Progress, part deux

I made myself curious last Tuesday when I visited the city-side of the India Point Park bridge. On Saturday, I took a ride down to visit the Park itself, via the always-exciting Gano Street entrance.

Construction sites can be either depressing or inspiring. Depressing because they're messy. The ground is torn up, trees removed, materials and debris all over the place. Lots of half-assed fencing. Or, my favorite construction site pet peeve: sediment fencing improperly installed and poorly maintained. India Point Park has all of this right now, plus also a gigantic, dilapidated building in the form of Shooters. But, I can already tell that the park is going to be pretty cool once the work is all done. Sure, it's going to be smaller than it was because there is an additional ramp adjacent to the highway, but what remains will be nicer. Maybe. At least there's good potential. The new pedestrian bridge is going to be great. The park will be better linked with downtown and riverwalk/waterplace. It'll be better linked to Wickenden. All this stuff will hopefully get lots of people down there. Also, the linear Washington Bridge park is going to be neat as well, at least in the year 2341 when it is actually finished.

This has nothing to do with that: This year the Blackstone River Greenway Challenge will include a mountain biking leg. My office throws a team together each year and since I'm the only person around who rides a mountain bike I have been volunteered. I expect this will be fun because despite my incredible speed and skills on a mountain bike I have never raced. I have no idea where the ride will take place or over what sort of terrain. Could it be Lincoln Woods? That monastary place up in Cumberland? Something else entirely? We'll see. The course will be officially released in a day or two. The event is September 27th. I should probably ride a time or two beforehand. I went to Lincoln Woods once last week and managed to avoid breakdowns or injury so we're on the right track. Good stuff.