Small risk taken, wonderful reward - beautiful hour on the water

Last week, I started rallying the folks at work to bring in their boats and do a quick trip on the Allegheny River near the office one night this week. That day turned out to be today. It was a great site to see a three kayaks and a canoe (mine) on vehicles in the company parking lot. One other set of friends with their canoe I don't work with intended to come as well. However, life decided to not cooperate with everyone's schedule. One guy was unable to go for personal reasons, another couldn't because he's a slave to the Company and worked late. The couple decided to call it off because the weather was pretty terrible all afternoon, and it was still raining steadily at 5pm when I talked to them.


Nonetheless, my coworker, Bruce, and I figured we had the boats on our cars already and that it wouldn't hurt to check out the water and maybe get out for a little bit. If it got bad, we'd not be far from the cars.


We put in the Allegheny at a nice launch in Lawrenceville, under the 40th Street bridge. It was raining, but not very hard. This was the small risk I spoke of in the title to this post. Within the first 15 minutes, though, it stopped raining and got progressively sunnier.


What started out as a marginal day for paddling became a beautiful experience out on the water. This was our wonderful reward for avoiding the gumption trap and getting on the river. The river's surface was smooth and calm. The lighting was great. There was a slight breeze. Pretty much perfect weather for paddling.


We came across a great blue heron in a tree near a factory.


I ended up disturbing it, and it flew upstream, allowing for more photographs in different locations.


We turned around near the 62nd St bridge.


Looking at downtown Pittsburgh in the distance. It's only four river miles to the buildings from where this picture was taken. This is one of my very favorite things about Pittsburgh.

Downtown kayak rentals (and canoes)

Venture Outdoors rents kayaks and canoes on the Allegheny River at the base of PNC Park. It's a wonderful way to see the city from an uncommon perspective. The rivers were the key to Pittsburgh's growth and persist as probably the coolest thing about the city (sorry, Steelers fans).

Pittsburgh robot

We visited the robot down by the Allegheny River. He's got parts made of bridges and is Pittsburgh yellow. Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure what the inspiration is. We do have a robotics lab and Carnegie Mellon University. Perhaps that's it.

I love in the picture above that there is a bird perched on the robot's bridge head.

I have heard that the yellow used to paint the bridges over the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh is a specific yellow and that perhaps it's been trademarked. I can't find anything about it on wikipedia nor from a quick internet search. So, I'm just spreading unsubstantiated rumors here...

More from yesterday's art stroll with Silas

After we strolled around the North Side riverfront for a while and then over to the Warhol Museum to find it was closed, we wandered over the Warhol Bridge into downtown. There is a courtyard in the Cultural District with a water feature and these crazy eye benches. There are also chessboards. The guy in the hat was playing air drums for a long time and then asked the monk if he wanted to play chess. I don't think they played much chess. From the bits of conversation I overheard, it was a pretty metaphysically heavy discussion...


The walk back to the car provided a nice parting view of the city on a fine evening.

North Side mosaic sculpture

Silas and I admired some art during our travels along the river. These mosaics are from a sculpture near PNC Park (where the Pittsburgh Pirates play) between the Clemente and Warhol bridges on the North Side.

Evening run with the boys

Silas, Guthrie, and I went for a casual 5 mile run on the north side trail along the Allegheny River. Guthrie did some wading. The mother duck was very upset I let Guthrie into the river where she was paddling around with her two young ducklings. She quacked up a storm and put herself between him and the young ones. It was sweet, but I felt bad for causing her alarm. She didn't know Guthrie won't go any deeper than a half assed wade... We ran down past the stadiums (stadia?) and to the Science Center before turning around.


We had parked near the bridge to Washington's Landing (aka Herr's Island), so we jogged over to a nice vista point to look at the city. The sky was really nice and the city well lit.

Bridges, the Run, and the Hollow

There have been some nice evenings to ride after work this week. I finally remembered there is a sidewalk on the Fort Pitt Bridge (shown above). It makes for a nicer, albeit longer ride over the Monongahela River to the South Side than fighting rush hour traffic from the Point to and over the Smithfield Bridge. The next picture is crossing the Allegheny on the Fort Duquesne Bridge. The Fort Pitt Bridge can be seen in the distance.


Riding home from the terminus of the Eliza Furnace Trail takes one through 4-mile Run. Big Jim's resides in the Run. In true Pittsburgh fashion, the serving sizes are enormous and are dirt cheap.


Continuing toward Oakland, in Panther Hollow, is this building. I think it's a CHP plant for the university, but don't quote me.

Sunny spring, back to riding to the Point

Despite knowing that it would delay getting dinner cooked and served, I rode down to the Point to see how it's been. I haven't gotten much of a chance to get down there between the medical hiatus from the bike and the less than ideal cycling weather during the winter. People were enjoying the early evening outside everywhere I rode. It was nice to see so many so happy to be outdoors. There is/was a physics conference of some sort going on at the convention center. Maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see, but there were lovely physics geeks all over Point State Park. It was nice. Sorry, no pictures to document the experience. Just some of the city.

More trail repair. The work shown below is on the north shore of the Allegheny River in front of PNC Park. As I've mentioned before, I love the trails along the rivers in Pittsburgh. They've done a good job on them.

Family hike and run

I wanted to go for a run today, but also wanted to spend time with everyone. So, we all went over to Millvale across the Allegheny River to enjoy the nice snowy day. Well, at least those of use that like to go that far. Max (our cat) stayed at home. Guthrie and I took off and ran while Bethany and Silas strolled around and enjoyed the scenery at a slower pace.

The picture above is looking upstream at the 40th Street Bridge. Below is looking south across at Lawrenceville.


Guthrie was so happy to get out. The city looked pretty in the misty distance.


Yes, wet and muddy.

Guthrie got wet and cold, but much of the mud came off. Not a bad trade off, as we were heading to the car.

And, we eventually caught back up with Bethany and Silas on their way back from Mr. Small's Skate Park.