Saturday, February 27, 2010

Saturday Ride through Dundalk

After yesterday's non-event snowstorm, today turned out to be a pretty nice day for a ride. It was windy, but not too brutal although I ended up cutting my ride short because as I realized that the killer tailwind I got going out to Dundalk was going to be in my face for the entire return journey. In a neighborhood near Merritt Blvd, I spotted these two groovy trucks, both of which appear to actually get used for work. Other than that it was just traffic, nothing else interesting seen, tomorrow is supposed to be a little warmer and a little less windy so maybe another ride :)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Wednesday Morning Downtown

Another nice day today, and no early calls in DC to prevent me from getting out, and no snow either :) . A quick run around downtown, including a stop by City Hall. We will see about tomorrow, supposed to start snowing again tonight.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Another Beautiful Day

Another day of sunshine and snow melt, so I got to go out again. Today I went out the Pulaski Highway, and around through Essex then back to the house through Greektown and Highlandtown.

In the area known as Chesaco, a neighborhood I never had seen before (not suprising really), the road ended at the water, and a patch of ice still floating out in the middle of it.

A little further around the neighborhood, and I got this view of the weird gold dome things over near Dundalk. I think that it is some sort of lab, but I really don't know for sure.


On my way back on Eastern Avenue, I crossed this bridge, and I am pretty sure that the spit of land I was at for the first picture is the one across the water here. Glad I got out, the weather forecast has snow and rain for tommorow :(

Saturday, February 20, 2010

I'm free!!!!

It's Saturday, and the temps have been rising all week, so I finally got to get out and go somewhere, after a week of riding the trainer. This time my ride took me uptown around Johns Hopkins and Loyola Universities. The city is still very different from the snow, every intersection has 2 or 3 piles of snow like this.


After looping around the universities, I went down around the Inner Harbor, which was packed with tourists, and up through Federal Hill. There was a lot of snow moving action there, front end loaders and dump trucks getting the snow out of the neighborhood, and moving it to vacant lots and such to get rid of it. This is the Domino's Sugar factory on the inner harbor, still active. The word is that that sign, which lights up red at night, is the size of a basketball court.


Pretty calm day in the harbor, but the ARC was in.
In the distance is the Key Bridge, I imagine named after Francis Scott Key.


Then it was back to the house. Since it has warmed up, the streets are all pretty damp with snow runoff mixed with salt and sand and road schmutz, and left the bike a mess. Only took about a half an hour to clean it up though, well worth it. Hopefully I can get out again tommorow and go through the process again.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Friday Morning Snowy Bike Ride

Well, as you may have heard, we have been getting a bit of snow here. After several days of cross-training with the snow shovel, and riding on the trainer in the garage in between storms, I could take no more, and decided to go out on my mountain bike this morning for a ride. When I left the garage, this is what greeted me. This is the alley behind my garage, I have shoveled this out twice since last Friday


After successfully navigating my way out to the streets, I headed over to Patterson Park, where my usual bike path looked like this, the city had plowed it out so cars can park there during the snow emergency.


But it was nice to get out, the playing field is about 3' deep with snow right now.
Of course, the last part of my ride was getting back to the garage, and I managed to take a header on the ice on the alley, but just a couple of bruises to remind me not to go slow on ice.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Thursday Morning Ride 2/4/10

Finally, a nice (31 degrees) morning, and after 3 days of trainer rides in a row, I had to get out. Thankfully my experiment with using the ski gloves worked well, and my hands weren't frozen. A quick run around Fells Point, and through Canton and Patterson Park. This is the Broadway pier in Fells Point, our local tugboat company is based there. Across the way is Tide Point, home of Under Armor as well as several other companies. The taller building just behind there is Silo Point, which is a former grain elevator that has been redone into condos. The brochure they sent us had some pretty spectacular views from the top floors, of course the price was equally spectacular. In the foreground is the remnants of Tuesday's snow storm, we got a few inches. They are calling for 18-24" starting tommorow morning, I am going to try and get out again before it starts, we shall see if that works out for me.