Schuylkill Path: +1 Philly

When A left the other day to betray both New York and Philly for a dalliance with Lancaster, I decided to take the long way home and bike down the Schuylkill Path. Going from the city out to the burbs all the way to Reading, the Path may be one of my favorite places in the city, in large part because its just so god damn fun to ride, not to mention that it surrounds you with green on one side and water on the other (large amass of cars and other bikers/runners/walkers notwithstanding). There was the mysterious and vaguely-torturesque sounding "24-hour Cross Country Race" going on that day, which hurt even my former XCer sensibilities, but once I got past that chaos (all centralized 'round about Boathouse Row, which should get its own little adorable note later) it was serenely quiet. I found a little bench under some trees up somewhere closer to Manayunk (ish) that overlooked the water and, if you were turned the right way so you couldn't see all the people going by behind you, felt like a completely separate universe, with no people or distractions for miles. My book and I hung out there for a while, and as a country girl who sometimes needs to get back to her roots, it was verging on bliss*.



















* (Detractions included: inability to swim/properly sunbathe.)

Bicycling-based Activities: +1 Philly

In chronological order:

1. Kensington's Kinetic Sculpture Derby
























2. Manayunk's Bike Race



















3. The TBRidden Bicycle Booze Cruise





















We Philadelphians love our bicycles. Its a big enough city that a bike is advisable, but not so big that its daunting (coughnewyorkcough). The road right next to my house (!) has big bike lanes. But that's not the point of this post; A can handle that later. Rather, this is about the fun ways Philly appreciates its biking culture. There are hundreds more things - Critical Mass, the Pretzel Factory ride, some Scavenger Hunt thing I ran into last year at Clark Park where the basin was full of bikes and everyone was getting drunk during breaks - but these are the three recent activities (minus that last one, which is next weekend, but come on, how fun is that) that reminded me why I love Philly and I love bikes and Philly loves bikes and bikes love Philly.

Because they're so fun and they make a really cool noise when they ride by in packs really fast, that's why.