GIVE UP Mix Up City Ride 5/15/2024

My coworker suggested this game to me called Animal Well the other day. Being interested in a game again felt weird. I've been enjoying old NES games and a sort of Sudoku thing, but where you make a 20x20 pixel image of a horse or something, late at night to wind down my brain. To butcher a quote from Inherent Vice for my own purposes: games let me step into a room of fun little challenges; Animal Well kicked the door open, threw me inside, and locked the door until I discovered all its little secrets.

Two days passed and I remembered I had a bike ride to lead. Between planning a ride down Tesla St as a backup for the last mix-up, and sharing a conversation about climbing it with a gentleman, whose name escapes me, at the most recent Super Casual ride, I wanted to see what that general area was like. I'd rate this route 5/10 for traffic spice and 7/10 for hill spice

A real sicko, a Harbor Hills if you will, mapped this route to start folks with a false sense of comfort as we roll downhill from Friendship Park towards the Mon via Millvale Ave, Center Ave, Neville St, all the way through the Panther Hollow Trail. Maybe we'll see the goats; we can only hope. From there we'll have a short spicy stretch on Second Ave so we can connect with the Blair St bike path. We'll gather everyone at the light so we can safely move as one. This will take us to Hazelwood where we'll connect with Flowers Ave, which turns into Kilbourne St, to Tesla Way. For those unfamiliar: this is a Dirty Dozen climb. We will wait at the top and probably push our bikes close to the end of this mile-ish-long climb. Things get considerably easier from here.

We'll connect from Tesla to Schenley Park to have a climb through the switchback and reward ourselves with that great downhill past the golf course. We'll loop around the Hill District via Terrace St and Oak Hill Dr before we descend Center Ave into Downtown. We'll then cut through some flat miles in the Strip, into Lawrenceville, then meander through the cemetery before finishing back at Friendship Park.

This one is a little longer than most of our Wednesday rides, so bring lights, ample water, and snacks.

Questions / Comments Text me: 207.852.4905

• David T
  Organizer
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