Cuyahoga Libraries

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??