The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Once again, your humble narrator finds himself locked firmly in your past, as the very moment these words are being typed it is currently the 24th of February as far as these words go, but the photos were shot back on Friday the 13th of the same month.

You’re seeing this mid March, if I’ve got my scheduling correct. These shots represent the part of February when you wondered if it would ever stop snowing, and pondered if the Fimbulvetr was finally underway. The cool thing is that as you’re reading this, we both know how things turned out.

It’s been really, really difficult to find a walking path not blocked by ice and snow. Mentioned many times, Pittsburgh ‘shit the bed’ on snow removal. Not just the city, but the private entities hereabouts too.

Disappointing. Fixable, but I don’t want to fix things anymore.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The original plan was to ride the T light rail to the very ‘developed’ Monongahela Waterfront nearby the Station Square Stop. I’d ride the incline up to the top of Mt. Washington, I thought, but the Incline was out of service.

Ok! ‘Plan B’ took the form of me walking in the street, along a de facto highway, because some bunch of goofballs decided to pile snow on the sidewalks, forming eight foot high mounds. This pathway delivered me to a parking lot, which was expertly plowed, shoveled, and treated for ice. The parking lot leads to an entrance to one of the river trails.

It just ‘has to’ have a path, I thought, given that the trail abuts one of the Crown Jewels hereabouts – Riverhounds Soccer Stadium. I mean…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The good news is that I saw a Towboat towing something. It was navigating easterly along the Monongahela River. Yay!

I cannot express how bored I’ve recently been. As mentioned above, we’re still deep in the wintertime here in Pittsburgh, at the time of this writing at the end of February. No Bueno, indeed.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This was the condition of the trail, the one I was hoping would be cleared, incidentally.

These shots were gathered on the first actual ‘melt’ day, with temperatures above freezing, that had occurred in about a two to three week interval, since a big snow maker had dumped 18 or so inches across the region. It shut down a lot of options for me.

I was stuck sloshing through this, which kind of ‘pissed off’ my bad ankle a bit. Wasn’t awful, but the organelle definitely made its displeasures known.

Fixable. This snow business is fixable. Easily so, and everybody who participated in fixing the problem would get to see themselves on the tv.

Fixable…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Oddly, given the condition of the trail, an enormous multi acre for pay parking lot was neatly cleared of snow and ice. I walked around there for a bit, and luckily spotted CSX #3155 as it tried to sneak past me while passing under the Fort Pitt Bridge. Imagine…

The trail on the other side of the parking lot was clad in deep snow similarly to the section detailed in the previous shot. Flarn!

Hands were thrown up in disgust, I fell to my knees and decried cruel fate. Imagine that… it was cold and snowy out in early February… and since I was largely unlucky in my pursuits – no incline, no sidewalk, no access – I could blame it on… Friday the 13th!

Dun dun dunnnnn.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I back tracked through the well shoveled parking lot, walked across the blocked sidewalk street, and then just boarded a T back to Dormont. Real short walk, this one, maybe three miles all told. At least the camera got up off its butt, and did something. Hmmphf.

Back tomorrow.

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