Walking back from getting a hair cut. Did a 9 mile run earlier with friends and followed it up with a great brunch. Awesome day so far.
... Ed, rolling to the top of Mt. San Bruno after a couple of hard 10 minute intervals.
I was digging around for some misplaced CDs when I found a bunch of old photos instead, now presented here in chronological order as best I can recall...
Some photos taken during a multi-week backpacking trip in New Mexico's Philmont Boy Scout park(?). I don't remember all the stories behind these though the one of Wesley running around the campfire shirtless is sure to amuse his now-wife (and maybe embarrass him).
These are of a house we built for a family in Mexico with my LDS church group/leaders. The process of seeing this through was pretty immense and I give big props to the leaders/organizers for making it possible. The photos here show only the work put in once in Mexico and nothing of the many weeknights and weekends beforehand.
I bought a nice mountain bike to replace my aging costco-purchased-rigid-frame shortly after high school. Back then I had a single bench mark to measure my fitness against: making it to the top (or at least where it turns really rocky just below) of Mission Peak (in Fremont, CA) without stopping. I didn't even keep track of time or PRs -- just whether I could make it without stopping. I was especially proud of the day these photos were taken as Kevin (in the picture) and I just finished our ride when 2 other friends called to see if I would ride it with them. I said no, but ended up riding it with them anyway. The white Sugar was only recently handed down to Kevin (my way of hoping to renew his interest in riding).
My friend Mike and I did a road trip down to SoCal to get a tour of Boeing's facility in which the Columbia was having its glass cockpit installed. Sadly, upon returning to service, Columbia and her crew met a terrible fate when re-entering the atmosphere. RIP.
via youtube.com
Two and a half months after the fact, I've finally put together the video I took on our Whitney-in-a-day adventure.
I thought the song "Blue Monday" by New Order was fitting for both the fact we hiked it on Labor Day Monday but also in respect to how severely beat down we were by the end of our 18 hour journey.
For a more detailed writeup and photo journal style entry on the trip, check out:
http://mark.posterous.com/the-mountaineers-route-of-mt-whitney-part-i
http://mark.posterous.com/the-mountaineers-route-of-mt-whitney-part-ii
Long ago I highlighted an early product by WalkScore.com which enabled you to select a location and time of day, and which then shows you a map of all the places you can get to on transit within a specified time. Reader Tom West points me to a new effort along similar lines, called Mapnificent, by Stefan Wehrmeyer. He describes the product on his blog in both geeky and practical detail.
Here's everywhere you can get to in 28 minutes from 9th & Market Streets in San Francisco. I'm assuming this is based on midday timetables.
The white dot in the East is a walk radius from West Oakland BART station, the first station east of the bay.The sharp point sticking out toward the ocean is made up of walk radii around the stops of the L-Taraval streetcar. As you go further out you have less time remaining to walk, so the circles get smaller.
Other assuptions are more peculiar. Waiting time at a connection point is assumed to be a third of the headway, rather than half, becuase such connections are sometimes timed. In practice, timed connections are most important at very low frequencies, 30 min or more, where they make a huge difference in travel time. But there's no consistent way to represent this with averages. The WalkScore tool avoids this problem by tracking a trip via actual timetables, so no averaging is required.
It would be nice ot have more options to fiddle with, such as your walking speed.
Still, these are important tools, because they help people make smarter decisions about where to locate. Eventually, every realtor and leasing agent will use something like this, and every transit agency will want its services shown.
via google.com
Looking to move? If you are, consider using this tool to help determine how conveniently you can get around without driving. Or just play around with it because it's cool.