Operation Pòbīng
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with a short walk across an icy Pittsburgh, in today’s post.
One was galavanting across the Smithfield Street Bridge, and was struck by the scene. The iced over Monongahela River was just a treat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A Towboat and barges had cracked open a pathway in the ice flows. I had missed seeing the passage, but it was pretty clear which pathway they had undertook.
Neat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was digging on all these compositional geometries.
It has been quite frustrating for me, this interval of hard winter, as it always is. Entire walking paths were obliterated by snow pack, and my exploration schedule was just crushed flat by the snow. If you click into the archives, specifically posts from January and February, you’ll soon discover that every single one of the 16 years that Newtown Pentacle has been in operation I’ve specially complained about the winter months and getting penned in or restrained by the weather. Kind of a theme, really.
For a few walks in a row, I found myself forced into these corridors of ‘passability.’ The ‘orthopedic incident’ looms large, still.
Pittsburgh, at large, really ‘shit the bed’ on snow removal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking southwards, at the northern face of Mount Washington in the South Side Slopes area. The vehicle causeway is the PJ McArdle roadway (whose sidewalks were – at the time – covered in about 18 inches of hard clear ice).
Just a day before the writing of this post, on the 18th of February, a landslide shut down the roadway for several hours. As you’d imagine, these elevated ‘zones’ were not considered for a scuttle due to weather conditions. So were the City Steps.
Bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Zoomed in for this one on the Colors House, which is found on Cola Street up in the ‘slopes,’ since the light was shining pretty nicely on it at the time.
One scuttled on, and on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The buckling and heaving of the ice down on the river was intriguing to me. The closer to the southern shore of the river that I got, the more that the plates of ice below were wet and degrading (or ‘rotting’) as the warmer waters flowing beneath ate away at them. Add in the mechanical energy of that Towboat path… neat!
Back tomorrow with Choo-choo.
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