Operation: Serial Park
Jun. 5th, 2011 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roadrunnertwiceToday, I finally went on that 13-parks-in-8-miles run I've been planning since early this spring. It was fantastic! It was further than I think I've ever actually run before. It was tons of NoPo shit I hadn't explored yet! It was... kind of pathetic, for those last two miles or so. But that's okay.
Anyway, the way this worked was that I took the Yellow Line up to almost the Expo Center, then bailed out and ran toward home. The parks, in order, were:
Everyone here who has tried to go somewhere with me in real life is now asking the same question, and the answer is yes, there was some navigational comedy, shut your damn mouth already, geez. Anyway, it was much better than it could have been because I am nobody's fool and hella brought a map:
Long story short, I just kind of assumed (based on Google Maps) that there was access to Mocks Crest from Greely, but said street turned out to be a highway at the bottom of the huge drop-off that gives Mocks Crest such a bitching 200° view. I'd never been there! I didn't know it was on a damn cliff! And I would have had to backtrack a shitload to get up there, which might have been fine except that I had no idea how to FIND it again after doing that, since the whole area is lousy with dead-ends.
So I said fuckit and climbed up the big fucking dropoff, blackberries and all. It was totally badass, although none of the folk drinking in the park seemed impressed. Anyway, I explored some once I made it up, and the answer for next time is to go straight from Patton Sq. to Madrona, then backtrack to Pittman Addition, take the spiral-ramp bridge over Going, and ride Skidmore to its dead-end at Mocks.
Other things:
EDIT: I took Schwern out to Mocks because we were going to Prost anyhow, and he noticed something I hadn't: there's a convenient ramp right at the edge of the cliff in the event that you desperately need to launch over it. What?!
Anyway, the way this worked was that I took the Yellow Line up to almost the Expo Center, then bailed out and ran toward home. The parks, in order, were:
- Kenton
- Gummans
- Arbor Lodge
- Omaha Parkway
- Patton Square
- Pittman Addition
- Madrona
- Mocks Crest
- Overlook
- Denoval Unthank
- Dawson
- Lillis Albina
- Irvington School
Everyone here who has tried to go somewhere with me in real life is now asking the same question, and the answer is yes, there was some navigational comedy, shut your damn mouth already, geez. Anyway, it was much better than it could have been because I am nobody's fool and hella brought a map:
Long story short, I just kind of assumed (based on Google Maps) that there was access to Mocks Crest from Greely, but said street turned out to be a highway at the bottom of the huge drop-off that gives Mocks Crest such a bitching 200° view. I'd never been there! I didn't know it was on a damn cliff! And I would have had to backtrack a shitload to get up there, which might have been fine except that I had no idea how to FIND it again after doing that, since the whole area is lousy with dead-ends.
So I said fuckit and climbed up the big fucking dropoff, blackberries and all. It was totally badass, although none of the folk drinking in the park seemed impressed. Anyway, I explored some once I made it up, and the answer for next time is to go straight from Patton Sq. to Madrona, then backtrack to Pittman Addition, take the spiral-ramp bridge over Going, and ride Skidmore to its dead-end at Mocks.
Other things:
- Hurray for performance-enhancing drugs, by which I mean the big bowl of yerba maté I chugged before heading out.
- So over on Gay Ave., just south of where Omaha Parkway dead-ends, there's this kind of amazing bar/thrift store. It is extraordinarily cute.
- Madrona Park has a kind of impressive thimbleberry thicket! Alas, they weren't ripe, so I'll have to come back later in the summer.
- Ow.
EDIT: I took Schwern out to Mocks because we were going to Prost anyhow, and he noticed something I hadn't: there's a convenient ramp right at the edge of the cliff in the event that you desperately need to launch over it. What?!