I’m a bit under the weather, but I had a long-standing lunch date down in the Inner Harbor. What was I going to do–drive there? Nah. I layered up and headed out the door for a zippy race down empty streets, Maryland Avenue through Mt. Vernon and the Westside and over to the giant Hilton. As always, as soon as I was on my bike I was glad I was. S. and I talked, and he asked me about living in Baltimore, what people do here. What I do is ride my bike around it, and that’s what people do in Baltimore, from my perspective. After lunch I dodged pedestrians around the Inner Harbor, did a quick tour around the gym, during which time the Ravens got not even one single first down, and then I was headed back up the hill under promised partly cloudy skies. I passed through Little Italy and Jonestown through downtown and headed up Fallsway. So much barbed wire on this stretch of the ride, keeping people inside cages and outside of parking lots. I snapped this picture right before Chase, looking over at the row houses, some of them standing vacant, the roof of the one in the foreground traced in the stuff. Enclosure everywhere. The sun was going down–check out that light. No instagramahipsterpicery here–that’s just the city in the afternoon after we all fell back. Baltimore’s complicated, and it’s beautiful.