Archive for November 21st, 2023
Low to high
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, one was executing a constitutional walk around Pittsburgh recently, stretching my legs and maintaining a steady level of activity which kept my heart beating in an elevated but therapeutic manner. After riding the streetcar ‘T’ line to the center of Pittsburgh, and then crossing a bridge over the mouth of the Ohio at the joining of the city’s three rivers, one proceeded along the south shore of the Monongahela River.
Luckily, a Norfolk Southern train was rolling past on an elevated set of tracks found along a secondary arterial roadway called Saw Mill Run Blvd. This Saw Mill Run section is a fairly scary pathway, pedestrian wise, but I was heading for one of the inclines so…
Having paid my fare on the T, I got a free transfer to the incline/funiculars. That’s how I got from low to high (1,000 feet up) without having to climb a mountain.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After being deposited atop Mount Washington, which the funicular is set into, my path led me to the P.J. McArdle Roadway which carries vehicular traffic from down on the waterfront flats all the way up to the ridge line of the landform. The views are fairly spectacular up here, and I quite enjoy them. There’s also a shared pedestrian and bike path which leads back down to the flatlands below.
One has been using an app on the phone to measure things of late, and apparently I walk at 2.6 mph. The phone also advises on the length of my stride (26.4 inches), approximates the number of steps taken in any given outing, and describes asymmetries in how I’m moving my feet about. No big revelation is encountered there, especially after the various issues and injuries experienced in my left foot in recent years,
I’m about 3% off in terms of that limb’s efficiency according to the phone. It seems that about a third of the time I’m out scuttling, I have both feet contacting the ground at the same time, which must mean that the phone wants me to hop like a bunny or something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fencing along this pathway is terrifyingly fragile, riddled with rust and the weathered corruption of old age. In several places it’s non existent and you’re looking at 1,000 foot drop along what has to be a 60 or 70 degree angle through woods. Brr.
This particular stretch of the cantilevered roadway sports concrete separation between the ped/bike lane and vehicular traffic but this is only for certain sections. There’s a long stretch of this P.J. McArdle roadway where all there is between you and the traffic that’s zipping past you at 40-50mph is just a regular three inch curb. Brrr.
Back tomorrow.
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