:
You really shouldn’t use the walking/running route I’m about to describe, unless you want to get arrested, drowned and/or run over by part of Baltimore’s urban rail transit system.
That said, here’s the description, without culpability if you misuse it. After bicycling to Baltimore’s Robert E. Lee park (via Falls Road and Lakeside Drive), I decided I wasn’t up to taking a road bike on hilly trails — a good choice as this turned out to be a better walking route.
While I planned it as an uneventful walk, the circuit around Lake Roland ultimately involved crossing two bridges that were not safe (as one was a rail bridge and the other was structurally unsound). I highly discourage people from mimicking my route, and I’m only including it for informational purposes so folks know what to avoid. See map below and photos for more information.
While there are plenty of weighty issues that are rightfully getting exposure — tunneling, traffic-light-timing, eminent domain, community traffic patterns, etc., — my burning question is somewhat more personal and greedy: Assuming that it gets built, will getting a bike onto the new light rail be easier than it is with the current Howard Street (north-south) line?
Advocates of a light rail option keep waxing — not poetically, just waxing — about how the newer rail cars would be faster and lower-floored than the vehicles on the clunky north-south route. Nowhere would that change be more welcome than when trying to get a bike on board.
While my decision to stop taking a bike this summer had more to do with the maintenance-created-crowding than with the three rather steep steps in each north-south car, I would imagine that a more bike-friendly Red Line could get many more casual commuters to consider a bike/rail combination. On a more greedy level, it would also mean that I could leave 15 minutes later when going to destinations along the route, since I wouldn’t have to walk once I got there.
One of the things that I like most about walking and running in Baltimore is the varied terrain. Baltimore is full of both large and small hills. Few places are those hills more appreciated than on the campus of Morgan State University, where they form a good chunk of the school’s identity.
The Morgan Park/MSU/Hillen route I chose goes down and up and down and up again, but never to any extreme measure. While Morgan State’s campus includes two pedestrian bridges — one over Herring Run and one over Cold Spring Lane — skipping the Cold Spring bridge lets one truly appreciate how much the hills add to the campus.
This 5K route goes through a couple of areas that could be described as rough, but I doubt that they’ll stay that way for long. A case in point: The largest building adjacent to the now-infamous Northwood shopping center, where City Councilman Ken Harris was shot, is slated to become a new building for part of Morgan State’s business school, according to a 2007 newspaper article.
While it’s true that the D.R. article linked above is now a year and a half old, I think it’s still quite likely that the project has some legs: Morgan State is growing so fast that three of the largest buildings on my route were shown on Google Maps as mere construction sites. Two of those sites overlook Morgan State’s distinctive red and blue track, which I was unfortunately unable to access directly.
This route might be a challenge on a bike, but for walking or running, it is recommendable.
Since a large part of Saturday’s event involves closing roads for runners, it only makes sense that you wouldn’t want to drive to the Baltimore Marath — er, Foot Festivus.
With that in mind, here’s a page on the MTA site that can help you find a transit option. Transit lines
I know that Google Transit Baltimore is handy for this as well, but they’re still working out a few bugs. While I still encourage people to use that service, it’s good to cross-check it on the MTA page.
Anyhow, these tools should be a good start for anyone going to the Baltimore Marath — er, Podiatric Parade — this weekend at Camden Yards. It’s also not a bad start for getting to Orioles games, since the apparent source for public transit info on the Orioles’ site is fairly sparse, as of early October 2008.
Today’s new circuit is a hybrid of a loop and an out-and-back setup, totalling just over 6.2 miles. Within that distance, you’ll see one of Baltimore’s wealthiest neigborhoods, as well as one of its most blighted. The transition between the two is fascinating in itself, as you go from East Baltimore to Charles Village and back (or vice versa).
That statement is not meant to knock the East-Baltimore/Waverly neighborhoods. The spreading wealth of the Station North redevelopment will hopefully soon start making good on some of the promise this area holds. While that transition is in progress, however, you’ll probably want to take this route on a summer morning with a friend — not alone at night. (That, of course, is decent advice for any recreational run or walk, if possible.)
There are beautiful endpoints on this course, with a lot of pretty blocks along the way. Assuming you aren’t dying to clock some sort of super-metronomic 10K PR, the scenery is well worth the time you’ll put into hopping up and down at traffic lights. Check out the map. As always, you can find a bunch of other posts with mapped runs/walks/bikes in the Baltimore area here.
—
Of note: This is a good route for runners and walkers, but you’ll find few bike lanes through most of it. This is a disappointment, as the area is in fairly direct proximity to several universities (Loyola/ND, Johns Hopkins and Morgan State are closest). That said, this loop is served by the route 61 and 13 buses, which should theoretically have bike racks now. That could at least make it easier if this area is part of a longer bike trip.
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.
I’ve been doing a lot of interval workouts lately, but mapping individual track runs is pointless. Imagine: “I went around. And then I went around again! And then I went around a third time!! Guess what happened next!!!”
That said, there’s at least some relevant information I can provide after track runs: The collected locations and conditions of the tracks themselves. See below: View Larger Map
It’s just an iframe, so it’s not as web-special as my Baltimore food retailers map at baltimoregroceries.org — but it will have to do for now.
