When Worlds Collide

I was reminded on Friday that even though this city seems so small at times, it is quite the large animal.

I've worked part-time at Blue Ridge Communications TV-13 for the last couple years covering sports and other live events which take us all over Northeast PA. This Friday, we were scheduled to cover a rare game in Philly, Germantown to be exact. Exciting stuff, because it would give me an opportunity to ride my bike to TV-13 for the first time EVER, in an area of the city I know next to nothing about, other than when I pass through when the Turnpike is closed or something:

With an assist from SEPTA

North Philly gets a bit of a bad rap, and sometimes deservedly so, but I was pleasantly surprised to find ample bike lanes, like this one on Ogontz Ave:

Ogontz is fun to say.

Overall, lots of homes and nothing too crazy to write home about. It is pretty easy to get turned around if you're not paying attention. South, Center City and Lower North Philly is mostly grid work with very few diagonals. Everywhere else in the city, it's a bit of a crap shoot. I'm not ashamed to admit that I had to consult the map a few times. There's also the slight annoyance of repeated road names with different suffixes (Walnut Lane instead of Walnut Street, Rittenhouse Street instead of Rittenhouse Square, etc.). Then, there are the unique street names that I didn't know existed:

Or 'Gansett for short...

I'm also not ashamed to admit that I enjoy a Narragansett from time to time. Anyway, all told, with taking the train and biking parts of the way, it still took me an hour to get to the field from my house. According to GoogleMaps, it would have taken 45 minutes by car with traffic. So, it was worth it, and so was this view:

This was the last game of the season. There's a metaphor here somewhere...

The trip home was uneventful, which I'm very thankful for, as it was the first time I biked at night in the city since my crash (still working on the Thank You entry, BTW).

A nice little work-related excursion away from my day-to-day routine. Today, I may venture back out to West Philly to check out the Earthship build site. We'll see...