{"id":648,"date":"2023-04-30T14:03:30","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T19:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/?p=648"},"modified":"2023-06-19T13:38:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T18:38:39","slug":"baltimore-april-showers-bring-may-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/2023\/04\/30\/baltimore-april-showers-bring-may-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore, April showers bring May flowers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Highlights for today were crossing Baltimore and cycling 30 miles along a busy highway in the rain. While it might have been tempting to take a rain day, I’m happy to have gotten in the ride today. In particular, I wanted to cross Baltimore *not* at rush hour and I am now set to try a few options early tomorrow for crossing the Susquehanna River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was on the road early. The weather forecasts suggested dry until 8am, but it was already sprinkling when I started out. There wasn’t much traffic at all on early Sunday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My GPS directions got confused (or maybe it was me trying to follow them :)), so I ended up mostly following my own directions and consulting Google Maps occasionally. Inbound wasn’t difficult, just head to the tall buildings. Outbound, I picked a few key turns and was through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brought me past the stadium, past a commercial downtown and then along some streets that looked like the ones below. Some were nicer and some had a few boarded up buildings. There weren’t many people out on a damp early Sunday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By the time I crossed the main part of the city. The rain was steady and the weather map showed large blobs of green with occasionally more intense. I stopped for a bite and to dry briefly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From here my route followed US 40. It was a busy road with two lanes of traffic in each direction, but mostly had good shoulders. The rain was intermittent, sometimes heavy and sometimes pausing for a bit. But the cars\/trucks left a spray and there was just enough headwind to bring rain into my glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Without too much difficulty, I found myself in Havre de Grace. My chosen motel wouldn’t let me check in before 3pm (and were sticklers on it), but did have a spot out of the rain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below is a photo for next challenge, that I decided to leave for tomorrow. The Hatem Bridge<\/a> over the Susquehanna River is a toll bridge with no shoulders. Bicycles are only allowed on weekends and with a big flashing light you can enable on the roadway. It is a little over a mile across the bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided with less visibility due to rain, cycling the bridge this afternoon wasn’t the wisest thing and put off to tomorrow morning hitching a ride across. There are a few options I have to try: (a) there is a cab service listed, I’ve tried contacting but so far no answer – the motel does think they exist (b) Uber is in this area but doesn’t let you reserve in advance – so try an Uber XL (c) local transit operates a bus about every two hours or so. If all these fail, I can cycle upriver to the next bridge, but that is a 20 mile detour and next bridge isn’t much better<\/a> … so will see what tomorrow brings. I am at least optimistic I will have reason to use my sunscreen for first time on the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Stava link for today<\/a> – shows an even slower ride than yesterday: 41.80 miles, 1328 feet climbed, 3050 calories burned, 4:42:25 moving time for an average moving speed of 8.9. What I thought was particularly amusing was that my bike computer sometimes tells me in advance of a hill on the route – and then shows the distance\/elevation yet to go. Once you get to the top there is a celebratory chime as in “you made it”. I was amused because some of those hills on US 40 I was rather slow so almost mocking me with the chime. I think I climbed\/descended the same 60 ft a number of times.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Elapsed Time<\/th>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMoving Time<\/th>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tDistance<\/th>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAverage Speed<\/th>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMax Speed<\/th>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tElevation Gain<\/th>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCalories Burned<\/th>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/tr>\n\t\t\t\t<\/thead>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
06:35:00<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
hours<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
04:44:22<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
hours<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
41.81<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
mi.<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
8.82<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
mph<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
22.41<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
mph<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
1,328.74<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
ft.<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
3,050<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
kcal<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/td>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/tr>\n\t\t\t\t<\/tbody>\n\t\t\t<\/table>\n\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Highlights for today were crossing Baltimore and cycling 30 miles along a busy highway in the rain. While it might have been tempting to take a rain day, I’m happy to have gotten in the ride today. In particular, I …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maryland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1539,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/1539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}