Every Larosas

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