Today’s ride took me down the hill and around the harbor and up again to Federal Hill, with a final left to Locust Point for a much-needed haircut and an afternoon of grading/watching football. I meant to go straight home afterward, but then I just kept riding west back through Federal Hill and over to M&T Stadium to watch the hordes of Ravens fans walk to their cars. I politely followed the lead of the cops directing traffic until I finally made my way toward the Gwynn’s Falls Trail. From there I watch so many Ravens fans pouring over the street ramp and tracing their way through the zig zags of the stadium to sit in their cars for hours, if my ride past and through their traffic is any indication of what those who drive to the game have in store for themselves afterward. I think this is why people “tailgate.” Anyway, rather than take my usual ride over to Middle Branch Park on the bike trail, I just continued straight up the hill past the waste treatment plant and onto Annapolis Road. I was very quickly somewhere I haven’t been before, and by the time I got up this new hill I needed to stop to take a breath and decide if I was going to go right or just keep going straight. I looked back toward Maisel and saw this little pedestrian bridge going over 295, so of course I went over it. how could you not–it’s like a portal! Then I was in Westport,* a very old neighborhood that used to be part of the one I had just been in–damn you, pesky highways, always cutting through neighborhoods. I saw a lot of brick homes, but there was an odd-looking stack of vinyl houses to the right. I headed that way, getting caught in the roundabouts of Westport Homes, a public housing complex build to desegregate the neighborhood’s schools after Brown v. Board of Education. Today the neighborhood was a whole lot of purple and kids in purple sitting outside, throwing balls and riding bikes. One group was engaged in a deep discussion about whether I was a lady or not–apparently wearing pants still changes everything for kids–and another had been practicing to yell a question at me in unison as I rode by: “WERE YOU AT THE RAVENS GAME?” Nope, I’m just wearing my purple Bike Easy shirt. I traced all the streets in the small subdivision before finding my way out and back near Carroll Park for a slow winding ride back through Ravens fans and up the hill to home. The western part of the harbor is at the beginning stages of a massive redevelopment that will be the “green” version of the Inner Harbor’s hyperdevelopment. “You Are On The Forefront,” the website promises. I’m guessing they’ve heard that before.
* That’s a link to the Westport Neighborhood Association, but it is embedded in the developer’s website. I will now commence thinking about what it means when the developer appears to run the neighborhood association.