Week 13 in Review (May 30 – June 5)

This was a pretty solid week for biking. Excluding the beginning of the week, the weather was good and I had some time to actually go on some decent rides. On Thursday I biked a simple loop around Fairmount Park and felt really out of shape. I couldn’t tell if it was the wind or if I was more that I had not biked much and still worn down from the wedding weekend. Either way I was mad strugs. I did make it out and back from my apartment in less than an hour. 

The next day, I wanted to go to a park to do some laps. I had been thinking about switching it up from FDR Park, mostly because I bike there so often. I remembered that Hunting Park has a loop road around it so I decided to attempt a ride up to North Philly and check it out. Hunting Park is much more difficult to get to than FDR Park. South Philadelphia streets feel like they are made for biking; they are narrow, traffic moves very slowly and most importantly (especially for guys) they are fairly evenly paved. While North Philadelphia does not have as many cars parked on the street (I took 13^th Street up to the park) the streets are in pretty poor condition, especially around Temple. Also it probably does not help that there are a lot of hills, whether natural or man-made bridges/dips that go over/under much of the decrepit industrial infrastructure.  I learned from another bike ride I took to/through North Philly a cyclist has to be more on alert, as motorists are seemingly less aware of bicycles.  This held true for this ride so if you decide to bike around here, be alert.

Hunting Park turned out to be a pretty cool park. As I stated in a previous blog entry the park has a lot of history. However when I rode past previously I did not realize how much was happening inside the park.  There are community gardens, a soccer field, a recreation center, a pool, and several playgrounds. Also, that Saturday was the inaugural day for the Hunting Park Farmers Market, at the corner of Old York and Hunting Park. The loop road is smaller and fairly broken up by stop signs for Hunting Park Ave that cuts through the park. Also, it is filled with some interesting entrepreneurs. There were people with lemonade stands. There was one man selling some sort of homemade trinket. However my favorite was the man that had a horse and a pony all set up for rides around the eastern field, that takes dedication. 

On Sunday I biked up to Lemon Hill to watch the last few laps of the Philadelphia International Cycling Championship with Meghan and Judd. I fortunately biked up the back way to Lemon Hill (up Pennsylvania Ave and then over the informal CSX crossing to Sedgely Dr.) and when I got there got a chance to watch the cyclist whiz past heading down the hill. It is amazing how fast the move and how close together they are.  So surprising that no one just slips and ruins the entire race. 

After finding Meghan and Judd on the other side of the hill (where I saw the cyclist come up Lemon Hill instead of down I biked home and ended up on the side of the parkway, where the entire group was in a giant pack and zipped past me at what had to be 35 mph. Impressive.

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
4	45.8	205	13.40	2,455

I covered over an extra square mile this week, which is impressive for not going on any exploratory rides. With this extra boost my total area is 25.99 sq. mi. covering 18.13% of the city. There were major changes in neighborhoods I’ve biked through.  By biking up 13^th Street to Hunting Park I added major gains in the amount Yorktown/Temple/Hunting Park I’ve biked.  Additionally, I have officially biked through 100% of Washington Square West.  For all the detailed information on my cycling patterns check out the Geographic Analysis page.