The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Ok, I’m really starting to lean back into my ‘normal’ things, lords and ladies. I’ve fully convinced myself that nobody thinks I can fully recover from the busted ankle because they think I’m old and weak, and further packaged that up with a lot of of other personal resentments and annoyances, so I thereby have to prove the world wrong. Again.

What? How do you motivate yourself out of the house to enact a forced march when the only thing you want to do is stay at home and whine about how much your ankle is bugging you? Pfah.

The hill I live at the bottom of was vaingloriously surmounted, and your humble narrator then heroically scuttled off in the direction of the light rail station. The goal for the day was a short walk, of about three miles, but the effort would also include walking some of Pittsburgh’s steeply problematic hills.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I made it to the apex of those hills, here in Pittsburgh’s Boro of Dormont. That’s where you’ll find the T light rail station, and it’s where I boarded the carriage to carry me to a more visually interesting section of the metro area. I boarded the thing and it lurched roughly towards Pittsburgh, about 5-6 miles away. For you New Yorkers, think boarding the subway in Downtown Brooklyn or the Northern Blvd. sections of LIC and Astoria for an analogue. Just a few stops and you’re ‘there.’

Observably, I seem to be the only person in Pittsburgh who shoots photos out of the T’s windows, but that’s a habit I started back in NYC while riding the subways. Helped pass the time during a commute, and you never really knew what you were getting until going through the photos back at HQ. Most of my ‘shooting out of a train window’ ends up getting trashed, but every now and then you get something unique or interesting.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That concrete blockhouse looking structure is the entrance to Pittsburgh’s Liberty Tunnel. The terrain surrounding it is byzantine, with multiple arterial roadways leading here. There’s also the T tracks, which are elevated on a causeway here, and there’s also busways, and a couple of heavy freight rail trestles also get threaded through this area. It’s complicated!

One of these days I’m going to debark the T at a nearby stop and try to get some decent shots of the complex. At least until the cops chase me away, or I get bored while waiting for a freight train to cross one of those trestles.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As mentioned in prior posts, a good amount of construction work is currently affecting the T light rail, and the lines will all be detouring through the Allentown neighborhood until the autumn. Unfortunately, the ‘PRT’ transit agency which runs the show only added a single stop way at the top of the hill for the inconvenience, but there you are.

If you’re curious, the camera formula for this sort of ‘out the window shooting’ involves setting the ISO sensitivity up to nighttime levels (6400 for my camera) and setting the device to its ‘AV’ or aperture priority mode. The camera will then find the correct exposure automatically while maintaining the ISO and aperture settings (which is f8 for the particular zoom lens I was using this day). Normally, I shoot in full manual mode, which allows me control over all aspects of the exposure, but shooting out of the window of a moving vehicle isn’t very normal and the technological assist is welcomed.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the set of tracks which I often point the camera at, the ones nearby that brewery I keep mentioning. My plan for the day involved the relative flatness of this area. The beginning of my walk involved a bit of muscle, in terms of getting to the T via the hills of Dormont. This section was all about exercising the more discrete tissues in the foot and ankle, and getting them moving and all lubricated.

Six months, and two weeks. That’s exactly how long I’ve been dealing with this broken ankle business. As mentioned last week, the Doctors have more or less given me the ‘all clear’ and thusly I now need to seriously work the joint in order to get back to what I consider ‘normal.’ Thing is, ‘normal’ is what it used to feel like, and it’s a pretty different ankle after the injury and surgery. How it works, feels, performs – all different.

The asymmetry is really hard to get used to, but in time I don’t think I’ll even notice it. If only I was born patient, instead of good looking…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The T was debarked at the Second Avenue station, which is fed traffic by the Panhandle Bridge pictured above. The plan was to walk a bit on one of the trails along the waterfront of the Monongahela River, cross the waterbody on the Smithfield Street Bridge, then try and get a few train shots. It wouldn’t be a ‘have a beer too’ day, although my end point for the walk would be nearby that now familiar spot nearby the brewery.

Back tomorrow with more.

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