FORT THOMAS/HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, KY
Oct. 15 2008
The Peace Bike, the Eyewitness Cam, and yours truly violated many an Allowed Cloud on this outing southeast of Cincinnati. It was all in good fun, of course. No one got hurt, and America is a better country now because of it!
This video starts out east of campus facing west. We travel through the forbidden zone: After going west, we go northwest on Carroll Drive and south on Kenton Drive. Much of the audio in this clip is muffled, making it appear as if the Peace Bike has a motor.
The day's first challenge against right-wing tyranny was my reclamation of 7th Street in Newport. East of Oak Street, 7th clearly used to be a regular street. For a while, it seems to have been part of the old Incinerator Road (the rest of which is now Wildcat Drive). But now it seems to have been taken over by Newport High School. Not one to let a school conquer a perfectly good road, I took back 7th! Since it's a public school, it's still a public road, right? At the end of the clip, we bop onto Wildcat Drive.
East on Memorial Parkway from Taylor Avenue in Bellevue towards Fort Thomas. The roadway is too congested and narrow for biking, but a bike path that was promised in 2007 was not built. A wide sidewalk that was promised by the summer of 2008 was nowhere near finished in this clip. I poke fun at the government's unresponsive, slothful ways.
Military Parkway is this residential street in southern Fort Thomas. Along the south side of the street though is this beautiful reservoir. For decades, the reservoir had a nice path surrounding it for joggers and walkers. But in the early 2000s, the treason lobby - the types who scream about everyone being a terrorist - had the path closed and put up this fence around it. The fence is dotted with NO TRESPASSING signs, even though the path belongs to the public. It also has signs saying the area is monitored by cameras, but I so dare them to arrest me just for photographing a road.
A better shot of the reservoir and the path that now sits abandoned thanks to Bushism.
East on Military Parkway at Robson. The rook-like structure in the background on the right is the famous old tower at Tower Hill Park.
Going west, Military Parkway trends steeply downhill. This video takes us to the street's dead end. I'm told Military Parkway continued to US 27 in the 1950s or 1960s, but now it's obliterated past its current end.
This video starts out facing north on US 27 near the Highland Heights/Fort Thomas line, but I bip onto Lamphill Drive (which was built in the 1990s or so). The purpose of my detour was to defy the private property sign that graces Lamphill. I did some research, and I'm pretty sure Lamphill Drive is public, so "their" private property sign is meaningless.
Facing north at US 27 & Nunn Drive in Highland Heights. Nunn Drive is the access road for Northern Kentucky University. NKU had been renamed from Northern Kentucky State College in 1976. When this occurred, the school's original name was covered up with the new name on this large concrete sign. But when I took this photo, the old name was visible for the first time in decades!
Although I was expelled from NKU and threatened with arrest for "trespassing" if I showed my face again, I didn't get expelled from Northern Kentucky State College, so I guess the order didn't apply on this day. If they were going to enforce a trespassing order from 1995, let them look stupid. Besides, the university is public, so it's impossible to trespass.
On the south side of Highland Heights is this old section of US 27, which is kind of an oxbow that was replaced by a new stretch in the 1990s. This is looking north. The building with the giant pair of eyeglasses on it was a notable landmark, and I had thought it was long gone, since I rarely use this stretch of road anymore.
Back in Fort Thomas, this is north on South Fort Thomas Avenue, where it has the unusual median with the utility poles. I got a photo of this sign back in 2006, but now someone has changed it from DRUG FREE ZONE to DRUG ZONE!
A video of Covert Run Pike running west from near one end in Fort Thomas almost to the other end in Bellevue! The clip is 9 minutes and is downhill the whole way - so now you know why I never take the Peace Bike uphill on this road. The audio starts out muffled, but the poo-poo slowly works its way out of the microphone. Covert Run Pike was the last of the old-time private toll roads in Campbell County, remaining toll until the 1920s.
The break at the 2:12 mark in the Covert Run Pike video was for this photo. This is facing back east. The END OF COUNTY MAINTENANCE sign looks like it's from about the 1940s.