This past Sunday afternoon, I asked my wife if she wanted to hop on her bicycle and ride a little while with me, and so we did.

I wanted to wheel away from the election news, having had my fill of the TV talking heads and the print pundits. I wanted to glide back into the real world. So while my wife’s parents watched our kids, she and I rode for miles.

Plenty of others had the same idea. We biked down the hill to reach the Allegheny River Trail that runs along the North Shore, and found a stretch alive with bikers, walkers and joggers, a scene that was a world apart from the lonely shore it had been when I moved to the North Side 18 years ago. Read more»