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.

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.

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.

Unearthed

We went to Unearthed, a fundraiser for the Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest last night. A handful of artists created work from dead and fallen wood from Allegheny Cemetery. Some of the pieces were great. Some seemed like the artist either couldn't find inspiration in the piece they received or by the deadline. It was a fun night. Maya was circulating sort of on the clock for her job at the Lawrenceville Corporation. Tim's band, the Metropolitans played a set during the show. Silas just hung out in the carrier the whole time. He slept for the first hour or so and woke up and looked around for latter half. We didn't end up with any decent pictures of him. Alas.