Tour de Fairport Harbor 2007

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

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 Fairport Harbor planning

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.