Wordless Wednesday

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On Sunday, I headed over to my friends’ house bright and early to do the T25 abs DVD.  It was…hard.  That’s about all I have to say about that!  Oh, and that yes I know it will get easier if I stick with it.  After we were done, they loaded up their bikes and we all headed downtown.

I don’t currently own a bike that has gears (or hand breaks), so in order to make the experience enjoyable for myself I decided to rent a bike.  Pittsburgh isn’t the most bike friendly city, but we sure are getting there.  Did you know that you can rent bikes downtown, right along the Great Allegheny Passage?

They have hourly and day rates, which I found very affordable.  The hybrid that I rented was $8/hr or $24/day.  Since I am just an occasional biker, this option seemed reasonable to me.  We followed the GAP Trail all the way to Hot Metal Bridge and into South Side.

fluorescent cyclist alert!

We decided to make a pit stop for lunch and I insisted that we eat at Pita Pit so that I could have their falafel.

I am obsessed with the falafel on whole wheat pita.  I load mine up with spinach, onions, green peppers, cucumbers, feta, tzatziki, and hummus.  I saved half of it for dinner!

While we were stopped for lunch, it started to torrentially downpour.  Then, about 5 minutes after we were done eating, it just completely stopped.  We wiped off our bike seats and kept it moving!  We looped back towards downtown on the South Side (side?) of the river through Station Square and headed toward Smithfield Street Bridge.

It was a fantastic little loop of the city and with lunch it only took us 1.5 hours. That meant a $14 bike rental tab for me, which I view as totally worth it.  I would’ve wanted to keep going but my friends had to scoot to a Pirates game at 1:30.

Plus I took my first bike selfie!

awko taco

5 Thing Friday

All week I’ve been reading about cool things and this is where I dump them:

1.  Beers Of The Burgh Festival – This weekend is the inaugural Beers of the Burgh Festival, which will be held in Lawrenceville and showcases over 30 local craft brewers.  General admission is sold out, but you can still purchase VIP tickets!

 

2.  40 Towns Create Land Bank – I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR A LONG TIME.  Finally.  Finally some action on blighted properties in my community.  If you aren’t aware of what happens when a region is dependent on a single industry (ahem, steel) and then all the industry packs up and leaves:  blight.  Empty, rotting houses and overgrown brush in abandoned lots, riddled with garbage.  An analysis done by local municipalities found that:

“20,077 vacant lots and 7,158 parcels with blighted structures that cost local governments more than $10.7 million a year in direct municipal services, such as police, fire and code enforcement. They also account for nearly $8.7 million in lost annual tax revenue. But the biggest drain was on neighboring non-blighted properties, which the report found suffered a total loss of between $218 million and $247 million in property values.”

Some Pittsburgh neighborhoods were hit harder than others, but the creation of this land bank is huge!  To me, it may mean that we are finally able to combat blight and attract a more stable tax base to effected areas.  Some people oppose these types of strategies because it gives government control over private property.  I, on the other hand, stare at abandoned buildings all day long.  In my opinion, if you aren’t able or willing to fix up your janky property then you shouldn’t have it to begin with.  The boroughs’ hands are tied because the properties ultimately belong to someone – and many times those people can’t be found or don’t want to be found.  The borough has to deal with the problems associated with the property but can’t actually do anything about it.  A land bank would allow municipalities to generate tax income, sell properties, attract new property developers, and to improve the overall aesthetic of a neighborhood.    That is HUGE for boroughs like Homestead and Braddock.

 

3.  16 Ways To Kick Plastic – This is a quick read but it’s got some great ideas on how to use less plastic.  My 2 favorite ones are: 1) Just say no to disposable straws, carry a few BPA-free reusable ones with you 2) Bring your own doggy-bag container when you go to a restaurant.

 

4.  Cyclocable Bike Lifts In Pittsburgh?! – This is basically exactly what I need to become an avid adequate let’s just go with cyclist.  If it’s good enough for Norway, it’s good enough for me.  DON’T JUDGE ME PEOPLE.  THOSE HILLS ARE NO JOKE.  Somehow I doubt that even Bill Peduto could make this one happen.

 

5.  Check out this list of 42 Flowers You Can Eat…I can’t see myself throwing chrysanthimums on my salad but hey the list also includes herbs and spices.  If I’m every stranded in the wilderness somewhere (LIKE FRICK PARK because my God I get all turned around on those trails), I will be able to survive.  Or maybe someday I will be go all rogue with my cooking and makes virgin tear soup with hibiscus garnish.  Ew.

 

Currie Tech E-Bike Event

I am neither involved with nor attending this event, but I did received some info about it and it looks cool.

If you’re over by Bridgeville or into biking, this might be something to put on the calender:

Worse case scenario:  you crash said $2,000 test bike and have to eat your feelings with some delicious food truck tacos!

Happy trails, y’all. 🙂

Great Outdoors Week: South Park

This week, we made sure to take part in Great Outdoors Week by visiting the BMX track at South Park in Pittsburgh.

We had two strikes against us because O’Reilly isn’t that great at biking and Jack has a bad bike chain.

I’m pretty sure we had fun though…

Fearless and fun!  I had a harder time getting good pics of Jack because he is much faster and loved the rapid hills on the far side of the track.

It was so much fun!  The track is very well kept, garbage free and there are picnic tables/bleachers for spectators.  I’d love to catch an event there one day to see what the pro/ams can do!

Warning:  The routes in and out of South Park are all messed up.  And confusing.  We knew where we were going and we got a little bit lost

Not that we would let that stop us.

♥ We just keep doing what we do ♥