Best of Baltimore: Rally for the River
I think I should start my own “Best of Baltimore” series beginning with today’s Rally for the River on 1-83, the Jones Falls Expressway or JFX. The highway was closed today from 8am to 2pm for a little festival stretching from downtown up to Cold Spring Lane. You can’t imagine how exciting it is to ride a bicycle on a highway until you have done it. It was pure bliss and heaven. Not only I had a lasting smile on my face, I have seen it on many other’s today.
I have to thank Ramsey for pointing me to this event last Friday, and Alice for joining me on this ride today. I’m so glad that instead of my usual solitary Sunday ride we could go out on the highway together. We entered the JFX at Penn Station and rode up to Cold Spring Lane where you could find some stands of the MTA, Joe’s Bike Shop, some environmental groups, some food/drink stands as well as a stage for the live music that started later around 11am.
To my surprise, there even was a chess stand! Chess and bicycles–I always knew that is the perfect combination. But I had no idea other people would agree to that 
We had a drink and snack, watched people and the band setting up their equipment, watched cars zooming by in the opposite direction… they had not nearly as much fun as the closed side of the highway. Eventually we continued our trip on the highway, took the Falls Road exit, continued on Falls Road and took the route back through the Hopkins campus.
So great… I wish the highway was closed every Sunday! In Germany during the oil crisis in 1973 there were four car-free Sundays that left the Autobahn free and open for cyclists and pedestrians. Too bad I wasn’t old enough to remember that. These few car-free hours on the JFX were definitely a highlight of the year for me–one of the things I would add to my list of Baltimore’s Best! Is it 2009 yet?
Here are a few pictures courtesy of Alice:
