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 searching for a rather repetitively aired commercial on which I’d long meant to comment*, I found something much more interesting instead:

Giving it a shot: So … What are we waiting for?

*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.

My relative ineptitude with video conversions has delayed this from going up sooner. Better late than never:

Please also read the accompanying story, as it gives some interesting background.

The 2009 Donate Life Family Fun Run was scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m. started around 8:45 today in Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park.

With a little luck, photos will be available here shortly.

An embedded video of the 5K start is viewable above.

The event is run to raise awareness of organ and tissue donation. It was organized by the Living Legacy Foundation.

Click image to view photos.

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.

View Larger Map

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UPDATE: I’ve added pictures above. In addtion, here’s a story link and video (both from autumn 2008) relating to the park.

Read related story

“Join a Parkour Meetup near Baltimore” says this page. If the group were a bit closer and I were a bit younger, I might jump at that chance. Get it?

As it is, I’m old, and I write bad puns. But young’uns should look seriously at it.

Here’s a closer look:

While Eminem amuses me, I’m not really sure what it has to do with Parkour. That hardly makes the video less amazing, however.

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.

I look forward to hearing from you.