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.
*I was originally looking for the piece that starts with the dialogue (or monologue, I guess): “Bicycle, what are we waiting for …” but I could not find it in video form, even though it’s an incredibly frequent CNN commercial. In either case, I find it very tough to imagine the focus group that resulted in Zyrtec brand managers deciding to run ads in which women talk to nonverbal objects/entities (here’s another example). Perhaps the waiting area outside of the conference area was filled with hallucinogens on that fateful day.
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.
One of the main goals of this blog is to build community.
Specifically, I want a community of happy, well-adjusted people who like to discuss walking, biking, running and related topics. Maybe sometimes they’ll even walk and run together. Maybe they’ll even spontaneously break into song once in awhile. You never know.
Starting on the very modest level of my blog, I would like to invite you into that community. If you would like to write about walking and/or running in the Baltimore area, please e-mail my gmail account, which is named “patrickmaynard” (minus the qoutes, of course). I’m not posting it with the little twirly “at” symbol because evil robots will pick it up and send me spam, but I’m sure you can figure it out.
