Panhandling? Mebbee.
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yes, we’re ending this week all ‘pastoral’ like.
For all the people who ask me ‘why Pittsburgh?,’ scenes like the one above are a part of ‘why.’ The name of this state I’m in means ‘Penn’s Woods’ after all, and it’s a not very long drive to leave behind the passive aggressive streets of the Paris of Appalachia to take a walk in a well manicured section of the ‘sylvania.’ If you wanted actual woods, that’s about another 25-30 minutes away in an any direction, this is a wooded corridor through an otherwise suburban area.
As described yesterday, a trailhead which I did not know existed was recently discovered as being about a 15 minute drive from HQ. The facility is called as the ‘Panhandle Trail.’ This particular trailhead, dubbed ‘Walkers Mill’ is found in Collier Township. There’s all sorts of indications that this area used to host a rock quarry, but I haven’t been able to find historic specifics. I’m am of the opinion that the ‘Walkers Mill’ nomen likely emanates from one of the legal founders of the town, in 1911, a fellow who was called J.J. Walker.
Saying that, I’m making broad inferences off of a scarce bit of research, so take that one with a grain of salt. I generally don’t ’deep dive’ these days unless I’m trying to prove a point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is always fascinated by the Appalachian layer cake you can observe here in Western Pennsylvania. One of the oldest mountain ranges on earth, the Appalachia are. Supposedly, these sort of rocks are heavily embedded with fossils of both a micro and macroscopic nature. They’re also valuable from a chemical perspective, having preserved climate data in their layers which go back as far as a billion years, and varying amounts of hydrocarbons can be found in the stack too. Coal, oils, gas. This trail has a feature called ‘Fossil Cliff’ which I’m intrigued by.
Unfortunately, I had a doctor’s appointment to get to, and the alarm on my phone chimed out (I’m currently using Black Flag’s ‘My War’ as the alarm tone) and that let me know it was time to go and get my 6 month in X-Ray for the busted ankle. An intention was to show the Doc what the ankle looked like after some exercise, instead of being all pink and fresh while directly out of a resting period. I offered the Doc my step count from the walk, and he seemed pleased with the orthopedic healing progress and my efforts. My exercise plan for the next six months was offered approval, as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s absolute Heaven for me to be able to do this sort of thing again, after my long autumn and winter of oft times extremely painful recovery from the injury to my ankle. The muscular atrophy in my upper things is a leave behind, which I’m assiduously attacking right now on a nearly daily basis. Just yesterday, I walked up a flight of stairs without clutching for dear life on the bannister, for instance.
The weather is also beginning to warm up here in Pittsburgh, now. My Doctor approved plan is to start up my old routine again, the one where there’s three short walks of about an hour splayed out during the week, and one long ass marathon scuttle on the weekends. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, I’ll be once again ‘turning the earth under my feet.’
Back next week with something different, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
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Walkers Mill, Panhandle Trail
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The start of the Panhandle Trail is pictured above, at a location which the people who run the institution call ‘Walkers Mill.’ Recent endeavor led to discovery of the trailhead location, which offers both parking and a porta potty. I checked the location into active memory after seeing it, and resolved to return and check the trail out. Glad I did, as Walkers Mill is only a 15 minutes drive from HQ. This sort of place is precisely what I’m needing at the moment, in terms of the post broken ankle ‘stretching and strengthening’ mission described in a post earlier this week.
This is a ‘rail trail,’ meaning that there used to be a freight train outfit whose ‘right of way’ was abandoned when they went out of business. I grabbed a shot of their signage, describing the history of this route, which you can see here. Obviously, a great more detail can be gleaned at the friends of the Panhandle Trail website.
I’ve encountered another section of the Panhandle Trail in the Pittsburgh metro area before, where it crosses the Montour Trail at a nice railroad trestle bridge. As it turns out, you can theoretically walk to West Virginia on this path. How’s about that? You’ll know you’re there when you start hearing Banjo music being played.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Alongside the trail is a shallow but quick flowing waterway called Robinson Run. The trail had a few other people walking and jogging around, but the population was sparse (it was a Monday, early afternoon). Your humble narrator had a few errands to accomplish nearby, and a Doctor’s visit later in the afternoon with the orthopedist who put Humpty Dumpty back together again. There’s a side trail or two which take you into the woods, notably one which leads to a ‘fossil cliff.’ The signage cautioned that accessibility is ‘difficult,’ but that usually refers to the grade of the hill. At the moment, walking on steep grades is still an issue, so I filed away that one for a visit in a couple of months when the ankle is stronger and surer.
Robinson Run does seems to receive a good amount of waste water from the surrounding town’s residences and businesses, based on my observation of the liquid’s coloration in areas of the stream bed which allowed pooling, and a few good sniffs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This sort of thing is absolute nepenthe for me right now, especially so with the vague odor of sewage popping up every no and then. Reminds me of home. Speaking of, I’m going to be back ‘in the old neighborhood’ for a few days in June. My dance card is already fairly full, but I’m planning on riding the ferry, smelling salt water (mixed with sewage), and visiting a certain waterway which provides the border of Brooklyn and Queens. I used to add in ‘undefended border,’ but who knows what’s been happening there since I’ve been gone.
Crushed limestone or paved surfaces, the Panhandle Trail is graded according to railroad standards, one foot’s worth of change in elevation for every hundred linear feet horizontally. Easy walking, this, and given that the rest of this year is going to be all about getting my legs back into scuttling condition… perfect.
Back tomorrow with more.
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Compounding interests
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s a portion of the Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church pictured above, which is one of several grandiose religious buildings here in Pittsburgh that I’m interested in getting an interior look at. Ideally, I’d love to get inside with the camera and a tripod and really go to town documenting all the architectural goodness that is no doubt contained within whilst the Presbyterians tell me how talented I am, but I’d be happy with about an hour in there to do my thing. A friend of mine who has lived in Pittsburgh for decades often suggests that I just go knock on the door and ask.
As is often stated, I’m like a Vampire and need to be invited in so I can do my work. This structure is huge, and set up in the manner of a cathedral. Here’s a longer shot of the building. On my ‘sacred spaces’ shot list, now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A couple of blocks away, you’ll find the Catholics. This is part of St. Bernard’s RC church, which I’ve actually entered in the past.
The linked post has an error associated with the first shot, which is clearly of the Presbyterian church, and being labeled as being St. Bernard’s. I goof up sometimes. No editor, one man shop, working against a five days a week schedule and with a zero budget – that’s me. Errors slip through occasionally due to exigency and obliging the scheduling. I rely on the wisdom of crowds for corrections and comments, which you lords and ladies often offer. Thanks to y’all. Collectively, we’re a ‘hell of a guy.’
Supposedly they have a cloister set up on their campus, and there’s a catholic school too. Boy oh boy would I love to bring the camera back here sometime soon. Maybe I’ll follow my friends advice and just ask for permission to record the scene properly, instead of waiting for the serendipity of social engineering to provide an opening.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One completed his scuttle, and burned through about 3-4 miles of walking. At the moment, this is a bit of an achievement, due to the broken ankle recovery situation. I decided that I’d take the T light rail back home rather than just backtrack my steps to HQ.
Back tomorrow with something different, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Heading south, on West Liberty
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, one was engaged in a constitutional walk with a route that was planned out as being rather close to home. On this scuttle, I was walking down a secondary arterial street called ‘West Liberty Avenue,’ which transmogrifies into being called ‘Washington Road’ as it travels southeastwards. West Liberty Avenue intersects with a few other high volume roads, nearby the Liberty Tunnels leading out of Pittsburgh, as it heads out into the South Hills section. It’s set up like a local road, with lights and crosswalks, but the West Liberty/Washington Road corridor is a four lane high volume 24/7 traffic engine. In transit geek language, it would be called a ‘Stroad.’
I’m intrigued by that church pictured above, and plan on seeing what it’s like within the place sometime soon. They built churches like battleships out here, back in the day. There are, in fact, four churches along this route which I’m very interested in photographing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
More of Pittsburgh’s peculiar (to me) alleys were encountered along my way. As is always the case when I’m on this sort of scuttle, one was trying to notice ‘all the little things.’ By this section of the walk my ankle was starting to get angry at me, but in accordance with a now long standing habit I just leaned into it. Won’t get better on its own, and I’ve had enough rest to last me a lifetime.
It’s actually an odd thing to be ‘consciously’ walking. As in focusing in on each step while avoiding the trap of ‘protecting’ my ankle. The protection thing inevitably ends up with me limping, dragging my foot, or walking like the Batman villain Penguin. All of those things are counterproductive to the recovery effort, so I need to maintain a certain awareness of my walking postures whilst scuttling about. My surgeon endorses this view of mine.
I’ve literally had to relearn bipedalism in the last six months. This was something I thought that I had accomplished more than fifty years ago, so it’s frustrating to have to do it all over again. Bah.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
About five years ago, I missed out on a serious payday from the stock photo company Getty when they were looking for shots of urban gas stations, specifically BP ones. I decided at that point to make such institutions part of my shot list. I also discovered how difficult it is to get shots of gas stations at night when they’re all lit up, and that’s something whoch draws me to a subject like nothing else.
Back tomorrow.
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Stretching and strengthening
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This time around, I made it halfway up the hill I live at the bottom of before I had to give the ankle a rest. I did utter a series of nonsense sounds while doing so, ‘unnghhhahh’ or ‘ahh ah ooh,’ that sort of thing. The plan for this walk involved going places which aren’t terribly interesting on the surface, but are somewhat close to HQ geographical wise. Just ‘a walk,’ this time around.
The endeavor I’m involved with at the moment is encapsulated in the title of today’s post: stretching and strengthening. The stretching part involves the tendons and ligaments which were damaged during the shattering of my ankle, and the consequent dislocation of the left foot back in September. It’s amazing how profound this injury ended up being, and long lasting. See, I am special.
After all this time – six months – I’m just now getting back to a somewhat normal pattern of life, and movement. The ankle still hurts, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the top of the hill, a left was hung, and I started walking up a more gradual hill, towards the ‘main street’ section of Pittsburgh’s Borough of Dormont. I’m still trying to understand the organizational chart of the Pittsburgh metro, as in ‘which’ elected office or agency handles ‘what.’ This Commonwealth business is still novel to me.
That’s the T light rail, moving away from Pittsburgh, and entering Dormont’s Potomac Avenue station pictured above. The PRT (Pittsburgh Regional Transit) people have been all over the local news for the last few days, ringing the alarm bell that they have run out of money. It seems that they have been propped up by first Federal Covid relief and then Infrastructure Bill money, sent by ‘Uncle Sugar’ in Washington for the last several years, and that they now find themselves more than a hundred million in the hole for 2026.
They are appealing to the State legislature in Harrisburg for a funding rescue, as Washington will no longer offer them financial succor, and the PRT claims that they will need to institute draconian cuts to their services in order to remain solvent. They offered their ‘Doomsday Scenario:’ complete elimination of over 40 bus routes, one of the T lines, and a decimation of their current schedule down to hour long waiting intervals between buses and even longer ones for the T. The doomsday plans includes layoffs for bus drivers and mechanics, train operators and engineers.
Entire communities would lose their bus, and or transit, service. Guess what? The cuts are mainly in the less wealthy ‘exurb’ places where people explicitly rely on mass transit to get to work or for their kids to go to school.
Lousy, this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A right turn was next hung, and your humble narrator began moving south east. Pittsburgh has lots and lots of alleys, which are described as ‘ways.’ Narrow, it’s where businesses keep their dumpsters and where the junkies gambol and jump and play. Land has always been scarce back home in NYC, and alleys are a lot rarer there. Hell, if this was NYC, they’d probably try to build a long thin ‘shotgun’ style building to profitably fill that space pictured above with ‘affordable housing.’
Me? I was just pushing against the ankle’s restraints, taking long striding steps in order to condition that web of rubber bands secreted under my skin back into regular ‘ready to exercise’ condition. It’s all about stretching right now, and conditioning my muscles back into active duty mode after all of the sitting over the last six months.
Not too long after this post publishes, this afternoon in fact, I’ll be at the Orthopedic office for a check up and they’re likely going to shoot radioactive waves through my leg, in order to photographically vouchsafe the repair condition of my broken skeleton.
Fun. Back tomorrow with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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The Newtown Pentacle 