Every Whatever

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 12

2011-01-19T09:45:00.001-05:00

Ok, I did this one a long long time ago. I just came across the photos and realized I didn't do an update.

We didn't stray much from the proposed map. I realize the map isn't updated, and hopefully I'll do it soon (if I can remember all the detours).

First of all, it was a pretty miserable day. It was warm and drizzling almost the entire time.

I met David at Washington and Heights and we took a familiar route through downtown. Passing through the area East of Downtown, we saw a photo op:

David showing off his muscles

We ate breakfast at a little Mexican place that I can't remember. But it was good!

After going through the Eastwood area, we got to #65 Harrisburg/Manchester:

Still wet and Rainy

Then after going to an Apartment that I thought would say Park Place on it and playing with my nearly dead phone for a bit, we decided to head down main street and found #74 Park Place:

Park Place Apartments

Along the very long stretch of Highway 3, we got #75 Meadowbrook/Allendale:

One day, I'll be living it up here

Further down Hwy 3, we got #79 Edgebrook Area:

It was getting pretty hot and humid by now

After even more Highway 3, we got #80 South Belt / Ellington. This was the entrance to Ellington Field, which is an air force base:

Then finally, at long last, marking the furthest I had ever ridden away from my house, #81 Clear Lake. If I were to ride straight here, the distance would be 22.6 miles for the most direct route:

Unfortunately, we didn't see any local restaurants at all, so we settled for this old-style looking McDonalds (in Clear Lake) before the long trip back.:

It stopped raining, but it was still hot as heck

The marathon is in two weekends, and after that I'm going to get back into cycling. I learned my lesson last year that riding bicycles long distances tightens up the worst possible muscles for distance running, so I decided to give cycling a rest while I was training. Hopefully I'll be back on the bike pretty soon.

There are only two big trips left, the major Southwest Tour and the mother of all trips, the Lake Houston/Kingwood Tour. 16 more super neighborhoods to go!

Atlanta Trip

2010-11-09T08:41:00.003-05:00

So I took a trip down to Atlanta for my friend (and fellow county counter) Jim's wedding. Because I am clearly demented, obviously I could not take the "normal" way to Atlanta (duh).

But I also had Carolyn with me, and in the weeks leading up to this trip, I professed to her that I loved her more than I love counties, so nor could I take the county-cramming-est way either.

Clearly, a compromise of some sort was in order! Also making things easier was that the hotel was not actually IN Atlanta, but more to the NE of town, so I decided to go down 75 to Knoxville and then instead of continuing down 75 to Atlanta, cutting east to go around the mountains the other way and then in to Georgia on I-85 (our hotel was right off I-85).

Things started off well - we set off bright and early Friday morning and headed south. At Knoxville, we took 640 to I-40 East and headed into North Carolina (Haywood County - #1, passing all the signs for all the Gatlinburg / Pigeon Forge attractions that we saw last summer.

I had tossed around a few ideas of ways to go, but in the end, decided that less counties while still following the Law of Conservation of Counties. So we got off the highway on US-74 South. 74 was a nice highway and we made good time. The plan was to take it past Waynesville and then hop on the Blue Ridge Parkway heading south (east?), which I thought would give some nice views and maybe a place to get out and stretch the old legs.

Problem was, when we got there, it was CLOSED! (for the winter I guess). Google did indicate that it was seasonally closed, but I didn't put it together that it would already be closed in early November. Buncha wimps. The big problem is that I didn't have any map / atlas type info with me, nor do I have one of those new-fangled fancy phones. Luckily there was a rest area / visitor information area about 1/2 mile back on 74, so we turned around and stopped in there and picked up a map.

The original plan was to take the Blue Ridge parkway to SC 215 to US 64 to US 178 into South Carolina, but with the parkway closed, we took an audible and continued south on 74 through Jackson NC (#2) and then went south on SC 107 near Sylva, NC. Then in the lovely hamlet of Tuckasegee, we turned on to SC 281.

This was a bad road. I mean, the road itself was okay, but it was just a VERY winding road and Carolyn started to get a little sick from all the switchbacks. Eventually, we made our way through Transylvania NC (#3) over to US 64 and then US 178 which took us into Pickens SC (#4). US 178 was pretty winding as well, but eventually we made it through the clear onto SC 11, which was a nice flat road, which perked up spirits in the car. That took us into Oconee county, which I already had. There was a slight detour onto SC 24 and SC 59 which was supposed to pick up Anderson County, but I messed up the turn at Fair Play.

We got on to 85 South and into Georgia, which picked up Hart (#5), Franklin (#6), Banks (#7), Jackson (#8), Barrow (#9) and Gwinnett (#10).

That was all for the trip there, and while at the hotel over the weekend, I re-examined our route home, to make sure that we would not run into such mountainous conditions. It looked like we were all good, so we continued as planned. Rather than taking 85 South into downtown Atlanta to pick up 75 North, the plan was to head more or less northwesterly, picking up 75 near Cleveland, TN.

We started off on 85N to 985N, picking up Hall (#11). Back on GA 347 West and GA 13 South to GA 20 West into Forsyth (#12). Then on to US 19 / GA 400 which was a nice divided highway, to GA 369 and then GA 9 for Dawson (#13). In Dawsonville, we turned on to GA 53 West, which was a bit of a tricky turn, and probably the most winding of any of the roads of the day (but still nothing like the ones in NC on Friday). GA 53 took us into Pickens (#14) and one (of the many?) "Appalachian Highway(s)" - GA 5 / 515. That was a very solid road which we took for awhile (through already visited counties) till we cut over on GA 136 over to US 411, which we took up into Tennessee and then through Cleveland on to 75.

Here's a subset of my county map, with the new counties on this trip marked in blue. You can see where I messed up Anderson SC - it's the county that would connect the 2 blue segments

Every County in New England in 20 minutes

2010-08-23T10:27:00.008-04:00

Here it is folks - the results of assembling 12,000+ still frames shot over our 26 hour journey to every county in New England into a 20 minute video with corresponding soundtrack.

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, so find yourself a 20 minute block of time, and get some popcorn. Unfortunately, the video here is a little small and blocky due to file size restrictions...

Wheels up +24

2010-08-14T07:48:00.003-04:00

We've just passed the 24 hour mark since taking off on a Cessna from the Vineyard yesterday. It's been an arduous journey, and we're 62 counties and 10,700 images into it, but we've come up short on the (never realistic) goal of completing all New England counties in 24 hrs.

We think we'll wrap up by around 10am, and will have seen some good sights, had some good conversations and plenty of laughs, and then we'll have 6 hours to get home. We were only pulled over once and got a warning, and we haven't hit any wildlife

All in all, we're doing well and thinking of new procedures to incorporate sleep hours in future trips.

It's finished.

2010-08-14T03:26:00.001-04:00

If we told you it took less than 24 hours, you'd believe us, right?

95N.

No sleep til 8 road.

No service!

2010-08-13T17:53:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates from rural, serviceless Vermont. We're through 27 counties, with Rutland coming right up.

We made a big error on 100/155, costing us major pansy time, which is going to be hard to make up.

The sandwiches are receiving rave reviews. And Kevin knows Calvin Coolidge's tomb like the back of his hand. More asap.

Sorry this post is old bad service. Bethel mountain road!

Tweet fail

2010-08-13T12:45:00.002-04:00

So twitter search is having big problems, thus updates on #efnec are not coming through to the website. You can, however, follow @TheDanMiller, @JimTocco, and @DrJayBoston to get updates.

Sorry, I know you're waiting with bated breath.

First mistake

2010-08-13T11:09:00.003-04:00

I'm not going to assign blame to any particular person from Virginia, but we missed Exit 5a off of 95 in RI. This cost us as we had to take 138 N (a slow going road) instead of 165 W into New London, CT. We lost about 8 mins along the way.

Dan's just going to turn up the awesome.

Rhode Island bound

2010-08-13T09:13:00.002-04:00

We are rolling down US6 in the Ford Escape (or similar), 18 minutes ahead of schedule. Let me take this time to explain the photography situation.

First, we have Jim and Jay on the iPhones, tweeting pics throughout. Check the twitter feed (#efnec) and the photos page at http://cns.bu.edu/~jbohland/ne.html.

In addition, we have a webcam hooked to the roof of the Ford Escape (or similar) with an industrial strength suction vise, with USB cable through the passenger window. This camera will be snapping photos every 6 seconds from here on out, about 14,000 in total. We'll make that into a time-lapse video and put it up after we return to Cambridge.

Tune in for further updates.

Charting a course to the Vineyard

2010-08-13T06:28:00.003-04:00

This is Dan (posting under Jay's account).

We had a good night. Yesterday (Thursday) afternoon I got to Jay's office, dropped off my car, and rode the T to the airport (where Jay managed to make us pay 2 fares each), and of course by "make us pay" I mean make himself pay for both of us.

Then we picked up Jim and Kevin at the airport, rented the Escape (or similar) and drove back to Jay's house (on Jay St., of course).

We packed up, and drove to Hyannis. We drove around the traffic circle a few times (Big Ben. Parliament.) and eventually parked the Escape (or similar) at the long term parking lot (backing in of course to save those crucial seconds)

Then we had a friendly Russian cab driver drive us over to the Sleepy Hollow Motor Inn in Woods Hole, where we stayed the night.

4:30 this morning came awful early, and after showering and getting ready, we walked down to the Steamship Authority ferry, which is where we're at right now.

We're using the ship's free wi-fi to post this while we are on the way to Martha's Vineyard (Dukes County). As soon as I finish posting this, we'll be making our way to the front of the exit line so we can hurry and call a cab to take us from the ferry landing to the airport.

Jim is ready with the official time, which will start as soon as we are "wheels up" on our flight to Nantucket. There may not be many updates until we get back as we won't have Internet. But you can check out our progress at the website http://cns.bu.edu/~jbohland/ne.html

Website to track us

2010-08-12T18:20:00.002-04:00

Jay spent the day making a website to track us. It has links to this blog, as well as some Google Latitude tracking us

http://bit.ly/bu3YNx

EFNEC food preparations

2010-08-12T07:57:00.001-04:00

Email from Jay
====
Friends,

Let me announce the food and beverage options for our voyage:

MAIN COURSES:
Buffalo Turkey with Provolone and Romaine on Oat and Honey Whole Wheat
Multigrain (2 available)
Buffalo Turkey with Provolone and Romaine on a hard roll (2 available)
Pepper Crusted Ham with Provolone and Romaine on Oat and Honey Whole
Wheat Multigrain (2 available)
Pepper Crusted Ham with Provolone and Romaine on a hard roll (2 available)
Combo Buffalo Turkey and Pepper Crusted Ham with Provolone and Romaine
on Oat and Honey Whole Wheat Multigrain (2 available)
Combo Buffalo Turkey and Pepper Crusted Ham with Provolone and Romaine
on a hard roll (2 available)
Dimitrio's of Cambridge, MA Cheese Pizza, served cold (8 slices available)

BREAKFAST OFFERINGS:
Assorted mini-muffins (12 available)
Fresh bananas (5 available)
Trader Joe's Reduced Fat Vanilla Yogurt, 6 oz tubs (4 available)

HEALTHY SNACKS:
Assorted apples (3 Granny Smith, 3 Fuji, 2 Pink Lady available)
Dried fruit and nut mix with Cashews, Almonds, Walnuts, Cranberries,
Blueberries (2 lbs. available)
Assorted Shaw's Crunchy Granola Bars (2 Maple Brown Sugar, 2 Peanut
Butter, 2 Oats & Honey available)

LESS THAN HEALTHY SNACKS:
Cape Cod Robust Russet Potato Chips (15 oz available)
Shopper's Value Salted Pretzel Rods (approximately 25 rods available)
Sour Patch Kids Soft and Chewy Candies (14 oz available)
Twizzlers Strawberry Twists (approximately 20 twists available)

DESSERT MENU:
Jen's Homemade Double Chocolate Brownies (approximately 10 available)

BEVERAGE CART (precise quantities to be determined by available cooler space):
Shaw's Natural Spring Water, 12 oz bottles
Adirondack Mandarin Orange Seltzer Water, 12 oz cans
Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry, 12 oz cans
Diet A&W Root Beer, caffeine free, 8 oz cans
Monster Energy Drink, 16 oz cans
Assorted Gatorade sports drinks, 32 oz WIDE MOUTH bottles

p.s. This is on me to make up for all y'all having to fly / travel.
See you tomorrow!

EFNEC route

2010-08-10T20:57:00.002-04:00

So EFNEC stands for Every Freakin New England County. It's the 3rd such trip that we have done, having done Ohio and Alabama previously.

So while the exact route must remain top-secret, for proprietary reasons, I thought I'd share a bit of noodling.

The problem, as I've mentioned before, is the 2 Massachusetts counties that are on islands.

So we'll be starting there by taking a ferry to Martha's Vineyard, then a plane from MV (Dukes County) to Nantucket (Nantucket County) and then another plane from Nantucket back to the mainland.

As a side note, one of my friends was simultaneously jealous when I told her I was going to Martha's Vineyard and appalled when I told her I'd be there for about an hour :-D

After landing in Hyannis, we'll drive west through RI and CT, then north through MA and VT. Upon reaching Grand Isle county in the far northwest of Vermont, we'll head southeast back towards Boston, before taking the final leg of the journey northeast into Maine.

We will end on a "road" that is called "Eight Road". As you might imagine, in some rural areas, there is a fun game to be played called "Is this a road, or someone's driveway?"

We will be attempting to live update from the road both on this blog as well as on Twitter at

http://twitter.com/#search?q=efnec

Happy Trails!

Every County in New England

2010-08-09T17:03:00.001-04:00

So..... it's been awhile since anyone has posted here, right?

To break my silence, I bring you news of an Every Freakin New England County (EFNEC) trip. The problem with New England is that there are 2 counties in Massachusetts (Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard) that are on islands. Total is 67 counties.

In doing calculations, it seemed like there was no way to do the whole thing in 24 hours, so we re-defined the project as 24 hours upon reaching the mainland, which does look doable.

So plans have been made and locked up, and we will be starting with a 6 am ferry to Martha's Vineyard this Friday.

More information coming, including ways on how to follow our adventures.

Every Town in Utah

2010-03-08T08:17:00.001-05:00

My friend Harmony sent me a link to some friends of hers who are blogging their visits to "Every Town in Utah". Not sure how many towns there are there, but that sounds like fun!

http://cnutah.blogspot.com/

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 11 (and 11b)

2010-02-03T11:24:00.005-05:00

Ok, I actually did this trip back in mid-October, and I finished the map right after the ride, but I neglected to do the actual write-up. Since we're doing the big 50-mile Clear Lake trip 12 this weekend, I figured it would be prudent to finally get this written.

This ride was on an absolutely gorgeous day. We started out in the upper 40s and ended in the lower 60s. It may be chilly for just standing around, but it was just about perfect for cycling.

We took a path I've taken many times before when heading west. The first stop was actually a mistake stop in Spring Branch Central, not Spring Branch West:

And here is the picture from Trip 11b, completed in mid-January, which was a make-up trip solely to pick up the #10 Spring Branch West that I missed. It was completely uneventful and didn't deserve it's own writeup, but here is the photo:

[picture to be uploaded tonight]

We took a left on an extremely busy road (Gessner) and was looking for the Memorial Hermann Hospital to pick up #16 Memorial, but instead saw a sign for the Memorial City Mall across the way, which had a much better angle and light:

After taking a nice ride on a fairly fast road all the way through Memorial, past the beltway, we arrived at Highway 6, the furthest distance we've ever gone (as the crow flies). We crossed I-10 and found a giant duck. I took a photo to add to the "me and giant birds" collection:

Then just a block north was our furthest-point destination of #9 Addicks/Park Ten:

Went down highway 6 a bit (an extremely busy and scary road), and zig-zagged our way down a fairly large detour to pick up #17 Eldridge/West Oaks.

I scoured the internet for something that said Eldridge on it that was closer to our intended route, but couldn't find anything. Likewise, when we were at Eldridge and Briar Forest, two fairly large roads, there were shopping centers everywhere, and not a single peep of the word "Eldridge."

A quick jaunt down Briar Forest Drive got us to the Abbey in #18 Briarforest:

We took a quick breather at a convenience store nearby and crossed Westheimer into a very commercial area, and then at Wilcrest and Meadowglen we found #19 Westchase:

Then we barely clipped #20 Woodlake/Briar Meadow, but they were nice enough to put a sign up for us:

After zig-zagging through the Galleria area, avoiding major roads because it's one of the most traffic-ridden areas of Houston and it was getting to be Sunday afternoon (and so all the shoppers and post-church eaters were everywhere). Then, at the very far edge of the neighborhood, we got #21 Greater Uptown:

And after that it was a pleasant ride home on a pleasant day through Memorial Park, with the exception of the flight of stairs we had to carry our bikes up because of construction. Not the best thing when you've already gone 35 miles!

Stay tuned for next week, where we will be doing a very long and very straight ride down to Clear Lake. 66 down, 22 more to go!

Every Library test trip

2009-08-20T13:05:00.005-04:00

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

2009-08-11T10:53:00.005-04:00

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

2009-08-04T14:36:00.008-04:00

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

2009-06-17T13:28:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-03T11:33:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-29T11:31:00.003-04:00

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

2009-05-17T16:24:00.005-04:00

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.

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 7

2009-04-02T11:57:00.006-04:00

Trip 7 went pretty well. We actually clocked in under the expected mileage by a tenth of a mile. The southern Super Neighborhoods (founded after WWII) were really good about having "Welcome to..." signs, which cut out a couple detours.

Mappy mappy

It was a little chilly and windy to start at around 43 degrees; I had to ride one-handed (with one hand warming in my pocket) until the sun really got out. We took a detour through Montrose, Fourth Ward, and Midtown (see Trip 1) so that Drew could catch up on those ones he missed before we started. After that, it wasn't long until we were in the predominantly poor and black neighborhood of #67 Greater Third Ward. It's 80% black, with the other 20% being poor white college students, since the University of Houston is in this neighborhood.

This was the "small" church, the big one was across the street.

An uneventful jog down the road got us to #83 MacGregor, named after the road that runs through it along Brays Bayou. This apartment complex was right on the bayou.

Keep a look at my attire, you'll notice me sheding layers as it gets sunnier

Continuing down Scott, we came across the first of many "Welcome to..." signs to smack us in the face in #68 OST/South Union, which is a much more appealing photo op than the South Union Place Apartments.

I love "Welcome to..." signs. Indisputable proof :)

Continuing on Scott street, which was a fairly busy road with 4 lanes, we again found another "Welcome to..." sign for #71 Sunnyside. This sign saved us about a mile because we didn't have to delve into the neighborhood, we just kept on going down Scott.

After this I had "Keep on the Sunny Side" from O Brother, Where Art Thou? stuck in my head.

Next we zig-zagged through another neighborhood to find South Park Inn, which I later found out was not in the South Park super neighborhood. In fact just on the other side of is the boundary. It was just like that damn church in Trip 4. I'm going to make a special trip back there myself to get it later; it's going to be too far out of the way to do on the Clear Lake trip (Trip 10), since it's right in the middle of the area we covered. It's only an 11 mile round trip from my school, so the next time I go up there to study on the weekend, I'll take my bike to school and do it on a study break.

Stupid South Park

Right after we turned on Airport to #76 South Acres/Crestmont Park was another sign! Luckily the back of the sign also said South Acres (don't ask me why) so we took the photo this way because the sun was pretty bright. (That story would have been a great pun for Sunnyside).

I was double checking the boundary on google maps to make sure it was in it.

"I took a picture of myself so you don't have to"

I'm not buying it :)

This next picture I took snapped because my wife went to a different Sterling High School in the Greater Houston area. Nothing special.

Not Baytown

The next sign I was really worried about. Google Maps showed no businesses at all bearing the Minnetex name. Through a little internet detectiving, I found there was a Minnitex Civic Club just west of Mykawa. When I checked it out on street view, it looked pretty abandoned. But having no other options, we checked it out anyway. I was worried when I pulled up because the sign that appeared on street view was not there. Luckily, it was propped up against the door. So here is the most rural Super Neighborhood in Houston, #77 Minnetex. Only 2,245 people live in the entire region, 5 times less than any other neighborhood I looked at.

I don't think they're meeting anymore.

Long shot of the former Civic Club (built in 1923 as a schoolhouse).

Next up was probably the scariest part of our trip, along Telephone Road. It's a very busy 6 lane divided road with intermittant sidewalks. After snapping this picture for #78 Greater Hobby Area and grabbing some breakfast, we spent about 30 minutes riding fast and praying we didn't get hit from behind. Don't worry, we didn't.

I was looking for Hobby Liquor, but this will do. There were many more signs as well.

After getting off telephone road, we went through a small neighborhood to get #73 Golfcrest.

We took a 5 minute break after this, my legs were really starting to hurt.

About 3 minutes later, we saw the giant sign for the Gulfgate Shopping Center in #69 Gulfgate.

Bad timing on the picture, I look like an idiot

Just for something different, we went through the area we went through during Trip 3, and found a really nice hike and bike trail that took us through most of it. We stopped for a beer again at Onion Creek in the Heights and then went home :)

Total time with breaks (minus Onion Creek) was about 4 1/2 hours and 40.3 miles. We picked up a whopping 9 Super Neighborhoods bringing us past the halfway point with 45 out of 88 Super Neighborhoods. We're going to do a short "make-up" trip this Sunday afternoon so Drew can at least ride through the Super Neighborhoods from Trip 6, then Trip 8 (Willowbrook/Greenspoint) is scheduled for April 19th with Trip 9 (Addicks) shortly after on the 25th.

Every Whatevers

2009-03-10T13:21:00.002-04:00

In an effort to make the site a little easier to navigate, I've tagged each post with a category, then linked to those labels on the left hand side of the website. So now you can not only see what we've done and what we're working on, but you can easily click once to read all posts about that topic.

Enjoy!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 6

2009-03-10T10:25:00.012-04:00

Trip 6 sucked. Let me tell you why. It's a long story.

A quick look at the map will show you how much of a mess it was (I'll throw the pictures in the map later). It was supposed to be 36 miles. It ended up being 51.5 miles.

It started with both people I was going to ride with canceling (both had pretty good reasons), so I had to do the whole thing on my own. It also started with a dead cell phone that I had to charge up a little.

Unfortunately all this meant I needed to bring my somewhat-heavy tripod so I wouldn't get nothing but face pictures, like Trip 1, and my nice camera as a backup in case my cell phone dies. I personally think my face is pretty, but I got a couple complaints about the lack of variety of the pictures.

I decided not to trek down to the bike lane on Lyons and just take Quitman all the way to "take 3" of Northside Village. Quitman actually turned out having a lot of room on the sides for cycling, so I think I'll make it a normal route when I need to go out this way. When I turned on Elysian, it really felt like a poorer neighborhood (see below)

I wonder how they keep them from running away/getting hit by cars?

I turned the corner to get to Northshore Redevelopment Center and saw a lot of homeless-looking people with garbage bags. When I got to the NRC, one of them was singing or yelling or something in my direction, so I decided it would be best not to take the time to whip out my tripod and good camera, so I snapped this one quickly with my cell phone and finally had #51 Northside Village.

I thought it was ironic that this building was for lease...

I went back down to Quitman and zig-zagged through Fifth Ward (where I saw two more Fifth Ward signs I never saw before, so I continued kicking myself for missing this the first time). I crossed I-10 and went the wrong way on Market Street (I was supposed to cross further east). Luckily, I ran into this post office just before the edge of the Super Neighborhood and got #56 Denver Harbor / Port Houston.

Nothing really special here, just a post office

Here is where it went downhill. Up until this point I felt like I could ride forever. Then the nonmoving train happened. I waited at the tracks (while checking my map) for about 5 minutes, then decided to go up to the freeway because it looked like the feeder went under the tracks. When I got up there, I found that the feeder actually dead-ended at the tracks and that in order to go underneath the tracks, you had to get on and off the freeway.

I seriously considered doing that, but my better judgment advised me against it. I even considered throwing my bike between the cars and climbing over, but my better judgment advise me against that as well. I rode to where the feeder dead-ended and started looking for an alternate route, because the train was still 100% completely stopped. It seemed the only way around it was to drive alll the way down Wayside to Clinton. If I didn't need to hit Pleasantville, this wouldn't have been so bad. Just as I was about to head out, the train started moving! (Elapsed time about 20 minutes). I rode down to the original crossing, because that crossing would be clear sooner than the one I was at.

When I got to the crossing, the train stopped, again. This time the end was only two cars away, so I hopped off my bike and carried it around. Two other cyclists who were stuck there had the same idea. When I turned around to look at the train, I saw this weird sign on one of the cabs:

"Do Not Hump"

Apparently they have a train humping problem... Anyway, after that bit of pansy time, I was on my way to Pleasantville.

Pleasantville was a bit of an anomoly. I was riding along, completely surrounded by factories and warehouses, and then all of a sudden, I was in a really nice little 50s neighborhood, complete with a run/bike trail. I pulled out my trivia printout and found out that Pleasantville was just that... formed after WWII and maintined their identity as a neighborhood despite warehouses popping up everywhere. I went to Pleasantville Library and found it had a bad word tagged on it, so I went up half a block to the Pleasantville Elementary school to get #57 Pleasantville Area.

I have an eye on the tiger

After leaving Pleasantville, I was out on the East Loop in a very indusrial-looking area (again). When I hit I-610 I knew I missed something. I looked at my map and apparently this truck docking area was called "Industrial Way" on google maps (see below). It didn't look like a street to me, but it was better than riding on the feeder with no sidewalk, so I cut through it.

Industrial Way

It wasn't much further after when I turned on Mississippi, went under the freeway, and was in #59 Clinton Park / Tri-Community

The elementary school across the way was for lease...

After taking the Clinton Park photo, I went through the Tri-Community area up to Market Street. It was a really really weird layout for a neighborhood (take a look at the map while I explain this). There were 50-foot high levees on either side of the road, and the entire neighborhood was in some sort of weird levee-valley. There was one main road that went all the way through, then each side street was a dead end. The history page says the neighborhood was settled by black men to work at the Port of Houston, and is still predominantly black to this day. It also said that "Large holding ponds containing materials dredged from the Houston Ship Channel are located adjacent to the residential areas. The high earthen dikes surrounding the ponds are distinctive forms on this flat coastal plain. The wetlands created by these dikes offer open space that permanently buffers many residences." Interesting!

Ok, now comes the downhill slope part of my trip. I spent about 2 hours and 15-20 miles in detours just to get the Northshore neighborhood.

It all started when I trusted Google that the name of this park was North Shore park. When I got there, I found that it was called something completely different. I remember checking Google Street View and seeing a sign. While I couldn't make out the words on the sign, it looked like it could have been Northshore. I don't remember what it was called, but it started with an 'S.'

I figure since I'm in the area, I would give the bike path in Herman Brown Park a try, since I was pretty sure it went through to Maxey Road, so I could look for something else that says Northshore on it. While biking through the park, I called Pam and she gave me some info on the best place to find something that says Northshore on it. Turns out the park does not exit to Maxey, so I basically rode aroundin a circle and exited very close to where I entered.

I tried to get over to Maxey, but the roads kept pushing me towards the freeway, until I actually got to the freeway. Where the bayou went under the freeway, there was a bridge on the feeder with no sidewalk. So I had to walk my bike across the bridge, staying as close as I could to the edge, with cars zipping past me at 50-60mph. As soon as I crossed the bridge I took myself back into the neighborhoods and out to Maxey Road.

I took Woodforest out to Uvalde and saw a bus sign that said Northshore on it, so I took a picture as a last resort. I try not to take photos of road signs or bus signs because 1) it makes it too easy, and 2) I don't consider those to be in the super neighborhood, but rather going through the super neighborhood, if that makes sense. Still determined to get something that says Northshore on it, I rode down Uvalde.

Then I found it, at long last, #58 Northshore was complete with Northsore Marine, on the far eastern edge of the map.

This is a mix of really tired and estatic.

On the way back up to Uvalde, I saw Northshore Auto parts :-/ The sign was blocked by a tree the other way and I rode right past it.

Since Uvalde was a busy road with no sidewalk, I tried to take neighborhood roads, but it proved difficult and I ended up on Uvalde anyway. I took a left on Wallisville, picked up a headlight for our car at the auto parts store there, and then stopped for lunch.

The place I stopped for lunch was the highlight of my entire trip. It was a little trailer called "Tacos y Pollos 'El Ray'". You could order one of two items: a bifsteak taco (con y sin queso) or half a chicken. I got two tacos with cheese for $2.50 and they were the best tacos I have had in my life! It came with fajita beef, seasoned to a perfect spicyness, and montery jack cheese. Then you got to put onions and cilantro on it along with a home-made green sauce. And it was all on a hand-made tortilla. It was extremely yummy!

The next leg had even more problems, as there was heavy heavy construction at Wallisville and Lake Houston Parkway. It looked like they were building an overpass. They had all traffic go on a two-lane road with no shoulder, and I tried my best to ride along it, but cars were getting very close to me at 50 mph. I finally got off that part and got #54 Hunterwood.

They must have had high vacancy rate, they were advertising $100 first month and no deposit.

There were no construction workers around, so I took the beat-up closed road back to Wallisville. Other than a 2 foot drop halfway through that I had to step down, it wasn't that bad. By this point, however, I was feeling a little sunburned and very dehydrated. I picked up a gatorade from the conveinence store and continued down the horrible Wallisville sidewalks.

Next up was my horrible judgment call that cost me about 4 1/2 miles. The neighborhood was called El Dorado/Oates Prairie. I was a little skeptical about my scheduled stop at El Dorado Taco, because when I double checked the street view, it just looked like a gas station. I got to Wallisville and Oates and decided to ride up Oates to see if I could find any business with "Oates" on it. That was a big mistake. There was nothing but trucking companies along that road and not one of them was named after the street they were on. I continued alllll the way up to Hwy 90 then took Hwy 90 all the way back to the loop, then took Wallisville alllll the way back to where El Dorado Taco was supposed to be. And there it was... as part of the gas station. El Dorado Taco for #53 El Dorado / Oates Prairie.

You can see the look of self-loathing in my face right now.

So that was it! I got to go home! I was tired and thirsy so I bought another Gatorade and had some Gu for energy. I looked at my map and it looked like Wallisville turned into Libery, which turned into Quitman, which turned into White Oak near my house.

Turns out it doesn't turn into Liberty. I got to where it was supposed to, and it required going back riding up a massive train bridge, then turning around again to hit Liberty. I was too exhausted to ride up one of those hills, so I zig-zagged through neighborhoods until I was eventually forced onto the bike path on Lyons. Luckily, while on Lyons, I got to see where the proposed future site of St. Arnold's brewery was. I liked the fact that it's closer to me than the other one, and it's on a marked bike route.

Future site of St. Arnold's; it definitely needs a lot of work.

From there I took the bike route all the way home. I collapsed, drank a lot of water, and ate some food. At least now I know I can do a 50+ mile bike ride. Hopefully the 41 miler this weekend will feel like a walk in the park. I left at 7:20am and got back around 2:25pm. It was a very long day.

So now I'm at 36 out of 88 Super Neighborhoods. They are going to come fast and furious now.

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 5

2009-03-03T12:04:00.002-05:00

Ok, now that the excitement is over from Alabama, I can finally finish up my Trip 5 post from two weekends ago.

This trip was the best one we had ever had. Since we're doing the trips within some kind of close frequency, our endurance levels are definitely getting up there. At the end of this one, we even took a detour to try to pick up some missed neighborhoods because we had so much energy left.

Anyway, here is the route we took.

The day started out with a knock at the door. It was Drew. My alarm didn't go off. I apologized, rushed around and got ready, printed out maps, and we left about 20 minutes later.

We decided to remedy three mistakes we made on the last 30-miler. The first was the butt soreness. We both went out and bought $70 bike shorts to wear under our regular shorts (we're a little self-conscious). The second was sunscreen, but it was cloudy and threatening rain, so we didn't bother. The third was extra water, which we brought. And the last was to actually draw the neighborhood boundaries on my printed out map so that we won't have a repeat of last time of not actually being in the neighborhood.
It was long straight ride all the way down cavalcade before we turned on Hirsch, and it wasn't long before we at #48 Trinity/Houston Gardens.

So far no rain

As we get further and further out, we have to deal with fewer and fewer bike-friendly roads as we leave the marked bike path area. I anticipated this and had us drive through many neighborhood roads to stay off the main thoroughfares with fast vehicles and no room for bikes.

We went north to #47 East Little York/Homestead. It would have been very easy to snap a photo of Little York road, the major street through the neighborhood, but I was really trying not to do that. So we went all the way up to Homestead Barber Shop. One of the patrons or possibly the owner was standing outside. We threw the "scavenger hunt" excuse at him (which works very well) and he smiled and said go ahead and take the picture. I had a great impression of this neighborhood. It's and older, nicer, black neighborhood (82% black). This is basically where the poorer people from inside the loop come to when they can afford it.

I was very tempted to get a haircut at this point

Next we took some more neighborhood roads and went over our first of many 80 foot railroad crossing bridges. We went past an elementary school where East Houston middle school was supposed to be. Right as we were about to turn around and look again, I spotted this sign for #49 East Houston.

There was a guy behind me that didn't pay much notice

We took a wrong turn (but still in the right general direction) and it wasn't long before we were at the small community of #50 Settegast. I had planned to go the Settegast apartments further down, but a "Welcome to..." sign always gets more cool points.

I'm willing to bet that civic club isn't so new anymore.

So that was it. We hit the four that I had planned to hit and we started riding back to Cavalcade. The next picture shows you what much of the area near Cavalcade and Homestead looks like. Plus I had to get at least one pic with Drew in it.

There was an eerie sound coming from out west, like a whistling ghost or something

After we had a medicore breakfast at a donut place at Cavalcade, I said to Drew "I still have a lot of energy... we only have 6 miles left." He said, "yeah me too." I can't remember whose idea it was, but we decided that we were so close to 5th ward, that we would give it another shot. On the way into 5th ward we went over our 3rd railroad bridge for the day. At least this one had an awesome view.

Drew, trains, and Houston.

I love this town!

So when we were on our way all the way to nearly I-10 to see Fifth Ward Library, this sign caught my eye right as we entered #55 Fifth Ward. It wasn't too far from the library, but it did save us a few blocks. At this point it was getting really sunny and we regretted not listening to ourselves and putting sunscreen on. I ended up a little burned at the end of the day.

Take two successful

Not knowing exactly which way I was going to Northside, we went back over the train bridge (my legs were finally starting to get tired after that one) and took a left on Liberty. As we were riding along, trying not to stare at all the poor people that were loitering on the street and giving us dirty looks, we turned the corner and saw a crowd of people and flashing police lights. Given the location we were in, we assumed the worst. As we got closer, we saw a podium with a City of Houston and a bunch of well-dressed people sitting in chairs. It turns out it was a dedication ceremony for a new historical marker for "Frenchtown". I asked Drew if he wanted to stop, and he said sure. It was a really great presentation, with live Zydeco music and accounts of residents who had lived in the area nearly 80 years. City councilman Jarvis Johnson was there, as well as a representative from Sheila Jackson-Lee's ofice. It's a good thing we went back the bridge way!

Jarvis Johnson speaking

Right after the unveiling

Closer picture with all the politicians and organizers.

After the great break listening to music and watching a historical marker be unveiled, we continued on to find Northside Baptist Church. The first church we went to (where my map said Northside Baptist was) was actually called something else. Drew took the woman's way out and asked a guy there if he knew were it was. I have to admit it beat spending 5 minutes looking it up on my phone. We went down 5 blocks and saw it. Unfortunately, it was not in Northside Village, but it was still in Fifth Ward. I though Jensen Dr. was the border, but I was mistaken.

If only I knew, I wouldn't be smiling.

Even after we were riding back, we passed a construction sign that said Northside on it. But we didn't stop because I thought we already had it. We'll just have to do take 3 this weekend when we go out to the Galena Park area (way out east).

We took a break and grabbed a celebratory beer at Onion Creek on the way back, and were home just before noon, when it started really raining. The final distance for the trip was 31.4 miles

We're now up to a total of 29 super neighborhoods totalling 89.2 miles on the bicycle.

Next trip is trip 6 on Sunday, all the way to the furthest reaches East and back.

I've re-routed the proposed trips, because of our increasing fitness levels. So take a look at the changes as http://careyj.com/sn/ We're now down to 12 trips instead of 13.

Alabama County Trip Table of Contents

2009-03-03T10:00:00.003-05:00

The Idea, September 23, 2008: Every County in Alabama (dan)

The days leading up to the trip:
February 23, 2009: Alabama county trip is on! (dan)
February 25, 2009: Every County in Alabama (dan)

Go time (February February 26-27, all times in this list are CST)
8:37am: First update (dan)
9:12am: Sense of urgency - county count 4 (dan)
10:10am: Carey update and Clark-ee county (carey)
10:38am: Choctaw - County Count 8 (dan)
11:51am: County count 13 (dan)
12:48pm: Sumter county - county count of 14 - first gas stop (dan)
1:48pm: Additional pansy time (dan)
2:16pm: Jim - king of county sign photography (dan)
2:23pm: Some updates / responses (dan)
3:07pm: The republic of Winston (dan)
4:04pm: Build me a depot Phil Caaaampbell (dan)
4:14pm: Boring update (dan)
5:43pm: Update - county count 30 (dan)
6:41pm: Update from the center of Alabama (jim)
7:25pm: We'll get you, Bibb County... (jim)
10:16pm: A plan comes together, hopefully (jim)
10:36pm: What a country (jim)
1:17am: Adventures in gas land (dan)
1:50am: Gas adventures solved (dan)
2:48am: Old Sudsville Water (carey)
5:54am: Nearly finished (dan)
7:13am: It is finished (dan)

Fan club message

2009-03-01T19:12:00.000-05:00

I got a message today from a fan.

I quote it verbatim:

Because of your rather strange fascinaton with weird objectives--24 hour state drives, coin collecting scavenger hunts, etc, you make my requests to my wife less overwhelming. For example, "hey, Amy, can I get a bigger fish tank?" "no" "Hey, I'm not going to drive through all the counties in Alabama in one day, I'm just asking for an aquarium." "Well, if you put it that way......."

You are the reason my marriage is stronger.

Awesome.

It is finished

2009-02-28T08:13:00.000-05:00

67 counties are done. 5:34:36 a.m. was the finishing time for a total time of 21 hours, 14 minutes and 42 seconds.

We have just finished in Bucks Pocket State park and have completed our finishing rituals.

Congratulations to Jim, Carey, Adam and myself on a job nicely done.

Stay tuned for the next trip!

=======================

That was what I was about to post. Due to a raging river blocking us from the final county no more than 200 yards before the ending point, we had to detour around, adding an additional 53 minutes and 58 seconds, ending at 6:28:32, and for a final time of 22 hours, 8 minutes, and 40 seconds. After averaging nearly 60 miles per hour for the trip, we averaged 0.0052 miles per hour to go the final 25 feet.

We hit our 66th county, Marshall, on an out and back at about 5:25 and then made our way into Bucks Pocket State park. As you can see from my message above, I was confident that we had completed the job.

In Bucks Pocket, we wound our way down the road. We saw a green sign that we thought was the final county sign and we wrote the finish time down. We began to celebrate as we turned the van around to illuminate the sign for proper finishing pictures. Then, we saw that it was some sort of camping sign. So we continued going forward down the road towards the county line. As we go around a bend, Jim sees the green county sign about 200 feet ahead and says "There it is" - following which, Carey yells out "Stop!", as the van plunges into a raging river.

Luckily, Jim had stopped in time and as steam arose from the van, we were able to pull it back out of the river. With the insane amount of rain we got yesterday (there was a flash flood warning at one point), the bridge over the river that marked the county line between DeKalb and Jackson (the final county) was washed out.

We got out and investigated crossing it but decided (wisely in my opinion) not to. Had it been 23:50 perhaps we would have tried it, but with 3 hours of buffer time we pulled back. We saw another option on the map but after about a 20-30 minute detour realized that the map was wrong and no entry to Jackson would be permitted from that direction either.

We finally managed to navigate around to the other side of Buck's Pocket, where we had been nearly an hour beforehand. We actually got into Jackson County about 10 minutes before that (at the times listed above), but continued down to the sign of our original defeat. We snapped pictures and had our way with Jackson County and called it complete.

Nearly finished

2009-02-28T06:54:00.001-05:00

We actually made it all the way to the finish line only to BE STOPPED BY A RIVER IN THE ROAD NO LESS THAN 200 FEET FROM THE FINAL COUNTY SIGN

No. Really. We are detouring around. Everyone is safe and we'll post again with more details in a bit.

Old Sudsville Water

2009-02-28T03:48:00.000-05:00

It's now 2:44 AM and things are getting weird. Jim and Adam are talking in an old man voices trying to get everyone to buy their Old Sudsville Water. Dan is slipping in and out of consciousness (no, he's not driving).

We are now at 57 counties, only 10 more to go. We're hoping to get this closed out by 5:20am or so, nearly three hours ahead of schedule.

Gas adventures solved

2009-02-28T02:50:00.003-05:00

We managed to limp to the Interstate at Opelika on fumes only to find out that...... all gas stations were closed. Luckily we had enough to make it one exit up the Interstate where there was a Shell open. We put 19.26 gallons in, so assuming a 20 gallon tank, we had about 10 miles left in us.

We are still about 1:50 ahead of pace and at 53 counties. We're heading northwest on US 280 out of Opelika

Adventures in gas land

2009-02-28T02:17:00.001-05:00

Barbour county is down one 'possum.

Current county count is 53. We are in Lee county. We are trying to make it up to Opelika to get gas before we run out. We are pretty sure that we can make it. Our van says it has 31 miles till empty, and we stand at 22 MTO (Miles to Opelika)

We are at just shy of 2 hours ahead of pace, so it looks like we will finish somewhere around 6 a.m.

What a country

2009-02-27T23:36:00.003-05:00

One of the big differences between this excursion and the Ohio trip has been the amount of technology available to us.

First, we're featuring a Garmin GPS unit on the windshield. We don't have our entire route programmed into the unit, but it does offer several benefits. It has a speed limit feature that tells you at any given time how fast you must go to violate the law. It also gives a good relative view of upcoming turns.

Second, Carey is rolling with some sort of prototype uber-phone, which must have been developed for secret intelligence agents. It also has a full-color GPS, along with a map of county boundaries which he downloaded. The phone is also broadcasting our position (via bliin.com) and taking pictures, which are automatically uploaded.

Lastly, this uber-phone is obviously offering us the opportunity to blog live from remote corners of Alabama. Although we don't have a constant connection, we do have the ability to hop on and create posts, and check your messages.

Even this van's technology blows away that of the Town & Country of '05. It has 11 cup holders and 4 (FOUR!) portable DVD holders. Also, it's got Satellite radio (a feature which we have not used, but was promised on the Town & Country and never delivered).

My mother and Yakov Smirnoff would say, "what a country!"

A plan comes together, hopefully

2009-02-27T23:16:00.001-05:00

We are cruising along nicely, beginning the last of three large North-to-South swaths we cut across the state. We'll sweep up the Eastern side of the state and pick up all of those counties, eventually finishing in Buck's Pocket State Park, where DeKalb County meets Jackson County.

As of this writing, that means we've got about 468 miles remaining on the trip. The van is currently 217 miles until empty, so this plays out nicely. Although most of the remaining distance is classified as "middle of nowhere," we do hit the interstate for just two miles around Auburn / Opelika, between exits 60 and 58. Assuming we can hit a gas station there, we'll be able to fuel up roughly 13 miles before the fan hit fumes, and then have just 234 miles until the trip ends.

The plan does hinge on finding a gas station in that area, though.

Our county count is at 42, and Dan is moving at a predictably plodding pace. We could still finish in 20-21 hours, though.

We'll get you, Bibb County...

2009-02-27T20:25:00.003-05:00

A minor setback strikes the intrepid traveling party near Calera.

While attempting to jaunt off of the interstate at Exit 228 for a quick out-and-back to Bibb County, we noticed flashing blue lights at the end of the off ramp. An accident had blocked the way to Alabama Highway 25 Westbound, leaving only a lonely, wet, moronic cop listlessly directing traffic.

Dan rolled down his window to engage the young officer in conversation, and he strolled over to the driver-side window, not grasping the enormity of our dilemma. My powers of observation are not currently at their keenest, but according to my recollections, the conversation went like this:

Dan: "Is this road closed?"

Cop: *Gestures with his flashlight at the accident*

*Five seconds pass*

Cop: "Yeah."

Hastily, a new plan was formulated. Unfortunately, Highway 25 is really by far the best way to get to Bibb County. So the new plan required us to double back on I-65 for three miles and bypass the accident, then circling through Bibb County.

The whole incident is reminiscent of the Ohio trip's Darlington Road debacle (I trust Dan will hyperlink that later here). Although this one cost us at least 10 minutes.

However, with Bibb successfully traversed, we're now at 34 counties, officially marking the point at which we're more than halfway through, at least on the county count.

Update from the center of Alabama

2009-02-27T19:41:00.003-05:00

32 counties have fallen, and the second gas stop has been made, accruing 5:06 more pansy time.

We are roughly 1 hour, 45 minutes ahead of schedule, which allows us for three key delaying factors: potential traffic delays as we move into Birmingham, tornado warnings and storms throughout the state, and Dan taking the wheel, with his aching hip and AARP card.

Adam was a fantastic driver, lopping several minutes off of the projected times during each leg of the trip.

To Dan's credit, he can't be blamed for the slow-going traffic right now. We're pinned at a few miles per hour under the speed limit.

Google's traffic maps are not to be trusted. They've been wholly inaccurate so far.

I'm going to be driving the anchor leg, once Dan's shift is up. I still think we're going to finish this thing before the sun rises. Sunrise is at 6:17 a.m., which would be a finish time of 21:58. As I type this, traffic has slowed to its most glacial crawl, and we have also crossed into Shelby County (named after former Governor of Kentucky Isaac Shelby).

I think we've seen the worst of any traffic and tornados that might befall us, and I'm thinking that we're still looking at a 20-hour finish.

- Jim

Update - county count 30

2009-02-27T18:43:00.001-05:00

Thought we'd give an update.

County count - 30

We are on I-65 heading down from Huntsville. We'll be on this for over 100 miles, hitting all the middle counties from north to south. We'll pass Birmingham and Montgomery and exit SE of Montgomery, heading to the SE corner before coming up the eastern edge of the state and ending in the NE

Rain has started again but we're making good time due to being on the Interstate.

Still making great time.

Boring update

2009-02-27T17:14:00.000-05:00

A request came in for more updates of what we were doing.

We are driving around. We have gone up the west side of Alabama, pretty much from the whole south to north.

We just hit our 25th county - Lawrence. We're soon to be heading towards Huntsville where we'll hit I-65 down nearly the entire of the center of the state. We are hoping to avoid rush hour in Birmingham.

Build me a depot Phil Caaaampbell

2009-02-27T17:04:00.001-05:00

So we just passed through the thriving metropolis of Phil Campbell, Alabama. Not Campbellsvile, or Campbellton or Campbell's Crossings. But Phil Campbell, Alabama.

So we managed to do a quick lookup of its wikipedia page.

Guy promised Phil Campbell if he built a depot and spur to the railroad track that he would name the town after him. So he did and then he did.

Sing it with me (to the tune of Bill Bailey)

Build me a depot Phil Caaaaaampbell
You'll bring the train right throuuuuuuuuuuugh
Build me a depot Phil Caaaaaampbell
We'll name the towwwwn for youuuuuu.

Doesn't it sound like an old time victrola?

There was a "Phil Campbell Day" in 1995 where 22 people named Phil Campbell got together.

Current County count - 24 (in Colbert county - in the NW corner)
Ahead of pace by - 1:42:19

The republic of Winston

2009-02-27T16:07:00.005-05:00

So as part of our county trivia, just recently we learned that when Alabama seceded from the US, that Winston County seceded from Alabama and declared itself the Republic of Winston.

It is also 97% white, and judging from the Wikipedia demographics, there are 9 African Americans in the entire county.

County count is 21, and we are currently 1:33:25 ahead of pace. We're definitely looking like a potential sub-20 hr time.

Some updates / responses

2009-02-27T15:23:00.001-05:00

To answer Jay's comments on this earlier post:

1. Adam is currently driving and has been since the start. We discussed switching at our last gas stop but Adam decided to carry on.

2. No black bean pueblo pie nor beef jerky. Jim is definitely tearing through the gold rold pretzel rods though.

3. There are 67 counties in Alabama, we just whipped through Fayette, county #19. That is one more than our last post.

4. I brought along 2 binders. One map binder and then a backup binder. I also had Carey print out and bring the wikipedia county pages for each county, for appropriate demographic trivia.

Jim - king of county sign photography

2009-02-27T15:16:00.000-05:00

Jim is in fact the king of photographing county signs. It is unfortunate that I can not upload the photo he just snagged.

You may be able to see up on bliin.com the photo that Carey just snapped of the logging truck we were stuck behind, whipping up spray in a torrential rainstorm. Just to give you an idea of conditions.

But despite that, Jim snagged a perfect shot of the Welcome to Lamar county sign (#18). I bow to his mad skills.

The rain has slowed down quite a bit. And actually it just appeared a lot worse because the truck in front of us was whippin up spray like there was no tomorrow.

Currently we are ahead of pace by 1:20:55

Additional pansy time

2009-02-27T14:48:00.003-05:00

2 recent occurrences have added 46 seconds of pansy time.

9 seconds at a toll booth on the Black Warrior parkway west of Tuscaloosa. The toll booth operator was manning both sides and refused to acknowledge us for 9 seconds.

Then just now a truck was trying to fit under a 13'6 railroad bridge and all turning around and backing up and blocking the road - 37 seconds.

We're currently in Pickens county, county #17. Last schedule was 1:12:52 ahead of schedule / pace.

Sumter county - county count of 14 - first gas stop

2009-02-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

We just had our first gas / bathroom stop. It took us 4:36 at the gas station, so our current TPT (Total Pansy Time) is now 4:39.

Carey was assessed $1.60 pansy dollars for looking up on Google and telling us there were no gas stations at AL-28 and I-20/59. So we stopped earlier for $1.79 a gallon when in fact there was a gas station right by the highway selling gas for $1.69.

1:11:59 ahead of estimates. Current county count is 14 and we are in Sumter county. Approaching Greene on I-20/59 East.

To follow along check us out at bliin.com - see earlier posts for instructions.

County count 13

2009-02-27T12:51:00.000-05:00

We just zipped through Perry County and back into Marengo county and then into Hale county, for county #13

We are continuing to make astonishing time. We are now up to over 1 hour ahead of pace. Jim threw out the possibility that we could finish in under 20 hours. That would get us finishing around 4 am on Saturday.

We'll keep you posted. To see our live status, go to http://bliin.com/?user=careyj then click on careyj, then click on trips then click on EFALC. Or click on Careyj and go to live! to see current location.

Note - no www on that bliin link.

Choctaw - County Count 8

2009-02-27T11:38:00.001-05:00

We just passed Zimco. We are wondering if that is the alphabetically last city / town in Alabama. Perhaps some intrepid reader can check for us and post in the comments.

Our thoughts were that it would certainly be a competitor, if perhaps there were no Zorn or Zutroffs (or Zwyckzwck)

There was 3 seconds pansy time accumulated when Adam thought that we were turning around at the Clarke county line and so slowed down (so as to turn around) before we let him know that we were continuing straight until Choctaw.

We just hit Choctaw county, #8. We are murdering all pace records - currently 30:46 ahead of pace.

Carey update and Clark-ee county

2009-02-27T11:10:00.000-05:00

Time for a Carey update. First of all, two lane roads and white trucks suck.

But first, background. My trip over to the starting point was fun, but I didn't get to pick up any new counties beacuse we had a late start. We stopped in Beaumont to check out an awesome fire museum. They had a fake front of a firetruck with flashing lights and a tiny house with safety tips to play in. Next up we stopped east of Lafayette at a small cajun restaurant called Boudin King, which had pretty horrible gumbo (some of the rice was uncooked even). After that it was pretty much a straight shot in the dark all the way to Mobile. We stayed for free with my new couchsurfing friend Chris, and in the morning, David and Conan dropped me off at the starting point. We beat Dan there by 5 minutes.

We're now 7 counties in, in Clarke county, and we're about 20 minutes ahead of schedule (I'm not quite as precise as Dan is).

Here's more instructions on how to use bliin, beacause it can be kind of confusing. Go to http://bliin.com/?user=careyj

To see where we are, click on "careyj" and click "Live!" and the map should center on us. Right now we're at 3 second interval updates, but we have to turn it off to update the blog. Click the "M" on the left control panel if you prefer street maps instead of satellite view.

In order to see the "trip" so far, click on "Trips" underneath "careyj" and open up the EFALC (not EFCAL).

Stay tuned for more updates, I'm sure there will be many more.

Sense of urgency - county county 4

2009-02-27T10:12:00.002-05:00

We are driving with a sense of urgency. We are in our 3rd county with an elapsed time of 26 minutes, 22 seconds. Which isn't that impressive given that we had 2 counties in the first 2 seconds.

But we are 4:03 ahead of pace after the first road (US 43)

UPDATE - while waiting for this to connect we reached our 4th county and nearly 5th (Conecuh)

First update

2009-02-27T09:37:00.001-05:00

Okay we are out exactly 2 minutes 30 seconds into the trip right now. We started at officially 8:19:52 Central time.

After some debate, Jim, Adam and I decided to get a hotel room. There was talk of some sleeping in a van, for some restful coma-inducing "van sl.eep". In the end, we got into not a Motel 5, not a Motel 7, but a Motel 6.

It was approximately what you might expect from a $33.99 hotel room. We made a reservation before we left Montgomery, but when we got to mobile, the clerk informed us that he had just sold his last room. The gentleman was not fazed when informed of our so called "reservation". Very reminiscent of last time with the van. In the end, he told us that he could sell us a room that "had something wrong with it".

Naturally the appropriate first question is "well what is wrong with it". Jim's first thought was a room with tigers inside. In the end, we had our choice between a room with purple dye on the bathtub or one with dirty carpets. We went with the dye. I have a picture that I'll upload later.

Jim also wants to point out that the desk clerk made him give his key back, depriving him of an addition to his hotel key collection.

While in the car, we were playing some of those "lateral thinking" puzzles, like "a man has hung himself and there's a puddle of water underneath him". We stayed up way too late trying to find out why a man killed himself after eating abalone.

I will keep you posted. Also, if you check out http://bliin.com/?user=careyj you can see the photos that we uploaded, as well as if you click on trips it will show our current location.

Every County in Alabama

2009-02-25T12:29:00.003-05:00

Preparations are being made, trips are being planned, rental vans have been rented, and all systems are go for visiting every county in Alabama this Friday (the 27th).

Stay tuned for more updates

Alabama county trip is on!

2009-02-23T14:50:00.004-05:00

As posted last fall, wheels have been in motion for an Every County in Alabama trip.

After weeks / months of speculation, the trip is on. It is happening this Friday, February 27th. The route is pretty similar to the one posted in that earlier trip.

So stay tuned to www.everywhatever.com for updates.

You can also join our Facebook group

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 4

2009-02-17T11:52:00.014-05:00

Well, it's a long time coming, but it's finally here. Trip 4. Now that marathon season is over, I'm hoping to do these at least every other week. Drew and I have all the way up to Trip 11 by the end of April scheduled.

I'm going to have to stop doing a regular google map, because there are too many points to fit all in one. You can still view the Super Neighborhood Map of the trip.

The day started off with Drew and I messaging each other that we both wanted to start about 30 minutes late, so that's what we did.

The first stop was an easy one, I drive by this sign almost every day. It's for #14 Lazy Brook/Timbergrove, right across from my grocery store.

Less than a mile from my house

The neighborhood was a lot nicer than our previous rides through impoverished Houston. The small two bedroom houses around here go for about $280k.

Our next stop was at Houseman Elementary, which is in the Spring Branch school district. We rode up and down and all around the school and didn't see a single sign that said Spring Branch ISD on it. Since it wasn't that far from my house, I wasn't going to freak out about having to pick it up later. We continued on down the route and came across the sign below practically smacking us in the face. I wasn't completely sure it was in #86 Spring Branch East, but when I got home, I verified that it was.

I hate deed restrictions almost as much as I hate zoning

We decided to take a shortcut on a busy road instead of taking the marked bike route. The shortcut saved us about a mile and a half, but we had to ride on a 40 mph road (where people go 50) with no sidewalk or shoulder. We survived, but I don't think I'll be doing that again unless I have to. In one of the detours from the main road, we went up to Langwood Baptist church, which was supposed to be in Langwood, but was actually a block away from Langwood. We're going to have to revisit this one in trip 6 when we go up to Willowbrook.

It took us a while to figure what the sign meant. Stupid church not being in Langwood.

Along the main fast road, I came to a screeching halt when I saw this place, since we were supposed to be looking for #4 Fairbanks/North Crossing. I wasn't sure if it was actually in Fairbanks, so we continued on to Dean Middle School, which had "Cypress Fairbanks" ISD in the title, like schools should have (stupid Spring Branch). So we got this one twice.

There was actually a guy hauling trash behind the fence, but he didn't seem to take notice of us

This is about the point where you can see me progressively getting more and more tired

After a serious wrong turn which added about a mile to our trip, we got to Carverdale Community Center in #3 Carverdale. We were starting to get really tired, because the 20mph winds were no longer at our backs, but we were going directly into it. You can tell from the next picture, I look a little more worn out.

"I can't believe we're only half way"

Drew pointed out this sign was more interesting, so I took a pic of him with it.

Back into the wind, we went south toward #8 Westbranch, intending to go into the subdivision and look for the Westbranch Recreation Center, but luckily found this sign early and saved a little bit of precious milage.

Is it over yet?

We definitely needed a break to recharge, so we rode down Gessner (on the sidewalk, because it was very very busy road) and looked for a place to eat. We found a little donut shop called Donut World, which had amazing donuts and good kolaches. The donuts were all warm and soft but not undercooked *drool*. Although we made the mistake of both of us getting orange juice, which was not a good choice with 12 miles into the wind to go.

We went back to kempwood, seeing Spring Shadows signs everywhere (but I didn't feel like stopping because I knew there was a school ahead and I knew it was in the superneighborhood). After getting nearly all the way through the super neighborhood, we came across Spring Shadows Elementary in #84 Spring Shadows.

Wildcats, rwar!

It was an uneventful quater mile to the next stop at #85 Spring Branch Central

Getting tired again.

And just for good measure, I got this one on the way back in Spring Branch East, just in case.

My sweat pattern looks like Kazakhstan

The ride home was brutal. We had a wrong turn which took us to Ikea (all in 20mph head winds). At some points it felt like if we stopped pedaling, we would roll backwards! But we finally made it, crashed on the couch with a lot of water, and that was it.

It took about 4 hours and 30.1 miles to pick up these 7 new Super Neighborhoods. Next trip is going to be roughly the same distance, but only 3 new Super Neighborhoods. It's also going to be back out in the east (low-income) area.

Every Contiguous State with a Twist

2008-11-13T08:18:00.004-05:00

I came across this post, which describes a plan for the world record for visiting all 48 contiguous states using the highest fuel efficiency possible. They plan to do it in 2 weeks. The previous record is 58.82 mpg. I didn't even know such a record existed... awesome!

There is a nice map on the post as well.

Old comment

2008-11-10T08:43:00.001-05:00

Just thought I would point out a comment that was received on a very old post about our Ohio county trip.

I randomly came across your blog while googling something completely unrelated about PC. I'm from West Alexandria and I find it totally hilarious that you ended your trip through every county of Ohio in the extremely small town I grew up in! Great blog and great idea for a mini-road trip! My friends and I might just have to attempt to do it ourselves. Oh and for the record, there are "Welcome to Preble County signs" elsewhere, just not on 35 for some strange reason! ODOT works in mysterious ways!

Good times!!

Soccer Golf

2008-11-07T06:59:00.000-05:00

Not quite an Every Whatever, but a game / competition in the same silly vein. Myself and 2 co-workers set out yesterday on a round of soccer golf. I didn't think that we invented the sport, and I see now that there are several instances - (reference Dan's first law of the Internet).

But the game we played is slightly different. First, here are the codified rules:

1. Game starts when each player kicks a soccer ball from the same "tee"
2. Game ends when each player kicks the ball into a pre-determined "goal", which can be set up in any manner that is agreed to by all participants.
3. Players are allowed to take any route they choose.
4. Each time a player touches the soccer ball with their foot, it is counted as 1 stroke. Players are not allowed to throw, head, or otherwise propel the ball besides kicking it. No outside transportation (kicking it into your truck, etc) or help from other people is allowed, except as detailed below.
5. No mulligans are allowed.
6. Players are allowed to, at their discretion, either allow the ball to come to a complete stop, stop the ball manually with their foot (counts as a stroke), or kick the ball again while it is rolling (also counts as a stroke). Players are advised to be aware of potential obstacles in the path of a kicked ball (cars, houses, trees, other people, etc) - all objects are in play.
7. If a ball should have to be extricated from an unplayable position (lake, in a tree, under a car, etc), there is a 5 stroke penalty, and the ball is placed where it entered the unplayable position. If that is on a hill or otherwise causes the ball to move once it is placed, the ball may be allowed to come to rest or kicked while in motion (counts as a stroke).
8. Touching the ball with your hands or any other part of your body (besides the foot) is a 1 stroke penalty. Should the non-foot touch be ruled by the other players to have been intentional, a 5 stroke penalty will be assessed.
9. If an outside participant touches or affects the ball, it is in play (see Rule 6). However, if in the opinions of the other players, an outside person is a "plant" or unfairly aids the player, the ball will be considered dead at the point of the outside person touching it.
10. If a player touches something that inadvertently affects the ball (e.g. the ball is laying in some tall grass on a hill and as the player walks near the ball, it causes the grass to shift and the ball to roll), no stroke will be assessed unless in the opinions of the other players it was egregious and intentional, in which case it will count as 1 stroke.

In our case, we set the course as from Randy's house to our work (about 0.95 miles as the crow flies, or about 1.5 miles with the route we played). Here is an approximation of the route. The colored circles denote interesting events which I will explain below:

We started down at the A marker. First few kicks were pretty easy as the road slopes in the direction we wanted to travel. Randy was able to kick it all the way down his street and around the corner on his "tee shot". Clearly that's because he was cheatingly practicing beforehand. At the orange circle a few things happened. First of all Doug kicked his ball into a parked Mustang whose owner was out mowing his grass. Then a lady walking her baby in a stroller stopped to talk to us and look how weird we were looking. Then Doug kicked his ball right into a tree, causing it to bounce backwards. This caused our spectactors / folks who drove us to the starting line (Molly and Elizabeth) much amusement and caused me to fall to the ground laughing. Then as Randy's ball was rolling down the street, a "helpful" man in a truck got out and stopped the ball as Randy yelled "No no no leave it"

I was in the lead as we made our way out of Randy's development towards the pinkish circle, 1 stroke ahead of Randy and 3 ahead of Doug. This was aided by a beautiful kick over a ditch that Doug and Randy got caught in. We made our way across an open field and towards a small (10-15 foot wide) covering of trees that separated us from the access road that would take us to Innovation Way. We all tried to kick over the trees but none of us were successful. Randy in particular got stuck in a really bad place in the middle of the trees. He pondered taking the 5 stroke penalty but in the end decided to just kick forward. He managed to get through the trees in only 1 or 2 additional kicks, whereas Doug and I used multiple kicks to try and finesse our soccer balls through the small path through the trees. This gave Randy a lead he would not relinquish.

The access road was gravel and the ball did not roll as well as we initially thought that it might. We all took many kicks to try and get the ball down to Innovation Way. Then, the "dodging moving cars" part of the fun began. We got a little separated as we all tried to make sure none of our balls got run over by cars. In particular I had quite a bit of problem getting my ball successfully rolling down the street (slight down grade for the first part of Innovation). At the yellow circle, again a "helpful" runner stopped Randy's ball from rolling down the street.

Being several strokes behind at this point, you can see the darker blue line where I deviated course from the other 2. I kicked my ball over a barbed-wire fence and through some grass. I think that this saved me a few strokes. At this point I was on about 55, with Doug at about 51 and Randy around 40. At the green dot, as I kicked my ball across Western Row, a "helpful" construction worker thought it would be funny to give it a good boot back over Western Row, costing me 1-2 strokes as I had to re-kick it across the street.

As we got through the back lawn of where we work, we faced another dilemma. Separating the "goal" of the back patio from where we were is a decent-sized ravine. Over, or around? Doug and Randy went around where again, needing to do something different to get myself out of last place, went over. Well, I tried to go over. Mostly I went through. Again though, after I found my ball through the heavy underbrush (pricker bushes!) it only took me 1 additional stroke to "chip" it out of the weeds and up over a bench and on to the patio. Doug went off the side of the path into the other side of the ravine, whereas Randy got his ball stuck in not one but TWO trees, costing him 10 strokes.

I avoided the dirty looks of the people eating lunch on the patio as I kicked my ball into the goal, finishing last time-wise but in 2nd place with 71 strokes. Doug was last with 75 and Randy was first with a world record of 67 strokes.

All in all a very fun happening and hopefully not the last!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 3

2008-10-23T09:56:00.012-04:00

This past Saturday was Trip 3 of Every Super Neighborhood in Houston, yay! Sorry it took so long to update this, I was sick earlier this week.

Here are Google Maps and Super Neighborhood Map for this trip.

As with all trips, each is longer than the last. This one was scheduled to be 22 miles.

We started out going the exact same path at Trip 1, down Heights and across Washington to Downtown. In fact, we passed the first three stops of that first trip. Once we got to downtown, I already got confused and missed our turn. After going a quarter-mile off-course, we turned around and went back towards Minute Maid Park. Once we crossed under the freeway, we were in #63 Second Ward. It didn't take long until we saw the sign I was looking for.

I wish it was open, I really need a haircut

The last trip was a ride through a predominantly black neighborhood, and this one was definitely predominantly hispanic. There was a Taqueria on nearly every corner (the entire street smelled SOOO good). But it was still pretty early, so we decided to wait and maybe hit one on the way back.

WhenI was hispanic, I mean really hispanic. For the most part, all the signs were in spanish only, no english. The only people we saw were hispanic. It was like we were transplanted to Mexico, only a little nicer.

The houses in this area were not in that good of a condition, but after going down Navigation for a while, the quality of houses and the neighborhood got better. After a fairly long, straight ride, we entered #82 Magnolia Park. We turned and crossed a busy street and stopped at the Magnolia Services Center for the photo.

I don't know what that face was for

We rode through a residental neighborhood and before long, we were in #88 Lawndale/Wayside. I got my photo taken in front of this cemetary, even though I wasn't completely sure about the boundaries (it wasn't a scheduled stop). I later found out it counted, woo!

They had two signs in two languages, one on each side of the entrance to the cemetery, this one was in spanish.

My 'victorious' pose

Since, at the time, I wasn't sure if the cemetary was actually in Lawndale, we continued down to where I knew Lawndale Dental was. We found Lawndale Dental, but right next door was a much better sign to take a photo of.

Mmm.... fried chinese seafood burger....

And then, I really screwed things up. First of all, I missed my turn to get to Pecan Park. We went a little bit too far, but for some reason, I thought we headed in the wrong direction altogether. So we turned around, passed Lawndale Fish Market, passed Lawndale Cemetary, passed the Bayou, and I stopped and checked my map again. I apologized deeply to Drew, and told him our stop was right around the corner from where we turned around before. So we turned around again, past the bayou, past the Lawndale Stuff, back across the railroad tracks, and was able to find the Iglecia de Cristo in #70 Pecan Park.

I think this is my "please don't kill me, Drew" smile

And so along we went. Next up was our last Super Neighborhood for the day, Greater Eastwood. Out of nowhere, the Eastwood post office pops up. I'm a little suspicious about it, since I thought Greater Eastwood started on the opposite side of the railroad tracks a few feet down the road. I took a photo, but I was going to continued to my scheduled Eastwood stop. Turns out I was right, leaving us with our first false alarm.

Faker! You're not in Greater Eastwood!

Drew made a crack about just trying to find a video store so we could take a photo of the box of Outlaw Josey Wales or something, ha ha. After we turned the corner, we saw a fun building that was called Drew's Corner. I ordered drew to pull over so I could get a photo of him in front of it. He uncomfortably obliged.

"That's right, it's my corner!"

"No one can park here but me!"

It was just a couple short blocks after the fun stop before we came up to Eastwood Academy in #64 Greater Eastwood. There were actually some students and parents outside, but they oddly didn't give much notice to the two white guys on bicycles taking a photo of their school. I guess that's a good thing.

Texas Recognized 2004/2007. Carey Recognized 2008.

So that was it for new Super Neighborhoods. We made a quick stop at Center Bakery for some breakfast tacos and oddly-shaped pastries. Then we stopped by Target on the way back to try to get a replacement tire repair kit for the one that broke last time. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to have any. Then on our way out, we saw something that Drew had been talking about all morning, a Zeppelin in the sky! So here it is, one of only three working Zeppelins in the world. Sorry I couldn't get better photos, I only had my cell phone camera today.

Is it made of Led?

The final count for the day was 25.2 miles (roughly three miles longer than anticipated) and about 3 hours 15 minutes including the stops for breakfast and Target. At that rate, the final trip to Lake Houston will take about 8 hours. Even though we only had 5 new super neighborhoods, we "touched" on 9 total.

Next weekend we're going to be going through a mix of warehouse and suburban areas at about 30 miles. We're also going to set a record 8 new Super Neighborhoods in one day. Should be fun!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 2

2008-10-07T11:12:00.012-04:00

After 2 1/2 months, ESNH trip 2 was finally on its way. I convinced my friend Drew to cycle with me, since it was a neighborhood with a reputation for crime, and there is safety in numbers. He arrived at my door at around 6:50am and, after arming ourselves with pepper spray, we were on our way shortly after.

As usual, you mapophiles can follow along in Google Maps and Houston's Super Neighborhood Map

We started in my home neighborhood of Greater Heights #15 and went north and enjoyed the sunrise and sparse traffic. It wasn't long before we crossed under I-610 and were in #13 Independence Heights. I missed the turn for the park, but not by much. When we found Independence Heights park, there was a man in a beat-up T-shirt walking around the corner, so I decided to ride past him and wait until he left. As we turned the corner, a car drove by and yelled at the man, and the man smiled (probably friends of his). After he left and I was no longer self-conscious about a photo, Drew snapped this beauty.

Not a bad little park... could use a cleanup

Now continuing east, we crossed under I-45 into #45 Northside/Northline. The original plan was to go to the Northline Mall, but we managed to see this realtor's sign about a quarter mile before we got there.

I'm pondering the meaning of life

Continuing east on Crosstimbers and coming up on the Hardy Toll road, we encountered an impatient driver who decided to honk at us because I guess I wasn't far enough over in the bike lane. I try real hard not to be one of those cyclists that think they own the road and can do whatever they want, so I talked myself down from getting upset about it. I turned to Drew and said "I figured that was going to happen at some point!"

Shortly after my comment, Drew motioned that we needed to stop and that he had a flat tire. As you can from the picture below, he has a rather old bicycle. We spent a good 20 minutes trying to get that damn tire off the wheel. It was so old that the rubber had fused to the wheel, so we had to use the removal tool to pry it apart.

Oh noes!

Luckily I had my trusty patch kit!

Patching a bike tube is a dirty job

Getting the tire back on the wheel was difficult, but not quite as difficult as getting it off. Drew pumped his tire full of air and we were back on our way.

After the incident, we continued on Crosstimbers and turned on we turned on Jensen road. We had originally planned to go down Jensen (which just happens to be my last name) without a bike route or lane all the way to Cavlecade to see Jensen Supermarket. Then, this convenience store conveniently popped up right after we turned. It was the Jensen food store in #46 Eastex/Jensen.

It's me!

Since we found it so close to the bike route, we turned around and continued on the bike lane on Crosstimbers. After a brief ride through #48 Trinity/Houston Gardens (where I wasn't planning on seeing anything photoworthy, and I didn't), we missed our turn for Hirsch. Quickly checking my map I decided rather than crossing a busy street to turn around, we would just go through the neighborhood.

Much to our surprise, when we turned a corner there was a big black man with a rifle!!! He shot it into the tree and we could tell it was a pellet gun and calmed down a little. I tried not to make eye contact as he kept shooting and we turned out of sight. I can only guess that he was shooting squirrels or birds or something.

Continuing on the southbound part of our circular trip, we passed Key middle school, and then back into the loop under I-610. After a short jog off Hirsch, we came to Kashmere Gardens Baptist Church in #52 Kashmere Gardens. We thought the entrance looked cool, so I got a photo in front of that as well, even though it didn't say "Gardens" on it.

Praise be!

I heard gospel music inside

Unfortunately, the next two super neighborhoods were failures. We got to #55 Fifth Ward where Mozelle's Fifth ward florist was supposed to be, and it was a barber shop with a different name. Fifth Ward has a reputation of being one of the highest crime areas of Houston, and people were up and about and loitering and staring at us, so it made me a little too uncomfortable to search more than a back-and-forth on the main street once. That, combined with Drew's rear brake cable snapping (he really does have a crappy bike), caused me to decide to leave.

Later, I found there was a library down the way that bore the name Fifth Ward Library. It's been closed since 2007, but the stucture should still be there on my next attempt... I hope.

Next up was #51 Northside Village. One interesting business of note when we first entered the neighborhood was Mr. Burger Seafood, which boasted Groceries, Beer, and Candy. I wish I had taken a picture.

We were supposed to go to Northside Bakery, but we couldn't find it. We couldn't find anything that said northside or even village on it. We made a quick donut stop at a non-descript bakery, turned on Quitman to get back to the Heights, and failed to locate a photo op for the neighborhood. Later, I looked up the address of the Bakery again, and found that someone had reviewed it on Yelp this year! I shot him a message and he told me that they had the best cheap fajitas (apparently it's a restaurant too). But the kicker is that he told me it was not where it was supposed to be on the map, and that it was half a block up Main street after we turned on Quitman. That pissed me off a little.

So all in all, we got 4 super neighborhoods of the 6 sought. The grand total mileage was 18.7 miles (the Google map doesn't have the exact start/stop). We're going to take another stab at Fifth Ward (library) and Northside Village (bakery) in trip three, when we visit the area just to the south of this one. I'm going to try to keep these going at one every other week, give or take.

ESNH Trip 2 Coming up

2008-10-01T09:42:00.006-04:00

I know that our loyal readers have probably been wondering "whatever happened to the super neighborhood trips?"

Unfortunately, half marathon training got in the way and pretty much killed my chance of biking on Saturday morning, as I've already committed to doing a long run. Then Sunday morning was generally for Go Club, and it's still been hot (upper 80s) in the afternoons. And don't even get me started on hurricane Ike!

But anyway, now my friend Drew is wanting to get into cycling, and I invited him to join me this weekend for trip 2! I'm glad I'll have someone else with me, especially since we'll be riding through some poorer neighborhoods (safety in numbers and all). As far as Go Club is concerned, I'll just have to skip it. Plus now there won't be as many mug shots of me since someone else can take the photos.

My plan, as it stands now, is to alternate weekends between Go Club and ESNH. It's getting much cooler now (low 60s in the morning), so I'm more inclined to get out there and ride.

The plan is basically unchanged from the proposed route here. It's about an 18-20 mile ride (depending on how lost we get). The new super neighborhoods (and landmarks) we're hitting are:

1) Independence Heights (Independence Heights Park),
2) Northside/Northline (Northline Mall),
3) Eastex/Jensen (Jensen Supermarket),
4) Kashmere Gardens (Kashmere Garden Baptist Church),
5) Greater Fifth Ward (Mozelle's 5th Ward Florist), and
6) Northside Village (Northside Bakery)

Of course the landmarks are subject to change, as google doesn't always account for the fact that places go of business. Also, I may come across a different landmark with the super neighborhood name that would shorten the trip.

NYC subway redux

2008-09-23T17:33:00.003-04:00

So setting the Guinness Record for visiting all 468 stations on the NYC subway has long been an interest of mine.

I mean, it's even in the masthead of the blog!

Jay and I have toyed around a few times with writing a computer program to help with it. Solving it completely is analagous (well, at least similar) to the Travelling Salesman Problem and as such, might be a bit difficult to solve completely. But a computer program could at least help with some of the more mundane tasks in creating a route.

But the big problem has been data. While technically the subway data is in the public domain (since the MTA is a publicly-owned enterprise), getting all the right data in the right formats has been challenging.

It was just yesterday that Jay and I had dusted off some of the ol' spreadsheets and such. And as I was again just looking at a few things, I noticed that Google Transit had (finally) added NYC to its list of cities

I found a few posts on the Internet about people getting all the NYC subway data into GTFS (Google Transit Feed Specification), so I think that before too long we should have something.

Every County in Alabama

2008-09-23T17:27:00.003-04:00

There are only 67 counties in Alabama, as compared to the 88 in Ohio. But Alabama is approximately 25% larger (in land area) than Ohio.

Since international rock-star Jim Tocco lives in Montgomery, I have toyed around with doing an EFALC.

Here is a first draft at a route

The 26:20 was my initial draft at a time, but upon further review, and taking into account our actual times from EFOHC, I think it's doable in 23:53.

I have sent Jim a test route which he will be doing sometime over the next month or so. Once he does that segment (roughly the SE section of the route), we can compare his actual time to the route estimates and see if this is doable.

Blacksburg to Cincinnati

2008-08-14T08:49:00.002-04:00

Sunday was a day of rest that we stayed with my dad and it was definitely nice to not have to drive back to back long days. Monday morning we headed out bright and early. I had talked with my dad about places to buy gas. We were really low on gas since I didn't want to buy gas on Sunday and hadn't filled up on Saturday (though I should have). I was worried if there wasn't a gas station nearby on 460 that we'd run out before we got to one, and was considering going back eastbound to a gas station. My dad said there was a gas station only about 3 miles west on 460 so I said a prayer and crossed my fingers.

We ended up making it there without any problems, so that was nice. My dad had said that typically it was more expensive than other ones nearby but it ended up being the best price ($3.65 I think) that I saw for the entire day!!!

We took the standard US 460 into Princeton WV but then instead of taking our standard route home up I-77, we continued west across the Interstate. Continuing with my pattern of getting lost whenever I have to go through city streets (or as I like to think of them - scenic deviations from plan), I missed the turnoff onto Ingleside Road and ended up going northbound on US 19 over to WV 20. Clearly the learning here is that for future trips, I need to give myself more detailed maps of cities (or get a TomTom).

WV 20 led us to US 52 and 4 WV counties (McDowell, Wyoming, Mingo and Logan). US 52 was pretty windy and hilly and not a great road for traveling. It was very interesting to go through these little towns and how they would just be cut out of a hillside. We turned off onto Buffalo Creek road and bypassed Williamson, WV and then rejoined US 52 where it had multiplexed with US 119 and was now a sweet 4 lane highway. We were on that for not very long before we exited back onto US 52. One neat part of that little stretch was that although for the most part the road paralleled Tug Fork to the east (the border between WV and KY), there is one section where just to make the road construction easier, it crosses the creek, which snagged me Pike Co KY!

Near Kermit WV, we crossed over Tug Fork on to KY 40. We had been looking for places to eat for awhile and near Inez spotted a Wildcat Mart / McDonalds combo so we stopped. Ate lunch and I found a quarter in a "Pot O Silver" machine. Took KY 3 to US 23/460 and I got a kick out of heading "East" on 460 when earlier this morning I had been heading west. Though really at this point it was more going south. KY 114 turned into the Bert Combs mountain parkway, which continued the good roads we had been having. Got off that on KY 205 and headed US 460 west into Mt. Sterling. 460 was a pretty good road with some slow parts near towns. KY 11 to KY 36 to KY 32 to US 27 in Cynthiana (where I actually didn't get lost!) and then US 27 took us home.

Total on the day - 21 counties (16 new)

Kitty Hawk to Blacksburg

2008-08-14T08:19:00.002-04:00

Initially I had thought that during the week that we were over in the Outer Banks, we could hit the first ring of NE NC counties (Camden, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Chowan) while I was there. Well, initially I was trying to figure out a way to snag SC (one of now-10 states I have not been to). In the end, I decided to bail on both of those plans. So instead of going home in a way that would go through Tyrell, Washington, Martin and Bertie counties, I went through the 4 listed above (US 158 to US 17 to NC 37 to NC 137 to US 13), in addition to Gates and Hertford counties, which both routes did.

Coming up on US 258 Truck route near Franklin, VA, I could not figure out why Google would not let me turn on to VA 616. Field reconnasiance reveals that the 2 roads, although they look like they connect, in fact are overpass/underpass. Makes sense! Don't mess with Google. We were on the lookout for a place to stop and stretch but were shut out. Franklin was kind of shady looking, if you ask me. Not to mention I got a bit lost (because I didn't realize my route had me going off US 58 Business (onto Armory Dr / VA 671) and so I got confused when the road signs were not matching up with what I thought the route should be). We ended up stopping at a 7-11 gas station on US 58 west of town. The restrooms were ummmm un-sanitary but hey my son found me a dime in the parking lot so it all worked out :-)

US 58 was a very solid road. Originally we were going to stop at Emporia (where it crosses I-95) for lunch but ended up going to South Hill (where it crosses I-85) and eating at an Arby's and then wandering around Walmart for awhile to stretch out. We continued on US 58 past Danville (with a slight detour on US 15 and 360 (to pick up Charlotte county). The US 58 bypass around the south of Danville was just SOOOOOOOO close to North Carolina that I took a 2 minute detour for Caswell Co.

It's Danville baby!!! You can also see down in the bottom right corner part of my license plate printout that I did to keep the kids (well one kid) entertained.

US 58 took us into Martinsville, where I again got slightly lost. Not too badly though and we headed out on VA 57. And here's where the day's adventures got a bit interesting. SW Virginia is verrrrrrrrry hilly and although we were pretty much done countying, there were just no good roads to get where we needed to go. The roads we took were very windy and very hilly and thankfully nobody got carsick. After talking to my dad, he suggested that I should have taken VA 8 which I guess is a better road. Once we got into Christiansburg, the familiar US 460 took us where we needed to go

Total 25 counties - 22 new to me. The repeats were Greensville and Emporia VA (from my trip down I-95 to NC on my honeymoon) and Montgomery VA (home of Blacksburg)

Hershey to Kitty Hawk

2008-08-14T07:51:00.002-04:00

Day 2 started off a bit slower. We woke up bright and early (of course) but with all the packing and eating and our kids just being so dang loud in the lobby, we didn't end up leaving till a bit after 9:00.

We headed southeast out of Hershey on Bachmanville Road into Lebanon County and then various middle of nowhere roads till we got onto PA 283 East. Went through Lancaster where I dropped off another post card. Not sure why that has a Harrisburg postmark unless that's where the gas station employee lived?

Went down PA 72 / PA 272 / US 222 into Cecil County Maryland and then took a brief out and back on US 1 to get Harford County, before heading east. BACK into Pennsylvania (Chester County!) and then back into Maryland onto MD 273 to MD 272. We hopped onto I-95 and before too long hit some nice traffic. Apparently on a Saturday morning everyone was heading beach bound? Just over the Delaware line, we stopped at a toll plaza that was INSANELY crowded. Just tons of people all over the place, many of them shady looking. I'm not sure if the toll plaza itself was dirty or it just seemed that way due to the masses of people. I bought some Delaware postcards and mailed the first one off. Too bad I didn't double check, but it was a duplicate.

Shortly after we got back on the road, the van started going crazy. We had been having some battery trouble and it was acting up. A few months ago the belt just came off of all the pulleys. It was kind of acting that way and we pulled off at the Christiana Mall. We said some prayers, I got out and jiggled the battery cables, and that was that. We had no further van troubles for our entire vacation. With the help of a missing fingered man, we got back on I-95 to I-295 into Salem County New Jersey. I had never been to New Jersey (or Delaware!) before and was glad to cross those 2 states off my list.

An immediate turn around in New Jersey and we dealt with traffic westbound too. It's dang crowded over here! We ended up getting back on DE 1 and passing the same mall we had just stopped at a bit earlier. I think that, given the van trouble, if I had realized that this was the way that we were going to continue after the NJ detour, I would have punted on New Jersey. But knowing now what I do (that the van had no further trouble), I'm glad I didn't!!

Lots of traffic on DE 1 (I'm pretty sure it was beach traffic). We exited on DE 299 and took US 301 back into Maryland (Kent Co). Then MD 299 to MD 301 and back into Delaware. Around here it was getting to be lunch time and we had our eyes peeled for a Wendys or Arbys or some such. I had written down the locations of some Wendys on our route but I thought that we were going to get an earlier start so they were all a few hours down the road. Local roads took us to DE 42 to DE 300 to DE 11 aaaaaand back into Maryland. MD 302 to MD 454 got me Caroline County (not to be confused with Carolyn!), past the border town of Marydel (again, not to be confused with Delmar, which we would pass through later in the day). We went through Felton, DE (where I detoured to find a Post Office and send another (duplicate) post card. We got on US-13, which we were going to be following for quite awhile. We stopped to eat in Harrington and then into Delmar and into Maryland (for the 5th! time today).

US-13 was pretty good - some slowdowns near towns / cities but overall pretty quick. We stopped for gas right at the VA / MD line and the kids amused themselves by having one hand in Virginia and one hand in Maryland. We crossed over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel and that was pretty sweet. Several people asked me how long that was and I think I said different things but for the record it has a shore to shore distance of 17.6 miles.

Some pics of the bridge and tunnel

We crossed and went on I-64 and VA / NC 168 south to US 158 east. Total was 21 counties (19 new for me). The only 2 repeats were Wicomico and Worcester Maryland which I had previously hit on a trip to Ocean City.

Home to Hershey

2008-08-14T07:47:00.003-04:00

I wanted to take a brief second to recap the driving portions of our recent vacation trip out to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Carolyn did a nice job of talking about the vacation itself, but for some strange reason she barely mentioned the trips to and there.

And while I have already documented the counties / routes in a spreadsheet, I wanted to just mention some of the things that I found / noticed, to pave the way (pardon the pun) for future travelers.

Day 1 was Friday July 25th. We had made the decision to pack up the whole car the night before to try and ensure an early start. Initially I had wanted to just throw the kids in the car in their pajamas ear-lie and change at the first stop but in the end, we decided to just try and make it snappy in the mornings. We put the kids in their backup pajamas (so we wouldn't have to pack them) and made them sleep nightlightless.

We got out of the house at about 8:09 and set up I-71. Carolyn had wanted to stop for fruit somewhere but there was nowhere good to do so nearby, so we decided we'd stop in Columbus. Apparently she cannot live off the standard traveling 3 square meals a day of pop tarts, sandwiches and cookies. It took us awhile to find a store in Columbus. As we circled around I-270 to I-70, I was getting a little worried we would soon be running out of civilization, so we got off the highway and eventually we found a Kroger Marketplace like 2 miles south. I think it was the one near Pickerington but I'm not sure. I should go back and check my receipts for historical accuracy. Except I threw them all away.

I also tried to find some postcards to send to Carey who is collecting one for every county but Kroger nor the CVS nearby had any. Jerks.

I was able to take a picture to contribute to the Ohio Highway Ends project

Anyway, one annoyance of Kroger is that their fruit is dang expensive. And indeed, grapes were $1.99/lb. Grr. We got out and wandered around stretching ye olde legs and such and then got back on the road. One bonus of Kroger is that we spotted a Florida license plate. I had created and printed out a 50 state find the license plate game and my son was enjoying it. This was definitely our best day of the 4 traveling days due to the extensive Interstate-ness of it all.

I was originally going to post my Word doc of all the license plates on here so people could download it if they wanted but it was like 7 MB so if you want it just email me or leave a comment and I'll send it your way.

Anyway we continued on I-70 east into West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Actually had to detour on I-470 near Wheeling since I-70 was closed to through traffic. Passed my aunt's house where I stayed on a previous county trip. Went through the various tunnels on the PA turnpike. We stopped for lunch at the Bedford Travel Plaza. I bought an array of postcards to send at various places in Pennsylvania but tragically 2 of them ended up being duplicates. I also found a penny on the ground - bonus!

We got off at Exit 201 and snagged Cumberland County and then came down PA 696 into the lovely megalopolis of Shippensburg. I enjoyed the sites of an old-school town (not to mention some old schools). After a jog on I-81, we went back on PA 997 to US 30, which we followed into a little town called Gettysburg, where I amused myself (and surely no others) by talking in my Rhett Butler voice for hours.

I even found the post office (after we drove right by it) and dropped off the postcard. I chose to follow the signs for the visitor's center rather than my maps and that confused me for awhile but we eventually got to the right place. We took the 20 minute tour of Gettysburg (about the kids' attention span) and then headed back in the car. Gettysburg was also very handy for the license plate game - we found a bunch of good ones here (CA, AL, and probably a few others).

Then we had to keep going south to snag the annoyingly LCC-d Carroll County, Maryland. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing towards our ending destination of Hershey, Pennsylvania. As we started coming up US 15, the traffic started. Not only was it rush hour, but there was a Jonas Brothers concert there. We went stop and go for awhile with vans full of hordes of pre-teen girls. Luckily our hotel was on the west side of town so we were able to get out of traffic a bit earlier. Also Carolyn spotted a sign that said "The churches of Hershey welcome you" - we couldn't grab a pic, but she definitely thought that a chocolate-based religion was one she could definitely get onboard with!!!

We walked to Hershey World and took the free tour. It was pretty cool. We hung out there for a bit and then took the free hotel shuttle back to our free hotel rooms. Definitely should have taken the shuttle over there instead of walking. We drove over to a disgusting Wendy's (food was fine but things were so sticky and dirty!) Got everyone settled in for bed and went to sleep to the melodious sounds of the Jonas brothers. We had gotten 2 rooms and had planned on having a boy and girl room but our rooms were adjoining so we just put the 3 big kids in one and Carolyn and I and the little'n in the other room. It ended up working okay.

Total for the day: 27 counties - 7 new ones (for me)

ESNH Interactive Map & Stats

2008-07-23T00:03:00.007-04:00

Today I finished preliminary plans to grab all the Super Neighborhoods in Houston in 13 trips.

Total Distance: 457 miles (approx.)
Distance range per trip: 15-67 miles
Average distance per trip: 35 miles
Number of new SNs per trip: 4-12
Average new SNs per trip: 6
Estimated time to complete: 4-5 months

Here is an interactive map that I will be updating throughout. As of now, my original trip and proposed trips 2-9 are up. Keep it bookmarked and I will update as I take more trips :)

As you can see from the trips, they get longer and longer as the trips go on. I'm hoping that I can build up some endurance for the dreaded 67 mile trip up to Lake Houston, which is not only extremely long, but I have to ride over two bridges twice each. That's going to be a long weekend!

I'm tentatively setting a goal to be done by New Years '09, so stay tuned.

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 1

2008-07-20T13:46:00.014-04:00

I had my first trip out for "Super Neighborhood Counting" today. I managed to rack up 8 out of the 88 my first time out. I totaled 15.2 miles and was on the road from 7:00am to 8:45am and then from 11:00am to 11:30am. For those of you that did the math in your head, that's a rather casual pace. I haven't rode a bike in a while, so I thought I would coast as much as possible.

If you want to follow along on a map, click here for Google Maps (may be slow) or here for Google Earth (recommended).

The first stop was at the welcome sign for my own neighborhood, #15 Greater Heights. It was easier to get a shot of this historical marker than the larger sign:

Then I went down Washington Ave. and picked up this shot for #22 Washington Ave./Memorial. This is in the same complex that Howard Hughes was buried in. Washington Cemetery is the older section, while Glenwood Cemetery is the newer (1910s) one. This is where all the obnoxiously rich people in Houston get buried.

It wasn't much longer before I was in downtown Houston. What better place to get a photo for #61 Downtown than the Welcome to Downtown Houston sign? I set up my camera on a tripod across the street, set the timer 10 seconds, and sprinted over there on my bike. I wasn't even in it. I tried a second time, dashed over, then came back and realized I forgot to set the timer. Again, I set it up, set the timer, waited for traffic to be completely clear, then I floored it (so to speak). Then my tire got stuck in a crevace for drainage (for the Bayou underneth) and my bike and I went tumbling forward. Since I was actually in this shot, I figure it was good enough. I wasn't going to do it again. My knee still hurts :(

And here is my good luck shot for the day. I was supposed to be in Fourth Ward, and I in fact roamed all over, following every address of every business listing on Google Maps that had the name "fourth ward" in it, but to no avail. I was about to turn around and this sign popped in front of me. I guess I went too far and ended up in #62 Midtown, which was unscheduled for the day:

Knee still hurting and frustrated at the lack of "Fourth Ward" signs, I decided to take one more pass through the neighborhood, just on random new streets. I screeched my breaks when I came to this house and read the plaque carefully. There it was! Fifth line from the top is the #60 Fourth Ward I needed (click for bigger).

Then on Montrose Blvd, I got an unexciting photo for #24 Neartown-Montrose

This next one was shortly after my break for my go club meeting. #67 Upper Kirby had these signs everywhere, so it wasn't hard to get it.

In another fortnuate turn of events, I passed this elementary school on the way to River Oaks County Club to pick up #23 Afton Oaks/River Oaks. That saved me about a mile.

I was supposed to go to Lazy Brook/Timbergrove, which was maybe 1/4 mile off my direct path home, but I was exhausted, I had already gone nearly 15 miles, I was out of water, and it was 90 degrees outside. So, I decided to save it for another day. After all, it's less than a mile from my house, so I can get it any time.

I forgot how much fun cycling was. I can't wait until I have time for another trip.

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston

2008-07-18T16:39:00.007-04:00

Dan and I were discussing what "EveryWhatevers" we were thinking of accomplishing. He was thinking of revisiting Every Municipality in Hamilton County, but with a bicycle instead of a car (since it's only about 80 miles). I'm sure he'll write about it soon :)

Of course, I knew right off the bat that Every Municipality in Harris County (see plan and execution) was out of the question for a bicycle, being about 200 miles. I tried to cull it down to every municipality contained completely within Harris County, but that was still 120 miles, way more than I could bicycle in a day.

Dan said "what about super-neighborhods in Houston?"

My first instinct was "are you kidding?" There are 88 super neighborhoods in Houston (which are political subdivision of the city itself, see map), each one about 7 square miles. Houston itself is 600 square miles. My best guess for a route going through all of them is about 200 miles. Again, no way I could do that on a bike in a day.

But the idea of ESNH was a really good one. It's a great way to explore my own city. It's a great way to get some exercise. So I'm doing what we don't normally do here, and throw the time limit out the window.

The only rule is that I have to leave my house and return to my house under my own body power, either by running, bicycle, etc. If I use any motorized or electronic vehicle between the time I leave and the time I get back, none of the SNs count. If possible, I should locate a sign, building, business, etc. within that SN, that contains the name of the SN, and take a photograph of it, with me in it.

So here it comes: ESNH. Stay tuned for updates. I'm thinking of doing my first run on Sunday with a route I've done before, with Greater Heights (#15), Washington Ave/Memorial (#22), Downtown (#61), Fourth Ward (#60), Neartown/Montrose (#24), Greenway/Upper Kirby (#87), and Afton Oaks/River Oaks (#23). I know of places where I can get good photographs of all of these, except for Fourth Ward, which is only 0.47 square miles and has no (active) schools, libraries, or police or fire stations, probably due to it's close proximity to the downtown stations. The route is 12.6 miles, and I'll do it in two chunks separated by about 1 1/2 hours.

48 States in 5 days

2008-05-07T07:46:00.000-04:00

Heard from my mom (who heard on NPR) about a trio of folks that are attempting to set "the record" for fastest drive to all 48 continental states. They are aiming to do it in 120 hours (5 days) and are of course following the standard rules of no stops except to refuel and change drivers. As of this writing they are in South Dakota and are 36 states down with 12 to go. They started in Vermont and are ending in 4 corners.

Follow along at their blog at http://greatamericanroadtrip.us/ or see the map. Also see Barry Stiefel's 50 States in a Week's Vacation

Good to see people following the lead of our great 88 Ohio counties in 24 hours trip

Every Ben and Jerry's in Vermont

2008-04-30T07:36:00.000-04:00

Some postage at Every Whatever!! I read a blog post by my brother talking about Ben and Jerry's free cone day, which was yesterday (April 29th).

He, as a loyal field reporter manning the lines at Quizno's in the mall, reported that "Towards the end of the day a few people came into the mall all bike-helmet, crazy-cycling-gear-like, and announced to much cheering and applause that they had biked to every B&J in the state and we were the last ones."

He suggested that this was 40-60 miles, since there were only 2 non-Burlington Ben and Jerry's, one in Montpelier and one in Waterbury. But alas, dear brother, there are also ones in Manchester and Rutland. There's also one in Smuggler's Notch that was not participating in Free Cone day.

I did brief mockup of their potential route (which may be off somewhat as far as which order they did the Burlington stores, which shouldn't change the route much.

It's 141 miles. You have 11 hours since the stores open at 10 and close at 9 (at least the ones I could find). Giving 15 minutes per store (* 8) to park your bike, go in, all order ice cream, eat it, and get back on the road, that means you have to do 141 miles in 9 hours (with no buffer time), or a shade under 16 mph. Doable, if you're good. But I definitely need some proof. Ryan, would you be willing to keep working at Quizno's until next year? :-D

New Hampshire towns

2008-01-11T21:03:00.000-05:00

So while following the New Hampshire primary results the other day, I came up with a possible new Every Whatever.

Every Town in New Hampshire (EFTNH)!

Towns in New Hampshire are a bit different than the way that they are done in most other parts of the country. Basically they function as mini-counties. Each town may have several villages within the town boundaries, but each town (as well as cities which are just bigger towns) has its own government, and each county is sub-divided into several of these towns (for instance, Hillsborough County has 31).

Further complicating things are the fact that New Hampshire also has things called townships, "grants", "locations" and "purchases" which are also sub-divisions of a county, but they are more like just un-organized county space (similar to how townships work in Ohio). These have no self-government and many of them are uninhabited.

So, EFTNH. Doesn't sound that bad, right? I mean New Hampshire isn't a very big state, right? It's 44th in land area with only 8,968 square miles. I had previously come up with an EFCNH route that was only like 4-5 hours. I can't find it right now but it was something like that - there's only 10 counties!

The rub comes in with sheer numbers. As you may have surmised from my mention of how many towns are in just Hillsborough County (31), there are a LOT of them! 234 to be exact (221 towns and 13 cities). There are 24 (I think) of those location / grant / purchase type things that will not be counted. All but 2 of them are in the northernmost county; Coos (1 in Carroll and 1 in Grafton).

So, I was hashing this around with Carey and he compared that to his trip to every municipality in Harris Co, Texas. 34 municipalities and it took him 5 hours and 6 minutes. New Hampshire is approximately 5 times bigger than Harris Co (1,729 sq. mi.) On the one hand, Harris Co probably has better roads (certainly less hilly and certainly better than the ones in the north of NH), but on the other hand, the towns in NH are more densely packed in. Still, that data point seems to indicate that it may be close to 24 hours, which increases its "cool factor" at least in my eyes. Another data point is that my Every Municipality route for Hamilton Co Ohio (407 sq. mi) clocks in at 50 municipalities and 6:46. So we shall see!

One problem that I was finding was some accurate mappage. Mapquest gives you the county borders, but not the town borders. I found a few places with town borderes, but none with roads as well. If I have to do an out and back, I need to be able to know how far I need to go to the next town over. Or definitive answers on whether certain roads go through certain towns. I searched around and eventually we found some ArcGIS image programs, but they weren't ideal. Finally, we stumbled on Granit, which bills itself as "New Hampshire's Statewide Geographic Information System (GIS) Clearinghouse". Very useful! Not only did they have plenty of GIS datasets for that kind of thing, they also offered 2 very useful maps off of their map library - a PDF with town boundaries and major roads as well as a cleaner PDF that just has the boundaries.

So I will investigate and report

Tour de Madeira 2007 report

2007-12-23T17:33:00.001-05:00

So, as I mentioned earlier this week, weather conditions were looking good for an attempt at Tour de Madeira 2007 this weekend. It did rain a bit Friday but not too badly, and so I decided to take a shot on Saturday. I was somewhat worried about the roads still being wet but I went for it anyways.

I'm not sure what was going on but it seemed like there was nothing but problems in the morning as I was trying to get things ready. First, I forgot to bring my route map home from work. That wasn't too much of a problem since I had it on my laptop and I had it pretty much memorized anyways. Then as I was looking for my sweatpants, I couldn't find them. So that necessitated a trip to Meijer beforehand.

So we dropped off my bike at our new house (which is very close to the starting line), and then drove down to the end-line, where I dropped off my car (so I'd have it at the end so I could drive back home rather than riding). The plan was then to head to Meijer and then drop me back off at the starting line so I could start the Tour. But then I realized I had forgotten something at the house, so we had to drive back home to get that. But now, as I write this recap, I forgot what I forgot!??

So then we headed to Meijer. Did some grocery buying, and I bought some sweatpants to wear. I changed in and was getting ready to start the tour when.... I realized I had forgotten my bike helmet. So we had to go BACK home, get that, then go BACK to drop me off. All in all, it was a frustrating morning for all involved. Luckily there were no other riders I had to coordinate with :-).

But the frustrations were not over yet! I got out of the car, started getting my bike and such ready, and realized that my high-class Walkman (© 1979) was not working. I don't need no steenkin iPods! I had planned on listening to the UC bowl game while I rode (the illustrious "Papajohns.com Bowl", but alas it was not meant to be. So I gave that to my support crew to fix, and I'd pick it up at my pit stop at the 1/2 way mark.

So they headed back home and after setting things in order, I headed over to the starting line. By now, my pre-race frustrations have to be done, right? Nope. The optimal starting line for the TdeM is on Kenwood Road at the south city line. Which happens to be on a pretty nice uphill incline. So it's kind of hard to get started. Especially given that the shoulders were kind of wet and muddy, due to the aforementioned previous day's rain. So you might ask "Well, why don't you just start further down the road to get your momentum, and then just start the clock when you cross the city line marker?" A good thought, but further south the road just gets even MORE hilly. Here's the topo map of the starting line, if you'd like to check it out.

Anyways, I kept trying to get started, and I kept not being able to get enough momentum, so I kept walking it a little further till I could turn off on to Kenwood Hills Drive where it is a bit more level. Oh, did I mention that Kenwood Road is a pretty busy road and so I had to deal with traffic as I was flailing about? Ah okay then. I was also in too high of a gear which I'm sure contributed to the problem, but I couldn't change gears because I couldn't get enough momentum to move the sprockets... Then when I finally did make it over to Kenwood Hills (pretty much walking my bike there, which is allowed per the ground rules), as I got going on the bike, I almost fell off. At that point I decided "Screw this - I'm starting over". Another nice fringe benefit of "racing" with yourself - you get to decide when you start :-)

So I got into my lowest gear, went back to the starting line, and what do you know? It was a lot easier to pedal! Imagine that! :-) And actually that was by far the hardest section of the Tour. The actual riding was fine and I didn't have any messups on the route itself. So if everything going wrong in the pregame setup was the price I had to pay for nothing going wrong on the Tour itself, I guess that's worth it. I'll give you a brief recap, though it was pretty uneventful.

The first section on this route is the Kenwood Road section, from the city line up to Euclid, with all the subdivisions and cul-de-sacs off of Kenwood (there are 13, of various lengths). I think this section has some of the trickiest topography, because most of these subdivisions are right on the edge of the hill that separates Madeira from the "valley" where Cincinnati itself sits. So you go down this cul-de-sac street, which drops off down the side of the hill at the end. You get a nice ride down, but you can't enjoy it too much because you have to ride the brakes to be able to stop and turn around. And then you're stuck at the bottom of a hill having to power yourself up the hill from a dead stop. At least I remembered to get into low gear as I rode down! On this stretch of the TdeM alone, this scenario happens on Mapleridge, Oakvista, Vistaridge, Windsong, Lakota, Foxdale, and Cherokee). As I got to the corner of Euclid and Kenwood roads (conveniently catching the green light!), I snapped a time - 11.9 miles at 57:33.53 (12.4 mph).

Then it was on to the far west side of Madeira. Nothing eventful there, though I was able to ride up Ken Arbre back to the intersection of Euclid, something that I had to walk last time. I caught the light at Kenwood *again* which surprised me since a) it turned green long before I got there and b) it's a pretty short green light. As I went through, I wondered if somehow I was setting off some sort of sensor but it was messing up because it was expecting something travelling at car speed. Probably not but it was weird because I specifically remember the same thing (the light lasting MUCH more than I was expecting it to) happening last year. Took care of the Pineneedle subdivision, then a few of the streets of the older subdivision (Summit / Fowler / Maple), then it was out on Dawson, back on Shawnee Run, then up Camargo into the downtown area. I was feeling pretty good still as I knocked out the Sellman park streets and then back up Camargo to Longfield and then around Maxfield to the pit stop at home (25.5 mile mark). Got there at 2:07:16 (12.1 mph). Took a quick break there where I refueled with some bread and water and such. Unfortunately I did not remember to press the lap button on my stopwatch until I was already on the road (at Sycamorehill Lane and yes Sycamorehill is one word). I will estimate a break of 9:20.

Since I was at about the halfway point, I knew that if I wanted to stick to my goal of only taking 2 breaks on the tour, I'd want to take my last one at about the 38 mile mark, and also knew that I'd want to put it off as long as I felt I could. The 3rd quartile of my route began as I wound through the NE section of Madeira then over through the Mingos and the Timberlanes, and up Hosbrook and over to the Lancewood subdivision. I was still feeling pretty good.

As I got back over to Buckeye Crescent I spied another point of interest - a Ron Paul sign! I had already passed the one at my house, and I would later spy a Ron Paul bumper sticker on a car parked on Miami. I saw no other political candidate sign (not counting a few leftover bumper stickers for Bush or Kerry). And since I visited EVERY house in Madeira, I can state with certainty that Ron Paul has a 100% lead in political signs in Madeira :-)

I ended up taking my 2nd and final break over on Berwood, which was at the 39.2 mile and 3:27:14 marks (11.3 mph including break time). Break lasted only 3:36, but was very refreshing. The last section of the route was pretty uneventful though I was definitely tired. I did have to walk up Indian Trail again (2nd and final walk section - I also walked up part of S Mingo). I really wanted to walk up Miami in the section between Camargo going up to Shawnee Run, but since Miami is such a major road, I didn't really feel like I could, and I knew that if I did it on the sidewalk it wouldn't count, so I manned it up. I thought I'd have to walk up Burman Meadow (nothing like a steep climb at the 49 mile mark) but I made it up.

Final total was 51.0 miles and a total time (including breaks) of 4:35:53 (11.1 mph). I continued down Camargo for the final 8/10 of a mile or so to my car and then sat down. Why didn't I get into my car? Oh well of course I had realized at my final break, as I was trying to run through things to make sure that I had everything covered, that I didn't have my car key. So I had to call Carolyn to come pick me up. Which she did because she's awesome, even though I had deserted her all day :-)

Fun time and it always feels good to set a NEW. WORLD. RECORD! :-)

EFC Ohio Table of Contents

2007-12-20T18:11:00.001-05:00

It has come to my attention recently that this blog has lacked is an introductory / Table of Contents type post for the 88 Ohio county trip. Well, to be more precise, that has long since been on my attention, but only recently have I decided to do something about it. This way when I talk to someone about the EFCOH trip, I can point them to one specific URL that has links to the various updates and exploits

PREGAME

DATE			TITLE
10/26/2006			Preliminary Update
11/3/2006			Preparation
11/7/2006			Roster
11/8/2006			Route Map
11/8/2006			Weather Forecast

THURSDAY NOV 9, 2006

DATE	COUNTIES	COUNTY	TITLE
7:41 AM	0		Morning Update
10:45 AM	1	Monroe	And so it begins
1:00 PM	8	Holmes	And so it continues
2:00 PM	12	Jefferson	2:00 Status
2:45 PM	14	Trumbull	Update time from wife
6:00 PM	25	Richland	6:00 and all is well
7:00 PM	29	Crawford	7:00 count
8:28 PM	35	Ottawa	It is now 8:28 pm
9:45 PM	40	Williams	Quarter to 10 and still going strong
11:00 PM	47	Hardin	The 1/2 way point

FRIDAY NOV 10, 2006

DATE	COUNTIES	COUNTY	TITLE
12:05 AM	50	Shelby	Desert Correspondent signing off
1:15 AM			They said it couldn't be done
2:07 AM	56	Franklin	Grave News
2:23 AM			Serenade
3:21 AM	60	Muskingum	Controversy
7:01 AM	72	Pike	Morning Hours
7:32 AM			Taking long drive
8:46 AM			Award for best husband
10:42 AM	88	Preble	It is finished

POSTGAME

DATE			TITLE
11/10/2006			ODOT: Friend or foe?
11/10/2006			County Proof
11/14/2006			Official EFC songs
11/21/2006			Jim's recap

Tour de Madeira 07?

2007-12-20T16:24:00.001-05:00

A flurry of posts today, after nothing since this past August.

The weather looks to be nice this Saturday (high of 55 with no rain) so the Tdem 2007 is tentatively on the schedule. I will keep you posted as it gets closer

Tour de Madeira 2007 planning

2007-08-15T06:44:00.001-04:00

Well it's time to start thinking about Tour de Madeira 2007. Well, actually it has been time to be thinking about it for quite some time now, and not to worry - I, your faithful blogger, have been doing just that.

Although the 2006 T de M was very successful (my take - PJs take), I felt that the route could definitely stand some improvements. All in all, it was a solid route, but there were a few areas that merited a second look. As always, feel free to familiarize yourself with the ground rules.

And I am pleased to report that I have (at last) finalized a route for the 2007 edition. So let's take a brief look at the changes / updates:

After my Tour de Fairport Harbor planning, I had a breakthrough involving Eulerian paths and cycles and such, and so of course I began applying this knowledge to improve the Madeira route. There are 44 "bad" nodes in Madeira, not including the start and end nodes of Kenwood and Camargo. While I did not exhaustively prove this to be the case, I did quite a bit of study on the matter, and I believe that the shortest way to turn these bad nodes good is to apply the following 23 artificial edges
- Kenwood / Dawson Kenwood / Shawnee Run
- Dawson / Eleck Dawson / Rosecrest
- Strifler / Springcrest Euclid / Pineneedle
- Euclid / Wallace Euclid / Maple
- Longfield / Camargo Euclid / Sanoma
- Euclid / Hosbrook Euclid / Summit
- Southside / Summit Southside / Fowler
- Southside / Wallace Laurel / Miami
- Osceola / Maxfield Longfield / Maxfield
- Sanoma / Osceola Sanoma / Iuka
- Sanoma / Sanoma Rita / Sanoma
- Miami / Greenbriar Thomas / Greenbriar
- Thomas / Mapleleaf Thomas / Tances
- Thomas / Locust Dee / Thomas
- Berwood / Jethve Dee / Britten
- Juler / Wesley Juler / Dee
- S Timberlane / Fowler Miami / Juler Ct
- Fowler / S Mingo Fowler / N Timberlane
- Hosbrook / Miami Hills Hosbrook / Shewango
- Miami / Locust Miami / Shewango
- Berwood / Homart Homart / Thomas
- Rathon / Thomas Homart / Thomas
- Thomas / Sanoma Homart / Thomas
23 edges for 44 nodes instead of only 22? That is to handle the bad node at Thomas / Homart, and its neighboring bad nodes of Homart / Berwood, Thomas / Rathon and Thomas / Sanoma (the last 3 entries in the above list). You can think of it as 2 edges going from Homart / Berwood to Thomas / Homart and Thomas / Rathon to Thomas / Sanoma (going through Thomas / Rathon). I chose to break it out as 3 edges as shown above - distance-wise it's the same

So, in comparison to the duplicate edges of the 2006 route, only duplicating these edges is approximately 0.4 miles shorter than last year's route. By my calculations it was 2441 feet, but it is a bit silly to give numbers that precise when my mode of measuring is an online mapping tool that can't hardly get that accurate I'm sure. Seems like a lot of work for less than 1/2 mile savings. But hey, 1/2 mile is 1/2 mile. And actually, given that there's at least one new street since last year. I think this will be the optimal route until and unless Madeira adds any more bad edges (most new streets are just going to be out and backs and therefore no changes to this route are necessary)
In addition to shortening the distance, there were a couple of other tweaks that I tried to put in. First off, I tried to eliminate as many out and backs as possible. Obviously, all the culdesacs (and lo, there are many) are going to require going out and stopping / slowing to turn around and come back. But last year's route had (by my count) 9 additional out and backs. Every time you do this you slow down - it's much more efficient to design a route that takes them out. This year's route only has 1 non-necessary out and back, and that was left in to avoid the next point
Avoiding left turns and traffic lights. I left an out and back on Miami Hills from the Timberlanes to Miami because without it, there was no way to avoid having to make a left turn onto Miami, and so I figured this was a good trade-off. The 2007 route tries to avoid having to turn left on to or off of major routes, and to have any intersection with a traffic light consist of 2 right turns at different sections of the route (to avoid potentially being stopped at a red light)
Where possible, avoiding uphills. This is probably on par with the 2006 route - there's only so much you can do.

I hope to try this out within the next few weeks, probably ear-lie on a Saturday morning. The current record is 5:43:33, and I think that it's not out of the question that I can get it done in under 4 hours.

Every Larosas

2007-08-05T14:20:00.001-04:00

Yes, as mentioned in my last post I have new plans! Every Larosas!!

There are 60 Larosas, mostly in Cincinnati, but also ranging up to Dayton and one (my foe) in Batesville, Indiana.

Here is a map with a tentative route plan. It starts up in Dayton and then ends at the Mt. Healthy Larosa's (which is one of 4 that is open till 1 a.m.) Batesville is a 63 minute drive from Oxford. Normally I'd try to start or end there, but since this has hours of operation to deal with, it's not really possible - since the Batesville Larosa's is open only till 11 a.m. (And opens at 11 a.m. as opposed to some of the other ones which open at 10:30)

So recently I did a test run of part of the route, starting in Landen and heading to Montgomery, Loveland, Goshen, Milford, Mt. Carmel, Amelia, Anderson, Mt. Washington and Mariemont. I had calculated the times between each of the stops through Google Maps. As it stood, to hit all the stops, it would require doing so with only 1 minute 53 seconds of time at each store. That includes all time to find the store, park, get out, order, pay, get back in the car, and hit the road again.

Obviously that's not a whole lot of time, so I wanted to try the route in real time to determine whether or not the times were accurate. If I could pick up a minute or so per store, that could mean the difference between success and failure.

The good news after my real-world route simulation: The times were not that accurate. The bad news: They were not accurate in the wrong direction. Most of them were pretty close - within a minute or so, excepting some traffic problems that (hopefully) wouldn't be repeated on a Saturday, though you never know when you'll have a broken down car on Beechmont Avenue backing up traffic, as I did.

I also missed the Mt. Washington Larosa's, which is on a street with no parking lot or anything. Definitely can't be having any of that.

One positive is that it someone at church told me that you can pay for your order when you make it, which makes sense. But that could definitely pick up some time at each store.

I haven't decided if I'll keep trying for this or move on to something else. Another option would be to just do the ones in the "Cincinnati area" whatever that means. The more I think about it, the more I think that should be defined on a county basis. So even though there are areas of Butler county that I don't consider part of Cincinnati (Middletown / Hamilton / Oxford), that at least is consistent with the Cincinnati / Hamilton / Middletown consolidated statistical area

I will keep you posted as usual

The demise of ECF

2007-08-05T14:01:00.001-04:00

I have done some thinking about ECF, and I have decided to put it on hold. The more I thought about having to limit it to 275 just made it definitely lose some "cool factor". But don't worry, I have other plans...

3,141 Postcards

2007-07-26T17:42:00.000-04:00

So I was sitting around, wondering what new "everywhatever" I could do from my couch that would still have the "cool factor" that you hear Dan talk so much about, and I came up with this idea:

I'm trying to get a postmarked postcard from every county and county-equivalent in the United States sent to me. It can be sent by anyone, but it has to be postmarked from a zip code within the county. Ideally, I would like the postcard to be about the county it was sent from, but it's not a requirement.

I've set up an separate blog to keep track of all of those postcards, as to not clutter up Dan's excellent blog. You can keep up with it here: http://3141postcards.blogspot.com/

Right now I'm going through and soliciting local Chamber of Commerces and Visitor's Bureaus to see if they will send me one for free. Once I get a P.O. Box, I will allow unsolicited postcards to be sent to me from loyal readers :)

Every Municipality in Harris County

2007-07-25T11:11:00.002-04:00

Carey here,

Last Sunday I completed my trip of Every Municipality in Harris County in 5 hours, 6 minutes, and 26 seconds. As stated in the previous post, I had 34 cities to cover, with almost half of them not even having 5,000 people living within the Harris County borders.

Myself and two random people, Kelly and Karen, whom I met through a meetup.com road trip group, gathered at On the Border in the northwest side of the county for lunch to fuel up for the drive. The restaurant was in a Census-Designated Place (not a city!) called Cypress, which is the epitome of suburbia. Every single store was a chain and every single house looked identical. I felt like I was in some kind of twilight zone...

I made sure to have lots of carbs and protein (steak quesadilla, yummy!), as I would need it sitting in the car for 5 hours. I don't know if this is actually helpful from an energy standpoint, but I like to rationalize eating anything that's not very good for me.

We set off due northeast on the aptly named Cypress-Tomball Road to the start point. Before we even got there, Kelly had to go to the bathroom. I forgave him since we hadn't started the timer yet :) So we made it to #1 Tomball without incident. So far I've already spent almost an hour in the car without starting the official timer. I wasn't looking forward to the drive back to On the Border, then back home again, but that comes with the territory. As soon as we crossed 249 heading towards Waller, I started my trusty Pampered Chef kitchen timer.

The drive out to Waller from Tomball (on the also aptly named Waller-Tomball Road) was nothing but trees; there weren't many signs of civilization. At #2 Waller we turned the corner and went south towards Katy. Keeping up with the road naming scheme, I was looking forward to the road being named Waller-Katy road, but for some reason it was called Katy-Hockley Road. I had no idea where Hockley was, but I sure hoped I wasn't heading towards it!

I hit my first blunder of the day when I turned a corner that didn't seem like I was supposed to turn at. So I turned around and went in the direction I thought I was supposed to go. Then I saw the freeway from the direction we came from, which I knew couldn't be right. Well, after that I just had to stop and look at a map. Turns out the first turn I thought I wasn't supposed to take was actually the correct direction. I turned around again and shamefully accelerated back to the route.

Katy city limits were well marked, with a sign as well as a different color pavement (usually a clear indicator that road maintenance has changed hands from one governmental body to another). We turned around after crossing the border to #3 Katy and went down Clay Road back towards Houston. Little did I know at the time that I was not following my own directions. When we hit Beltway 8, I told everyone that we had hit city #4 Jersey City and turned towards Houston. I jumped on the toll road then, suddenly... too suddenly, I-10 arrived. I looked at my directions and found that Clay Road was actually the boundary for Houston after we were supposed to hit Jersey City further north. So, without any fanfare, I told our group that we had actually been in #4 Houston for a couple of miles now. So I got off the toll road, turned around for 4-5 miles to get now #5 Jersey City. Then I turned around again, got on the toll road, again, and set off to begin our tour of cities that are completely surrounded by Houston.

The Memorial Villages are 6 of said municipalities, all grouped together, completely surrounded by Houston. First we hit #6 Hedwig Village, #7 Piney Point Village, #8 Bunker Hill Village and #9 Hunters Creek Village, then we crossed the freeway and hit #10 Spring Village and #11 Hilshire Village. We hit all 6 of them in under 15 minutes. The interesting thing about all these villages is that they are all independent municipalities, but they all share police and fire service separate from Houston. This was a very posh area; we saw quite a few very large mansions. Looking at some of the census demographics of the area, the median income of the villages ranged from $66,000 for Hedwig Village (a lot of Shopping Centers) to $185,000 for Piney Point Village (a lot of Mansions). It was a nice drive with lots of trees and beautiful houses.

Next up were the tri-cities of #12 Bellaire, #13 Southside Park, and #14 University Park. These cities are also in a cluster completely enveloped by Houston. A lot of business professionals live in Bellaire because they have one of the best schools in Houston ISD. University Park has a lot of early-retired rich people who want to live close to Rice University while their children go there. Just like the villages, it's way out of my price rage! Southside Park is so small I don't even really know what's in it.

Now we headed southwest to the annoying portion of our trip: Cities that really have no business being in Harris County. We went down US-59 and got off at the Beltway frontage road. We turned on a Stafford Road and went down one block to hit the tiny tiny area of #15 Stafford that was in Harris County, or so I thought. While writing this I was remembering that I needed to be in a little subdivision to be in Stafford in Harris County, and we never went in one. I went to my trusty TxDOT map and was able to take a sigh of relief. I had changed my route because there was a second, easier portion of Stafford to get to. Crisis averted, it counted!

After Stafford we got back on the Beltway towards Clear Lake and ran through #16 Missouri City, which is also mostly in Fort Bend County, but just happens to peek into Harris County. Then we hit I-45 and took it south, exited and hit #17 Pearland, which is mostly in Brazoria County. Now we were starting to get into true middle-middle class suburbia. All the houses looked under 2,000 sq. ft., and only half of them were kept up. Most of the cars parked on the road looked about 6-7 years old, and there was a not-so-spectacular-but-still-OK park nearby. Of course a lot of people are starting to move to move from the Clear Lake area (upper-middle class) to Pearland because of its low cost and proximity to Houston, so I have a feeling those property values are going to increase.

And finally we went far enough down I-45 to get to what's called the "Clear Lake" area, which is named after the lake the area surrounds. That lake happens to also be the Harris County/Galveston County border, so I only have to hit the cities on the northern portion of it. The municiaplities are going to come fast and furious now, since we're mostly past the reaches of Houston's gigantic land-grabbing hands. Only Clear Lake City was swallowed by Houston, the rest remain unscathed. So I exited NASA Road 1 and was immediately in #18 Webster, which is where I got married not too long ago! We took a right on NASA Road 1 and immediately after hitting the border for #19 Friendswood (mostly in Brazoria County), we took a left into Challenger Seven Memorial Park, the boundary for #20 League City (mostly in Galveston County).

Then we begin our tour of NASA Road 1. This was the kingmaker of this trip: A straight road that goes through many municipalities, as well as (of course) the NASA Space Center! NASA is to us Houstonians like the Statue of Liberty is to New Yorkers. We consider it a tourist attraction, so we never actually go there unless we have out-of-town company or it was a school field trip. I've lived here 4 years and I've never been. My wife has been, but only on one of those school field trip. I've even passed right by it dozens of times when we were making trips down here from Baytown every weekend for wedding planning. But I digress...

Along NASA Road 1, we went through the main portion of Webster, then #21 Nassau Bay (Kelly really enjoyed saying the word "Nassau" for some reason), #22 Pasadena, #23 El Lago, a quick u-turn left on Kirby Drive to catch #24 Taylor Lake Village, then at the end of the road, #25 Seabrook. It was a beautiful drive along the northern border of the lake. We saw marinas everywhere. This was very much a marina community. Pam and I actually looked in this area to live when we first moved down here, but it was so much more expensive than Baytown was, so we decided against it.

Next was TX-146 going north. This is a road most people in the Houston area don't really need to go on. It's lined on both sides with refineries. If you're coming from Louisiana and going to Galveston and didn't want to take the ferry, this is the way you'd take to get there. But who doesn't want to take a ferry!? We drove straight through #26 Shoreacres and exited at Main Street after #27 La Porte.

The next city, Morgans Point, always seemed like an anomaly to me. From the freeway, as well as a satellite's point of view, it just looks like a large shipyard. A very large shipyard. It hardly seems like there could be enough people living there to justify incorporation. We crossed the city limits to enter #28 Morgans Point and, lo and behold, there was the city hall/police station/courthouse building on our left. There was even a single Morgan's Point Police Department patrol vehicle. We only saw a couple of houses to our right, so we knew at least someone lived there. After the trip I looked up more specifics of the city: In 2000, they had 336 people and 111 households. The children attend La Porte ISD. And the Morgans Point police are dispatched through the La Porte Police Department. They boast a property tax rate of 0.54%. City Council meetings are the first Thursday of each month and the municipal court is only in session one day a month on the first Tuesday of the month. They have garbage and even curbside recycling pickup. Who knew?

Next up was a Houston Landmark, the Fred Hartman Bridge. I swear, every time I see a commercial about Texas trucks, I see this bridge in one of the Texas landmark montages. The funny part is that this bridge is completely surrounded by oil refineries and shipyards. Even on that website I liked you too, it takes care not to show you the surrounding area. But one of the most interesting things about all the oil refineries is that, for safety, they are brightly lit all night. If you cross the Fred Hartman Bridge at night, it's one of the most spectacular visuals you could see of something so ordinary during the day. If you're ever in Houston, you should check out this bridge at night at least once.

Once we crossed the bridge, we immediately exited into the city where I lived for three years, #29 Baytown. Oddly enough, the fastest route back to the remaining cities was back over the bridge (because of the natural barrier of the Bay), so we turned around and headed back. Next was westward on TX-225 towards Houston. On the freeway we crossed #30 Deer Park and Pasadena again. Deer Park/Pasadena are famous for their roles in the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy, with John Travolta. Gilley's, the bar from the movie, was an actual working bar and remained in operation until a fire destroyed a portion of it in 1990. The bar was closed, but the structure remained until it was finally torn down in 2001. Unfortunately, I never got to see it myself.

We went down Shaver Street/Main Street in Pasadena to grab the most out-of-the-way city, South Houston. This is another small city that's surrounded by Houston on one side and Pasadena on the other. I made my last blunder of the day by missing my turn onto a road that was named something other than what the map said. We passed South Houston High School on our right and figured if we were in the Parking Lot of that, we would be in South Houston. I double checked when I got home and we were, indeed, in #31 South Houston, barely.

On the way back we went to the hottest Subway I had ever been to in my life. It was obvious the A/C wasn't working, but I thought it would of been too hot to even keep the store open. It was a relief to finally get outside, where it was 93 degrees in the afternoon sun. It must of been in excess of 110 degrees inside. It was not pleasant at all.

We drove all the way up main street to the last remaining automobile tunnel in Houston, the Washburn Tunnel. This is another one of those landmarks that most people who live here never go on. It's in between the I-610 loop bridge and the Beltway 8 toll bridge, so you can always just take a freeway across rather than take the tunnel. Luckily for me, the next two cities were just across the tunnel.

We took a left after the tunnel and we were in #32 Galena Park. This was definitely a lower-income area, as all the houses were small and run-down. The one thing that really caught my eye is that all the street signs were black on yellow. I had never seen a color scheme like that before. We turned on Main street and, after an open stretch of nothing, crossed into #33 Jacinto City. Jacinto City was like Galena Park, but a little more fixed-up.

The last city was pretty uneventful We took I-10 to I-610 to US-59 towards Cleveland (Texas). We got off near the airport, took a right into an area with lots of trees, and picked up the final city, #34 Humble (pronounced "Umble" for you northerners). The landscape in the northeast looked just like the northwest: lots and lots of green trees.

I stopped the timer at 5 hours, 6 minutes and 26 seconds and we drove 30 minutes back to the restaurant. I was really kicking myself for making those screw-ups at the beginning, but not enough to want to try a second attempt :) On to the next project, which will probably be the Every Local Bus in Houston trip.

ECF planning

2007-07-24T19:05:00.001-04:00

So the planning is on for ECF. What is ECF, you might ask? After much careful thought and deliberation, I have decided my latest craze shall be named Every Cincinnati Favorite, or ECF for short.

Busken, Graeters, Larosas and Montgomery Inn all had nice pages with hours of operation for all their stores. Skyline? Not so much. I sent them an email asking if they had that anywhere corporately, but the response I got was pretty much "Nope". So, while it wasn't quite the "Screw you" that Carey got from Houston Metro, it was also not the "Oh, here they are all and here's some free gift cards too". So I just got off the phone with 35 Skylines asking them for their hours on Fridays. And only one of them gave me the hours that the particular person was working, though a few tried to give me hours for Saturday.

I have decided that Friday must be the day to do this. Most stores have extended hours on the weekend (Fri/Sat), and the reason it has to be Friday instead of Saturday is that the Busken at 8th and Walnut is closed on Saturdays.

I think my plan is to do all the early stores starting at 6 am till 10 am. There are 14 Buskens and 11 Graeters (2 Graeters don't open till 11). Here's a map with those 25 locations. I looked up the actual driving directions for a route starting in Hebron (SW near the airport in KY) and ending on the west side of town, and it was 3 hours 49 minutes
. Taking out the 4 stores on the south east side drops it to 2:52 which is what I would probably do. 3:49 is just driving time and doesn't include stopping in each of the stores nor traffic which could be troublesome. Depending on how my trial runs go, I might take out the 2 Springdale stores (far north).

What? Trial runs? Mwahahaha. Yes, I may go on a trial run of this part this upcoming Saturday.

Anyways, now that I have all (but 2) hours of operation, here is a breakdown. As mentioned there are 25 stores that open before 10 am. The others open at 10, 10:30 and 11.

Closing times:
Of the early stores, 9 close before 6 p.m. This shouldn't be a problem since I should be hitting those first thing. Though actually 1 or 2 of the ones I wanted to skip in the morning are among these 9 - I'll have to remember those. Also I bet that the 2 Skylines that I didn't get an answer for close early (i.e. they were closed when I called just now) - they're downtown so it wouldn't surprise me.

8:00 - 1 Skyline (7th and Vine downtown)
9:00 - 3 Skylines
10:00 - 1 Graeters, 5 Skylines
10:30-10:45 - 8 Graeters, 1 Montgomery Inn
11:00 - 5 Buskens, 4 Graeters, 2 Montgomery Inns, 2 Skylines
11:30 - 1 Larosas, 1 Skyline
Midnight - 25 Larosas, 7 Skylines
12:30-12:45 - 5 Larosas
1:00 - 3 Larosas, 4 Skylines
2:00 - 1 Skyline (Oakley)
3:00 - 8 Skylines
3:30 - 2 Skylines (Kenwood and Plainfield Rd)
4:00 - 1 Skyline (Clifton)
24 hours - 1 Busken

If the numbers don't add up, and they probably don't, sue me. It's interesting trying to find a rhyme or reason to some of the closing times. Like it doesn't surprise me that the Clifton Skyline is the latest closing - all those UC students. But why does Norwood close at 10? Don't Xavier students need their 3-ways and Coneys?

Also, the times for Skyline were their dining hours - some of them had drivethrus that stayed open later. I'm not sure how I feel about drivethrus - kind of defeats the whole purpose of visiting every restaurant. Though I used the delivery / carryout hours for Larosas, as opposed to dining areas, because at least there you're actually going IN to get your pizza (or your garlic sticks or 20 oz beverage, as the case may be)

I think this is definitely doable, and one of the cool factors is that it's going to be close. It will take some excellent logistical planning and execution to make it happen in one day. There's something cool about having a 24 hr deadline rather than just going as fast as you can without a deadline. Good thing I'm the (self-proclaimed) world's #1 expert on such matters...

And, one final point, Carolyn has decreed (and if there's anybody who knows her way around the middle of the night, it's her) that 3 a.m. is still night time, but 4 a.m. is morning.

EDIT TO ADD: There was a missing Skyline!!! After talking to Amy at work, she was remembering one downtown on 4th street. I double checked the website, and it was there, but only listed as a Downtown store. The other 2 downtown stores are also listed in the general Cincinnati category. That would have been a disastrous faux pas to not include that one. Naturally, this just cements Skyline's place as "worst website evah"

Cincinnati Favorites

2007-07-23T07:45:00.000-04:00

So after watching Mark Malkoff's record-setting performance of 171 Starbucks in Manhattan, I dusted off a few of my plans. The first one I thought of was the plan to visit every Kroger in the area. There were 108 Krogers in what Kroger considers the Cincinnati "area" (which goes from Batesville to Maysville to Hillsboro to Sidney), and IIRC, the estimate was 22 hours or so to visit all of them (and that's just driving time - not including time to actually go in and buy something).

After ruling that one out, I remembered the 58 Krogers in what I considered Cincinnati. That came in as somewhere around 8 hours of driving time (much more realistic), but I had dismissed it as lacking "cool factor". Upon review of the Starbucks video, I may need to reconsider that. I think that there is definitely some cool factor involved.

But what has currently grabbed my fancy is visiting every "Cincinnati Favorite". Though there are more brands listed on the aforementioned website, I narrowed it down to Busken, Graeters, Skyline, Larosas and Montgomery Inn. With apologies to Sturkey's and Glier's, whatever they are, if after 10 years of living here I have never heard of you, you don't qualify!

So I then set my sights on acquiring the store list. As I already knew, this can be one of the most challenging parts of the whole endeavor. Larosas has an EXCELLENT page - a full store list with Google Maps mashup! I was even able to get latitude and longitude coordinates off of it, so that was nice.

The other sites weren't that bad - I eventually was able to get a full list, but then I ran into another problem. Skyline's store list contains stores inside Kings Island, the Zoo, Coney Island and Great American Ball Park. After thinking about it for a bit, and an (unrelated) trip to Kings Island (where I of course did some reconnaisance work), I decided that those stores don't count. After all, there are also Larosa's and Graeter's in Kings Island, and neither company lists those locations on their official store listings. If Skyline wants to artificially inflate their store count, that's their own business. So I decided (and I do declare myself to be in the best position to arbiter) that only stores that are open to the public are counted. Skyline also lists a store inside the IRS building in Covington, but a quick phone call confirmed that they are open to the public, so they're in.

Then I turned my sights to boundary locations. What, exactly, is considered "Cincinnati". It was easy to rule out locations in places like Oxford, or Hamilton, or Batesville, or Lebanon, or Walton. But as you start getting closer, the line becomes much hazier. If you count Mason, then what about Landen. And then if you count Landen, well what about Maineville? How about Amelia or Goshen? Independence or Alexandria, KY? Lawrenceburg or Bright, IN? There were somewhere around 150 locations to visit, depending on where you drew the line.

But then I decided to just make the boundary the 275 loop. It's a nice definitive boundary without any room for wiggling - either it is inside or it isn't. And that still gives 104 stores. I didn't think that 150 was doable in 24 hours, given the fact that many of them don't even open until 10 a.m. (the exception being Busken). So you don't really have a full 24 hours - it's more like 15 or 18, though I did see a few Skylines that were open till 3 a.m. on weekends and the Hyde Park Busken is open 24 hours a day.

The rules, just as in the Starbucks movie, are that you have to visit every store, and you have to buy something at every store and consume at least part of it. If you happen to come across a store after closing time, then if you can get an employee to sell / give you something, that can count. More codified rules will be written as necessary.

Stay tuned!

171 Starbucks!!

2007-07-20T06:44:00.000-04:00

Yes there are indeed more folks out there like me. Mark Malkoff, a NYC resident, came up with the plan to visit all 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in a single day. After a few false starts and much planning, he pulled it off on June 29, 2007.

You can watch the 10 minute video recapping the event at the appropriately named 171starbucks.com.

The rules were that he had to make a purchase at every store, and consume at least part of it. He managed to do the first 14 hours or so on bicycle, but then, hopped up on caffeine and with a hobbled leg, he did the last part in a car.

Due to bad luck and / or some delays, he arrived at 2 stores after they were closed. One was shown in the video as closed at 10:12 p.m., although the store sign said they were open till 11. The employee, after much begging and attempted bribery, parted with a biscotti for $1. At another closed store, it took $80 for a pound cake!

He ended up spending over $369, but finished nearly 23 hours after he started.

Definitely awesome, and it has renewed my vigor in some of the other tasks that I could do around here. Perhaps Every Kroger isn't such a bad idea, or maybe Every Larosas!

Old comment!

2007-07-10T09:24:00.000-04:00

So no more than 10 minutes after the posting of my last post, I get an email with a notification of a comment on my blog. As a side note, if you use Blogger, you should definitely turn the feature on that emails you on comments - otherwise you may be missing some.

This was a comment on my first post on this blog from a fellow county-counter. He actually also lives in the Greater Cincinnati area (nearby),but has racked up over 2500 counties. So a leeeetle ahead of me.

Anyway it was good to hear from another county enthusiast. He has his own blog about the subject which I highly recommend.

One of his posts is an article from the Pioneer Press, in St. Paul, Minnesota. It talks about us crazy people and also mentions

"There's a guy who has a Web page about his whirlwind visit to all 88 counties in Ohio — he did it in 24 hours."

Woohoo I'm famous!!!!!!

County game

2007-07-10T07:40:00.000-04:00

Not quite an every whatever, but close. Here's a little game:

Take your basic county map of Ohio.

Starting at Adams, and ending in Wyandot, make your way through all 88 counties in alphabetical order. Obviously this is impossible to do all in one trip, but the game is to see how few "strikes" you get. Every time you have to start over (i.e. you reach a county that has no non-visited adjacent counties that are after it alphabetically), you choose an adjacent county that is before it alphabetically, and count yourself with one strike.

I'm thinking that for Ohio the "magic" number would be somewhere around 12-15.

Oddly, there do not appear to be any states that you can do this without strikes, unless you count Hawaii which has kind of "fuzzy" borders due to the water. Delaware and Rhode Island (which have the fewest counties at 3 and 5 respectively) are doable with a single strike, as is Connecticut (8 counties).

New Hampshire (10 counties) is an interesting case:

Without the rules of having to start and end at the alphabetically extreme counties (Belknap and Sullivan), it's doable with one strike (Belknap-Carroll-Coos-Grafton-Merrimack-Sullivan, Cheshire-Hillsborough-Rockingham-Strafford). But if you force those boundary conditions, it takes 3 (Belknap-Carroll-Coos-Grafton-Merrimack-Strafford, Rockingham, Hillsborough, Cheshire-Sullivan).

I like the symmetry of starting and ending in the extremes so we're doin' it baby!

Every Municipality (in Harris County, Texas)

2007-07-05T15:09:00.001-04:00

Carey here (not Dan).

As usual, I like to like to use Dan for inspiration and I borrowed his every city in a county idea to my own county, Harris County, Texas.

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and our counties are no exception. Harris County is 1,778 square miles and third largest in the country by population. This is compared to 413 square miles of Hamilton County, Ohio. Needless to say, it's going to be a much longer trip. However, there will be fewer municipalities to hit, since the city of Houston alone takes up 33.8% of the entire area of the county.

Texas is a little different in Ohio in that they don't have "villages" or "townships." All we have are cities and unincorporated county areas. These unincorporated areas are basically the same things as townships. They don't always have a set border, but they are considered census-designated places.

From speaking with Dan, I think these are the ground rules we came up with, which is pretty much what he's already discussed in the previous post:

Municipalities are usually defined by state statute. Anything considered an unincorporated area (i.e. township) by the county doesn't count towards the goal, as they do not always have defined boundaries.
If a city is split into two or more disconnected parts, you only have to visit one of the parts to count the city.
You are allowed to leave the county, but any city you pick up outside of the county doesn't count towards the goal. You must be inside that city inside the target county.
If any part of a city is in the County, it must be hit.

So, with these ground rules in mind, here is the list of municipalities in Harris County that require visiting:

Baytown
Bellaire
Bunker Hill Village
Deer Park
El Lago
Friendswood
Galena Park
Hedwig Village
Hilshire Village
Houston
Humble
Hunters Creek Village
Jacinto City
Jersey Village
Katy
La Porte
League City
Missouri City
Morgan's Point
Nassau Bay
Pasadena
Pearland
Piney Point Village
Seabrook
Shoreacres
South Houston
Southside Place
Spring Valley
Stafford
Taylor Lake Village
Tomball
Waller
Webster
West University Place

The shortest path I could find was 205 miles and estimated 5.75 hours. See my map here

And I have a date set! It looks like I'll be attempting this route on the afternoon of Sunday, July 22, 2007 with a few people I know who wanted to share in the world record. I'll report on the trip afterwards.

Every Municipality

2007-07-03T07:22:00.001-04:00

So a new thing I've been tinkering with - every municipality! I started with Hamilton County, of course because hey that's a cool place to start! As with the Every Zip code problem, one problem with EFM is getting a list of all the municipalities, as well as finding the actual borders.

Each county in Ohio is broken up into (generally rectangularish) townships. Hamilton County has 12 townships. I believe there used to be 14, but Cincinnati Twp and Mill Creek Twp have been completely annexed by the city of Cincinnati. When a county was first formed / surveyed / whatever, it only had these townships as organizational units. As cities and villages are incorporated, land is taken away from the townships to form said cities / villages.

In very urban areas, this can lead to some odd township boundaries, or even removal of the township. As I mentioned before, there are 2 historical townships in Hamilton County that no longer exist. Or Columbia Township which now only exists in several small islands, since the rest of it has been annexed by other cities.

So, the list of places to visit:

Cities:

Blue Ash
Cheviot
Cincinnati
Deer Park
Fairfield
Forest Park
Harrison
Indian Hill
Loveland
Madeira
Milford
Montgomery
Mount Healthy
North College Hill
Norwood
Reading
Sharonville
Silverton
Springdale
St. Bernard
Wyoming

Villages:

Addyston
Amberley Village
Arlington Heights
Cleves
Elmwood Place
Evendale
Fairfax
Glendale
Golf Manor
Greenhills
Lincoln Heights
Lockland
Mariemont
Newtown
North Bend
Terrace Park
Woodlawn

Townships

Anderson
Colerain
Columbia
Crosby
Delhi
Green
Harrison
Miami
Springfield
Sycamore
Symmes
Whitewater

Now you might ask yourself: "Why Dan, I live in Mack, or Dillonvale or Finneytown - you missed my town on your list!!". And the reply of course is that you do not live there. You live in Green Township, or Sycamore Township, or Springfield Township (respectively). Those are what are called Census Designated places. Or, in other words, they just don't really exist, outside the minds of the people that live around there.

I have nothing against CDPs (other than that they would make my trip longer), but the problem with including them is that their borders are abstract and/or nebulous. To take some examples of some west-side Hamilton Co. neighborhoods. Where's the border between Mack North and Mack South. Or either of them and Bridgetown. Or Covedale, Dent, White Oak or Monfort Heights? You may think you know the exact border, but I guarantee you that out of 10 people, at least 5 would give different borders.

So, I have decided to stick with actual municipalities, with elected officers and official boundaries and such. Similarly, I chose to treat Cincinnati as just one city, rather than try to divide it up into neighborhoods - same kind of border problem. Maybe for my next trick I will visit every ward in Cincinnati (I believe there are 25).

And again, you might ask yourself: "Why Dan, Loveland and Milford are in Clermont County, not Hamilton, and Fairfield is in Butler County! I thought this was a Hamilton County thing?!?". Actually, most (local) people know that Loveland is partially in Hamilton County, as well as Clermont and Warren, as one of only 5 cities in Ohio that are in 3 counties. And Milford has a tiny sliver in Hamilton County, near the former terminus of the Little Miami Bike Trail. But Fairfield?!? Even the Wikipedia doesn't know it's partially in Hamilton County. In browsing the city's website as well as the county auditor's website, I am forced to agree that there is a tiny section (less than a block long) of Winton / Gilmore Road of Fairfield that is in Hamilton County - near 275 and the Cincinnati Mills mall.

Here is a map of the various places in Hamilton Co (click to enlarge)

Note that it includes CDPs.

and here is my first draft at a route

Isn't Google Maps new feature of being able to auto drag and drop maps and directions cool! It's like they're listening right to me! This nearly eliminates the need for places like http://www.routebuilder.org and http://www.gmap-pedometer.com.

Tour de Fairport Harbor 2007

2007-06-29T08:03:00.001-04:00

So, in catching up on my blog posts, here's an update on the Tour de Fairport Harbor, 2007.

Basic "Every Street" rules can be found here

Fairport Harbor specific rules can be found here.

When thinking about this post, there's actually not a whole lot to say. My step-dad and I went out last Tuesday (June 19, 2007) to tour. Having already thought about the mechanics of the route, I had arrived with a route already in hand.

Tuesday morning we set out a little after 7 a.m. and then we rode the ride and that was... about it?

Our route ended up being 17.26 miles and the world record time is 1 hour, 38 minutes and 35 seconds. I think that it could probably be beaten - we weren't really cycling competitively - more just for fun and exercise. Plus my dad was doing silly things like stopping at stop-signs :-).

It was a nice way to see the town and see some of the sights

Tour de Fairport Harbor ground rules

2007-06-28T22:20:00.001-04:00

Ground rules for the Tour de Fairport Harbor, Ohio.

1. All rules as laid out in the basic ground rules must be followed:

2. The borders of Fairport Harbor are as follows:

Lake Erie to the north

Grand River to the west, south and east (you must cross the river on OH-535 to the south and St. Clair St to the east

East St to the east

OH-535 to the east must be travelled to the city limits sign

3. Special cases

Water St - You must travel north to the end of the street with the port authority building

High St / Huntington Beach Dr - You must travel north to the guard shack admitting people into the park. You must travel on both sides of the "V" to the west of the guard shack as well as around the complete circle to the north of the shack.

Houghton Ct - You must travel until the parking lot at the back (north) of the buildings
House Ct - You must travel the entire street

Prospect St (section off Vine St) - You must travel around the bend to the east - no need to travel down the foot path that goes down the hill to the west of Vine St

Prospect St (section off East St) - You must travel around the bend until the Marina welcome sign.

2nd St - You must travel until the road dead-ends into the parking lot for an apartment-type building

3rd St - You must travel until the road splits into straight-ahead into the industrial building and off to the left into the condos.

4th St - You must travel into the section west of High St

OH-535 - You must go eastbound until the city limits sign

St. Clair St and OH-535 - You must cross the river

OH-535 and High St - You must travel around all 3 sides of the triangle intersection between these 2 streets.

Villa East Dr and Harbor Ridge Ln - You may travel between these streets by going around the chain barrier.

4. These streets are specifically not included

Windjammer Ct

Any pedestrian paths to the lake

The driveway / roadway east of the guard shack at the Lakefront Park.
The walkways inside Huntington Park

Pincus Ct

5. One-way streets:

Marine St - must be travelled northbound

King St - must be travelled eastbound

Paradise Alley / Paradise Ct - must be travelled eastbound

2nd St between High St and Water St - must be travelled westbound

South St - On various online maps, this appears to be one-way westbound. But "on the ground" there were no markers to indicate as such. This was where one of the local schools was, so (since I'm not local) I don't know if this was a one-way thing only when school is in session? If so, the one-wayness must be observed. If there continue to be no markings when you attempt the record, you may travel it in either direction.

Tour de Madeira ground rules 2.0

2007-06-28T19:26:00.001-04:00

Okay, as an update to the first draft and as a companion to the basic ground rules, here are the ground rules for Tour de Madeira 2.0

1. Rather than listing off every street, I will list out the various border streets and special cases. Where a specific side of the road is mentioned, the route must include riding / walking on that (Madeira) side of the street. Where the city border does not occur at an intersection of two streets, you must ride / walk past the Madeira city sign posted on that road before turning around. Any streets within these borders that are not specifically excluded must be visited

Montgomery Road (from Hosbrook to Galbraith - SE side)

Galbraith Road (from Montgomery to east of Miami - south side)

Miami road (north of Galbraith - west side)

Camargo road (both sides - from west of Blome to Madisonville)

Shawnee Run road (from east of Madeira Hills Dr - north side)

Kenwood Road (from south of Kenwood Hills to Euclid - both sides)

Euclid Avenue (from Ken Arbre to Hosbrook - south side; east of Hosbrook - both sides)

Ken Arbre Avenue (from Euclid to Stewart - south side)

Stewart Avenue (from Woodsway Dr to Ken Arbre - east side)

2. Special Cases - for some streets, it is unclear what actually consists of a "road". Or some roadways are definitely roads, but it's unclear where the border is between road and driveway. Some clarification for those cases.

Goff Terrace - From Miami to the Ferrari's parking lot

Railroad Ave - From Miami past Center and into the first parking lot (7805 and 7809 Railroad)

Dones Ave - From Camargo east of Marvin to where it splits into 2 driveways (going east to 7845 and south to 7825)

Marvin Ave - From Dones to Sellman Park; no need to go past the Parking Lot

Iuka Ave and Osceola Ave - at the south ends of both of these streets, there are triangular "median" type structures. You must travel around all three sides.

Paisley Lane - You must go around the corner until the road dead ends into the driveway for 6680 Paisley

May St - You must go all the way to 6600 and 6609

3. These streets are specifically NOT included

Any of the streets of the mobile home park on Dawson Road

Greylock Drive
Any "named" streets on the campuses of any of the schools

Shawnee Pines Drive
Dot Ave
Miami Road south of Shawnee Run road

"Extended" driveways, such as 6873-6929 Fox Hill Lane

The path through Sellman Park to Fox Chase Lane - though you are allowed to travel that if you feel that would be advantageous

The narrow separate pedestrian walkway at the south end of Rita Avenue. You still have to travel all of Rita, but you do not have to especially go through this walkway as you do with the medians on Iuka and Osceola

4. There are no one-way streets within the tour limits

Every Street ground rules 1.0

2007-06-28T06:24:00.000-04:00

After the first draft, I've thought of some updates to the Tour de Madeira ground rules. While planning the T de M 2007, I thought of some areas that might need clarification. Also, after doing the Tour de Fairport Harbor, I also realized that there was a need (yes, a NEED) for a set of abstract ground rules for things that are common to all tours of this sort (like generic rules for how to handle cul-de-sacs or intersections or borders), as well as tour-specific ground rules (like a listing of streets / borders for a specific tour). So this post will contain the generic rules. Further posts will come (soon?) with Madeira rules 2.0 as well as the Fairport Harbor ground rules, and of course a report of T de FH '07.

1. The full length of every street within the tour's ground rules must be visited, but you are allowed to go outside of the tour limits if you want. Official time is from start to finish, and includes any break or rest time. You are allowed to ride or walk your bike on each street. You may travel on the sidewalk if it is convenient, but travelling on the sidewalk does not count towards completing the route. Except where specifically excluded, travelling through any part of an intersection between two streets counts as visiting the entire intersection. To count a segment of road as "completed" you only have to ride on one side of the street, though of course, you can choose to ride on both sides, if you deem it to be advantageous.

2. When going down cul-de-sacs, you must make an effort to "round the bend", but you do not have to scrape the curb. Similarly, when travelling to the end of a particular intersection, you do not have to go into the cross street to "fully" complete the street you are on, as long as a reasonable effort is made to get to the end of the street.

3. If there are any one-way streets (or one-way sections of particular streets) within the tour limits, you must travel them in the correct direction.

Tour de Fairport Harbor planning

2007-06-15T20:15:00.001-04:00

Yes folks and loyal readers and viewers, it is another post from me, Dan Miller, your host in the crazy world of every whatever adventures. Or should that be Every Whatever adventures? After a few guest posts, we are back on the saddle. So no need to be confused about wondering why I'm going to be riding 63 buses in Houston, leaving my family and making all these plans without telling you. I don't know if anyone is sick of reading about Houston buses (I can only speak for myself in saying that I never tire of such talk) but this post is going to be bringing it back home to the Buckeye State.

Frankly, I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. Sometime this summer we are going on vacation to the lovely 'burg of Fairport Harbor, Ohio. So recently I got the idea for TOUR DE FAIRPORT HARBOR 2007!!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

Okay, calming down now. FH is a pretty small town. Don't worry, further bulletins as events warrant, but I think it can be done in somewhere around 20-30 miles, maybe even less.

Because it's much smaller than Madeira, I am taking a more systematic approach. FH is mostly just in a grid layout, but it does have some wrinkles laid in. First I tried to figure out exactly where the boundaries of the village lie. This was actually a bit more complicated than I wish that it had been. I primarily used the Lake County auditor's website to try and figure it out. Using home sales as well as searches, I was able to (I think) come up with a fairly close enough boundary system. If you look at a map of Fairport Harbor, I am saying that, starting in the NW at Lake Erie and the Grand River, the border follows the Grand River south (on the east side of the river), then follows OH-535 north, with the village border continuing to follow East St. north (and also including the dead-end sections to the east of East St, such as Joughin St, York St, 3rd St, etc). I think this will be close enough to allow me to come up with a route, pending some investigation when I get there.

Some topics to research - where on OH-535 does FH start - at the river or slightly before / after? I did see that Windjammer Ct, just to the south of the river, is in Painesville Township. What about any part of N St Clair St, or any sections of OH 535 east of East St. What about Huntington Beach Drive - driveway to a park, or road? Then there's the always fun game of "Is this a road, or someone's driveway?"

So, now on to a bit of technical analysis of the problem. What we're looking for here is called an Eulerian path. That is, in technical terms, a path in a graph which visits each edge exactly once. Now we are not constrained in having to only visit each edge once, but obviously if we were able to do so, that would minimize our total distance, which IS the goal.

To find an Eulerian path through a graph (or in this case a road system), each vertex must have an even degree. Or, in other words, each intersection must have an even number of roads in it. So, 4-way intersections (or 6-ways!) are good, while T-intersections (3-way) or 5-ways are not.

I think it would be difficult to find a road system where this was the case, and Fairport Harbor is no exception. After printing out a map, I started plotting the "odd degree" vertices. To make the graph capable of containing an Eulerian path, you have to insert artificial edges between the odd degree vertices, thus making them even.

Note that for purposes of this experiment, I ignored dead-end / culdesac entries, since in those cases it is clear that you will have to do an out and back, which will turn it into even. As an example of this, take East St and Joughlin St (a dead-end st). It's currently a T-intersection (3 vertices or odd). But (barring starting or stopping the route on Joughlin), when you approach the intersection on East St. you will go out and back on Joughlin, creating a 2nd "edge" there, making it have 4 vertices or even. If this is not making sense to you, you should probably just go ahead and stop now (if you haven't already). An example of an odd vertex that we want to count is something like High St and Orchard St, or High St and King St.

So with that condition, I originally came up with 18 odd vertices. So it seemed simple that all I would have to do is connect them with 9 "extra" edges and I would have my path. But on further review, I realized that I was missing some instances where the out and backs on cul-de-sacs would throw things off. Just like doing an out and back on a cul-de-sac causes a 3-way intersection to be turned into a 4-way (and thus even and good), the out and back on a 4-way intersection causes it to be turned into a 5-way (and thus odd and bad). An example: East St and 3rd St. It's a 4-way intersection, but because you have to travel out and back on the section of 3rd st east of East St, that causes it to be a double edge and makes the vertex of East and 3rd into a 5-way.

So, when taking that into account, it comes up to 36 edges. While I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this is exactly twice the number, I'm not sure if it HAS to be an even number or not. I was trying to figure out what I would do if there was an odd number, but I'm not sure if it by definition HAS to be even or not. In any case, I just have to come up with 17 artificial edges, and the 17 that have the shortest distance, and I'll have my route. Note that it is 17 and not 18 because 2 of the odd vertices will be my starting and stopping points.

I will post later if/when I come up with a route, and of course a post for the report.

Computer Programs and the (now) 63-Bus Ride

2007-06-04T11:41:00.000-04:00

Yes, the new METRO schedule change is out, and they split Bus 8 (South Main/Yale) into Bus 8 South Main to the south and Bus 66 Yale to the north. So now that makes 63 buses I have to ride. I had better get going on this before they change it again!

I managed to get all the bus times (post-bus 8 split) and threw them all into a database. I've been trying my hardest to use this data to my advantage to find an optimal route. In my mind, an optimal route would be one where I would have at least a 10 minute wait between buses (to avoid the late bus factor) and no more than a 30 minute wait between buses.

My first script did just that. You gave it a starting spot and how long you wanted to wait, and it spit out a route for you. You could either have it spit out the first route found or the fastest route found. The problem with this is processing speed. In order to find every bus route possible, it is a worst case of 63! calculations (63! means 63 factorial, or 63*62*61*60* ... *3*2*1). If you throw that into a calculator, it comes back with 2 X 10^82, or a 2 with 82 zeros after it. This means that even if I had a super computer that could do a billion checks a second (which is unreal speed), it would take 3 X 10^67 years to calculate a solution. So... that won't work.

My second script was to cut it down into little pieces to aid in a human-aided search. You could put in point A and point B and it would try to find the best path between them. The script works, to a point. The problem is that it usually skips over some crosstown buses that you need to get, because it would take too long to get them later. But it does very good at finding quickly the fastest path using 3-4 buses between two points. At least that's something. I also added a user-input variable for a "first bus" that you have to take, as well as an exclusion list of buses that you may not take on your trip. Another problem with the script is that there is no advanced string matching for the starting point, so if you don't spell the street name exactly like it is in the database, it won't know what you're talking about.

My next script is going to be 100% user input. I think this will be the best help in finding a good route. When you give it a starting point, it will spit back at you all the routes that go through that point. When you pick one of those routes, it will spit out every stop along that route, including what times it will get to that route, and which buses intersect it at that route and how long you'd have to wait at that stop to hit that bus. Then you click one of those stops and the process repeats. It will keep a running tab of what buses you've taken to get to where you're going and let you back up as many spots as you need. Unfortunately, I probably won't get to this until after my vacation next week.

Making the Most of the 62-Bus Ride

2007-05-24T23:01:00.000-04:00

First of all, a correction to my original post. There are 62 local buses in Houston, not 61. I grouped buses 26/27 together. If you look at a map, they're pretty much the same line. They go around in a circle around downtown. Bus 27 goes clockwise and bus 26 goes counterclockwise. But, they have different numbers, so I'll consider them different lines.

I think the biggest question I get asked about riding every bus in Houston is "why?" I think the biggest reason is: adventure. It's the same reason that someone would drive 3 days cross-country when they could of just taken a 5-hour flight. It's the same reason you can't help but slow down to look at a car crash. It's a break from the ordinary. With every adventure comes a story; a story you can tell others. A story you can tell your friends and family. I mean, what is my alternative? Spending all day making copies and staring at a computer screen? Besides, I never give up a chance to promote public transportation. You can ask any of my co-workers that and they would tell you the same thing!

But is this enough? I think so. But, if this adventure ends up getting press, I'm going to try to do something charitable. I would seem like a waste not to. I'm a good person, after all! Yesterday METRO released a news article that 10 of their mechanics were putting away $3 of each of their paychecks into a fund to buy bicycles for Houston's Fifth Ward kids for Christmas. Last year they managed to buy 58 bicycles. This year they are hoping to buy 500 bikes with help of donors. I think this is an amazingly worthwhile cause. What I'm going to do is try to set up a way to accept pledges to go towards this fund, where people can pledge a per-bus donation for my big trip, then an optional bonus if I can finish the entire thing. This way, even if I don't make it, I will still raise money for charity. Every dollar I collect will go towards buying those kids these bikes. They will compliment all the new bike racks that METRO is putting on their buses quite nicely.

Houston buses

2007-05-23T11:41:00.002-04:00

In case you aren't monitoring the comments for posts that were written 6 months ago, I thought I would clue you in on a recent development. Yesterday I got a new comment on this post

I have inspired someone else!!! Fellow is going to attempt to ride all 61 local buses in Houston. Follow the link for more information.

It's almost enough to make me want to go down to Houston to ride with him :-). And just think of how many counties I could pick up travelling down there!!

I had considered doing something similar in Cincinnati but shelved the idea. The problem is that just about every bus in Cincinnati goes from downtown to somewhere. There are only a few (51, 41, and probably a few others that I can't think of off the top of my head) that are more of "cross-town" buses. So that's not really a problem for completing the route - actually it would make it pretty easy. All you'd need to do (for the most part) is just get on and off various buses downtown, which just didn't seem as "cool" as some of the other things I had come up with. A larger city with more buses (Chicago and New York to name 2) I think would be a worthwhile challenge. Still maybe this will inspire me to come up with a good route for Cincinnati.

Cuyahoga Libraries

2007-05-01T07:38:00.001-04:00

Did you ever think that there could me MORE library posts?!!?

When I was out driving to Chicago for the second time, I got calls from various family members along the way. That would be mostly due to the fact that it was my birthday. I appreciated the well-wishes, but while talking to my step-dad, he was mentioning how he had seen my post about visiting every library in Hamilton County, and wondered what the possibilities would be for doing every library in Cuyahoga County.

This has spent some time being tickled about in the back of my mind, but I got some time the other day to work it out.

Unfortunately, I don't have my system quite completely automated (though it's automated enough that it does take a lot of the grunt work out of doing things). One of my problems is that the program that I have (that I downloaded) only finds the shortest solution for a closed loop (i.e. starting and ending at the same place). That's not quite what we're going for here, so I have to manually pick the starting and ending points. I try to do that logically and I pick out several different start/end points and run the program, and take the one with the shortest distance.

There's a map of the shortest route that I was able to find, 109.7 miles. No matter where else I started or ended, I couldn't find anything better. Most of the ones I checked were in the low 110s, so this is probably pretty close if not the fastest.

A few notes: From looking at the map, it seems like ending North Olmsted, Fairview, Bay would not be faster than ending N.O., Bay, Fairview, but comparing the distances is 10.7 for the first (4.2 from N.O.-Fairview and 6.5 for Fairview-Bay) and 11.7 for the second (5.2 for N.O.-Bay and again, 6.5 for Fairview-Bay)

Unlike the Cincinnati libraries, which seem to have variable start-end days by branch, all of the Cuyahoga libraries have hours from 9 a.m.-9 p.m., Monday-Thursday. So that gives a full 12 hours to do the ride, which seems doable (though not by much if at all). That's in contrast to Cincinnati, which has a shortest distance of 121 miles (for 42 libraries) and only 9 hours to do it (due to the different branch open and close times)

The only exception to those hours is the Richmond library, which has hours of 10-6. So that would require doing this route starting at Gates Mills, but even so, you'd probably still have to wait for Richmond to open at 10, since the first 2 legs (Gates Mills-Mayfield and Mayfield-Richmond) are only 4.8 and 2.1 miles (i.e. they would probably take you less than an hour, even considering book-checking out times). So logistically, it may be better to choose a slightly longer distance that would put Richmond further than 3rd. Though when you're riding 110 miles, you don't want to put TOO many more on there :-)

We shall see if this becomes a reality. One problem is that it would require a day of vacation (at least - possibly 2 to recover). I think maybe a Thursday ride would be the best option, with a long weekend to recover. Do I hear Thursday, July 3, 2008??

On the way home

2007-04-17T20:42:00.001-04:00

On Wednesday morning, one of the first things I did was check out the weather. I couldn't help it as I walked out of the hotel in the morning to find snow. Yes, it is still April. Weather.com had a snow advisory for much of central Wisconsin, with areas like Madison expecting 7-10 inches.
Ouch. Luckily my class was only a half-day on Wednesday, so I was able to get an early start. I think that if I had left in the afternoon the combination of regular Chicago rush hour with all the snow would have just been murder. As it was, the Interstates were certainly not clear - there was stop and go traffic as I made my way from downtown out I-90 westbound into Wisconsin. One downside of having picked up a bunch of these southern Wisconsin counties in previous trips is that it took me about 3 hours (and about 175 miles) before I hit my first "new" county - Marquette (#51). A few miles later, I exited I-39 north and headed east on WI-23. It was about a 16 mile one-way jaunt to pick up Green Lake (#52), but there was no other better way to do it. If you look at the Wisconsin county map, you can see that most of the counties are twice the size of Marquette and Green Lake. I'm not sure why they decided to split them so small, but it's annoying. I had looked for ways to cut out some mileage on the way back by diagonally getting to I-39 one exit further north (either by county roads or a jaunt on WI-22), but with the snow, I decided to just go back the way I came.

Continuing on I-39, I sauntered through Waushara (#53) and Portage (#54) before setting out for my 2nd out and back of the day, this time on County Road W, westbound to pick up Wood (#55). The road itself was not too bad (you could typically do 30-40 mph), but there were MAJOR snow drifts on parts of the road that made driving "interesting". At CR U, I turned right and did a little British-style driving to make sure I was in Wood. Driving through Kellner, WI, I got myself a bit unsure of where I was headed, but stayed the course and found myself on WI-54 eastbound, headed back to I-39. In Plover, I stopped to refuel and get some Wendy's. Here you can see a bit of the weather I was dealing with:

Somwhere in Plover, I first started seeing signs that WI-54 was closed for construction. As I started looking at the map to try and find an alternate route, I saw another sign that listed that it was open to I-39. Since that was as far as I was taking it, I breathed a sigh of relief. Continuing on I-39 and then US-51 northbound picked up Marathon (#56) and Lincoln (#57). In Merrill, US-51 ends its limited-access-ness (at least according to Mapquest), and I took the last "exit" to WI-64 and then WI-17, and headed northeasterly. After about 20 miles I got into Langlade county (#58) and I started looking for my turnoff on to CR Q. Just after the county line, I saw a turnoff to the right, but I continued straight because I was expecting to go left. It took me about a 1/2 mile or so to realize that I had missed my turn. Within a few miles I picked up another county, Oneida (#59), and after one near false-start, successfully navigated my way around the northern side of Pelican Lake to US-45. I believe it was here that I saw a sign for a "Church of Jesus Christ Restoration Branch". My first reaction was that this was some sort of LDS splinter group. I tried to do some Googling to verify this hypothesis, but was unable to confirm. So, either it's some other similarly named church, or it's just too small for me to find (I mean this was a hand-made sign staked up on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere...)

CR Q goes around the north side of Pelican Lake, with CR G going around the south side. Both dead-end into US 45, but about 6 miles apart. Since I was heading north, CR Q seemed like the logical bet, but the online mapper had suggested CR G. I wasn't sure if that was a particular reason or not (like CR Q didn't really exist or was in crappy condition?) but when I got to the T-intersection at the west side of the lake, there were signs pointing left for US 45 north and right for US 45 south, so I took CR Q around the north side. It wasn't a problem, except for the general snowiness.

A few miles north, I did an out and back on US 8 to pick up Forest (#60) and then continued for another hour or so north on US 45, picking up Vilas (#61) and then on into Michigan. Ahhhh the good ol' U.P. Before this little trip, the sum content of my knowledge of the UP consisted of the fact that my aunt Bonnie was originally from there, and that Michigan was forced to accept it in exchange for a strip of land on the Ohio border following the Toledo War. That may be a slight exaggeration. I continued on US 45 into Gogebic (#62) and Ontonagon (#63) counties, then took M-26 into Houghton county(#64). In the city of Houghton, I crossed the Portage Lake Lift bridge over the Portage waterway. I did not notice this when I crossed (it being dark), but from the Wikipedia page and picture, it appears that in the summer, the bridge raises to an intermediate level to allow boats to cross under while still maintaining road traffic. After crossing over into the town of Hancock, I turned left onto US-41 and followed that north to Keewenaw (#65). There was not a county welcome sign (that I saw anyways). My map had me looking for the "town" of Kearsarge, which I did not see. I should have been looking for Allouez (which was on my map but I just didn't notice it). I passed through there and when I got to Mohawk, MI, I saw that it was definitely in Keweenaw county, so I turned around. There was a welcome sign for Houghton County going southbound though. I followed US-41 back the way I came, back over the bridge, and then into Baraga (#66). At this point, it was about 1:30 a.m. CDT, and I was feeling a bit tired, so I pulled into some gas station and took a little nap. I ended up sleeping for about an hour and then set on. No more than a minute after I was back on the road, I passed into Marquette (#67). A few miles later, I turned right on to M-95 and made my way into Dickinson (#68) and then an out and back on M-69 West into Iron (#69). The original plan had me then taking M-69 east, but I found that it was a much better option to continue on M-95 south into Iron Mountain, and then make 2 short out and backs on US-2 West and US-141 South to pick up the final 2 Wisconsin counties on my trip, Florence (#70) and Marinette (#71). Trying to get these couunties from the Wisconsin side would have added significantly more time to my trip.

Back in Michigan on US-2 eastbound, I travelled uneventfully into Menominee (#72) and Delta (#73) into the city of Escanaba. I then rejoined US-41, this time going northbound, into Alger (#74). Then it was M-67 northbound, and just before I made the turn on to M-94 east, I pulled into another parking lot to take a nap. At this point it was about 5 a.m. (EDT now). I slept for about an hour again, and when I woke up and tried to pull out, the wheels just spun. I had been able to pull in due to my initial momentum, but with 3-5 inches of snow on the ground, I wasn't going anywhere from a standstill. I tried forward and reverse, but nothing. By now it was light out, and there were some cars driving by as I surveyed my options. I put it in neutral and got out of the car (it was still snowing lightly). I rocked the car back and forth a bit. Of course I couldn't move it by myself, but I moved it a bit. I got back in and I don't know if it was that or something else, but I was able to put it in reverse and spin myself a bit backwards, and then once I put it in drive I started going. Phew.

After a brief jaunt on M-94, I began an 80 mile trip on M-28 eastbound, through Schoolcraft (#75), Luce (#76) and Chippewa (#77), then M-123 to Mackinac (#78) and finally on to I-75 southbound. By this time, I was running kind of low on gas so I kept a lookout for gas stations. I figured there might be one at the onramp to 75, but nope. I crossed over the 2-mile Mackinac Bridge and my Upper Peninsula became AWFUL BLUE. The bridge was pretty cool. I was going to take a picture but you know, I've done that before and it just doesn't come out very exciting. Still, travelling between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron was kinda neat. The very first exit in the Lower Peninsula had a Shell station, but I couldn't tell if there was re-entry to 75, so I didn't stop. As I passed by, it did look like there was, but it was hard to tell since the interchange was an odd design. Passing through Emmet (#79) and Cheboygan (#80), I remained on the lookout for gas stations. The next 3 exits (about 20 miles) had no services! Finally, I was able to score some at the M-68 exit. The Interstate itself was not plowed very well - I was actually behind a pair of plow trucks, but even behind them it was still barely one lane wide. Inside the gas station, I took a pic of one of my favorite grammatical mistakes

At this point, I decided to punt on part of my plan. Originally, I was going to continue down 75 a bit to do an out and back to the west, picking up Otsego, Antrim and Charlevoix counties before heading east, but I decided that those counties would still be there later (deep breath), and in an effort to get home a little earlier, I instead headed east on M-68 into Presque Isle County (#81) and shortly thereafter, went south on M-33 into Montmorency (#82). From here on, the roads were pretty clear. I'm not sure if the more southern parts of Michigan just didn't get as much snow, or if I just gave the snowplows enough time to clear it out. I spent some time trying to find CR 624, which was going to cut off a few miles by taking a more direct route to M-32 east. With the snow, I debated whether or not to just stay on M-33 to M-32, but in the end stuck with the plan and went with the county roads. The county roads were not plowed as well (but still not that bad) - I think that in normal weather, taking these county roads would definitely be worth it, but with the snow, it was probably about a wash.

Just east of Hillman, I made it to M-32 and Alpena (#83) and then followed M-65 south into Alcona (#84). A brief out and back on M-72 got me Oscoda (#85) and then back on to M-65 into Iosco (#86) and Arenac (#87). Somewhere in here, I took my 3rd nap of the day, at a Shell station. Afterwards, I turned westbound on to Maple Ridge road which took me close to I-75. Before getting on the Interstate, I did an out and back south and northbound to pick up Ogemaw (#88) and Gladwin (#89). On I-75 southbound, I saw a sign

This is actually a replica that I found online from some other prison, but that's what it said (more or less). I took I-75 through Bay (#90) to M-84, which I followed southbound into Saginaw (#91). Turning around just south of the county line, I encountered my first instance of a Michigan left interchange. On the road, I thought that this was a new type of intersection which I had recently read about (a Continuous flow intersection), but it appears that these are different (though similar) types of interchanges. The Michigan left has been around for about 40 years, and is named that because it's not very common except for in (wait for it) Michigan. I saw several of these, especially later in the day as I went through Detroit.

Back on M-84 north, I skirted the southern edge of Bay City, where, hearkening back to the prison sign I saw earlier, I saw a billboard mentioning a wanted criminal named (I kid you not) Lando Calrissian Jones. East of the city, I passed a Meijer and made my way to M-25, which I took into Tuscola (#92). At Unionville, when M-25 headed north, I continued straight on Bay City-Forestville Road, which I took into Sanilac (#93). A brief out and back on M-53 picked up Huron (#94) and then I continued on M-53 south for 50 miles into Lapeer (#95). At Almont, MI, I did an out and back on Almont Road to pick up St. Clair (#96). I got lucky there as the road was not well marked in the city limits, so I took a guess as to which road was going to turn into the road I needed. Back on M-53 I entered Macomb (#97) for my final (new) county of the day. On the entry to Detroit, I passed by 32 mile road, which was the first time I noticed the Mile road numbering system, the most famous of which is 8 Mile.

From then, it was just a trip home on I-75. I did take my 4th and final nap of the day just over the Ohio border in a Meijer parking lot. Of cousre I stopped in first to check if there were any good sales for the week! I ended up getting home just after 11, so with the exception of my 4 hour-long naps, and taking the time zone into account, I was driving for 34 consecutive hours.