Every Library test trip

So back a few years ago, I pondered visiting every library in Hamilton County. I have revisited that off and on a few times, and while I was off on vacation this past week decided to give it a test ride.

The reasoning was to see how well the directions held up, how fast I could ride (approximately) with traffic and such, as well as test how long it took me to get in the library, check out a book, and get back on the road.

I left my house around 2:00 or so. Plan was to go to 7 libraries and then meet up with the fam at the end. A little something like this.


I set off and got to the Madisonville library right away. Coming down the hill was interesting. I mean going fast is nice, but you never want to get TOO fast. I've never been one of those guys that can just get super fast without worrying about falling. There were a few patches of gravel on the road which got me a bit nervous. I was up to about 35 mph coming down the hill.

So, as I got going, I realized I had forgotten a few things. This tends to happen to me when I just go without really focusing and planning on everything. Forgot my sunglasses, forgot sunscreen (it was hot and sunny), any water, my bike lock and perhaps most importantly, I forgot any type of carrying case for the books that I was going to check out. My plan had been to just check one book out at each library, and then returning it at the subsequent library. But that still meant I had to carry a book on the bike with me.

So I got to the Madisonville library and hurried to check out a book. There were a few hooligans hanging out by the front door, but I hoped that I wouldn't be in there long enough for anything to happen, and I was right. I grabbed a small paperback, checked out, and headed on the road. Left on Madison and headed towards Oakley. Got in there, parked my bike by the front door and went in.

It was annoying there because there was this kid at the checkout desk asking abou drawing books and the librarian was helping him (fine) and then she offered to show him where some of the books were. And I waited... and waited... it was probably 3-4 minutes of me standing in line waiting to check out a book. (No self checkouts there). Eventually I made my way back down Madison towards Hyde Park. There was a lot of road construction there, but I managed to find my way to the Hyde Park library without a problem.

Again no self checkouts at Hyde Park and I had to wait for a bit. When I went to checkout, the librarian said that she had seen me on her way to work while on my bike on Whetsel. Good times! I was right in Hyde Park Square and did not realize that I was supposed to turn right onto Edwards. So I missed the turn and had to circle back (onto Mooney if you're falling along). I went past Rookwood and past I-71 and into Norwood. I turned left onto Williams and then right onto a different Madison.

But then, tragedy struck. I got a flat tire :-(. I tried to pump it back up but it definitely had a hole in it. I got out my patch kit. I had a really hard time trying to get the tire off the rim but eventually got it but either my kit was too old and not working, or I was not doing it right, but I could not get it going.

So I called Carolyn and had her come pick me up. The baby was still sleeping but we agreed to meet up in Norwood somewhere. I started walking that way. I found a penny on the sidewalk as I was walking, so you know it's good times. And then I got thrown out of Kroger.

But things went well - I had about a 14-16 mph average and it was taking about 1-3 minutes per library.

One annoying thing was that the receipts on a normal checkout don't have a timestamp on them. It does appear that the self checkouts have a timestamp, but I really wanted to get timestamps for each one just as kind of a record of the trip.

But I think that it makes things possible. I believe the shortest distance was 121 miles. If I could keep up a 14mph pace (which I think would be tough over that long) that would be 8 hours and 38 minutes. Then if I could average 2 minutes per stop, that's 42 * 2 or 84 minutes (1 hour 24 minutes). That's about 10 hours. I have 11 hours to do it from 10 to 9 (possibly 12 hours if I start at the Main library which opens at 9).

Or I could always hope the library levy fails and they close a few branches :-)

Every State Highpoint

It has come to my attention that there is a group of folks attempting to visit every highpoint in the lower 48 states in 3 weeks.

Apparently the record (PDF) is held by a Brit - Jake Meyer at 23 days, 19 hours, 31 minutes.

Though in looking at these guys' website, the challenge has been called off for reasons that are currently unclear. Hopefully they will post something soon and hopefully everyone is okay.

Here are a few pics from our recent trips to Campbell Hill (Ohio) and Hoosier Hill (Indiana).



This was the log book - we got there about 1:00 p.m. but there had already been 2 people visiting before us that day!


Picture of the fam.


After doing the grueling climb up Campbell Hill (in our van :-) ), we headed west to Hoosier Hill. The Indiana state highpoint is a bit less well marked.


Here is the turnoff off of Elliot Road. We passed it because there was no sign or anything. We went down to the (north) end of the road and saw the signs for the highpoint pointing back this way so we made it. Apparently it used to be even more nondescript before 2005 when an Eagle Scout fixed it up as his Eagle project.

Carolyn showing her true joy upon reaching the summit.

And here she is, "pretending" to be angry about being forced to detour out of her way to visit this great site.

So 2 down, 48 to go!!!!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 10

It's been really hot in Houston. We generally are over - or at least flirt with - a 100+ degree heat-index every day. But even so, David kept bugging me to get out and do another bike ride. So we did a "short" 27 mile one and nabbed two Super Neighborhoods. See map.

David let me wear his cycling jersey just so I could check it out. I have to say, not having to wear a backpack definitely cooled things down.

We zipped through familiar neighborhoods and got a little turned around on the way to the first stop, so I decided to wing it. We came across this sign for #32 Braeswood Place:


Not my most attractive picture.

We again kind of winged it over to the Astrodome (which we could see almost all the way from where we stopped in Braeswood. We took a fun yet bumpy route along the bayou and then overshot our turn. We came to the back entrance of Reliant Center and the guard wouldn't let us cut through. So we went around to the Reliant Stadium side, hoping it would say "Astrodome" somewhere, but there was another guard station. So we rode allllll the way around to the east side of Reliant Center and the only sign we could see was actually on the Astrodome itself, way in the distance. We asked the guards if we could just go in to take a picture, and they said they couldn't let us, and even if they could, no photography was allowed (huh?). So we just took the best pic we could get using a cell phone camera:

Guards wouldn't let us get any closer

Even though it's blurry, you can just barely make out that it says Reliant Astrodome. Not to mention: I'm in front of the freaking Astrodome. So there you have it, #34 Astrodome.

So that was the last one for the day. Just for fun we rode back through downtown and along the Buffalo Bayou trail. It was getting pretty darn hot when we got back around 9:30am.

So my total is up to 270.1 miles and 58 out of 88 Super Neighborhoods.

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 9

Wow, it's hard to believe I've been on 9 trips now. Only 4 more to go after this one! Follow along on the map. Sorry it took so long for the update (the ride was on May 31st), but I had a lot of personal stuff I had to take care of.

I had a social gathering at my place the night before the trip, so Drew slept in our guest room rather than driving back to his place, then all the way back early in the morning. A new cyclist to these trips, David, also joined us, all dressed in his fancy MS150 gear.

The forecast was good, but still kind of hot. I made sure to bring sunscreen, and our first stop was at Kroger to stock up on Gatorade. After all, it was going to be around a 45-mile trip.

The first stop was not too far from home on Ella Blvd., to see this sign in #12 Oak Forest/Garden Oaks, saving us a trip to Oak Forest Elementary.



We continued on Ella straight north (which became Wheatley) until we came across the Acres Homes Center in #6 Acres Homes.



I was worried about the next super neighborhood, Hidden Valley. I spent a long time researching online and couldn't find anything bearing it's name. Even Hidden Valley Elementary School changed its name to Jones Elementary. There was a road that went through called "Hidden Valley Dr.," so I figured, worst case, I could get a shot of the street.

When we got there, we hit Hidden Valley Drive and I had an idea to go to the edge of the Super Neighborhood, on Hidden Valley Drive, to see if there was a "welcome" sign. We drove all the way down Hidden Valley to the freeway, and didn't see anything. Admitting defeat, I said we'll just go back and take a photo of the road sign. And wouldn't you know it, on the way back, completely covered by branches, was a sign for #7 Hidden Valley.



Greenspoint was our next stop, and it is (luckily) very oddly shaped. We crossed over to the other side of I-45 and went up the back road to Greenspoint Furniture in the very bottom skinny section of #2 Greater Greenspoint.



I think the next stretch was one of our longest (intentional) stretches without a single super neighborhood. We went along West Rd to Veteran's Highway, then crossed the beltway for the first time ever on these trips (Beltway 8 is about a 28 mile diameter loop around downtown Houston). 11.8 miles later, we were at Willowbrook Mall to grab #1 Willowbrook.



Willowbrook is one of the three disconnected areas of Houston; we were driving through unincorporated Harris County for nearly all of those 11.8 miles. The other two disconnected areas are the IAH Airport, and the Kingwood/Lake Houston area. I'll be doing both of the other two in the same, final trip.

By this point we were getting pretty hungry, so while on the way to the next one, we kept an eye out for donut shops. We drove south on Gessner. When we got back to the Beltway, we were stopped at a red light and Drew and David were behind me. I noticed it was clear (but still red) and so I went. They guys started yelling at me so I looked back and saw a cop car follow behind me through the red light. He looked at me through the window and gave me a "are you stupid?" look and kept on going. While I stopped and waited for Drew and David to catch up, the cop turned around twice, turned his loudspeaker on, and said (without stopping) in a heavy Texas accent: "Can y'all hear this?". We stopped and nodded as he was driving past. As he got close to us he said "Y'all don't be running red lights now!". We said "OK, sorry!" back to him even though it was obvious he couldn't hear us. It ended up being a running joke for the rest of the ride.

My guess for the reason he didn't write me a ticket is because he was an HPD officer and we were technically outside the city limits. So he would have had to stop us and call a Sheriff's Deputy over just to write us a ticket for running a light on a bicycle.

But moving on, after a few turns and two shut-down donut places, until we were on Antoine. Right after we turned on Antoine, I saw this:



It was not scheduled, and I still felt like we were out of the city limits (I later found out I was right), so I decided to keep an eye out for another Inwood.

After we stopped to take a photo, I found myself extremely fatigued and hungry. My chest was tight and I felt overheated. Before we took that photo, I sat on the ground for about 5 minutes to recover. It was very hot and humid at this point, and we had already gone 30 miles and I hadn't eaten, so I was not in a good place.

After the photo, we rode down to the next light and found another shut-down donut shop (I guess people in this area don't eat donuts?). I went to the convenience store instead and got some more gatorade and a snack. I told the guys I really needed to eat, and so we went over to a little taco trailer in the parking lot of the gas station across the way. The cashier didn't speak English, but we did the best we could. It was really great Mexican food, but not as good as the tacos I had on Trip 6.

After finishing eating, hydrating and applying another coat of sunscreen, we pressed on. I found my "backup" for #5 Greater Inwood at the Inwood Forest Golf and Country Club (which is really the one that counts).



We went all the way down Antoine to Hwy 290 and got even more Gatorade (did I mention it was hot?). We did a very quick jaunt the wrong way on the frontage to get to the Langwood Neighborhood (the one that we barely missed all the way back on Trip 4). This time we got this sign in front of Langwood Park to finally get #11 Langwood.



It was a pretty uneventful ride home after that. We stopped by Cedar Creek Cafe (since Onion Creek wasn't on the way) and had our traditional celebratory beer.

So 7 more Super Neighborhoods and 44.3 more miles down. That puts me at 56 out of 88 super neighborhoods and it looks like the number of miles is up to 243.4 total across all trips. Wow! After this trip, I'm past the original estimate to do all the super neighborhoods in one trip by car (210-220 miles). It's hard to believe that we still have about 210 more miles to go!

Soccer Golf #2

Last Friday, Doug, Randy and I attempted round 2 of Soccer Golf. For those of you too lazy to click on that link, it basically consists of kicking a soccer ball from point A to point B, and counting the number of kicks that it takes. Every time that you touch the ball it counts as a stroke. There is also a 5 stroke penalty if you go into an unplayable situation (e.g. in a creek, in a tree, etc).

This time we did the same course as before, but went in the opposite direction, from work to Randy's house. While Randy and I waiiiiiiiiiited for Doug to show up, we did a few practices on the patio to see what kind of strategies we wanted to make for making it into the back field.

But it didn't really help much. We started off okay, navigating the patio and pathway and making our way to the bridge. We had all agreed that it was extremely risky to try and clear the ravine with a long kick. I was the only one who had attempted to cross the ravine going the opposite way. That way you at least have a slight elevation downhill advantage, and it still took me a chip shot from inside the ravine.

So we got to about 5 or 6 kicks. Randy was first to cross the bridge, and he gave it a pretty decent sized kick, only to find that the bridge had a little lip on it - his ball hit the lip and then bounded high in the air and went down into the ravine. He chose to not take the 5 stroke penalty but instead kicked his ball back out of the ravine and then over the bridge (more carefully this time). Doug made it across the bridge without a problem. I thought I was being careful but ended up hitting the lip too. My ball went further into the ravine, so I decided rather than taking the 5 stroke penalty or kicking back that I would play through. I think that ended up being the best move - it only took me 3 or 4 strokes to make it across to the other side of the bridge.

But Doug was already several strokes ahead of us at this point, a lead he would not relinquish. The next segment was going across the field, a place I was at a disadvantage due to my poor soccer skills. Then we crossed "Eastern Column" and moved on the south side of the street onto Innovation.

Aaaaannnnd let's just say there is a lot more traffic on Innovation at 4pm on a Friday than there was at noon.... We definitely had to evade a few cars, and one guy even shouted out the window "How stupid are you?", an epithet that we chose not to answer. At one point, Randy got his ball stuck on the side of the road, and there was a girl riding her bicycle, and a big semi truck coming, so he chose to take the 5 stroke penalty so as to avoid any unfortunate accidents.

That put him about even with me, with Doug 3 or 4 strokes ahead. We made it onto the service road (see the previous post if you want a map) and I made some good kicks here. It was definitely tricky getting the right combination of momentum to keep the ball rolling with not wanting to go too far into the underbrush.

We also noticed that Duke (or someone) had cut down the trees that separated the access road from the back of Randy's development, so that made things a lot easier. At this point we had to navigate our way around a ravine / stream, and I tragically went in. Well, my ball went in, but then I went in after it. Got real muddy and wasted probably 3 or 4 strokes chipping out.

Then it was just down the residential streets and onto Randy's porch. I believe the final score was Doug 72, Randy 75, Dan 80 (I 2-putted onto the porch).

We have decided that for our next course, we are going to go to a local disc golf course and try that out. We all agreed that Innovation was too busy for our needs.

All in all, it was a lot of fun!

Bicycling 48 states in 48 days

So I was tipped off to a guy who is bicycling the lower 48 states and aiming to do it in 48 days.



That's the basic route, from a local newspaper article. He is from Ohio actually - near Dayton.

His website is http://www.go48in48.com/ but it's not up and running just yet.

It is about 8100 miles, so he has to do 165-170 miles a day, which should be quite daunting!!!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 8

I haven't really been biking lately since my bicycle was stolen last month, but I fitted my wife's bike and decided to start the trips up again. Since it's been 6 weeks since I've done one of these, I decided this would be a good time to do a shorter trip to revisit the South Park Super Neighborhood that I missed last time.

Both Drew and I had late nights last night, we decided to start at 8am instead of the normal 6:30. I got up and checked the weather and found it was perfect for a bike ride. 69 degrees and a cloud cover that would keep it 70 degrees for hours. After waiting about 40 minutes for Drew, I decided not to waste the great weather and to head out by myself with the tripod. Here's the route I took.

If it looks like I made a lot of wrong turns, I did. My printer is out of ink so I was just winging it. Everywhere I was going I felt I knew pretty well, and I just took roads that looked good.

It didn't make sense to me to go all the way to South Park without getting a few other auxilliary SNs, so I rode through the Hermann Park area on the way. It was a straight shot south to Rice University in #28 University Place


The oldest university in Houston, established 1912

For some reason I thought Hermann Park (right across the street) was a Super Neighborhood, so I snapped this photo:


You can make out Mr. Hermann in the background

Just a block further down, I was in the Medical Center, and came across this sign for #33 Med Center


Houston has the best cancer treatment centers in the nation

Now that the easy part was over, I rode over to South Park. I decided to give the MacGregor bike trail a try and was greatly impressed. It was all freshly paved and there were not many road crossings. I was flying!

After going a little too far and backtracking to Cullen to get across I-610, I turned on Bellfort and saw a dead horse laying in the median... It really smelled too as I passed it; it must have been there a while.

Anyway, I continued on to my destination, the South Park Child Redevelopment Center. As I got closer, I saw a giant for lease sign and no others. I decided to ride up to the entrance and see what I could see, and luckily this sign was still outside, for #72 South Park


It looked like the vacated pretty abruptly, there were still notices to parents on the door

I saw a sign for South Park Baptist Church, and I thought it would make a better picture


I may look upset because I was having angle issues

I rode back up to the MacGregor path, then my plan was to go north on another new bike path until I got to Binz, which of course take me to the Binz Super Neighborhood. When I got to Alabama, I knew I was waaay off. So I cut over to Midtown and then went back south.

Binz was a super neighborhood that I could not find any businesses bearing its name online. Really no one calls this area Binz, it's considered the eastern edge of the Museum district (which is also not a super neighborhood). Binz also has the disadvantage of being very small. I figured if I was going to see anything, it would be along the tiny stretch of Binz Rd. that runs through the southern edge.

Normally I discourage myself from taking photograhps of street addresses, but I made an exception in this case because it was just so colorful and unique. Not to mention I couldn't find anything else. So here is #66 Binz:



I tried panoramic to get all the wording, but for some reason it didn't focus.

After Binz, it was a pretty uneventul ride home, basically taking the same route I took to get out there. So after these 4 new Super Neighborhoods, it puts me at 49 out of 88 Super Neighborhoods. It took me just over three hours and was 31.0 miles long.