We Made It!

After a bright but quickly burnt out start half a year ago, our team regrouped and rallied this weekend to make it all the way up to the top of le olde Carew!

Our team raised a bit over $300 for the American Lung Association.  We also burned our lungs out hauling ourselves up those stairs!

The Clean Air Climbers ready to climb!

After a good half hour prepping a playlist and half a minute stretching, we were ready to go!  For the second year, we brought the party with a soundsystem and funky playlist.

What Rebecca keeps calling "the sound system"... A cheap speaker in a PAC bag hooked up to an old iPod.

We won't know our official times for a bit, but we estimate it was something like 13-14 minutes.

Our "official Red Face photos" - post climb & catching our breath...

For the record, we all signed up for next year.  So, we'll have to keep this blog going and actually write in it more than once a month...

One more team photo on the way out.  Back in our civvies and showing off our medals!

It's fundraising time!

We are just a few weeks away from the Carew Tower climb.  The American Lung Association wants us each to raise $100.  That means we need about $10 in donations each day per climber for the rest of the month.

If you can spare $5-10, click the following link and donate to one of our climbers until they reach $100.

Thank you!!!!!

Donate to Jen

Donate to Chris

Donate to Rebecca

We've got the book again...

Rebecca  and I picked up the Climbing the Stairs of Cincinnati book last night from the library.  We hope to update the blog soon with the other 4 sets of stairs we completed last fall.

Stay tuned!

Preview of Walk #5: Prospect Hill

Our fifth walk took us into new territory:  Anywhere but Mt. Adams!  We started in Over the Rhine, wandered through Prospect Hill National Historic District to the peak of Liberty Hill in Mt. Auburn and back down to OTR.  The walk involved an increase of steps over what we'd grown used to in Mt. Adams -  which is probably good since we're supposedly doing this to prep to climb Carew Tower.

Here are some of the fun facts we learned along the way:

• Around the time George and Mary Alice Pendleton built their house which is the sole mansion at the peak of Liberty Hill in Mt. Auburn (the time of which the book neglected to mention), the area was called the "Northern Liberties."  The book explains that the CIty's tax laws ended at Corporation Alley, right on the edge of the neighborhood.
• The area has another historical nickname:  "Dr. Daniel Drake, founder of the University of Cincinnati medical college, referred to Prospect Hill as "Mount Poverty" because when he moved into a log cabin on what is now Milton Street, it was quite rural and he was quite penniless.  Again, no time frame given.
• There's an important set of ruins on the tour:  "At the pinnacle of the Young Street Steps... take note of the view and the broken monument at the peak of the steps.  During the mid-1880s, the Hamilton County Courthouse was destroyed by fire.  The only thing that survived was a spectacular ornate marble archway, which was moved to this site.  It stood here until 1965, when all but this column base was toppled in a car accident."
  We're pretty sure we saw the view, but not the base.  Thanks, car accident!  Sheesh.
• We may not have found the column base, but we found two other cool things:  A park with a sweet jungle gym; God's Bible School & College.  We'd never known of either before.
• Folks at the two-and-a-half story Mt Auburn House made somebody really busy for a long time.  The owner of the  house - Henry Martin - also owned the Mount Auburn Cable Railway observed the Sabbath by transferring the title of his railway every Saturday night and resumed ownership every Monday.
• According to the book, the William Howard Taft National Shrine (author's name for it, not its real name) - which just happens to be the birthplace of our 27th president - is the smallest and least visited national park in the entire United States!  I'll admit, the only thing that stuck with me about Taft from grade school is that he got stuck in a bathtub.

Update to the brunch walk

If you are thinking of joining us for the walk to the PIP / Venice on Vine Brunch this Saturday, we've changed the time we are meeting.  If you would like to come, please meet us at 11:00 (instead of 11:30).  Rebecca and I have to be done by 1:00 so we thought we'd start a little earlier.

The details on the walk are here: http://cleanairclimbers.blogspot.com/2010/09/special-walk-1-plan-walk-to-pip.html

Walk #4: Science Stroll

Our fourth walk out of Walking the Steps of Cincinnati was our fourth and last in Mt. Adams. Despite our fourth time being there, we still learned and saw things we hadn't in walks one, two, and three.

As usual, you can see the route we took and Chris' snapshots from the trip at SportsTracker.  We record this all on Chris' Nokia 5800 Xpress Music phone on the Cincinnati Bell network.

We initially planned to start the walk about two-thirds of the way through the given path:  We walked from Hoxworth Blood Center where we'd just donated to the intersection of Court & Broadway downtown.

Heads-up for here on out:  The fingers show you which walk we're on. :)

Check out the rest of the walk after the break!

Special Walk #1 Plan: Walk to the PIP Fundraiser Brunch 9/19 11:30

EDIT:  If you've read this before 9/13, we've changed the time we are meeting.  We will now meet at 11:00 AM 

Want to join us for a short walk, eat a great all you can eat brunch, and raise money for one of our favorite local charities?  This is the walk for you!

First...about this walk.
Meeting location:  Bandstand in Burnett Woods
Meeting time:  11:00 AM, Sunday September 19th.  (Don't be late.  We'll be hungry and ready to get to brunch!)
Walk plan:  We'll walk down and up a couple small sets of stairs in Burnett woods.  From the park we'll cut through UC's campus and hike a few small staircases as we make our way to Corryville Catholic School's cafeteria.  This should be a short walk of less than 1 mile with only a few small staircases to navigate.

Now...about the brunch!
Power Inspires Progress, the organization behind the restaurant, Venice on Vine, is holding their annual all-you-can-eat brunch fund raiser.  PIP / Venice on Vine's focus is on taking persons who are living in poverty and helping them break the cycle by providing them job skills that will help them move from being labeled as unemployable to working a job that provides a living wage.  They deliver on this mission by training persons in their program to operate their fully functional restaurant, Venice on Vine.  In addition to providing real experience working in a restaurant, they also are aided in achieving educational goals through mentoring and tutoring.

While the Venice on Vine restaurant provides a portion of the funding required to run this organization, they continue to need additional funds to tutor and mentor their trainees.  To help cover their costs, PIP/Venice on Vine hosts an annual fund raiser brunch featuring an all-you-can-eat menu of waffles, goetta, sausage, ham, eggs, muffins, fruit, potato pancakes and more!  The cost to attend is only $12.50 in advance or $15 on the day of the event.

Even if you can't join us for the walk but would like to attend the brunch and support this great organization, please do!  You can read more about the brunch and purchase your advanced reservations on their website  http://powerinspiresprogress.com/.