Monday Morning

Just another day of bike commuting, nothing out of the ordinary happened today, but I do like the view down Lombard as I head towards downtown.

Art

Kathleen's off getting a haircut, so I went out for a ride today around the city.  It was blustery and threatening to rain, but never did.  Going up Patterson Park Ave N I spotted this, a little homegrown art.

Coffee Shop Ride

Today, being Sunday, is the day for the Twenty20 Coffee Shop ride.   I managed to get out of bed on time, and ride up to Hampden to meet the gang for the ride.  We noodled around Druid Lake Park and Johns Hopkins campus before heading back to the shop.   Here is Norman and Kristi (I remembered to ask her name again, I suck at remembering names), as we rolled down Charles Street.

We made it back to the shop, then it was time to head for home. On my way back to the house I spotted this, apparently today is the Italian Festival in Little Italy.

Today there was also a contest of sorts, which was to guess the weight of Norman's bike as it was today. He is prepping for a ride up the C & O Canal leaving tomorrow, so he had a pannier and tent on his bike. I guessed 50lbs and the actual weight was 49, so I was the big winner, and here is my prize, a bitchin' Specialized Purist water bottle, sorry about the disaster area that I call my work bench.

I headed in to the house, fed the cat, jumped through the shower, and then rode my city bike down to Red Star for breakfast.

Not so good

I am exhausted, I haven't had a turn off my brain and take it easy vacation in 5 years since Kathleen and I went to Costa Rica.   Every other trip I have had has involved having to do work stuff at night to keep up.   I slept 10 hours last night and I am still tired today, it seems to be affecting my mood at times, my tolerance for morons has gone way down lately.   Since I am pretty sure that virtually nobody reads this, I am not so worried about airing it out here.   At any rate, Kathleen is off in Luray doing the double header triathlon this weekend, so I have been on my own so far.   This afternoon I got it together and went out for a ride.  I rolled out of the garage, and down the hill on Chester Street only to encounter the local block party in progress.

This block does this fairly regularly, and it looks like today was another. I continued on through the Inner Harbor, where the city has rendered the bike path totally useless through an "improvement" project, then out past the stadiums where I spotted this bit of urban art that I hadn't noticed before on Warner Street.

I noodled around through Catonsville, eventually ending up back on Pratt Street through downtown, it looks a lot different now that they are gearing up for the Baltimore Grand Prix in 2 weeks.

Yes, that is my shadow in the bottom right of the picture. I headed home, jumped through the shower, then went over to 5 Guys for a burger and the Washington Post.

Commute Day

I commuted into work today, far to long between rides. Fairly uneventful ride in, it's still muggy as hell right now. I did my day at work, managed to get rolling home about 7:00PM or so. Passing through Leon Day Park it's definitely football season now.

On the last park like leg of the ride I stopped for a moment to catch the setting sun through the trees.

Passing over Ostend Street I spotted downtown basking in the sunset beyond the tracks here.

After that it turned into a bit of a mess, the sidewalk/trail from the golf course to Carroll Park is completely torn up, so I was forced onto the street to get around it, which of course is also torn up.   Then after passing through Federal Hill I got to the bike path around the Inner Harbor only to find this.

That's right, it's coming up on race time again, the grandstands and jersey wall are going up, and in this case right on top of the bike path.   I continued on home, thought this was a cool batch o' clouds.

Then it was home for a shower and some dinner with Kathleen.