John Wolf, a local college student and avid biker, recently got in touch about a biking blog he’s started to promote the sport in the area. He sent us a nice letter promoting the blog, and the blog itself is very nice and a very good idea.

It’s nice to see that with Ross Dangel’s Freedom Trail apparently squashed by the bureacracy, someone else might be taking up the cause of making it reasonable, smart, and safe to bike, or even walk, from Sykesville to Eldersburg. Or at least from Eldersburg to Eldersburg.

So here’s the Freedom Area’s best biking blog, and here’s the letter.

Picture this: You are hanging out at your house near the MacBeth Way/Slacks intersection and figure you need to run to the grocery store and cleaners. You gather your canvas bags for the store, your clothes to be pressed, and head out on your bike. You turn out of your drive and begin riding toward Liberty Road on MacBeth. You keep straight on MacBeth until it dead ends, but you take the multi-use trail that has been made to connect the other side of MacBeth.

You turn right onto Georgetown Town Road and then make a left into the shopping center with the grocery store and cleaners. The parking lot is packed because it is 4:15 pm and everyone is doing the same thing you are, but you are on your bike. You zip through the lot, snag a premium parking spot at the bike racks right near the door of the cleaners. You run in, drop off your clothes and are on your way to the grocery store.

Bread, produce and Clif Bars loaded, you place your canvas sacks into your Pannier bags, secure them, and you are off. Riding back down Georgetown to MacBeth you see a few familiar faces and wave to them as they ride in the opposite direction. One last turn onto the multi-use trail from MacBeth and you are home.

You have just taken an ordinary errand and made it unique. You have been able to significantly reduce your carbon emissions and carbon foot print, you have had a good dose of exercise, you have spent no money on fuel, you have had very little impact on city roads (which comes out of your pocket in taxes), you have increased the life of your automobile, you have reduced traffic congestion, you have reduced your stress levels, your mood is significantly better, you were able to interact with other community members, and you have, most likely, completed that errand faster than if you had done it by car given that it was done during rush hour.

Sound realistic?

Not so much given the lack of safe cycling lanes and multi-use paths in our area. This can become a realization if we get on our bikes and let our local representatives know that this is the way we want to live/get around in the Eldersburg/Sykesville/Freedom Area(s).

My name is John Wolf and I am a resident of the Eldersburg/Sykesville/Freedom Area(s) of over 15 years. I enjoy riding bikes and I believe that bikes can do a lot for our community. Now, I would like to make a few things clear: I am in no way against automobiles and I understand that riding is not for everyone. I am simply writing to advocate for alternative forms of transportation in our area.

For this reason, I created a blog titled Freedom Area Cycling Opportunities (http://fac21784.blogspot.com/). The blog is being used to keep the Freedom Area Community up to date with current cycling topics around the Freedom/Eldersburg/Sykesville area(s), our county, and our state. My hope is that the blog will act as a discussion and information hub for anyone (cyclist or not) interested in this topic.

Please feel free to visit it and contribute constructively. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
John Wolf

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Wow, if my calculations are correct, and if the Carroll County Times is correct, a new chicken operation of some sort moving into Taneytown will send somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 chickens to their death over the next ten years.

And they’re not even for eating.

Rather, they’ll lay eggs, and when their 65 week “life cycle” is over they’ll be “taken to a rendering plant to be made into pet food.” Rendering, of course, meaning killed, chopped up, and packaged to feed our dogs and cats. Not all will be so lucky, though. If they die before their day of rendering, they’ll be incinerated on the premises.

So Carroll County’s getting an incinerator after all.

And of course, if you consider the living conditions of the chickens, 14,000 packed into a room for 65 weeks, maybe an early incineration is the way to go.

SPF Sentinel Hens

Here’s how it works according to the Times.

The company was originally planning to build two hen houses, each 189-by-135-feet, to house 14,000 hens each, with the possibility of expanding by two more buildings of similar size in the future, Studyvin said.

However, costs for the project were higher than expected, he said, and in late December the work was put on hold while the plans could be revised and scaled back. The new plan is to build just one building with three rooms, he said. A flock of 14,000 hens will be on each end of the building, he said, with the center room serving as a nursery to raise chicks from birth to about five weeks, when they would be ready to move into the next room for the rest of their duration at the facility to lay eggs.

Each flock of 14,000 hens has a life cycle of about 65 weeks, he said. At the end of that time, the flock will be taken to a rendering plant to be made into pet food. The nursery within the building would have a younger flock ready to take their place, Studyvin said, so for about a five-week overlap each year, there could be as many as 42,000 birds in the building at one time.

[read more...]

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That’s what a lot of you were probably wondering. There was ice. There was fog. Sidewalks were slippery.

So we asked. Here’s the response from Steve Guthrie, Superintendent of Carroll County Public Schools .

It’s an interesting response, thorough, and somewhat reassuring. I’m wondering, though, does it always make sense to make the decision county wide? Aren’t conditions sometimes more severe locally?

Thanks for expressing your concern. There is no question that it was a difficult decision this morning. Please understand that four Transportation Services Department officials were on the roads this morning from 3:00 a.m. to 5:00 am. to survey the roads. Each section of the county was driven to determine if the roads were properly prepared for the weather. Transportation Services Department staff was in constant contact with weather stations, county and state government staff, police, and transportation officials in other counties, as well as each other, during the road and weather assessment.

While on the road, the following factors were used to develop the recommendation today’s decision to open on time:

• Existing road conditions across the entire county.
• Amount of snow and ice that has accumulated, whether it will continue, and the amount of time required for road crews to clear county roadways.
• Air temperature and road temperature.
• Weather predictions – the school system prefers not making a decision based on weather predictions, which are not always accurate; however, weather predictions are considered in combination with existing conditions.
• School parking lots, school sidewalks and school bus loops.
• Other traffic – other traffic can slide into buses or make waiting at bus stops dangerous.
• Will observed conditions likely improve or deteriorate?

Yesterday, our maintenance crews visited every school in the county to make sure that all parking lots and sideways were properly prepared for schools to open today on time. In addition, we re-salted the schools at 5:00 am. this morning ensure that we would be ready for bus and vehicle traffic.

My crews reported to me that our roads and school parking lots were ready for school to open on time. I understand the Federal Government did delay opening their offices last night in anticipation of inclement weather. However, I cannot make a determination about school in Carroll County for a decision that is made mostly in response to traffic conditions in Washington D.C.

Thanks again for writing to express your concern. I understand that not everyone agrees with the decision to open, close, or delay the opening of school.

Stephen H. Guthrie
Superintendent of Schools
Carroll County Public Schools

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Well, if you live in Sykesville, you know that a bunch of kids have created their own skateboard park near the entrance to town at South Branch Park in what is actually Howard County. Town government has decided to do something about it. Or at least talk it over. I’ve heard there are some liability concerns.

Is this the end for the skateboard park or the beginning?

The Mayor and Town Council have decided to form a committee to discuss it, and they’re looking for skateboarders or anyone else interested in joining. The mayor is personally involved and wants you to contact him at 410-795-8959 or mmiller@sykesville.net if you are interested.

It’s nice that these kids have taken an abandoned bit of concrete and turned into a good way to have fun, and I’m hoping the town will support them and actually help improve it. I’ve emailed the mayor on the issue and I’ll let you know what he says.

It’s actually historic Sykesville ground

While I’ve got your attention, let me point out that where the kids are skateboarding is actually important ground in Sykesville history. You can get the details in our big story on James Sykes. But if you’ve ever wondered about that old building, which the town recently renovated a bit, it used to be a house.

James Sykes ran the Howard Cotton Factory here, and he built 12 houses for his workers. Everything on the site that originally belonged to Sykes was either burned or washed away in flood, but this lone worker house, one of the original 12, still survives as a monument to the town’s founder.

Howard County’s architectural historian, Ken Short, recently evaluated the building in great detail and wrote: “The surviving stone building is clearly domestic, and must have been workers’ housing for the Howard Cotton Factory.” He continues that it “is set up to have cooking facilities and cellar storage in the basement, with living and sleeping space on the first story.”

Short says an 1858 ad for the sale of the whole site mentions 12 houses for factory workers, and he’s convinced this is one of them. Some people thought this might have been Sykes’s office, or even his house, but he had a much nicer house and it burned in 1870. Sykes had a lot of bad luck and is actually a tragic figure.

So it’s an old house on old ground. Who knows? Maybe two hundred years from now, some local residents will be talking about the old historic Sykesville Skateboard park built back in 2012 by a bunch of teenagers looking for fun.

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