I started my morning with S. and J. and our Sunday Morning Hiking Club, which is really the best thing going. I mean, what day isn’t better when it starts with a brisk walk amidst some good old fashioned natural beauty, especially when it’s followed up by a seasonal latte? After warming back up at home it was time to take the bike out for a ride. Continue reading
business
Empty Lot Where Harrah’s Casino Will Go at Warner & Worcester
After a many-hour morning at the coffee shoppe grading papers it was time to get back on the bike and spin along on this beautiful sunny fall day. I headed down the hill, around the harbor, and up through Federal Hill toward my favorite pedestrian mini mall called McHenry Row. Continue reading
Lululemon Platitudes at Harbor East on Aliceanna
Thursday’s ride took me down to Harbor East for a trip to the pool and some really terrible swimming. I’m good at a lot of things–reading, eating food other people cook for me, taking pictures of cats–but I’m just a horrible swimmer. Fortunately, you don’t have to be good at things to enjoy them, so I just hopped in the pool and slowly made my way back and forth without drowning–a win in my book. Continue reading
Aloha at Scores on Fallsway & Terminal Alley
I spend a lot of time riding up and down Fallsway. It’s like St. Charles in New Orleans–I know every bump and crack and bus stop and crosswalk likely to be overrun by cars unwilling to stop before pulling through to make their rights on red. The blocks change quickly here, and I always wonder how the tourists who booked their hotels in “Harbor East” feel when they see they are sharing their neighborhood with a literal prison industrial complex, a police garage, the biggest post office ever, and a number of homeless services centers; something tells me that part isn’t making it into the ads. Cities never represent themselves in any complexity, because that doesn’t pay. Continue reading
City of Baltimore Car Wash Facility on Fallsway & Gay
Today’s ride took me down the hill–surprise, surprise–for a quick turn at the gym and some groceries before heading back up the hill to home. The whole ride is only 6 miles and only takes about 40 minutes. Driving might be marginally faster, but so, so much less pleasant! Anyway, I stopped to take this picture of the City of Baltimore Car Wash Facility on Fallsway near Gay Street, practically in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express or Sleep Inn or whatever hotel is there, surely regularly disappointing visitors that it’s sharing the block with Healthcare for the Homeless. Continue reading
Closed Pharmacy at 36th & Chestnut
Oh, I wanted to ride my bike so badly today. I haven’t ridden since *Tuesday*, and when I don’t ride, the hamster wheel starts going in my head instead, and then I can’t sleep. It was nice and warm out today, but the wind was howling, and that’s just not weather I like to ride in. In which I like to ride. (See what I mean? Hamster. Wheel.) Sigh. So I decided to walk instead, and that was an excellent choice. Continue reading
Bank of America at 32nd & St. Paul
I wanted to go on a real bike ride today, but it was windy and rainy, and I just didn’t have it in me for that kind of ride. But I did manage to take the bike up and down the hill to the Bank of America at 32nd and St. Paul to finally close out my account now that my credit union account is all up and running and I finally have my direct deposit business sorted out. Continue reading
Cloverland Green Spring Dairy at Loch Raven & Exeter Hall
Oh, bicycle, how I’ve missed you! I hopped on my bike, S. hopped on hers, and we rode up to Waverly for waffles with J. It felt immediately good to be pedaling along, like being back at home. After tossing back some fruit, maple syrup, and whipped cream with my waffle and flipping through a guidebook to Eastern birds on the roof in the sunshine, S. and I zipped down the hill and then rode aimlessly around the neighborhood–my favorite kind of ride. Continue reading
Cyclists Learning About Banks at the Wells Fargo at St. Paul & Fayette
Today’s ride took me up to campus in the afternoon for another faculty senate meeting, and I could feel the difference regular riding is making in my stamina, and it is really exciting. I’m not scared by hills anymore, even that one that gets you up to Haverhill Road. The ride makes sense in its chunks–down the hill to Mt. Vernon and up through Bolton Hill, Lafayette through West Baltimore, South on Monroe–serious traffic today–Frederick and up the hill to Caton Avenue, Caton and Wilkens, and then finally the weird cul-de-sacs of Arbutus–et voila! I only took one wrong turn and knocked 3 minutes off my time, but what really surprised me was that I wasn’t exhausted when I got to campus, and that felt amazing. Continue reading
Stay Tuned For Something Special At Louisiana & St. Charles
Tonight’s ride took me to Carrollton to meet M., K., and J. for dinner. I wasn’t much in the mood for a ride, but I knew that was all the more reason to take the bike. The sky had that look about it, so I wasn’t surprised to get caught in a shower. It wasn’t the kind of rain that makes you have to pull over for safety, more the medium setting on the nozzle at a hotel. And then all of a sudden it eas over and the asphalt was dry. Nice. After dinner I sped down St. Charles as fast as I could, enjoying the feel of the slightly cooler air. I stopped to take a picture of this banner promising exciting new things at the empty hull that used to be Border’s, built with millions in Go Zone dollars, open for about fifteen minutes, and now empty again. But something special is going to be here soon. Maybe it won’t be a big box bookstore or funeral home, but surely it will be something special, which mostly means somewhere to buy something that’s not actually really special at all. For M.’s sake, I hope it’ an H&M. Pedal, pedal, pedal, froyo with S. that helpfully returned my eyes front, and then home. Yep, I needed a bike ride.
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 