The Urban River Showdown

Back in the Spring I posted our thoughts comparing the Boise River Greenbelt to Philadelphia's Schuylkill River Trail. For those keeping score, the Greenbelt won. Frankly, wasn't even close.  As a hot-weather continuation of that comparison, I give you: The Urban River Showdown.

Last weekend, in hopes of briefly escaping the brutal humidity and heat that seems to be a hallmark of the East Coast summer (How the heck did I tolerate this for the first 30+ years of my life?!?  Didn't know any better, I guess.) Tina and I rented a hard-shell tandem kayak for a 6mi cruise down the Brandywine River.

The section that we kayaked of the Brandywine, which runs through southeastern PA and meets the Delaware River in Wilmington DE, is more like the section of the Boise from downtown to Eagle, which T and I ran several times with Fritz Hummel. Mostly forested, occasionally paralleled by trails and intersected by bridges, but not traversing a truly built-up urban area. The River itself, while less clean than the Boise, is more like it than not - averages probably 100 feet wide with a mostly rocky bottom, a few mostly gentle curves and "rapids."

Near the end of the float

Unfortunately for us, there's no dam regularly releasing into the Brandywine, so water levels were low - VERY low in many spots. We got plenty of opportunities to practice a trick Fritz taught us - raising our butts off the bottom of the boat so it didn't scrape. Even that didn't work several times and I was forced to drag the boat through ankle-deep water (and no, it wasn't that I was out of the channel on a bar - there WAS no channel). Too, the Brandywine's drop must be negligible, because the tube-floaters we saw were barely moving. The Brandywine reminded us more in many spots of a still pond than a flowing river.

One check in the Brandywine's column, though, was the water temperature, which was more like a swimming pool than the Boise typically is, especially in early summer. A couple of times when I floated or kayaked the Boise the water was painfully cold, which made for an interesting "frying pan or fire" choice - "do I stay in the sun, where it's 100+ degrees, or get in the water, where it's 50?..."

While it made for a pleasant day and perhaps isn't a fair comparison given the low water levels, Tina and I agree the Boise, either the "commercial" section east of town or the more "adventurous" section to the west, gets the decision this time.

Our first tandem trip: On the Boise River, 3 yrs ago today

Humidity

Having lived in the West for over a dozen years, I found myself missing some things from earlier stages of my life: Certain foods (real grits, fried Krispy Kreme's, collards with ham, etc.), architectural styles common before 1930, friends (most of all). The one thing I never missed - not for a moment - was humidity.

Pennsylvania apparently doesn't often suffer from the levels of humidity to which I grew accustomed - didn't know any better - living in Ohio, Georgia, and Alabama. When I would visit those places, or more sultry locations like Mexico, after moving to Idaho, I'd mutter a curse at how I felt like I was wearing a wet blanket taken straight from a hot dryer.

Temps in our neighborhood reached nearly 90 today, with humidity around 80%. Tina, having acquiesced in her battle with the humid air for control of her hair, admitted that she appreciates its affects on her skin. She noted, though, that after having walked only a few blocks I had already sweated through the t-shirt I was wearing (Icebreaker merino wool, chosen especially for the occasion. If you aren't familiar with the all-season wonders of merino wool, I'll be happy to educate you). To put it very politely, I was uncomfortable.

haze over Philly

Sitting on our little porch this evening, though, the dark and quiet was punctuated by the distant flash and thump of a fireworks display in an adjacent town. I felt an occasional breeze lift the dogwood leaves in our front yard and listened to the rattle of melting ice settling in my glass. I remembered sitting with my grandparents in their yard in rural northeast Georgia listening to a train approaching through the drone of the crickets; sitting on curbs outside stadiums after shows, eating PB&J sandwiches and chatting with my drum corps family; camping among and climbing the gritty limestone cliffs at Red River Gorge...

At night, I realized, humidity has a different personality - becomes a familiar and comfortable character, one I like to spend time with.

Sticker Madness

People here seem to have a real thing for those oval stickers you'd see denoting autos registered in various European countries.  Herewith, a brief sampling of stickers we've seen recently.

A significant number seem to be collected at vacation spots, like the Jersey Shore.

Avalon NJ

Sea Isle City, NJ

Stone Harbor NJ

Outer Banks NC

Chincoteague Island / Assateague (it had you wondering for a second, didn't it?)

These little ovals are apparently the mid-Atlantic replacement for those silly "my kid was student of the day at XYZ Elementary" bumper stickers you see elsewhere.

Bishop Shanahan HS

Penn Valley Elementary

Wayne Elementary School

Drexel University

Even respected military academies aren't immune.

Virginia Military Institute

Some people have to show off both their kids' school AND their vacation spot.

Rosemont School of the Holy Child; Wildwood Crest NJ

There are stickers that commemorate artistic organizations...

Gilbert & Sullivan Festivals

PA Renaissance Fair

Residents of certain cities and states feel obliged to put one on...

Narberth PA (next neighborhood over from us)

Vermont

We even saw a car with the real thing...

Unless you are, in fact, an orthodontist, would you really want a sticker on your car?

Reading Orthodontic Group

Finally, I must admit I'm guilty of slapping one on my truck, too. Friends from Boise will recognize it...

Idaho Mountain Touring

Ardmore ~ North End

As we announced in mid-April, we moved two weeks ago to Ardmore PA, an honest-to-goodness neighborhood about 9 miles from downtown Philadelphia. Our little (~1200 sq ft) house sits at the north end of a street entirely populated with "twin homes", essentially duplexes with a property line that subdivides the structure.

Yin-yang twin home in Ardmore

Although our place has been a rental since its owner moved out about five years ago (and so needs a serious cleaning and some cosmetic work), we're already way more comfortable than we were during our six months in the humongous house among the horse farms.  With the exception of the location, our routine would be familiar to most people who live in the North End:  We walk through the neighborhood to dinner (Ardmore's version of DBA lists over 40 eating establishments in the town, which measures about 1.5 miles square), ride our bikes to the Saturday morning farmers market (in Bryn Mawr, home to the eponymous women's college), walk the dogs (through campus of Haverford College, another highly-rated liberal arts college, only a few blocks from our place), drive about two miles to the local grocery store (Trader Joe's in Ardmore or Whole Foods in Wynnewood). Our achievements of the past two weeks include identifying a great neighborhood coffee shop (Milkboy), Irish bar (McCloskey's Tavern), sushi restaurant (Harusame), hardware store (DMI), and dog park. With the exception of the dog park, which is two miles away, everything's within walking distance.

I drop my shirts at the dry cleaners on my one mile walk to the Ardmore train station. Most days I ride Amtrak to Paoli (subject of several earlier posts), from where a shuttle bus takes me to Vanguard's campus. My commute has extended from 25 to 55 minutes but it consists of a 20 minute walk and reading on a train and bus.  Longer to be sure, but when I arrive in the office at 8:05AM I'm less stressed because I haven't had to deal with traffic or parking.  And when we have occasion to head into Philly (which we'll do next Saturday to see members of the Trey McIntyre Project perform Peter Pan with the Philadelphia Ballet) the train will drop us off downtown in about 15 minutes.

We're on the left side - 636 Georges Lane

Of course our new abode boasts a guest room - in fact we'll host Petra, Tina's  friend and former coworker, in a couple of weeks. Her visit is a great excuse to head into Philly, Washington DC (where we'll have dinner with Alan and Geri Bullard, Boise friends who're coincidentally visiting DC) and NYC (to see Porgy & Bess on Broadway) during her week-long stay.  PLEASE come hang out with us!

Change of Venue

It's been a month since we posted - no excuses (good ones, at least) - and we promise to get to it more regularly.  In the meanwhile though, we want to share the news of our pending relocation.

We shared with you the adventure of living among the horse farms west of Philadelphia. You'll recall we found the house too large (and expensive), without the neighborhood feel we enjoyed in the North End (although our next door neighbor is Christin Steele's childhood friend - how crazy is that!) and too far away from shops, restaurants, and other amenities.

The suburb to which we're moving, called Ardmore, is only nine miles from downtown (aka Center City) Philadelphia. We'll be one mile or less to supermarkets (Trader Joes!), restaurants (our new favorite sushi place!), a library, the train to Vanguard and Philadelphia, and heaps of other stuff we can walk or ride our bikes to.  Plus, the house is around the size of our Boise place, with similarly lower costs.

For your records, as of this Sunday 21 April, our address will be:
636 Georges Lane
Ardmore, PA 19003

As a reminder, Vanguard's just north of Paoli and we're living (for the moment) on Yellow Springs Road (in the very upper left corner). Our new place is marked. Philly is at the bottom right.

The River Trail Showdown

We spent many, many hours on the Boise Greenbelt during our tenure in the city. Kenn did most of his marathon training and took hundreds of other runs and rides along the entire length of the trail from Discovery Park at Lucky Peak Reservoir to where it crosses beneath Eagle Road. Tina likewise walked and jogged the Greenbelt many times. While it's a convenient site for community members to exercise they may take for granted to beauty of the strip of urban park that is the Greenbelt and the River itself.

We must admit we did exactly that. We extracted two of our five bikes from their basement prison and took our first ride on the Schuylkill River Trail and Perkiomen River Trail this afternoon, taking advantage of the continued excellent weather to get a little outdoor exercise. We'd read and been told about the paved trail beside the Schuylkill (skoo-kull) River and looked forward to making use of it ourselves.

The SRT is a paved path, two auto lanes wide, following the River as it arcs northwest from the western edge of downtown Philadelphia. The Perkiomen River Trail intersects the SRT near Phoenixville, northeast of our house and adjacent to a fenced dog park to which we take Karma and Bailey. We rode on the SRT north from the dog park then followed the PRT north another few miles to a convenient turn-around.

While both Trails are surely convenient for runners, walkers and cyclists (although in our opinion not an appropriate substitute for roads for the hard-core cyclist because of the density of other users) the main drawback to us was the state of the Schuylkill River itself. The muddy banks are choked with underbrush in which trash hangs; myriad dead trees litter the banks and channel; the water appears thick, brown and sluggish, with streams of white bubbles swirling downstream. Not a body of water in which I'd be inclined to let my dogs cavort, much less that I'd want to kayak or from which I'd eat a fish.

More or less what the PRT looks like, at least for the moment

In sharp contrast we've had the pleasure of doing all three of the above in the Boise River.

While perhaps a technicality - our disappointment is with the River, not the Trail itself - round one must go the to Boise Greenbelt.

How we remember the Greenbelt...

Buried Neck-Deep In History

To say that the region in which the Taters now live was central to the American Revolution is like saying Boise has a few outdoor recreation opportunities. You can't swing a dead possum (sorry for the sudden lapse into Southernism...) without hitting a monument, battlefield, house where Washington slept, and so on. Kenn, with his keen interest in history, has been doing some reading and exploring, which is summarized here.

interactive link at bottom of post

Probably the most obvious symbol of American independence, and the war that was waged to create the nation, is the Liberty Bell, which is housed in Independence Park in downtown Philadelphia. While it's unlikely the Bell was actually used to proclaim the Declaration of Independence (it was in pretty bad shape at the time, apparently) it's become an international icon and relic.

Less iconic but certainly more important from a political perspective is Independence Hall, across the street from where the Bell is housed. It was here that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and adopted. This building was literally the delivery room into which the United States was born.

Founding Father and all-around rock star Ben Franklin is buried a couple of blocks away.

It was not at all clear that, once the War commenced, that the new country would succeed. In fact, the odds against their doing so were quite high: At the time England had the most powerful military force in the world, having only a few years before defeated France in the Seven Years' War (aka French & Indian War) in one of the first true world wars. 

So much more remarkable, then, was Washington's crossing the partially frozen river that is Philadelphia's (and Pennsylvania's) eastern border to defeat the Hessian troops stationed in Trenton with a successful surprise attack on December 25, 1776.

While an important tactical and political victory the Continental Army's victory at Trenton obviously didn't settle the matter. In fact, Washington's troops pretty frequently took what we'd have called down South an a**-whipping. Several noteworthy battles fought in the 1777 Philadelphia campaign took place within a few miles of here.

At the Battle of Brandywine in mid-September 1777 Washington was outmaneuvered due to poor battlefield intelligence. The fight, one of the largest of the War, nearly led to the destruction of the Continental Army and allowed the British to march unimpeded into the new American capital of Philadelphia.

Remember that most European wars were politically or religiously motivated so the goal of the fight was to capture the capital, at which point the defeated monarch would cry uncle and pay tribute or give up land. Rather than rolling over and giving up the Continental Congress simply moved out of town while the British occupied Philadelphia and the Continental Army, while depleted and depressed, remained viable.

It's likely that members of the Continental Army would have marched down the road in front of our house on their way to Yellow Springs, site of a Revolutionary War hospital. Washington withdrew his men to Yellow Springs in search of ammunition after the Battle of the Clouds (September 16 1777).

A few days later, British troops got the drop on a detachment of Continental soldiers led by General Anthony Wayne, who had himself been planning to ambush the British army. Wayne, who lived in nearby, encamped his troops in Malvern (within a couple of miles of Kenn's office). The British got wind of Wayne's plans and executed a devastating bayonet and sword attack on the unsuspecting American camp after midnight.

On December 19th 1777 the Army marched into an area that was home to an iron forge west of Philadelphia and began establishing its winter encampment at Valley Forge.

There's plenty to intrigue and satisfy the history buff in southeastern PA. Beyond the Revolutionary War sites, the most obvious might be the Battle of Gettysburg fought during the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War for those who didn't grow up in the South), but plenty of important stuff has happened here. More on that later.

walking Karma in Valley Forge National Historical Park - Sunday 22 Jan 2012

http://maps.google.com/maps?pq=battle+of+the+clouds&hl=en&sugexp=pfwl&tok=72SoksAqe0s-gLSR3dSMPA&cp=4&gs_id=f&xhr=t&q=valley+forge&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1536&bih=850&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

Our Huge - I Mean Humble - Abode

The house we're renting - "The Tater Box", aka K-bar-T B&B - sits among horse farms in beautiful and historic Chester County, about 30 miles west of Philadelphia. The map below shows the area, with Downingtown (for reference for those who read our post on that town) on the far left and Philly on the right.

Our understanding is that the house was built in the mid-1960s by an aeronautical engineer as an exact replica of his grandparents house, which was apparently constructed in the 18th century. This declaration is made easier to believe after taking a close look at how tightly the doors fit into their frames, the perfect right angle made by each of the dozens of identical colonial-style hinges, the 14" wide planks used as flooring throughout the house.

The listing information from HotPads does a good job of describing the place. Here's the super-long link:
http://hotpads.com/search#lat=40.076766126602664&lon=-75.58143138885498&zoom=22&previewId=4e1qcr4qban3y&previewType=listing&listingTypes=rental,sublet,room,corporate&includeVaguePricing=false&loan=30,0.0525,0&resultsPerQuad=24

Below we've created a short photographic tour of the interior of the house so potential visitors can get an idea of where they'll be staying (see how cleverly I slipped that invitation in there?)

The house has four entry doors onto the ground floor (four - I have no idea why) but we typically enter through the kitchen, off the parking area. This kitchen is WAY too big (like most of these shots only partly of the room is captured in the picture) but Tina's done a great job of making it as functional as possible.

That's Bailey, our German Short-haired Pointer, hanging out near the door (to the left of the fridge) in hopes she'll get to go outside.

The dining room is next.

Turning left and up a short flight of stairs (left side of the photo below) puts you in the foyer.

Across the foyer is the parlor - I mean, living room. The window wells show off how thick the walls are.

Up another short flight (visible in the foyer picture) is the master bedroom.

Across the hall is my favorite room, my office. Love having a library. Makes me feel intelligent to be surrounded by words.

Up another short flight of stairs is the main hallway, which leads to the guest room. Karma's wondering what the heck I'm up to.

At the end of that hall is another bedroom we've converted into a massive closet. While the house itself doesn't lack for square footage, the closet space is miserly.

Up ANOTHER flight of stairs is the top-most room in the house, Tina's office, which is tucked into a great attic space with its own bathroom.

Below all of this is a finished basement, and below THAT a workshop / storage space.

We're not fans of having to clean, heat, and pay rent for a house that's nearly 3X larger than what we had in Boise. Truth be told, we settled on it because of its proximity to Vanguard's campus (about 6 miles) and because the owners we OK with our animal menagerie. Although we're unsure how long we'll stay in such an out-sized house rest assured that so long we we're here guests are always welcome.