Perdidit in civitate aliena
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, an attempt at a long walk, on a very hot day, saw me circumcising the effort down to a short walk. You’ve got to acknowledge and respect the environmental conditions.
These shots are from where Pittsburgh’s Birmingham Bridge meets the ‘Uptown’ section of the city. There’s an emergency bridge reconstruction project underway hereabouts, a project which was spurred on by the collapse of the nearby Fern Hollow Bridge in 2022 and a raft of Federal funding.
I love this sort of chaotic place. The construction guys and gals are artists and they don’t even realize it, with all of the signs, and the high visibility gear, and the tarps cladding the job sites.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking through the bridge’s ramps, that curving roadway leads towards the Oakland neighborhood with its universities, museums, churches, and other cultural centers. The lower ramp carries I-279 out toward the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, and then continues to points east. The bridge receiving the emergency repairs is the one with the tarps on it, quite obviously.
Infrastructure, amirite?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Right after this shot was gathered, my phone came out of the pocket and the planned route went out the window. I figured out a more wholesome pathway which wouldn’t put me at risk of heat stroke, but there was no way that I wasn’t going to be cooking in the sun for a bit.
A humble narrator was screwed in terms of shade, given where I was, and I’d just have to suck it up and walk in the direct sunlight for at least a mile. Thing about ‘back home’ was that – with very few exceptions – multi story buildings cast broad shadows that you can use that to your advantage on hot days. Large structures also cast ‘rain shadows,’ but I digress…
I pulled the brim of that Costco brand $15 bucket style hat I’ve been wearing low down over my face, and then just leaned into it.
Back tomorrow.
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Sine fine ambulant
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Alright… in retrospect… it was dumb of me to say ‘yeah, it’s hot out, but that’s no big deal.’ Regardless – it was exercise day, for both the hollowing meat puppet that supports my brain and the camera too, and despite climatological conditions which could be described as a ‘reverse blizzard,’ one set out for a long walk. Within a couple of hours, that was amended to a short walk instead.
Pittsburgh is famously humid. The CBS news station hereabouts has a humidity chart they show, when reporting the weather, which has a top range that is labeled as ‘ridiculous.’ Given the national heat wave’s eye watering temperatures out west, we were lucky that it was only in the middle 90’s here in the Paris of Appalachia, but factor in that ‘ridiculous humidity’ and my utterly fantastic decision to start this walk in the late afternoon… it was ‘shvitzy’ out there.
I’m a real complaint department these days, ain’t I?
Pictured above is the Birmingham Bridge, over the Monongahela River, which I was intent on walking across for some reason.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pure existential misery is what a humble narrator was experiencing. ‘Heat island effect’ was in full force, and the concrete that I was walking on was radiating a hundred and change degrees of heat straight up, while the warrior sun above beat down mercilessly on my $15 Costco brand bucket style fishing hat. The air quality and dew point level was such that if you were to wave your hand through the air, it would be wet by the end of the effort. Yuck.
Regardless, I couldn’t help but grab a shot or two of these blokes guiding their boats onto trailers. There are many, many spots close to the downtown area here in Pittsburgh where you can put a boat in the water.
The spot in the photo above, for instance, is in a public park. That’s kind of awesome, if you ask me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the other side of the river from where I started, and where that park is, there’s an enormous concrete plant which can observed from above. This plant sits in part of the footprint of a ‘used to be, once, long ago’ steel mill called the Eliza Furnace. I-279 is the highway riding on the cliff behind the plant.
These people seemed pretty busy, and there’s a bridge reconstruction project happening all around their operation.
It was a lot hotter out than I thought it would be, and by this point I was already thinking about where I wasn’t going to be walking to. My original plan was about twelve miles long and involved a wide ranging bit of scuttling about. In the end this was a just under five mile long walk.
More tomorrow.
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Solus ambulo
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After a cool experience with the Wings of Victory historic plane tour about 20 miles away, described in prior posts, I drove from Pittsburgh’s West Mifflin section over to the waterfront section of Homestead to execute one of my constitutional walks.
A section of the Great Allegheny Passage trail coils through here, and there’s a local chunk of it which I hadn’t walked yet. Distant, the section I normally frequent is landmarked by the Homestead Pump House, whereas this one is notable for the extant group of soaking stacks from the former Homestead Steel Mill complex.
To see the historical context of these stacks, click here for a Library of Congress page with ‘back in the day’ info and photo.
They’re just for show these days, an architectural curiosity sticking out of the parking lot at a gigantic shopping center complex called ‘The Waterfront.’ Near the Costco and not quite as far as the Sandcastle water park, close to the movie theater multiplex, that’s where you’ll find these.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was a short walk on what was turning out to be a really warm day, and since there was no tree cover – I was schvitzing heavily. My plan was two miles in and two miles out, and along the way a CSX train came roaring past, so ‘win.’ I had a rail bridge in sight which was my turnaround point and mile marker, although I generally gauge my distance using time.
I’ve started religiously carrying a water bottle on walks, as a note, after my ‘problem’ about a month ago on a different trail.
According to my phone, I walk at 2.3 mph and have a pronounced limp affecting about 20% of stride, associated with my left leg. That’s the one with the smashed toe, broken foot which never healed properly, the sprain prone ankle, the knee that sounds like I’m crushing popcorn in it, and an onset of arthritis through out the entire assembly, so the data is easily interpretable by use of a single phrase.
I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The aforementioned water park, which is dubbed ‘Sandcastle,’ was quite busy and hundreds of kids were waiting their chance to get shot through a plastic tube, or into a wave pool via an angled ramp.
Above is one of my experiments, wherein 17 different shots were combined as some Yinzer teenager shot through one of the ride/tubes. All 17 were combined into a single shot. The action started at top right and finished bottom left, and that’s the same person you see at every stage.
Back next week with more moaning, and groaning, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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Alis victoriae, deux
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, a humble narrator was tipped off by a neighbor that a museum aviation outfit, based in Arizona, would be making a July 4th oriented week long stand at Allegheny County Airport here in Pittsburgh.
They flew out two of their planes – a B-17 and a B-25 Mitchell – with the latter being the focal point of today’s post and the former yesterday’s. Links to information on both planes, the airport, and some general WW2 stuff were embedded in the prior post, so scroll down if you’re curious about such things.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Wings of Victory people had set up ladders, of a common variety, to facilitate the climb up into the planes. Once within, you needed to drop down to all fours to move through its confines for an interval, at which point you were able to stand up but needed to stay stooped over. It was very quarters tight within, but these are warplanes and they weren’t built for comfort or for modern day American bodies.
These are still operational aircraft, as a note, and were flown here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the prone position, this was what I saw while looking towards the nose of the plane. Below was the fore gunner’s station, above, the pilot and co-pilot/radio operator seats. I clumsily reoriented myself towards the neck of the plane, which would carry me through the bomb rack.
That’s right about when I started feeling a bit claustrophobic.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Squeezing through the breech above required sucking in the gut, but the buttons on my shirt were still clicking against the metal. All the kids on the tour jumped through like deer, whereas me and all the other fat assed old men had to turn sideways and hope for the best.
Americans were physically smaller back then, in stature and especially in body weight. Back then, the average height on a draftee was just under 5’ 8,” and their weight would have been about 150 lbs.
Modern day yanks… we don’t have lived knowledge of famine, drought, or financial depressions like they did back then. We’ve been very well fed, as a country, for the last 80 years. In 2024, the average weight of an American male is 197.9 lbs.
On the bomber doors and bomb bay walls, several former service members had left behind autographs with their unit information.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All of the kids were having an absolute blast, and were allowed somewhat free rein to explore. As you’d imagine, those machine guns on the windows were often grasped and ‘choom-choom-choom-gigatah-gigetah-gigateh’ sounds were enunciated more than once.
After leaving the plane, and checked the time on my phone, it was time to leave as I had another destination for the afternoon. I had driven here, so it’d be reached by automobile. It’s still quite novel owning a car, after all those years living in the center of NYC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way out of Allegheny County Airport and to the parking lot, I noticed that the emergency fire unit, which is housed on the airport property, had just deployed their trucks in front of the hangar/garage which they operate out of. Neat.
My next destination was about a 25 minute long drive away, but more on that tomorrow.
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Alis victoriae
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
‘Wings of Victory’ is what today’s Latin title translates to, and it’s the name of a fantastic aviation museum group which flew two WW2 era aircraft to the 1931 vintage Allegheny County Airport, found in Pittsburgh’s West Mifflin section. The airport is built on top of a steel industry slag heap, as much of West Mifflin is. Wings of Victory were offering public facing tours of their equipment, which drew me in.
My neighbor Dwight turned me onto the outfit’s presence here in town, so I checked their website and schedule, and drove over to the airport to buy a ticket for the ‘ground tour.’
The price for that was supposed to be $15, but I think that the lady at the till figured me for a senior citizen because of the gray beard, and only charged me $10. Hey, maybe this ‘crazy old bastard’ thing isn’t just all terrifying doctor’s appointments, after all.
There’s discounts!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Taking a ride in a plane this old just ain’t in the cards for me, as I’m fairly unlucky – and certainly not at $500 a seat – which is what the ‘air tour’ cost. Yikes. The ground tour ticket led me onto the deck at the airport, where the two museum planes awaited. They are both still in working order, I’d remind.
There was a B-17 Flying Fortress (above), and a B-25 Mitchell.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The B-25 is one of several reasons that many people around the world rue the day that someone in their government decided to start a war with the United States. It’s the same model of the planes (developed under the command of General Billy Mitchell) that the American Military had designed the ‘Doolittle Raid’ around, which struck the Japanese home islands with a surprise bombing experience that occurred in April of 1942, and was led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle.
This was just the beginning of a vulgar display of industrial prowess which led first to the Battle of Midway, and then the 1944 emergence of the B-29 Superfortress aircraft (which carried massive fire and explosive bombs, and then the Atom Bombs) just a couple of years later.
The physical embodiments of ‘eff around and find out,’ American style.
Lessons learned by a nervous world, afterwards, included the idea that when a giant is sleeping you don’t antagonize it unduly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Part of the ‘ground tour’ involved being able to actually enter the plane’s interior and do a walk through. Observationally, the crews on these planes were rather skinny fellows of small stature.
I realized that I was way too fat and old to have defended my country in the Second World War very quickly. You climb a few steps on a normal ladder, and then get down on all fours inside for a quick crawl to an internally installed step ladder that takes you into the ‘neck’ of the craft. The pilot and radio operator’s area was off limits, but I managed to crack out a couple of zoomed in shots.
This one was gathered on the B-17, btw.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The B-17 was clearly the crowd’s favorite, and had the longest line to get onboard. There were Grandparent and Grandkid combinations all over the place, and the kids in particular were going nuts over all this excitement – especially with all the machine guns which were arrayed all over the things.
Some of the folks from the Wings of Victory outfit were telling tales and reporting history, and it seems that both planes saw action in the European theater of WW2.
The B-25, in particular, was one of only about thirty survivors of the model which can still fly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I got on the line to check out the B-17’s interior, which was pretty cramped within, truth be told.
Shots of the B-25 will be on display tomorrow.
Back then, with more.
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