East End Runners

So many decisions could have been bad!

Sunday, August 08, 2010

Aug 15 Run: Chatham Village for a Mt. Washington Run

Cheryl Levin generously offered to lead us on a running tour of Mt. Washington and give us coffee afterwards at her lovely apartment in Chatham Village this coming Sunday! Meet in the vicinity of Little's Shoes at 6:40 AM to car pool to the run.

It was a perfect mid/late summer morning for a run - cool but bright, streets very quiet thanks to vacations and schools still out on break. We took a dive into the greenness of Schenley park, running to the pond (wittily observing the No Skating signs), across the tracks, past the soccer fields and into the bottom of Greenfield. True to its Italian roots, there were squash, corn and tomatoes growing along the streets. Defying the "Steps Closed"sign we scaled the very steep stairs next to what I think is St John Chrysostom Byzantine Church (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John_Chrysostom_Byzantine_Catholic_Church_(Pittsburgh)), which included quite a few gaps and wobbly steps, up into Greenfield proper. I think this is the third time we have done this climb, but I am always amazed at how far down the bottom is once arriving at the top. From there is was back to the start over the Greenfield bridge and on to a raucous coffee gathering.

It appears we have officially made the switch to the "new" coffee place, Commonplace Coffee, at least for Sunday gatherings. We had a guest on today's run, one of Wendy and Max's wonderful set of friends from school, who was given the full immersion treatment in the running group's coffee conversation extravaganzas. As always topics were diverse but somehow veered into body hair and odor which made for some spicy conversation. To off set the frivolous nature of that thread, Roye gave us a glowing recommendation for the book Cloud Atlas (http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Atlas-Novel-David-Mitchell/dp/0375507256/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281300965&sr=1-1) by David Mitchell.

No comments: