The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As described yesterday, your humble narrator was out for a walk and finally got up to and past the five mile limitation which has plagued similar efforts, in this ongoing recovery period after having broken my ankle last September. Also mentioned, a bit of psychological trauma got inserted into me during the injury as well, which has caused this wandering mendicant to become a bit phobic about staircases.

Given that I’m partial to the old philosophical sentiment about ‘falling off a horse and getting right back into the saddle’ I’m going to be exposing myself to a bunch of scary stairs this summer while getting my legs back into shape, thusly.

That’s the West End Bridge over the Ohio River up there, and its stairs are doozies but certainly not the worst Pittsburgh has to offer. I’m working my way up to those, and they’re terrifying.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I did get distracted along the way to the bridge, but darn it these guys were doing something interesting. There’s some sort of development project kicking into gear around this area, and there’s all sorts of work going on to get the area ready for whosover’s dreams of avarice will be playing out.

This effort involved the replacement of a Utility Pole by a crew of workers with a lot of specialized equipment. I’m also visually intrigued by this sort of thing, and tried to get a few shots of the action while zoomed all the way in and from a distance.

Funnily enough, most people don’t like strangers walking up to and interrupting them while they’re at work, and especially not those strangers who start taking random pictures of what they’re doing while at work. I’m fully aware of how uncomfortable that is, and try to remain geographically aloof. That’s what a long range zoom lens is for.

I wasn’t hiding behind a mail box or anything, though.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It was an act of will to not clutch at the steel bannister on the West End Bridge with every bit of strength in my arm. This new phobia of mine, it’s going to take a while to be drowned out by something else I’m more scared of. Might as well enjoy it while I can, until it callouses over.

Some group in the local non profit industrial complex is floating a project which promises to redesign these approaches to the bridge’s pedestrian and bike lanes and bring them into compliance with ADA standards as well as polishing them up esthetically.

As mentioned, the powers that be have offered a development scheme for this section of the ‘North Side,’ click here for a lookie loo.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Having surmounted the stairs, in a cavalcade of fear and terror, one leaned into things and pushed forward. This bridge is in pretty rough condition, I have to mention. You can’t see it while driving over the thing, but while walking West End Bridge, the need for maintenance and probable major repairs is pretty apparent. Rust, broken concrete, all the tell tales are there.

Your humble narrator was actually somewhat happy during this walk, as I didn’t have to actively focus quite as much on the act of walking as I’ve had to in recent excursions. One of the many problems encountered post injury involved ‘proprioception,’ which involves the somewhat unconscious knowledge of where your limbs are spatially. Losing touch with that hidden sense of kinesthetic parameters, it was difficult to confidently walk as I was unaware of my foot’s relationship and relative positioning to the ground.

The trouble I’m having with angled surfaces is related to this dealie, but in time… everything will be great, all the time. I keep telling myself that.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It seems that the governmental powers are scratching out a new road for themselves on Mount Washington. I’m of the opinion that it’s going to just be for the ‘official’ vehicles to use, but you need to be able to,move emergency vehicles quickly, after all, and the roads leading to and from the summit are often choked with what passes for heavy traffic here in Pittsburgh.

This new road, observably, seems to parallel the PJ McArdle roadway across the face of Mount Washington.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As mentioned in the past, I’ve caught some critique on local Pittsburgh social media groups for referring to what you see above as ‘mineral barges’ when posting photos. A lot of this is politically motivated, IMHO, with some red hat wearer thinking he’s ‘owning the libs’ by screaming in all caps that it’s coal, why can’t you just call it coal?

As is often restated, unless I know for a fact what something actually is, a category level is jumped. It looks like there’s gravel or ballast stone in those barges, but that’s a guess based on purely visual observation. All I can say for sure is that a Towboat with four barges worth of minerals was photographed while navigating from the Monongahela River to the Ohio River in the Port of Pittsburgh’s Pool.

Back tomorrow with more.

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