Baltimore - A Serengeti for Runners

That should be the city's new motto. It would definitely be more accurate than other mottos such as:

- Charm City (makes no sense)
- The City that Reads (spend 15 minutes in the Gallery mall and you'll see this is a joke)
- The Greatest City in America (seriously, this can be found on several broken benches around downtown...I assume the irony is lost on the City government)
- The City that Bleeds (a play on words from number 2 but more accurate)
- Baltimore: Get in on it! (admittedly not a motto but a slogan, but still bad and unimaginative)

With all the other problems in Baltimore, I'm not going to hold my breath for more water fountains anytime soon. Apparently it takes the city 10 years to figure out what to do with a homeless population that lacks health care, education, jobs, and general welfare so if they can't get an idea of how to solve this huge problem, I would actually think something like installing more fountains would prove monstrously difficult.

In the Inner Harbor (tourist central) and Federal Hill (yuppie central) there are four (FOUR!) water fountains. One is in Federal Hill Park. There are actually two along the Inner harbor promenade but one doesn't work and the other one I have yet to try, but for which I have low expectations. The other two are actually not in a neighborhood at all but are in the Ft. McHenry National Park, which is only open after 8 AM and is about a mile down Fort Ave, through locust Point. Outside of that, noone thought of installing additionla fountains in any of the parks in Federal Hill or along the Inner Harbor. I guess the builders wanted to make sure that thirsty tourists went to Starbucks and spent $27.95 for an iced coffee instead of quenching their thirst at the city's expense.

But, this is Baltimore, and like I said, there are bigger problems than water fountains to deal with first. Sigh.

In other news, I got a 3 mile run in on Saturday, followed by some swimming (I'm going to try to increase the amount of non-running exercise I do). Then on Sunday I did 6 tough miles. This morning I ran 4 miles (I did 6 on Sunday so I could get 4 miles in today). Annie is flying back from Colorado tonight, and since her plane doesn't get in until 10:45, I know I won't be in any condition to run tomorrow morning so I have planned on taking a rest day and sleeping in until 7.

I'm on vacation Wed-Fri this week, so I plan on getting runs in on each day, and then taking Saturday for cross training before taking a long run on Sunday. At some point this week we might go to Philadelphia to get our wedding bands and we have a few other things that we need to take care of as well. I'm going to try to talk her into going to see the Dark Knight with me or going to the Maryland Renaissance Festival (we've been talking about going all year so this would be a great time to go and people watch. Those actors take the festival REALLY seriously!). Should be a good end of the week!