Good Ideas for Cycling Laws

The Greater Greater Washington blog is a great resource for people interested in increasing the availability and safety of alternate forms of transportation. Today they have a really good post on 12 Ways Our Region Could Reform Bicycling Laws. If you're even a casual cyclist in Maryland, you should read this article. I know that since I've been reading that blog I've learned that not only are the roads less safe for cyclists than I thought, but that generally cyclists don't have much of a legal leg to stand on in Maryland if they do get injured (or even killed!) by a car.

Quietly Awesome

One of the most under-appreciated things about Baltimore is out park system.  Baltimore was on the leading edge of the urban parks movement in the 19th century and it shows today. However, many of these beautiful parks were a little too “urban” for the middle class at the beginning part of this decade.  The gentrification in Canton led to the rediscovery of Patterson Park as “Baltimore's Backyard.” In South Baltimore, Riverside Park is now a popular dog-walking location in the evenings – a far cry from the drugs and crime that troubled the South Baltimore area 10-15 years ago.  Still, if your world revolves around communities that border on the harbor, you're only seeing a fraction of the green space that Baltimore has to offer.

I think that most people have noticed that Baltimore has some pretty big parks.  However, I also think that a lot of people don't spend a lot of time exploring in Baltimore.  Yes, it's a slightly dangerous city, but large swathes are safe for exploring.  I recommend bicycling around the city more, it's a great way to learn where streets go and explore neighborhoods.

Still, I didn't realize how much Baltimore doesn't suck at public parks until I spent some time on the website of The Trust for Public Land.  They have a lot of facts and reports about the state of public parks in America.  What I found interesting is that for cities with a high population density, Baltimore ranks #3 in acres of parkland per resident. Here's the top ten list:

Park Acres per 1,000 Residents
(City Population Density: High)
#1 – Washington, DC – 13.1
#2 – Boston, MA – 8.5
#3 – Baltimore, MD – 7.7
#4 – Philadelphia, PA – 7.6
#5 – San Francisco, CA – 7.2
#6 – Jersey City, NJ – 6.8
#7 – Los Angeles, CA – 6.2
#8 – Long Beach, CA – 6.1
#9 – New York City, NY – 4.6
#10 – Chicago, IL – 4.2

Now, obviously, there are two factors in this equation. The total number of park acres and the total number of city residents. In Baltimore, park acres are fairly constant (except for when some vacant lot is deeded over to the Department of Parks & Recreation by another city agency). The fact that Baltimore has lost a lot of city residents over the last couple of decades really helps bring that number up. I might be crazy, but I am anticipating that the population of Baltimore is about to stabilize and turn around. If we want to stay ahead of Philadelphia we might want to consider building some new parks. Next time we redevelop something like Harbor East, let's set aside a few acres for a park.

One factor that I think is good is that Baltimore gets on the list of park acres per 1,000 residents with a lot of smaller parks, not one large park. Baltimore barely cracks the top 100 on largest city parks (#89 – Gwynn Falls / Leakin Park). That's good because it means that the city parks are spread across the city and more people therefore have access.

Finally, Baltimore has two of the oldest city-run parks in America:

23rd Oldest Public Park – Patterson Park, 1827
55th Oldest Public Park – Druid Hill Park, 1860

So, if you haven't checked out some of these parks, I highly recommend that you do some exploring.   There are some really great parks in parts of the city that you normally don't go. Carroll Park, Lake Montibello (with a great bike loop around the lake), and even Middle Branch Park are great places to go and just be outside on a nice summer day.

Once you visit those parks, you'll probably ask yourself the same question I did - “How did we not screw this up?”  The answer actually lies pretty far back in history.  In 1859 the mayor of Baltimore decreed that no railroad would be given franchise to operate in Baltimore unless they paid 20% of gross income to the city for park building.  That's an incredibly high tax, but railroads paid it because Baltimore was such an important port at the time.  So from 1859 until the 1940's, the parks had this incredible source of income for operating costs and capital improvements.

All that history can be found in a really interesting report from the Baltimore Parks and People organization.  It's called "Discovering Baltimore's Parks" - if you're at all curious about parks in the city of Baltimore and their histories (collective and individual), then you should check out that report.

Reasons to Wake Up in the Morning

So my friends were all like "We're doing this pub run on Saturday morning, you should join us!"  I was thinking "Wait, when does it start?"  Turns out it started at 8 AM.  I'm like "Do I look like I went to a school with a Division I football program?  I never gotten up early just so I could start drinking!"

But I signed up for the Baltimore Running St. Patrick's Day Pub Run (not to be confused with any 5k events) and it was a great decision.  First of all, it's a "variable distance race."  That is, there are some bars you're supposed to visit, but there's no course and there's no specific order that you're supposed to visit the bars.  They get everyone lined up at the start and say "Go!"  Then a mass of people (like a >100 people) just start running through Fells Point (we started at Slainte).  Everyone's running down different streets, wearing green shirts, wearing Guinness beads... it's unlike any race you've considered running.

So you run to some bars, but they're not actually open.  Instead, they have a table set up like a water station at a real race with beer cups on it.  The stations had Natty Boh mostly, but also some Guinness.  My personal favorite was the fact that they had water bottles full of Irish whiskey.  So you squirt a shot of Jamison in your mouth, chase it with a beer, and then start jogging again.  You do it with your friends, so you're not running too fast.  Plus there's a bunch of other people running around the city doing this too.

I generally had at least a beer at each stop and usually a little whiskey.  A couple stops had Bailey's in water bottles too (my friend made himself a small Irish car bomb at one stop).  We generally know our way around Baltimore, so even if we didn't know the bar, we could figure out a good way to get there based on the address.  So we were pretty efficient, our race was 5.86 miles long, but it took us 66:14 (11:18 pace) to run because we hit all the stops to drink and we jogged nice and slow.

Seriously, it was so much fun.  I actually refused to believe that we'd gone 5 miles, it just seemed to fly by (especially because we ran to the furthest bar and worked our way back).  At the end, they gave us a free Guinness at the bar (which, if you're willing to pay a little money, can easily become an Irish car bomb).  If you live in Baltimore, you should absolutely run this "race" next year!

Comment on the Red Line

If you have ever visited a major metropolitan area with great public transit (such as Washington DC, Boston, or New York City) you probably returned to Baltimore thinking "Why can't my city have efficient, convenient mass transit?"  The ridiculous mish-mash of transit modes is a joke to almost anyone who looks at it.  We have heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, buses, express buses, and commuter buses.  Nothing connects to anything else (unless you count the stunted offshoot of the light rail that takes you to Penn Station, which I don't - see below).

In the next 6-8 years, however, Baltimore will build the Red Line.  It's actually a really good idea.  Basically it's a transit corridor stretching from Woodlawn, down Security Blvd., along the US 40 corridor through West Baltimore, cuts across downtown, Fells Point, and Canton before reaching the JHU Bayview campus.  Along the way it will have legitimate interchanges with the MARC Penn Line (in 2 places!) and the existing light rail.  Finally, Baltimore is going to invest in some transit that will connect areas where people live to area where they work and wish to go for entertainment!  It's a revolutionary concept, but let's give Baltimore the credit it deserves, as the City Paper recently pointed out, "the Red Line is, remarkably, on schedule."

In fact, this is where you, the blog-reading public, come in.  Right now we are in the public comment phase of the AA/DEIS phase of the project.  I forget what DEIS means, but AA = Analysis of Alternatives.  This is where they do a super in-depth study of the alternatives for this transit corridor.  Then they solicit community input.  Then they decide which option they will propose for Federal funding.  So right now (until January 5th, 2009), is your big chance to help campaign for a good choice.

They considered 12 different options, which I have conveniently summarized for you.  The format is "Alternative #: Title = My Interpretation"

Alternative 1:  No Build = No one wants this, but you have to do it as part of the process for getting Federal funding

Alternative 2: TSM = Don't build anything, but time the stop-lights better.

Alternative 3A-F: BRT = Bus Rapid Transit, because what we really need is yet ANOTHER mode of transit in Baltimore.

Alternative 4A-D: LRT = Light Rail; the best option

It is imperative that you go to the Baltimore Red Line website and submit a comment endorsing Light Rail, preferably Option 4C.

Pretty much everyone in their right mind realizes that 4C is the best compromise.  1 and 2 are only included for completeness as part of the Federal funding process.  Alternative 3 is included because, apparently, the Maryland Secretary of Transportation was a big fan of bus rapid transit (source is wikipedia for that).  Let's face it, buses just seem cheaper and crappier than light rail.  I don't think any upwardly mobile urban professionals have ever thought "I like this apartment because it's near a bus stop!"  But how many people do you know who live in a certain part of DC because it's close to a Metro stop?  Light rail is not as cool as a functioning subway network, but it's a hell of a lot better than some funny looking buses.

Here's a list of the organizations that endorse Option 4C:

• The Greater Baltimore Committee (a business consortium)
• The Central Maryland Transportation Alliance
• The University of Maryland, Baltimore
• Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
• Mercy Hospital
• Baltimore City Community College
• Sojourner-Douglas College

It's pretty much the only option that is both reasonably affordable and will actually change the way people travel across the city.  It's not a completely done deal though, there is a lot of concern among community residents about how this transit corridor will work out.  However, in my view, the most important thing is that this transit corridor happens at all.  Sure, construction won't begin until 2013, but there is no way to make something this expensive go any faster.

In case you want to be more informed before you submit an online comment, there are 4 different light rail options:

A - Dedicated Surface

B - Downtown Tunnel and Dedicated Surface

C - Downtown Tunnel and Cooks Lane Tunnel and Dedicated Surface

D - Maximum Tunnel and Dedicated Surface

Here's my take on each of these:

A - Can you imagine if Baltimore and Lombard Streets had light rail tracks like Howard Street?  This is a BAD idea.

B - This is a good idea, unless you have ever been down Cooks Lane in West Baltimore, then you realize that...

C - Is the best option.  Light rail is what you want, it has tunnels to get it past bottlenecks, but is not out-of-this-world expensive.

D - Probably too expensive to get Federal help.

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Idiocy of Light Rail Connection to Penn Station

So it is technically possible to get from Penn Station to other places using the light rail, but my question is "Why would you?"  It's impossibly inconvenient.  It is only effective if you are at Penn Station and want to go to one of a few light rail stops along Howard Street.  Otherwise you will have to get off the light rail train you're on and wait for another train that actually goes somewhere useful.  It's design flaws like this that make Baltimore public transit a case study in how NOT to design transit.

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This is how the opening message on Mayor Sheila Dixon's Red Line Website:

Baltimore... We Got Next... The Next Generation of Light Rail that is.  The Red Line... OMG!

Generally I think Sheila Dixon's doing an all right job, but I think that's just embarrassing.

Shakespeare in a Park

This is one of those "here's a great thing I found in Baltimore and I think they deserve a 'shout-out'" sort of posts:

The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival

Right now they are doing Twelfth Night at "the meadow at Evergreen house."  I'd never even been to Evergreen House, it's conveniently hidden between Loyola College and the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and inexplicably owned by JHU.  You should go catch this play or their next one (The Taming of the Shrew, July 18 - August).  The acting was fantastic and you couldn't ask for a more relaxing environment.  The play starts at 8 pm, as the sun is setting, you're far enough off the road that you can't hear any traffic, there's a small brook at the edge of the meadow, it's just awesome.  

We got there at 7:45 and were about the last people to show up.  Apparently everyone else knew that you're supposed to bring some wine and a picnic dinner... I'm totally doing that next time!  And, in case you forgot your wine or beer, it's available from the concession stand!

This is one definitely falls in the "Pro" category when you're considering living in Baltimore.

Open Letter to Google

It's been a long time since I made a blog post, but I have a good idea that I want people to listen to.  Specifically, I want Google to pay attention.  Like anyone that uses Gmail, I take it for granted that I will have the entire history of an email exchange on one screen.  But I have a problem.  At work we have a Microsoft Exchange Server and have to use Outlook.  As much as I love have 15 lines of my inbox taken up by one message chain, I would prefer to have it all collapsed down by conversation.  This would be especially key for my email archives I think.  It's a pain in the ass to try to find something in an email from last May from someone you worked a lot with last year.  I've got 1200 email from someone and I need to find one sentence - "Sort by Sender" just doesn't cut it.  At least cut that down to 400 or so conversations; better yet, give me Google search capabilities.

So Google, this is the product I want.  I want something that can read in MS Outlook *.pst archive folders, sort the messages into conversation, and allow me to use Google search on the messages in the archive.  Here's the catch, like many people, I work on very proprietary stuff - my company would NOT be cool with this being advertising-based and sending any sort of information about the emails to a central server.  It would have to be a stand-alone program.  But, I would pay for this program.  I think that if you could offer me this product for $20, I would buy it.  I would even fight my IT department to get a corporate implementation if I had to.

Even if you never really sell this product, could you just create a Beta version that people could download for free?  What I'm really looking for here is to force Microsoft to modernize their email client a little.  There are a few small variations, but MS Outlook's mailbox looks more or less like my AOL mailbox in 1998.

Crazy Fun Things to do in Federal Hill

I've lived down here in South Baltimore for 3 years now, so I'd consider myself pretty adjusted to the average Friday/Saturday night in the neighborhood.  Perhaps it's more like a building up a resistance to a drug, for some reason the same ol' hit of Cross Street just doesn't do what it used to.

It was with that in mind that I assumed a Federal Hill scavenger hunt would be just like any other party.  Perhaps a scavenger hunt is going to have the same mean fun level as a normal party but a much higher variance, because I was very, very wrong.  It was probably one of the most fun nights of my life.  Sure, I enjoy drinking as much as the next guy (although, in all honesty, possibly not as much as the next guy in this neighborhood), but this party also combined two of my favorite things to do while drinking:

1. Doing things - especially active, unusual, exciting things
2. Competing at things - especially pointless, fun, team-oriented things

Yeah, scavenger hunt was pretty much the ideal party activity for me.

It also helped that it was superbly planned and organized.  Everyone met up at one house, had a couple drinks, then we scavenged, then post-party at another house.  The lists were even laminated!  There were like 6 or 7 teams of 5 to 7 people, so there were a lot of people running all over Federal Hill looking for viryta or Chartreuse (from my favorite bar - Idlehour) or someone walking two dogs.  The best part was how welcoming everyone was in at all the bars.  By the second half of the hunt, we'd show up in a bar with our laminated list looking to sing karaoke and people would be like "Oh, you're with the scavenger hunt!"

Of course, what really makes or breaks the hunt is list.  The guys did a fantastic job with the Federal Hill Scavenger Hunt List.  Check it out and see what you think.  We had from about 9:20 PM until midnight to gather photographs of as many of those items/actions/places as possible.

My team actually won with 860 points.  It was a little unfair, 6 of the 7 people on our team are at least casual runners - so we used speed to our advantage.  I was definitely in a flat-out sprint to make it to the second house on time after deciding to go for those last 10 points at 11:55 PM.

My favorite picture of the night:

Human pyramid (worth 20 points) and picture with "The J&P guy" (Pete) (worth 10 points) in a single picture.  There's also some random dude spotting us.  And by "spotting" I clearly mean "hoping to get a chance to fondle that girl's ass."

So word from the wise: if you're like me and you enjoy "doing things" and "competing at things" while having a couple drinks - attend the next scavenger hunt you get invited to.

Oh, and wear practical shoes (definitely saw at least one girl in heels for this... that team was unable to compete with our teams' highly appropriate footwear).

Do Something Productive for the Community

No time for any insightful analysis this morning, just wanted to post about an upcoming event:

Friends of Baltimore Parks and Middle Branch Shoreline Day

If you're from the South Baltimore/Federal Hill area, you've seen Middle Branch Park.  It's south across the Hanover Street Bridge from Port Covington.  Anyway, it's actually a very nice park, but has a tendency to get a lot of trash piling up on the shore.  There's a clean-up day schedule for next Sunday, May 3rd.  I wish I could attend, but I'll be out of town that day.  Anyway, just hoping to spread the word and maybe get some people involved.

Advances in Medical Science

As any dedicated reader of this blog knows, I often use this blog as a vehicle to promote products that have made a significant contribution to society (see this post for example).  This is such an instance.

Humans have been getting and coping with blisters for literally millions of years, but only recently have I discovered the ultimate blister treatment.  I couldn't have done this without my medical-student roommate (who is like 99% of a doctor; I mean, he's already matched to his residency so it's pretty much just a formality now, right?).  My roommate introduced me to:

Band-Aid brand "Advanced Healing Blister"

Now aside from the deficiencies in product naming ("Advanced Healing Blister" sounds like a blister that is in the final healing stages, not an advanced treatment for healing blisters), this is a fantastic product.  Eureka!  Further, in-depth, research has taught me that these are "Advanced Healing Blister Cushions."  Still not a very good product name... maybe that's why I've never heard of them, I just can't imagine an marketing jingle based on that phrase.

Anyway, let me contrast this treatment with historical blister treatment:

In the past, when you got a blister, you'd pop it, put some Neosporin on it, and put a regular band-aid on it.  After a couple hundred yards of vigorous walking the band-aid comes off and sticks to your sock.  Your foot continues to hurt... a lot if you're wearing the same shoes that caused the blister.

With this product?  You pop the blister, stick one of these bad boys on it, and you're good to go.  I ran 10 miles with one of these cushions over a blister, it not only stayed in place, but the blister didn't hurt or get worse!!  It's this kind of innovation (or, since I don't know who invented these cushions, this kind of large corporate theft of a small company's idea) that made this country great in the first place!  Thank you corporate America for allowing me to run without pain.

These adhesive cushion things cost more than your average Band-Aids, but they work infinitely better.  If you're any sort of athlete or just someone who has uncomfortable shoes, you owe it to yourself to stock up on these "Advanced Healing Blister Cushions" immediately.

An Ode to a Taco Shell

Every so often you're walking along, just living your life, when WOAH! Holy crap! That's a revolutionary product!


What's so amazing about that box of taco shells? At first, I didn't notice it either. But look closer, those hard taco shells are shaped like a "U" instead of the standard "V!" Revolutionary! A hard taco shell that will stand up on it's own while you fill it with delicious taco things!

Clearly, when you're walking through the taco aisle you're not expecting an entire paradigm shift, but that's exactly what I encountered. So I bought those taco shells (I can't tell you anything about the relative pricing of the various taco shell shapes, but can you put a price on this sort of innovation?) and tonight was taco night.

Let me tell you, those shells work exactly as advertised (in that picture). They sit there calmly on your plate while you make your taco, then remain standing while you make a second taco, then remain standing while you walk to the living room, then remain standing while you eat them! Want to have a drink of apple cider midway through your taco? No problem, just set your taco down on the plate, it will remain standing.

These are the best hard taco shells I have ever have ever experienced. My taco enjoyment was at least 50% above average for a hard-shelled taco!

My only question is, why have I had to live my entire life (to this point) with on V-shaped taco shells? How could we, the human race, miss such an obvious invention for so long? I fully expect these tacos shells will add about a tenth of a percent to US productivity over the next few years. I mean, seriously, think of all the man-hours of taco-spillage clean-up that will be eliminated by U-shaped shells!

Thank you Old El Paso, your Stand 'N Stuff taco shells have rekindled my belief in gigantic food processing companies like General Mills.

EZPass for Charity

Every so often I have a great idea. One of those ideas where the light bulb really blinks on above my head and I know, I've just had a good idea. So what's the point of having a blog if you don't post your great ideas so that some day in the far future you can launch a patent lawsuit?

So, here's my idea: EZPass for Charity. It's simple, but brilliant. First, you are a charitable organization. Next, you get an EZPass reader and you set up a little gateway. Say you're a church, for example. You'd set that baby up in your parking lot, set the value of the machine to $0.25, put up a sign saying "EZPass for the Soup Kitchen" and then let it work it's magic. Maybe you get a local business to put it up in their parking lot so that it gets more traffic.

So here's why this idea is great: it'll increase charitable giving. It will be the ultimate impulse buy. "Well, I've got EZPass, and I'm already in my car...why not drive through that little gate and give $0.25 to charity?" Everyone has EZPass or the regional equivalent (ok, I don't have EZPass, but I know that I should get it) and best of all, EZPass dollars are not real money. Go ahead, ask someone with EZPass how much it costs to drive across the Susquehanna River on I-95 North. They can't tell you because they never see the cost. It gets deducted right off their credit card and it's probably small in comparison to their income, so they never notice.

This is the future of charity fund-raising. It's completely unmanned, private, operates 24 hours a day, and could even be mobile. Imagine taking this to the county fair, or Raven's stadium on game day, or getting Wal-Mart to set it up in their parking lot for the Friday after Thanksgiving.

I'm telling you, this is a great idea! Now someone go out there and build an EZPass for Charity gate and start raising money! (I won't mind if you mention that I inspired you ;)