I am writing this on Sunday, 7/20. There is one pic.
After all the excitement lately, we were shooting for a quiet week. The weather has been much cooler than normal lately, often coupled with low humidity. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enjoy the weather on the road all that much. My sore back refused to cooperate. However, I did get a few shorter rides in.
They started a program to encourage walking in Howard County. They published a small, free booklet with 16 walks in it. Each walk is on paved trails, usually about 2 miles long. Walk enough trails and you can collect a small prize. To prove you’ve walked the trail, they mounted a post on each trail. The post has a metal plate with raised letters. The book has the address of the walk’s starting point, a map of the trail, and a space to do a crayon rubbing of the post. It’s a fun thing to do. So far, Danita and I have done 5 trails. Three more and we get a prize. (Probably a cheap foam sleeve for a Coke can, but hey! a prize is a prize.) We’ve seen parts of Columbia we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Rouse Rock
The strangest thing we’ve seen so far is “Rouse Rock”. The late James Rouse was the CEO of the company that developed Columbia. He had the opportunity to design a city from scratch. He implemented a lot of novel ideas, like a mixture of light industry, retail, and housing in each neighborhood. A mix of different income levels in each neighborhood. Lots of green space (including the walking trails). Etc. This rock was given to Rouse for his forward-looking ideas and vision. I swear, I am not making this up.
The trail with Rouse Rock goes around Wilde Lake, which includes one of the oldest and richest areas of Columbia. Many of the houses are easily worth more than a million dollars. A few of the houses are right on the lake, complete with private docks. In this area, the trail has to follow a residential street on the other side of the houses. I found this amazing for several reasons. “Wild Lake” is small for a lake. Some might call it a very large pond. The trail that circumnavigates the lake is less than 2 miles. The largest boat you would want to take out would be a canoe. That hardly requires a dock. The next amazing thing was that many of these very expensive houses with a private dock had car ports, not garages. They were very nice, but they were still just car ports. The last amazing thing is that the lake stank. There was lots of decaying plant growth. The water was so bad that even the ducks and geese won’t stay there. That *has* to be a downer — build a million dollar house on the lake, then it turns out the lake stinks. I’m glad I’m not that rich.
Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. We had a neighborhood party last night. The room was packed. We had a pot luck dinner and a guy who sang Beetles songs. In a little while, we’ll leave to go to a free concert in Catonsville. We’re taking a picnic dinner.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.