Druid Hill Park dirt trails

     I’m sad to see that no one has mapped, mentioned or marked the little dirt trails branching off the Jones Falls Bike Trail in Druid Hill Park.  Thus far in my year in Baltimore I’ve avoided the whole park out of fear of the local residents and because I’ve found so many miles of quiet trails to explore at Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park and Patapsco Valley State Park.  But since I often wake up too late to drive very far and I try to avoid just running from my front door down the sidewalks, I’ve been pushed to explore the rather close Druid Hill Park.

     Again, about a year after my arrival and first glimpse of “the scary park” I’ve discovered a different sort of park than I envisioned.  First, the people.  There are plenty of Baltimore crazies out there.  But honestly, the ones who take the time to go out to the park tend to be the low-key, nicer type.  They learn to recognize you, say hi to you and treat you pretty well.   However, most of the people there are there for the same reason you probably are: to run, bike, or just walk around.   They also tend to recognize you, say hi to you and treat you pretty well.  It’s not such a scary park.  True, I might not run through the more forested part at night, especially if I were a young, female.  That doesn’t really apply to the daytime.

     Secondly, it turns out that the park is pretty big.  You can still see the big, green dot the park occupies even if you’re zoomed out of the Baltimore beltway pretty far.  Consider: it houses a reservoir, a zoo and a Frisbee golf course, a botanical garden, plus quite a bit of other usable green space.

     I guess the point is both that I’m sad for not having spent more time there but excited that I’ve gotten around to exploring it now.  I started with the reservoir loop and discovered some public exercise equipment.  I know most people are in the techno-gyms lifting 50-lb circuit boards and achieving better results than Rocky Balboa in his home gym (cue the juxtaposition of Rocky vs the Russian in Rocky IV . . .), but when you’re poor it’s not so bad to use a purple, 30-lb shoulder press bar in the middle of a park.

     Beyond the loop, the Jones Falls Bike Trail runs through the park.  If Google.Maps is to be trusted, it runs about 1.7 miles from the reservoir back to the edge of the park.  The fun part about it is that it manages to get away from people for at least one relaxing chunk of the trail.  Sadly, while it takes you past the zoo, it doesn’t allow you a view of any of the exhibits—by design, I realize, but I can still lament.

     But the entire reason I wanted to fling this line of text out into cyber space is in the hopes of catching anyone who is trying to find a bit of dirt within the city.  Yes, I know there are other options and I also realize that anyone looking to train for a trail race will need something more substantial like GunPowder, Patapsco or the not really a trail NCR.  But there are actually some dirt tracks that run you around Druid Hill Park.

     Thus far, I’ve only just discovered them and have little more than an intention to chase them down.  But up where the Bike Path meets the north end of the park, there are two dirt trails that branch off the road on either side and take you a fair distance away from the bike path.  Along the way they branch off into other little trails.  Time didn’t permit me to do more than about a mile total but that’s a start, there was plenty of trail ahead of me yet to run, and it's considerably better than running along North Avenue.  There is another up by the zoo hospital, but I'm not yet sure if this is part of the Frisbee golf trail chain.

     As soon as I got home I started snooping around the internet (I actually ate) and found nothing about how many little trails there are, where they start out or meet or anything.  Which led me to writing this: little more than an infatuated ode to a park that I just got a crush on.  I’m glad there turns out to be a very substantial amount of green space in what isn't as dingy of a city as I first took it to be.

Oh Baltimore – Part 1: the Driving Anals. I mean Annals

     I’ve been putting off writing this post for some time.  In my mind I was waiting until I had enough material.  That would have been about a week or two after moving here.  I think it was more to make sure I wasn’t angry or cynical as I wrote.  Here I am anyway.

     Today’s favorite was the guy who pulled up behind me with about 3 feet between his bumper and mine and honked at me for only speeding by 3 miles per hour.  The numerical coincidence took me away to my blissful paradise in another state while the guy promptly turned off the road anyways.

     Speeding is a major issue here in Baltimore.  That is, if you’re not doing it then you risk getting your license revoked, or your trunk smashed.  We always know we’re getting close to home when the relative speed moves from only a couple mph over the limit to between 10-12.  Better yet is the expressway in the middle of town; I get passed like I’m stopped when I’m only doing 10 over—in any lane.  They put up signs along the side of the expressway that read “3 seconds distance” and “Obey speed limit”, like we were in kindergarten but with a license to kill drive.  They don’t even bother putting cops on patrol there.  None of them are brave enough to pull anyone over.

     Driving isn’t the only thing we complain about or are terrorized by here.  It does, however, occupy a vast majority of our time and topics of conversation.  I have forgotten that there is a debt crisis in the world largely because we no longer have time to talk about it.  It’s far more fascinating to gripe about the fact that we just got flipped off for thinking of going through a green light when a pedestrian wants to cross.  When they’re really mad they don’t flip you off, they put up the stop hand and slide the head from side to side: “Uh-uh!  No you di’ in’t!”  This is most effective in the middle of the crosswalk on your green light.

     We actually wondered how pedestrians can get away with this so “safely.”   Let me elaborate.  It’s 10pm and you’re out driving somewhere in Baltimore (that was dumb).  The street lights are broken.  Suddenly, you see a dark shape in front of you.  It’s some dude dressed in total black crossing a 45 mph road.  There was a traffic light about a 2-minute walk down the road, but this was safer . . . somehow.  It’s funner when it’s raining outside in Baltimore.  I’ve come to realize that the little people stickers on the back of the SUV’s aren’t family members but confirmed hits, which explains why there appear to be so many atypical 10-car families in Baltimore.  As I was saying, we wondered how people survive here.  Some good friends doing rotations in the local ERs have laid our naïveté to rest.  The hospitals stay in good business here in Baltimore, thanks to the pedestrians.  Sadly.

     It doesn’t work in reverse.  Traffic rules are twisted here and if you try to jaywalk without enough attitude, you will hear about it.  I made the mistake of trying to cross at an intersection with the little walk light.  There are signs posted in “Don’t hit me” yellow that say to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks.  However, those first few seconds (meaning: until the light turns red again) are for right/left turners to get through the intersection—pedestrians wait.  I’ll admit that this clears out the cars more easily.  I’ll also admit that I carried a spare set of shorts with me for the first couple months until I learned to stop following the pedestrian rules and just jaywalk like every other decent Baltimore citizen.

Oh Baltimore

     Perhaps my favorite part of Baltimore is the guy who drives around on his motorcycle with a spiked helmet.  We’re talking spiked—like a few dozen of these things.  Fluorescent engine lights.  Funk.  He’s got his radio pumping funk into the night everywhere he goes.  This is actually a good thing.  It’s not death metal.  It’s not kill-your-ex-buddy anger rap.  It’s funk.  And he’s bouncing up and down, dancing on his motorcycle both at the stoplights and as he’s driving.  It actually makes me happy to run into (not literally) this guy.

     Another classic was the lady heading into the public library in front of me.  It’s actually quite an attractive library.  I highly recommend checking it out if you’re in town.  I’d have opened the door for her, but I couldn’t get around her one-wheeled suitcase to help her.  Yep.  She was half-dragging a one-wheeled suitcase down any number of blocks, into the library and down the halls.  I’m pretty sure people upstairs heard her.  We’re not talking about your little trendy, wheeled-backpacks that you can just as easily carry but are too lazy to.  We’re talking about paying United Airlines $25 to check this thing all the way to Denver because there’s no way you're getting it through the cabin door.  She was dressed nicer that I am, which I realize isn’t ever saying much, but still nicely enough to afford a suit case.  Or at least a wheel.

Oh Baltimore

Mitt for President or Mormonism?

It’s funny how the strapping a candidate and his religion to the presidency wasn’t so much of an issue in the past.  As long as it was a protestant no one really cared if he was Lutheran, Methodist or any other.  Catholicism got a bigger reaction, I’m told—I wasn’t there!  Possible ties to Islam even took a back seat to the fact that Obama is black.  However, a Mormon for President is a whole other issue.

There has actually been a lot of good press regarding Mormonism lately.  Some people are defending the Christianity of it (in fact, terming it overly Christian—a hyper-Christian church perhaps?), others are defending the fact that Mormons tend to be people of atypically good morals.  Think what you will, Mormons people are human beings that come in a variety of good and bad.  What makes me laugh, though, are people who honestly believe the myths that Mormons have horns.  While most people take it for granted that this is now a cultural joke, there are still those…

The issue of Mormonism came to mind this morning because I have to buy stamps.  Now you get to see how my mind [doesn’t] works.  Strap in.  You see, Mormon missionaries will give you a Book of Mormon for free then call you a few times to see if you’ve read it.  On the other hand the USPS sells stamps for $0.45 each now, or $9 for a full, canonized book.  AND you have to mark every one of your written communiqués with that stamp.  By way of comparison Mormons tend to only quote scripture in their speech, not writing.  Sort of like licking your envelope.

“Club dues” have remained a steady 10% throughout the years of Mormonism.  I can’t say that about my 2011 taxes.  We were somewhere around a fifth, which is twice as much as ten percent, as opposed to a twentieth which sounds bigger because the twenty is twice as big as the ten but is in reality only five percent (meaning per hundred).  Did you follow that?  The irony lies in the fact that the Mormon church can track you down in any continent to make sure you’re doing alright and to offer you help, all with their 10%, done by volunteers.  The Federal government, on the other hand, pays their employees but can’t even keep track of who’s inside its borders.  Maybe the Feds should hire the Mormons out to convert all the illegal immigrants and keep them on church records.  I bet they’d get SSNs a whole lot faster.

However, I don't think religion should influence my vote.  Or politics.  Therefore, I'm still voting for myself.

I also bet I’m going to get an earful about what I wrote today.  And I bet I’m going over budget by about $9 this month.