The more I bike around the city the more cool things I see and discover. Philadelphia has this program called the Mural Arts Program that connects artists with members of a community to create murals to beautify the urban landscape. As I have ridden around Philly this year I have notice a mural here and there but when I actually started looking for them I couldn' believe the sheer number of them and what great works of art they really are. If you ride down Spring Garden they are almost on every block. The picture above is the Bicycle Mural which is at Spring Garden and 2nd. It's a very colorful and abstract piece of art that actually wraps around two sides of the building. This is one photo that will definitely end up in the book.
My ride this weekend took me on a 35 mile loop from the top of Wisahickon Park to the Ben Franklin Bridge and back. We hit a number of the major sites along the way including the Art Museum, Schuykill River, Independence Mall and Fairmount Park. This was a good route that I really enjoyed. I'll post the route in the near future so other people can enjoy the ride. I was joined by Chris on this ride which was good since it gave me a subject to put in some of the pictures. I got a couple of good shots of him by the Art Museum steps including one of him doing a Rocky pose with his bike.
Unfortunately Chris's rear tire had a major spoke problem by the Ben Franklin Bridge. He hopped a curb and twisted his back wheel. He tried to work the spokes but couldn't get it to get much better. He opened the rear brake and rode for a while but after some more tweeking the rear break rubbed against the tire and wore through. At this point his was done and we were into another episode of Tom and Chris's Excellent Misadventures.
With Chris out of commission I left him at Independence Mall while I headed back to the car on my own. I felt bad leaving Chris but with out a spare tire there was no way to get the bike ridable so it was the logical choice.
It took me a little over an hour to get back to the car. I stopped a few times along the way to get a few more pictures for the book. Once back at the car the hard part was getting back to Chris. Although it took me an hour to get back to the car on bike it took over a hour and a half to drive back to him. This was because all the traffic and road closures in this city this weekend. There was some big event in Germantown then a regatta that closed Kelly drive for a stretch and then there was the Occupy Philly by City Hall. As usually in most major city riding a bike is a much faster way to get around than by car.
By the time I got back to Chris he had actually worked on the wheel some more and it gotten it mostly straightened out. I think the lesson here is that it takes patience to fix the spokes of a wheel. So when it happened we tried to do a least amount of work to get the bike barely ridable whereas we should have just taken the time and approached it like we were truing the whole wheel and maybe we might have been able to get the bike ridable.
Despite the mechanical problem it was still a good day. Philly is a gritty urban landscape that can be a little challenging to ride in at times. If you just look at the roads and trails that are crowded with people and car traffic you might be discouraged to ride here. However if you look around at the art, architecture, landscapes and monuments you can find a lot to like here. There are few better places to ride a mountain bike than Forbidden Drive, The roads of Fairmount Park are filled with interesting buildings and sculptures. Boat House Row and the Art Museum are just fun places to hang out and on Saturdays and Sundays it is just plain cool to ride down the car free MLK Drive. Philly is a great place to ride on a nice sunny day.