Posts Tagged ‘Becks Run Road’
Deathsylvania
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Catchup from yesterday: your humble narrator had accidentally gotten ‘turned around’ on a local road, called Becks Run, after having made a wrong turn at the start of a scuttle. This set me on a less than salubrious pathway.
I’ve mentioned, many times, that one of the things you have to watch out for when taking walks around the Pittsburgh metro area is finding yourself trapped into a ‘cul-de-sac’ style situation, while ‘on-foot.’ You find yourself with limited options, as far as where you can go and even when you do, or the path that you’re walking on just kind of terminates at a highway, or a cliff.
The highway scenario was the case, on this particular day.
I ‘effed up, alright.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lovely little ‘zone’ back here, have to say. The wooded hills behind the neighborhood are at the edge of a natural area called Hay’s Woods. Bald Eagles nest in those woods, which is kind of cool. Lotsa critters.
Becks Run Road has been receiving an awful lot of attention from the State’s water control people, who are quite concerned with flooding, and the broader region that Becks Run Road is a part of has been displaying opened up streets and busy construction crews for the entire interval that I’ve been living out here in Pittsburgh.
History of coal mining hereabouts, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the end of Becks Run Road, there’s a fantastic ice cream joint called Page’s, and an enormous rail trestle which carries trackage for the Norfolk Southern RR outfit. Becks Run disappears into the ground there.
A ‘local’ street is present, which interesects to the ‘South Side’ section of Pittsburgh to the west, or becomes a de facto highway heading eastwards towards Homestead and Duquesne, along the shoreline of the Monongahela River. That local east/west street is called ‘East Carson.’
About a mile to the west, it’s a normal street with lights and crosswalks and sidewalks, but here…
This is where I found myself in a pickle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I walked up on top of a hill, along this de facto highway, to see if I could spy some way to get from ‘a’ to ‘b’ without having to walk the better part of a mile along the shoulder of East Carson Street.
No bueno.
This view looks eastwards, as a note. The ground level set of RR tracks on the left of the shot belong to CSX.
‘Feck.’ I’d just have to ‘do it,’ and walk alongside a high speed road.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As an omen, as soon as I began my tremulous passage, the realities of this plan asserted themselves.
There was an abattoir’s worth of dead animals lying on the shoulder side of that curb. It was so dangerous a walk that I didn’t shoot any photos during this section of things, as I couldn’t take my eyes off the traffic lane in case I needed to leap for safety. Of course, the curb disappears after a few hundred feet and then you’re just walking on the 18-24 inches of space between the painted white line and the grass.
‘Sheiste, en mi pantalunes,’ lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cannot begin to tell you how happy I was when I saw that guard rail above appear, and then when I stepped over it. Whew.
I was still walking alongside a highway, but now there was 10-20 feet of space and a steel rail between me and oncoming traffic. That’s opposed to about 18 inches of space, with buses shooting by me at 50 mph.
Wow. How stupid was that? I really am a moron, just like everyone says I am.
Back tomorrow.
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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
What you do and what you say
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The title of today’s post is from another one of the idiotic aphorisms which swirl about, within the brain box of your humble narrator.
‘Do what you say’ is fairly obvious, but ‘say what you do’ needs a bit of explaining. I think it’s important to – out loud and to the crowd – say when you’ve ‘effed something up, rather than performing some aggrieved martyr act intoning that you are an innocent whom ‘something bad just happened to,’ as a defense mechanism.
There’s a reason I’m starting this post with all of this admonition, Y’see…
I really ‘effed up on this one, and could have gotten seriously hurt.
We’ll explore my stupidity, committed here at the edge of Pittsburgh’s Mount Oliver section, over the next couple of posts. My ‘mea culpas’ need an audience, after all.
Meanwhile… welcome to Mount Oliver.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Despite the usual preparations – for some dumb reason, when I was dropped off by a cab at the start of this walk, I scuttled off in the completely wrong direction.
I had even been gazing at a map that morning, before I left HQ, and considered the path I accidentally ended up on and said ‘no way.’ My rejection was based around a long stretch of high speed road with zero sidewalks which I’d have to navigate.
Of course, that’s exactly the direction which I stupidly headed towards, without realizing it until it was far too late to change my course.
Oh, unhappy act.
This street I was walking along in Mount Oliver is called Mountain Avenue, if you’re curious as to where all this played out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Steep as the name would imply, when walking on some of Mountain Avenue’s rare sidewalks, nearby an intersection, there was some sort of city step action going on. There mostly weren’t any sidewalks, forcing me to just walk on the side of the road, which is actually kind of normal for Western PA. – to be honest.
As a note – Mountain Avenue is a local, and fairly low volume, street. My problems were still ahead of me.
Crap.
It was right about at this point that I had realized my mistake, and the direction that I was heading for. If you were in Pittsburgh and overheard blue language and angry ‘cussin’ in the vicinity of Mountain Avenue and Becks Run Road, on the afternoon of the 13th of April… yeah, that was me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Becks Run is an urban waterway.
As established in the past, Pennsylvania uses the term ‘run’ for flowing but not terribly deep waterways which other municipalities would call a ‘creek’ or a ‘stream.’ It’s fuzzy, the naming convention.
Haven’t been able to discover what differentiates a waterway being called a ‘run’ as opposed to a ‘creek’ or a ‘stream.’ River, yeah, that’s volume and depth based, but ‘run’?
Like nearly all urban waterways in Pittsburgh, Becks Run flows in an engineered manner around a series of residential and business properties, which are found along a roadway named for it. A lot of traffic from the South Hills area gets focused along this particular roadway, as it’s sort of the gateway to get out towards Homestead, where a retail Mecca called ‘The Waterfront’ is extant, and where one of the local Costcos is found.
Big draw, lotsa traffic, the Waterfront.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After turning onto Becks Run Road, a roadside memorial was encountered. Have no idea what sort of tragedy occurred here, but it was likely caused by a pickup truck driver, and it was obviously deadly.
Seriously, the pickup truck guys seem to think that they’re driving in indestructible Batmobiles or something. Drifting along the road at speed, playing games with other vehicles, tail gating…
Somebody tells me ‘a car got hit by a train nearby,’ my first response is going to be ‘did the pickup’s driver survive’?
Anyway, this post is all about my own stupid decisions, not somebody else’s. Bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Noticed this dead thing on my way. To me, it looked like an Eagle while ‘in the field,’ but one of my buddies insists that this is likely a dead Hawk of some kind. Any opinions? Here’s a full body shot, and one of its particularly wicked looking foot. Whenever I try to say what kind of a bird that a bird is, I get it wrong.
Leave opinions in the comments, if you’ve got one.
Back tomorrow with more… and… the horror…
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 