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.

Guest post - sign grammar

My friend Zen sent me this picture of a sign he walks by on his way to work in New York City.

This is one of my favorites on the way to work. This sign is on a building where most of the block is abandoned.

Thanks, Zen!

Warhol Museum

Silas and I met up with some friends from work to spend a little time at the Andy Warhol Museum on Friday. Bethany was at a yoga teacher event at the studio she at, so it was another nice boys night out.

We all thought the Silver Clouds installation would be really fun to watch Silas take in. However, I think he thinks much in this world is pretty crazy and mylar balloons aren't that much more clever than all the other great things he sees every day. He was pretty neutral about it all. Evidently, he's not developed such rigid expectations for the world that it was all that remarkable. He didn't not enjoy it, but it didn't elicit much of an emotional response.


He was particularly fond of Debbie Harry.

And staring at a film of a three-foot eyeball proved pretty interesting for him.


He was also very curious about Mick Jagger flailing around wearing eye makeup in a some Rollings Stones concert footage from the mid-1970's. Although, it's possible he was fascinated by the cathode ray tube used to play the film. He'd probably not seen a CRT before.

Running in the rain

Bethany met up with Becky to do yoga on the South Side. Silas and I went for a pleasant 5 mile run on the trails and streets. The city is always pretty at night. And we also stopped so Silas could watch choreographed fountain at Station Square.


Then we all went to the Library for dinner. Here was Silas sharing an inside joke with Becky. Maybe he was just hitting on her. He is pretty suave at times...

Mural and a Sunday ride

We had a nice brunch with friends on Sunday. Riding back toward Bloomfield with Maya and Ryder, I saw this interesting mural on an interesting building. It a much nicer experience than that corner would have been without the scenes painted on the plywood.

Art All Night

Art All Night was this past weekend. I'm finally getting around to posting a few pictures. The event is an annual art show where anybody can bring and show a single piece. It's held in the Lawrenceville neighborhood and is generally in a space that has been recently renovated and is hoping for some exposure.

It was pretty warm outside to start out with, but it was insane hot inside the warehouse.


Silas stopped to rehydrate.


This is Ryder's piece. It's a good work, but had a very unfortunate location. There was no light on it at all and a big beaming light just over and beyond it, so the contrast made it impossible to see any detail, let alone tell what the scene was. It was definitely in the top-tier of art by quality in the show. It's pretty sad he got such a bum draw on location.

Sunny morning commute with Dave

Dave from work and I ride the same route to work (for the most part). We were both late coming in this morning. This is a shot over my shoulder of Dave as we rode down the hill in the bike lane on Liberty Blvd. Note the conscientious driver giving us a nice wide berth. I appreciate the sentiment.

Max-the-cat memorial ride

Our cat, Max, passed away a couple of weeks ago. He had a gritty life, fitting for coming from Pittsburgh. He spent much of his life either feral or being handed down from person to person before we were given him. He was uncoordinated and had a gravelly meow, but he was kind and generally a nice little friend. He went through several severe bouts of sickness last year that he pulled out of, but the vets couldn't figure out what was wrong. This last episode was an order of magnitude worse, and it was pretty clear that it was the end. We're sad to see the little bugger go. We gave him a solid and comfortable home the last two or so years since he came to us.

We had his body creamated. The day I went to get his ashes was a gorgeous crisp spring Saturday, so I rode my bike. It was only 16 miles round trip, but there were some substantial hills to climb to get out to the crematorium (different than a creamery!). That meant that the ride back home had some very fast, winding downhills. It was a nice ride and therapeutic to have him with me in my backpack. It felt really good to use my own muscles to get him, instead of driving a car. He never drove a car. He just strolled everywhere he went.

Flying down one of the downhills somewhere around 40 miles an hour, I could swear I heard a gritty "whee!" I think he enjoyed the ride.

Youghiogheny River day trip

On 22 March, Kevin and I did a nice section of the Youghiogheny River from Dawson to Whitset. It was a really nice spring day, despite how cold it looks in the GoogleEarth image of the route below.

Spring hike

After Tim and I got turned back by the ice on the lake, the ladies (and Silas) were kind enough to wait up for us and go on a nice, short hike with the dogs.

Canoeing and 'hard' water

The dark line up ahead is the transition from open water to ice

So, it's good to remember that just because the air temperature is around 70, doesn't mean the lakes aren't still partly frozen over. My canoeing plans for the weekend changed about ten times. In the end, Tim and I took the tandem out on the lake at North Park. However, we didn't even notice the ice until we were already on the water. The satelite images I was looking at in Google Earth weren't taken yesterday, of course, so I had forgotten to even consider that there'd be ice. Oh well.

It was still fun. We paddled around the open water for a while and then shot into the ice floe as far as we could before it was thick enough to resist breaking, and the bow pushed up onto the sheet. In any case, this time of year, any warm day on the water, no matter how short, is worth the effort.

Tim checking the water hardness

Looking back after we broke our way into the ice sheet some

Backing out of the path we'd plowed

Future paddler

Silas, sporting his t-shirt from Rutabaga. Thanks again to the Bagans who sent us this shirt! I think that my friend Jason in Wisconsin did the artwork.

We can't wait to get back on the water. I get to go on the nicer days on safer water, but the water temperature is way too cold to risk bringing Silas out yet.

Last of the canoe pics: Anuses of Pittsburgh

Some last photos from the river.

Spelunking by canoe

Kevin noticed a neat culvert or outlet into the river when we were out the other day. I couldn't pass up exploring it, despite the vague odor of sewage. It was a dry day and had been, so I was pretty sure we wouldn't be caught by any sudden deluges and flushed back out into the river.

It was a really neat experience. The acoustics were awesome. This was on the north side of the river, so the sun shone in for a little distance and reflected in further. There was a slight trickling sound of water far in. I got in far enough to see it, as shown below. Where the cross section changed from round to rectangular, it got too shallow to continue. The hips of my canoe were pretty close to touching both sides at that point, so it was pretty definitive. It was too narrow to turn the boats, so we had to backpedal to get out.

The photos are in chronological order, so go from the river inward.




Pretty much dark by this point. A little dim light. The pictures were only possible because of the flash. There was a weird sensation that just up ahead where it was dark, there was a huge pit and waterfall into somewhere much more subterranean. Of course, one would be able to hear such a thing, but that didn't stop the overactive imagination. It was kind of exciting.