Morning Ride

Afternoon Ride

First time skiing in 30 years

New bike

it's usually not as bad as i anticipate

I like the feeling of leaving work and taking off on my bike in the wrong direction from home. I'm trying to finish off SW Baltimore, not one of my favorite parts of town, and lately I'm feeling mixed between interest in making progress and the mild depressant effect of riding through neighborhoods I don't enjoy being in, for the most part. I've been working on characterizing what I don't like about this area and can't exactly. A big piece of it may just be the heat and humidity of the summer sun, i.e., it's less fun because the weather sucks. The people aren't particularly different. I did have a firecracker explode near me, presumably thrown, though I didn't see where it came from and there was no one around. It's clear differences such as tree coverage and home upkeep, but also one piece is the presence of children. One of the photos captures a pretty depressing community center—closed, somehow, on the 5th of July—a place I'd deserted earlier when I started in on it and saw some young boys playing in the field. Strewn with glass, and with a lone beer bottle, which it occurred to me is an innocuous sign in other places I've visited and lived (Berlin), but here is a sign of disorder and chaos. But a short way north of it was a school lively with uniformed kids playing on a nicely-maintained baseball field, and near that, kids playing in the street—not to far from where the firecracker went off. But most of all, I think it some minimal collection of factors—tree coverage, friendly people out in the streets, some break in the wide streets that allow cars to move fast through—that makes for a more pleasant place to ride.

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Matt Post

Wrong way commute

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Morning Ride

Afternoon Ride

First time skiing in 30 years

New bike

it's usually not as bad as i anticipate

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