Picture from Saturday's Ride

I was just reading Dr. Gridlock's chat on washingtonpost.com when I noticed that someone wrote in linking to a gallery of pictures from Sunday's ride, along with my YouTube video. The above is from the gallery, of course.

First Crossing

 

Yesterday was the first day the Woodrow Wilson Bridge was open to bike and pedestrian traffic. Despite the cold I'm recovering from, I decided I wanted to be part of this history. So I met up with a bunch of other bicyclists on the Maryland side. (For those of you from out of town, the Wilson Bridge is the part of the Beltway that goes across the Potomac at a relatively wide point.) Going with a group definitely gave me the confidence to do this, but now that I know the way, I realize that the only difficult part is going uphill to reach the bridge. (Contributing factors may have been my cold, and the fact that I was nervous about shifting the front gear to first based on some recent problems.) I shot the video below from my handlebars.



The organized ride included 4 more miles around Alexandria (or a longer trek to Mount Vernon). Once I realized, though, that I could just turn around and go home, I opted to turn back. Anyway, it's a neat new place to ride...you can look off the bridge at the Capitol and Washington Monument, for example. Hopefully in coming years, Maryland will connect it to more of its trail network.

View from My Handlebars

My latest toy is a camera mount for my bike. I thought it would be fun to shoot video from the perspective of a bike rider. Below you can see my first attempt. To spare you the ambient noise of biking (hint: "whoosh"), I have replaced the soundtrack with some classical music. Unfortunately, I can't do anything about any motion sickness you may experience watching the video.

Stay tuned for a much more exciting ride that I'm in the middle of uploading now.

My first (and possibly last) piece of golf equipment

 

I took a couple of golf lessons this week. Christina was set to join me, but came down with a nasty bug on Sunday; hopefully she'll be back on her feet soon. One of my reasons for not taking golf lessons before is that I don't need another expensive, time-consuming hobby. Another reason is that, although I like the idea of continuing education, I am rarely home for long enough to take a class.

With the exception of Memorial Day weekend, I've been home for an extraordinarily long period of time, by my standards. So it seemed to be a good time to fit in a golf class, offered through the Prince George's County parks department.

The first class was fun, partially because half of it consisted of whacking the ball without great concern for accuracy. At the end, though, I had one question for the instructor. "What am I doing wrong if skin is coming off my hand when I hit the ball?"

"Nothing," replied the golf pro. "You'll develop calluses. Or you could get a glove." A $10 glove seemed a reasonable precaution to prevent further erosion of my epidermis...well, it ended up mitigating it, at least.

Today, I dragged myself down there (I have a bit of whatever's laid Christina low), got a glove, and spent 40 minutes hitting the ball. Apparently, the pro's criterion for ending the lesson is the second visible lightning strike. By the end of that time, I was fairly consistently hitting something that looked superficially like a golf shot. (The alternative being the errant shots my classmates were frequently dribbling past my feet.)

So I had fun. I'm not sure I'll pursue this past the four lessons I have remaining. On the other hand, if I had a club, I could visit the driving range from time to time...

Road-Testing the EyeFi Explore

Picasa Album

This morning on my bike ride, I decided to test out my new wireless memory card. The main selling point of the Eye-Fi cards is that they will wirelessly upload your digital photos to your computer and/or web albums. For me, however, the most intriguing thing about the Eye-Fi is that the Explore modeling will automatically tag photos with geographic coordinates.

How does it do that? GPS? No, actually, it detects wireless networks in the area and compares them versus a map of known wireless networks. If you think, "there aren't enough wireless networks in my area for that to work"...then you're probably wrong.

I tested it out last night in our living room. The first picture I took was tagged as being in the alley behind our house. My thoughts, in order:

1. Hey! That's not quite right.
   
2. Wow! That's actually really close.
   
3. Hey! That's actually kinda scary
   

This morning on my bike ride, I decided to give it a further test. I took pictures at 5 locations. They probably weren't as widely dispersed as they should have been for a great test, but...oh, well.

1. First, I took a picture while waiting for the light to change at Route 1 and Queens Chapel. One reason I have been riding this route lately is that it's the only light I have to wait for. EyeFi accuracy: within a few feet, it looks like.
   
2. Next, I realized I hadn't stretched, so after riding down the steep hill on Amherst, I did some stretching. EyeFi accuracy: a few feet off (it put me on the road instead of the trail).
   
3. Then, I decided on something trickier. I rode to the tunnel under the Metro tracks. The tunnel is quite muddy after the recent rains. Yesterday, after braving the mud, I found the way blocked ahead by yellow caution tape. Today, a jogger said that the trail looked open, but I turned around there anyway. EyeFi accuracy: Failure. It defaulted to the previous location. No surprise, since I can't imagine I was near any wireless networks.
   
4. On the way back up the hill on Amherst, I slipped a gear and had to turn the bike over to fix it. After my recent bike class, I think I know the problem, but am not sure of my competence to execute the repair myself. EyeFi accuracy: Great. I was especially impressed at the ability to distinguish between this and each of the other nearby locations, half a block away.
   
5. I rode back via the University Park tennis courts and took a picture. EyeFi verdict: Failure; it defaulted to the Amherst location. This was a little disappointing, but not shocking.
   

When I got back, I set my camera down, turned it on...and the first two photos automatically uploaded. Later, I turned the camera back on, and the rest transferred.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the EyeFi. I think eventually cameras will need to combine this technology with GPS receivers to get much better coverage, but for now it won't be too hard to clean up the glitches by hand. (I avoided doing so on this set to demonstrate the drawbacks.) Hopefully I'll get to use this in some more exciting locations than College Park soon. Also, I've ordered a camera mount for my bike, so I'm looking forward to trying that out.

PS I just tested the links, and you may have to click on the album itself (rather than the links I've given to individual pictures) to see the mini-map Google provides for each photo.

Second Saturday Ride

 

After yesterday's morning ride, I felt invigorated enough to try another ride. After Thursday's unsuccessful attempt to by fruit from the farmers market, I decided to give the College Park Farmers Market a try. Unfortunately, I misread an article about the market, so I didn't realize they closed at noon.

Thus my ride didn't bear fruit (ha) from that perspective, but I did enjoy my longest ride yet. It wouldn't have been so long, except I decided to go the long way around Lake Artemesia on the return trip. It was nice, though on the short way, I did see a deer!

I'm hoping I'm building up some endurance. I am taking today off from biking, but hope to be back in the saddle tomorrow.

 

Bike Repair Class

 

I realize almost all of my posts lately have been bike maps, but I've been enjoying exploring new bike routes, and I enjoy technology, specifically GPS technology, more than I probably should. I promise to limit my posting to new bike routes, at the least.

Anyway, this morning, I rode down to the bike shop for their bike repair class. I learned how to change a tire, which may come in handy if I get a flat, as well as how to perform other bike maintenance. I am less enamored of learning how to do that, but I appreciate having some idea how my bike works.

I took a slightly different return route, partially due to one-way streets. Total distance was about 3.3 miles, but the GPSr cut off a couple times, so that's not exact.

Ride to Riverdale

 

This evening, after I got home from work, Christina and I rode our bikes down to the Riverdale Park Farmers Market. Instead of riding our usual route, we decided to head through College Park to the Trolley Trail. Unfortunately, at the southern edge of College Park, the paved trail ends. It's supposed to run all the way to Hyattsville eventually, but that hasn't been constructed. So we ended up riding on a path through the woods. As you can see it was a really direct route.

Unfortunately, the farmers market has lost its fruit supplier, so it wasn't as useful a trip as it could have been. Fortunately, we were able to get some ground lamb and...sorbet!

 

The path to the farmers market had a steep downhill, so it wasn't a good candidate for a return path (uphill); instead, we took our usual path up Queensbury. I did suffer two minor injuries (hamstring and ice cream headache), but I am recovering nicely. :-)

New Bike Route

 

I'm taking the day off today. Things to do...and such nice weather. We went out for an exploratory bike ride to find the College Park Trolley Trail. It turned out to be a nice ride, although the hill on Amherst is a little bit of a killer in the return direction. We did about a half an hour round trip (a little less than 4 miles). It would probably require half an hour each way to get to REI or MOM's Organic Market. It's also not that much further from where we were to Lake Artemesia and the airport...definitely a much quicker way to get there than Sunday's ride. On the way back, we stopped at town hall to get $0.25 stickers for our tennis rackets to allow us to use the town tennis courts. Then we looped through the town park and headed back home.

Now...mulch.

Longest Bike Ride Yet

 
Today (Sunday) we took our longest bike ride yet. My GPS receiver counts it as 7.7 miles. It's similar to one we've taken before -- through town, across East-West Highway, then through Hyattsville and Riverdale Park to the Northeast Branch Trail along the Anacostia. This time, however, we pushed past where we usually go...we went around the College Park Airport and made it to Lake Artemesia in Berwyn Heights. Maybe next time we'll make the loop around the lake.
 

Warm-Up

 

Christina and I took the bikes out together for the first time since before my recent trip to Germany. We just did a 15 minute tune-up to get our "bike legs" back. It provided me an opportunity to test out my new GPS receiver mount -- I had snapped the old one. It performed well and helped me produce this map. Hopefully, tomorrow we'll be able to get out for a longer ride.

Game Days

ETI: Estimated Time to Invasion
Originally uploaded by Eric E Haas

Last Saturday, I went to Timonium for a gaming convention. I initially went to exchange games as part of a trade, but since I paid admission, I figured I'd stay for the silent auction, and since I was staying for the silent auction, I might as well play some games. Here you can see me wearing my favorite hat and playing a game called "Estimated Time to Invasion". I was the alien -- the game wasn't that good.

Someone takes pictures at these gaming conventions and posts them at Flickr. Here you can see a picture of me playing Dominion. Probably the highlight of the day was seeing people playtesting unpublished expansions to Dominion. Well, that and getting a copy of Civilization, a game I lost in the 90s to some movers.

Geocaching Stats Update

It's been since last June since I posted a full-fledged geocaching stats update. At the time, I had found 61 caches; now I have found...78. Since last June (after the update), I have only found one physical cache. That was...yesterday. There's one on the bike trail mentioned in a previous post, so I decided to grab it. It wasn't too urban or too woodsy to touch on any of the things that had bothered me about physical geocaches. Today, I did an earthcache here in Cologne, Germany.

Sadly, some of the requirements lead to some pretty stupid pictures. Anyway, that brings my total "cache-to-cache" distance to 86743.95 miles. That means, on average, I've traveled over 1,100 miles between each cache. I'll bring that average down later in this week with a virtual cache a stone's throw from the cathedral. (I misunderstood the instructions today and have to take a new picture).



I'm now up to caches in 9 countries, having added Australia and Germany since last June.

I'm still enjoying waymarking more, but the ability to generate stats in geocaching is way more advanced.

Bike Ride

 

I had a nice bike ride after work today. This route is fairly similar to one Christina and I took on Sunday, but this time I brought my GPS receiver. It was just shy of 6 miles round trip. About three and a half miles were on-road, so I'm looking forward to getting a bike rack for the car, so we can start closer to the trail. We actually ordered one recently that attaches to the spare tire, but we need to get someone to install it.

Waymarking Sunday Drive

Last weekend, when I dropped Cheetah off at the kennel, I took Route 2 back, since I was headed towards Laurel. I noticed a number of historical markers along the road. So today, after I picked her up, we went north on Route 2 and found 5 markers (I also found one on Route 4, before I picked her up). Surprisingly, none of these is among the 259 historical markers already waymarked, so I'll have to write these up later. That'll bring me up to 8 posted in this category, only two short of my 10 in "You Are Here" signs. I'm not quite sure why these are my favorite two categories.

 

 

 

 

4% More German

In honor of (not celebrating) St. Patrick's Day, I decided to take another look at a project that I last seriously pondered about eight years ago -- genealogy, or more specifically trying to figure out my ethnicity.

I have 256 great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents -- well, we all do. So if I can figure out their ancestry, I can figure out how many parts in 256 I am whatever. For example, my great-great-grandfather, William Grantham, came from England. For the sake of simplicity, I'll assume that all 16 of his great-great-grandparents (my great⁶-grandparents) came from England, too. So that contribution alone tells me I'm 16/256=1/16 (6.25%) English. Add in another English great-great-grandparent on my mother's side and I'm 32/256 (12.5%) English.

When I last left things in 2001, I had figured out 140 of these 256 parts. I was hoping with more information on the web these days, I'd be able to make progress with little further effort (ah, the American dream).

I succeeded, but I didn't make it much further. My paternal grandmother (Oma) has the most unresolved lineage, so I was happy to figure out more about her. Her great-grandmother, Elizabeth Keffer, is of German descent. Her great³-grandfather, Peter Putman, was born in Germany.

So that's 10 more parts out of 256. 10/256=5/128=3.90625%. So I'm about 4% more German than I realized. Approximate tallies to date: 24% German, 14% Scottish, 13% English, 6% Welsh, 2% Dutch, 41% Unknown.

None of this is too important, but if I find any Irish ancestry by next St. Patrick's Day, I promise to put on a silly leprechaun hat and celebrate to make up for previous days gone unobserved.

On a more substantive note, if you go to Google Books and search for "Alexander Cairns" and Wisconsin, the first result is for my great-great-grandfather, who is listed as a leading progressive in Grant County, Wisconsin.

Tourney Time

Well, once again, I'm filling out my bracket. I've uploaded a copy of mine from Yahoo! Sports. I'm filling out brackets on 3 different sites. My goal is to pick the same teams on each site (tracking one bracket is a waste of time, let alone three), but in the past, I've messed that up and ended up with slightly different teams on different sites.

Waymarking Category Hunt

Last August, I mentioned "Waymarking Bingo", the goal of getting 20 categories in a row in my "waymarking grid". At the time, I had 4 in a row, now I have...6. You can see them diagonally above from F22 to J27. For what it's worth, they are "Doorways of the World", "Burger King Restaurants", "Municipal Flags", "Newsstands/Newsagencies", "Art Deco - Art Noveau" and "Tennis Facilities."

Overall, I have 202 of 874, for a 23.1% hit rate. This seems like I'm not making any progress, but I see from last August's post that I was at 73 of 752, or 9.7%. Also, I'm missing 672 categories as opposed to August's 679, so I'm even making slight progress on that metric.

Since I'm not going anywhere this month (haven't even left Maryland), I'm trying to post some categories within walking distance of our house. I've done synagogues, Presbyterian churches, Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches and Lutheran churches. These are all easy to find nearby, and I can put them on my "ignore" list when I'm done, since I don't feel the need to see more of these when traveling. (I also found a couple of Civil War memorials last weekend near the farm where I was buying beef.)

Schadenfreude

I read recently that Bank of America stock fell on fears that the government may take over the bank. I would be very happy to see this happen.

When I moved out to California in 1992, I needed a local bank. First, it was hard to do cross-country banking with my credit union. Second, I needed to establish residency, if I was going to spend a second year in school there. I chose Bank of America through a fairly simple process: I walked from my apartment to campus, and chose it because it had a branch along the way. I was very happy with BofA, and was a little bit sad to close my account when I moved to Georgia the following year. But in 1993, there weren't really national banks. So I set off with a rather large cashier's check locked in my glove compartment.

When I got to Georgia, I decided that I was going to put down roots by choosing a bank with some sort of local flavor in its name. The first one I came across, "Southern Heritage", seemed a little too flavorful for my tastes. (In Georgia, the word "heritage" is generally code for the Confederacy or for African-Americans. In this case, I think it was the former.) My next choice was "BankSouth," which seemed more like it.

I had a happy banking relationship with BankSouth, until shortly before I was about to leave Georgia, when they were swallowed up by NationsBank. First of all, this was an anti-competitive merger -- these were the two main choices in much of the South, so combining them didn't help the consumer. Secondly, NationsBank had completely awful customer service. They instituted a program where, when you called in or visited a branch, their computers would determine how profitable you were to them, so they could figure out whether or not to be nice to you. Also, after the merger, people in their branches were completely flummoxed by my attempts to pay my BankSouth car loan -- yet they refused to give me new loan coupons.

When I moved back to Maryland, I happily closed my NationsBank account, refinanced my car with the credit union and have not been a bank customer ever since. In the late 1990s, NationsBank took over Bank of America and appropriated its name. I guess they figured that they could erase their (deserved) reputation for bad customer service by buying the name of a bank with good customer service. If the entity responsible for all this gets wiped out, so much the better.

Inauguration

We delayed our trip to San Diego to give us time to go to the inauguration. It was worth it! Things were packed so tightly that I didn't get any great pictures. Here are some snapshots I took.

Inauguration