This Happy Ending, pictured above, is the repaving of Denver Avenue South in South Seattle as it intersects with South Lucile Street. The railroad tracks--the very ones that grabbed my front tire one rainy morning on my way to work years ago and threw me arms first into the pavement--are ended! The remaining tracks in the foreground are on private property and are not part of the street proper. All the tracks, and there was a wild splaying of tracks, are gone excepting the one below which is still a very active track coming into and out of the railyard.
And as you can see in the photo above, that remaining crossing is relatively smooth now.
Looking the other way, away from that remaining track, is this view of smooth pavement on Lucile, a delight to ride now.
This nondescript building is home to the Georgetown Brewing Company at 5200 Denver Avenue South. They moved here a year or so ago, and it is my hunch that their moving into the neighborhood might have been contingent on the City's cleaning up the nasty railroad remnants. I have no evidence, but I'm betting that once again Beer and Bicycles just have this karma. They are naturally intertwined.
One of these days I'm going to stop in at the brewery again and drink a fresh pint while toasting the removal of the tracks that did me in that one slick morning. I'll drift back to that moment as I pulled myself off the pavement, removed the grit from my arms, checked for serious injuries--thankfully none--and recalled asking myself how I took that tumble even though I knew to be careful of railroad crossings, especially in the rain.
I guess knowing to be careful, and being truly careful, aren't necessarily the same things.
Do be truly careful out there, and don't forget to toast our lucky stars:
- to not getting seriously hurt when we otherwise might have, and
- to the offending railroad tracks being ripped from their concrete beds as they slept.
All hail Safe Streets!
Keep it ripped,
CurioRando
