Jump in all 5 Great Lakes

So a few months ago, the idea was tossed around to set a record for the fastest time to jump in all 5 Great Lakes. After quite a bit of logistics and planning, things are set for a go for this Friday, August 10th. We'll start near Toronto, Canada on the western edge of Lake Ontario, then hit the northern side of Lake Erie. Crossing back into the US, we'll drive up to the Straits of Mackinac to hit Lake Huron and Michigan and then up Lake Superior. Follow #DiveInAllFive on Twitter for live updates

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 12

Ok, I did this one a long long time ago.  I just came across the photos and realized I didn't do an update.

We didn't stray much from the proposed map.  I realize the map isn't updated, and hopefully I'll do it soon (if I can remember all the detours).

First of all, it was a pretty miserable day.  It was warm and drizzling almost the entire time.

I met David at Washington and Heights and we took a familiar route through downtown.  Passing through the area East of Downtown, we saw a photo op:

David showing off his muscles

We ate breakfast at a little Mexican place that I can't remember.  But it was good!

After going through the Eastwood area, we got to #65 Harrisburg/Manchester:

Still wet and Rainy

Then after going to an Apartment that I thought would say Park Place on it and playing with my nearly dead phone for a bit, we decided to head down main street and found #74 Park Place:

Park Place Apartments

Along the very long stretch of Highway 3, we got #75 Meadowbrook/Allendale:

One day, I'll be living it up here

Further down Hwy 3, we got #79 Edgebrook Area:

It was getting pretty hot and humid by now

After even more Highway 3, we got #80 South Belt / Ellington.  This was the entrance to Ellington Field, which is an air force base:

Then finally, at long last, marking the furthest I had ever ridden away from my house, #81 Clear Lake.  If I were to ride straight here, the distance would be 22.6 miles for the most direct route:

Unfortunately, we didn't see any local restaurants at all, so we settled for this old-style looking McDonalds (in Clear Lake) before the long trip back.:

It stopped raining, but it was still hot as heck

The marathon is in two weekends, and after that I'm going to get back into cycling.  I learned my lesson last year that riding bicycles long distances tightens up the worst possible muscles for distance running, so I decided to give cycling a rest while I was training.  Hopefully I'll be back on the bike pretty soon.

There are only two big trips left, the major Southwest Tour and the mother of all trips, the Lake Houston/Kingwood Tour.  16 more super neighborhoods to go!

Atlanta Trip

So I took a trip down to Atlanta for my friend (and fellow county counter) Jim's wedding. Because I am clearly demented, obviously I could not take the "normal" way to Atlanta (duh).

But I also had Carolyn with me, and in the weeks leading up to this trip, I professed to her that I loved her more than I love counties, so nor could I take the county-cramming-est way either.

Clearly, a compromise of some sort was in order! Also making things easier was that the hotel was not actually IN Atlanta, but more to the NE of town, so I decided to go down 75 to Knoxville and then instead of continuing down 75 to Atlanta, cutting east to go around the mountains the other way and then in to Georgia on I-85 (our hotel was right off I-85).

Things started off well - we set off bright and early Friday morning and headed south. At Knoxville, we took 640 to I-40 East and headed into North Carolina (Haywood County - #1, passing all the signs for all the Gatlinburg / Pigeon Forge attractions that we saw last summer.

I had tossed around a few ideas of ways to go, but in the end, decided that less counties while still following the Law of Conservation of Counties. So we got off the highway on US-74 South. 74 was a nice highway and we made good time. The plan was to take it past Waynesville and then hop on the Blue Ridge Parkway heading south (east?), which I thought would give some nice views and maybe a place to get out and stretch the old legs.

Problem was, when we got there, it was CLOSED! (for the winter I guess). Google did indicate that it was seasonally closed, but I didn't put it together that it would already be closed in early November. Buncha wimps. The big problem is that I didn't have any map / atlas type info with me, nor do I have one of those new-fangled fancy phones. Luckily there was a rest area / visitor information area about 1/2 mile back on 74, so we turned around and stopped in there and picked up a map.

The original plan was to take the Blue Ridge parkway to SC 215 to US 64 to US 178 into South Carolina, but with the parkway closed, we took an audible and continued south on 74 through Jackson NC (#2) and then went south on SC 107 near Sylva, NC. Then in the lovely hamlet of Tuckasegee, we turned on to SC 281.

This was a bad road. I mean, the road itself was okay, but it was just a VERY winding road and Carolyn started to get a little sick from all the switchbacks. Eventually, we made our way through Transylvania NC (#3) over to US 64 and then US 178 which took us into Pickens SC (#4). US 178 was pretty winding as well, but eventually we made it through the clear onto SC 11, which was a nice flat road, which perked up spirits in the car. That took us into Oconee county, which I already had. There was a slight detour onto SC 24 and SC 59 which was supposed to pick up Anderson County, but I messed up the turn at Fair Play.

We got on to 85 South and into Georgia, which picked up Hart (#5), Franklin (#6), Banks (#7), Jackson (#8), Barrow (#9) and Gwinnett (#10).

That was all for the trip there, and while at the hotel over the weekend, I re-examined our route home, to make sure that we would not run into such mountainous conditions. It looked like we were all good, so we continued as planned. Rather than taking 85 South into downtown Atlanta to pick up 75 North, the plan was to head more or less northwesterly, picking up 75 near Cleveland, TN.

We started off on 85N to 985N, picking up Hall (#11). Back on GA 347 West and GA 13 South to GA 20 West into Forsyth (#12). Then on to US 19 / GA 400 which was a nice divided highway, to GA 369 and then GA 9 for Dawson (#13). In Dawsonville, we turned on to GA 53 West, which was a bit of a tricky turn, and probably the most winding of any of the roads of the day (but still nothing like the ones in NC on Friday). GA 53 took us into Pickens (#14) and one (of the many?) "Appalachian Highway(s)" - GA 5 / 515. That was a very solid road which we took for awhile (through already visited counties) till we cut over on GA 136 over to US 411, which we took up into Tennessee and then through Cleveland on to 75.

Here's a subset of my county map, with the new counties on this trip marked in blue. You can see where I messed up Anderson SC - it's the county that would connect the 2 blue segments

Every County in New England in 20 minutes

Here it is folks - the results of assembling 12,000+ still frames shot over our 26 hour journey to every county in New England into a 20 minute video with corresponding soundtrack.


I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, so find yourself a 20 minute block of time, and get some popcorn. Unfortunately, the video here is a little small and blocky due to file size restrictions...

Wheels up +24

We've just passed the 24 hour mark since taking off on a Cessna from the Vineyard yesterday. It's been an arduous journey, and we're 62 counties and 10,700 images into it, but we've come up short on the (never realistic) goal of completing all New England counties in 24 hrs.

We think we'll wrap up by around 10am, and will have seen some good sights, had some good conversations and plenty of laughs, and then we'll have 6 hours to get home. We were only pulled over once and got a warning, and we haven't hit any wildlife

All in all, we're doing well and thinking of new procedures to incorporate sleep hours in future trips.

It's finished.

If we told you it took less than 24 hours, you'd believe us, right?

95N.

No sleep til 8 road.

No service!

Sorry for the lack of updates from rural, serviceless Vermont. We're through 27 counties, with Rutland coming right up. 

We made a big error on 100/155, costing us major pansy time, which is going to be hard to make up. 

The sandwiches are receiving rave reviews. And Kevin knows Calvin Coolidge's tomb like the back of his hand. More asap. 

Sorry this post is old bad service. Bethel mountain road!

Tweet fail

So twitter search is having big problems, thus updates on #efnec are not coming through to the website. You can, however, follow @TheDanMiller, @JimTocco, and @DrJayBoston to get updates.

Sorry, I know you're waiting with bated breath.

First mistake

I'm not going to assign blame to any particular person from Virginia, but we missed Exit 5a off of 95 in RI. This cost us as we had to take 138 N (a slow going road) instead of 165 W into New London, CT. We lost about 8 mins along the way.

Dan's just going to turn up the awesome.

Rhode Island bound

We are rolling down US6 in the Ford Escape (or similar), 18 minutes ahead of schedule. Let me take this time to explain the photography situation.

First, we have Jim and Jay on the iPhones, tweeting pics throughout. Check the twitter feed (#efnec) and the photos page at http://cns.bu.edu/~jbohland/ne.html.

In addition, we have a webcam hooked to the roof of the Ford Escape (or similar) with an industrial strength suction vise, with USB cable through the passenger window. This camera will be snapping photos every 6 seconds from here on out, about 14,000 in total. We'll make that into a time-lapse video and put it up after we return to Cambridge.

Tune in for further updates.

Charting a course to the Vineyard

This is Dan (posting under Jay's account).

We had a good night. Yesterday (Thursday) afternoon I got to Jay's office, dropped off my car, and rode the T to the airport (where Jay managed to make us pay 2 fares each), and of course by "make us pay" I mean make himself pay for both of us.

Then we picked up Jim and Kevin at the airport, rented the Escape (or similar) and drove back to Jay's house (on Jay St., of course).

We packed up, and drove to Hyannis. We drove around the traffic circle a few times (Big Ben. Parliament.) and eventually parked the Escape (or similar) at the long term parking lot (backing in of course to save those crucial seconds)

Then we had a friendly Russian cab driver drive us over to the Sleepy Hollow Motor Inn in Woods Hole, where we stayed the night.

4:30 this morning came awful early, and after showering and getting ready, we walked down to the Steamship Authority ferry, which is where we're at right now.

We're using the ship's free wi-fi to post this while we are on the way to Martha's Vineyard (Dukes County). As soon as I finish posting this, we'll be making our way to the front of the exit line so we can hurry and call a cab to take us from the ferry landing to the airport.

Jim is ready with the official time, which will start as soon as we are "wheels up" on our flight to Nantucket. There may not be many updates until we get back as we won't have Internet. But you can check out our progress at the website http://cns.bu.edu/~jbohland/ne.html

Website to track us

Jay spent the day making a website to track us. It has links to this blog, as well as some Google Latitude tracking us

http://bit.ly/bu3YNx

EFNEC food preparations

Email from Jay
====
Friends,

Let me announce the food and beverage options for our voyage:

MAIN COURSES:
Buffalo Turkey with Provolone and Romaine on Oat and Honey Whole Wheat
Multigrain (2 available)
Buffalo Turkey with Provolone and Romaine on a hard roll (2 available)
Pepper Crusted Ham with Provolone and Romaine on Oat and Honey Whole
Wheat Multigrain (2 available)
Pepper Crusted Ham with Provolone and Romaine on a hard roll (2 available)
Combo Buffalo Turkey and Pepper Crusted Ham with Provolone and Romaine
on Oat and Honey Whole Wheat Multigrain (2 available)
Combo Buffalo Turkey and Pepper Crusted Ham with Provolone and Romaine
on a hard roll (2 available)
Dimitrio's of Cambridge, MA Cheese Pizza, served cold (8 slices available)

BREAKFAST OFFERINGS:
Assorted mini-muffins (12 available)
Fresh bananas (5 available)
Trader Joe's Reduced Fat Vanilla Yogurt, 6 oz tubs (4 available)

HEALTHY SNACKS:
Assorted apples (3 Granny Smith, 3 Fuji, 2 Pink Lady available)
Dried fruit and nut mix with Cashews, Almonds, Walnuts, Cranberries,
Blueberries (2 lbs. available)
Assorted Shaw's Crunchy Granola Bars (2 Maple Brown Sugar, 2 Peanut
Butter, 2 Oats & Honey available)

LESS THAN HEALTHY SNACKS:
Cape Cod Robust Russet Potato Chips (15 oz available)
Shopper's Value Salted Pretzel Rods (approximately 25 rods available)
Sour Patch Kids Soft and Chewy Candies (14 oz available)
Twizzlers Strawberry Twists (approximately 20 twists available)

DESSERT MENU:
Jen's Homemade Double Chocolate Brownies (approximately 10 available)

BEVERAGE CART (precise quantities to be determined by available cooler space):
Shaw's Natural Spring Water, 12 oz bottles
Adirondack Mandarin Orange Seltzer Water, 12 oz cans
Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry, 12 oz cans
Diet A&W Root Beer, caffeine free, 8 oz cans
Monster Energy Drink, 16 oz cans
Assorted Gatorade sports drinks, 32 oz WIDE MOUTH bottles

p.s. This is on me to make up for all y'all having to fly / travel.
See you tomorrow!

EFNEC route

So EFNEC stands for Every Freakin New England County. It's the 3rd such trip that we have done, having done Ohio and Alabama previously.

So while the exact route must remain top-secret, for proprietary reasons, I thought I'd share a bit of noodling.

The problem, as I've mentioned before, is the 2 Massachusetts counties that are on islands.

So we'll be starting there by taking a ferry to Martha's Vineyard, then a plane from MV (Dukes County) to Nantucket (Nantucket County) and then another plane from Nantucket back to the mainland.

As a side note, one of my friends was simultaneously jealous when I told her I was going to Martha's Vineyard and appalled when I told her I'd be there for about an hour :-D

After landing in Hyannis, we'll drive west through RI and CT, then north through MA and VT. Upon reaching Grand Isle county in the far northwest of Vermont, we'll head southeast back towards Boston, before taking the final leg of the journey northeast into Maine.

We will end on a "road" that is called "Eight Road". As you might imagine, in some rural areas, there is a fun game to be played called "Is this a road, or someone's driveway?"

We will be attempting to live update from the road both on this blog as well as on Twitter at

http://twitter.com/#search?q=efnec

Happy Trails!

Every County in New England

So..... it's been awhile since anyone has posted here, right?

To break my silence, I bring you news of an Every Freakin New England County (EFNEC) trip. The problem with New England is that there are 2 counties in Massachusetts (Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard) that are on islands. Total is 67 counties.

In doing calculations, it seemed like there was no way to do the whole thing in 24 hours, so we re-defined the project as 24 hours upon reaching the mainland, which does look doable.

So plans have been made and locked up, and we will be starting with a 6 am ferry to Martha's Vineyard this Friday.

More information coming, including ways on how to follow our adventures.

Every Town in Utah

My friend Harmony sent me a link to some friends of hers who are blogging their visits to "Every Town in Utah". Not sure how many towns there are there, but that sounds like fun!

http://cnutah.blogspot.com/

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 11 (and 11b)

Ok, I actually did this trip back in mid-October, and I finished the map right after the ride, but I neglected to do the actual write-up. Since we're doing the big 50-mile Clear Lake trip 12 this weekend, I figured it would be prudent to finally get this written.

This ride was on an absolutely gorgeous day. We started out in the upper 40s and ended in the lower 60s. It may be chilly for just standing around, but it was just about perfect for cycling.

We took a path I've taken many times before when heading west. The first stop was actually a mistake stop in Spring Branch Central, not Spring Branch West:



And here is the picture from Trip 11b, completed in mid-January, which was a make-up trip solely to pick up the #10 Spring Branch West that I missed. It was completely uneventful and didn't deserve it's own writeup, but here is the photo:

[picture to be uploaded tonight]

We took a left on an extremely busy road (Gessner) and was looking for the Memorial Hermann Hospital to pick up #16 Memorial, but instead saw a sign for the Memorial City Mall across the way, which had a much better angle and light:



After taking a nice ride on a fairly fast road all the way through Memorial, past the beltway, we arrived at Highway 6, the furthest distance we've ever gone (as the crow flies). We crossed I-10 and found a giant duck. I took a photo to add to the "me and giant birds" collection:



Then just a block north was our furthest-point destination of #9 Addicks/Park Ten:



Went down highway 6 a bit (an extremely busy and scary road), and zig-zagged our way down a fairly large detour to pick up #17 Eldridge/West Oaks.



I scoured the internet for something that said Eldridge on it that was closer to our intended route, but couldn't find anything. Likewise, when we were at Eldridge and Briar Forest, two fairly large roads, there were shopping centers everywhere, and not a single peep of the word "Eldridge."

A quick jaunt down Briar Forest Drive got us to the Abbey in #18 Briarforest:



We took a quick breather at a convenience store nearby and crossed Westheimer into a very commercial area, and then at Wilcrest and Meadowglen we found #19 Westchase:



Then we barely clipped #20 Woodlake/Briar Meadow, but they were nice enough to put a sign up for us:



After zig-zagging through the Galleria area, avoiding major roads because it's one of the most traffic-ridden areas of Houston and it was getting to be Sunday afternoon (and so all the shoppers and post-church eaters were everywhere). Then, at the very far edge of the neighborhood, we got #21 Greater Uptown:



And after that it was a pleasant ride home on a pleasant day through Memorial Park, with the exception of the flight of stairs we had to carry our bikes up because of construction. Not the best thing when you've already gone 35 miles!

Stay tuned for next week, where we will be doing a very long and very straight ride down to Clear Lake. 66 down, 22 more to go!

Every Library test trip

So back a few years ago, I pondered visiting every library in Hamilton County. I have revisited that off and on a few times, and while I was off on vacation this past week decided to give it a test ride.

The reasoning was to see how well the directions held up, how fast I could ride (approximately) with traffic and such, as well as test how long it took me to get in the library, check out a book, and get back on the road.

I left my house around 2:00 or so. Plan was to go to 7 libraries and then meet up with the fam at the end. A little something like this.


I set off and got to the Madisonville library right away. Coming down the hill was interesting. I mean going fast is nice, but you never want to get TOO fast. I've never been one of those guys that can just get super fast without worrying about falling. There were a few patches of gravel on the road which got me a bit nervous. I was up to about 35 mph coming down the hill.

So, as I got going, I realized I had forgotten a few things. This tends to happen to me when I just go without really focusing and planning on everything. Forgot my sunglasses, forgot sunscreen (it was hot and sunny), any water, my bike lock and perhaps most importantly, I forgot any type of carrying case for the books that I was going to check out. My plan had been to just check one book out at each library, and then returning it at the subsequent library. But that still meant I had to carry a book on the bike with me.

So I got to the Madisonville library and hurried to check out a book. There were a few hooligans hanging out by the front door, but I hoped that I wouldn't be in there long enough for anything to happen, and I was right. I grabbed a small paperback, checked out, and headed on the road. Left on Madison and headed towards Oakley. Got in there, parked my bike by the front door and went in.

It was annoying there because there was this kid at the checkout desk asking abou drawing books and the librarian was helping him (fine) and then she offered to show him where some of the books were. And I waited... and waited... it was probably 3-4 minutes of me standing in line waiting to check out a book. (No self checkouts there). Eventually I made my way back down Madison towards Hyde Park. There was a lot of road construction there, but I managed to find my way to the Hyde Park library without a problem.

Again no self checkouts at Hyde Park and I had to wait for a bit. When I went to checkout, the librarian said that she had seen me on her way to work while on my bike on Whetsel. Good times! I was right in Hyde Park Square and did not realize that I was supposed to turn right onto Edwards. So I missed the turn and had to circle back (onto Mooney if you're falling along). I went past Rookwood and past I-71 and into Norwood. I turned left onto Williams and then right onto a different Madison.

But then, tragedy struck. I got a flat tire :-(. I tried to pump it back up but it definitely had a hole in it. I got out my patch kit. I had a really hard time trying to get the tire off the rim but eventually got it but either my kit was too old and not working, or I was not doing it right, but I could not get it going.

So I called Carolyn and had her come pick me up. The baby was still sleeping but we agreed to meet up in Norwood somewhere. I started walking that way. I found a penny on the sidewalk as I was walking, so you know it's good times. And then I got thrown out of Kroger.

But things went well - I had about a 14-16 mph average and it was taking about 1-3 minutes per library.

One annoying thing was that the receipts on a normal checkout don't have a timestamp on them. It does appear that the self checkouts have a timestamp, but I really wanted to get timestamps for each one just as kind of a record of the trip.

But I think that it makes things possible. I believe the shortest distance was 121 miles. If I could keep up a 14mph pace (which I think would be tough over that long) that would be 8 hours and 38 minutes. Then if I could average 2 minutes per stop, that's 42 * 2 or 84 minutes (1 hour 24 minutes). That's about 10 hours. I have 11 hours to do it from 10 to 9 (possibly 12 hours if I start at the Main library which opens at 9).

Or I could always hope the library levy fails and they close a few branches :-)

Every State Highpoint

It has come to my attention that there is a group of folks attempting to visit every highpoint in the lower 48 states in 3 weeks.

Apparently the record (PDF) is held by a Brit - Jake Meyer at 23 days, 19 hours, 31 minutes.

Though in looking at these guys' website, the challenge has been called off for reasons that are currently unclear. Hopefully they will post something soon and hopefully everyone is okay.

Here are a few pics from our recent trips to Campbell Hill (Ohio) and Hoosier Hill (Indiana).



This was the log book - we got there about 1:00 p.m. but there had already been 2 people visiting before us that day!


Picture of the fam.


After doing the grueling climb up Campbell Hill (in our van :-) ), we headed west to Hoosier Hill. The Indiana state highpoint is a bit less well marked.


Here is the turnoff off of Elliot Road. We passed it because there was no sign or anything. We went down to the (north) end of the road and saw the signs for the highpoint pointing back this way so we made it. Apparently it used to be even more nondescript before 2005 when an Eagle Scout fixed it up as his Eagle project.

Carolyn showing her true joy upon reaching the summit.

And here she is, "pretending" to be angry about being forced to detour out of her way to visit this great site.

So 2 down, 48 to go!!!!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 10

It's been really hot in Houston. We generally are over - or at least flirt with - a 100+ degree heat-index every day. But even so, David kept bugging me to get out and do another bike ride. So we did a "short" 27 mile one and nabbed two Super Neighborhoods. See map.

David let me wear his cycling jersey just so I could check it out. I have to say, not having to wear a backpack definitely cooled things down.

We zipped through familiar neighborhoods and got a little turned around on the way to the first stop, so I decided to wing it. We came across this sign for #32 Braeswood Place:


Not my most attractive picture.

We again kind of winged it over to the Astrodome (which we could see almost all the way from where we stopped in Braeswood. We took a fun yet bumpy route along the bayou and then overshot our turn. We came to the back entrance of Reliant Center and the guard wouldn't let us cut through. So we went around to the Reliant Stadium side, hoping it would say "Astrodome" somewhere, but there was another guard station. So we rode allllll the way around to the east side of Reliant Center and the only sign we could see was actually on the Astrodome itself, way in the distance. We asked the guards if we could just go in to take a picture, and they said they couldn't let us, and even if they could, no photography was allowed (huh?). So we just took the best pic we could get using a cell phone camera:

Guards wouldn't let us get any closer

Even though it's blurry, you can just barely make out that it says Reliant Astrodome. Not to mention: I'm in front of the freaking Astrodome. So there you have it, #34 Astrodome.

So that was the last one for the day. Just for fun we rode back through downtown and along the Buffalo Bayou trail. It was getting pretty darn hot when we got back around 9:30am.

So my total is up to 270.1 miles and 58 out of 88 Super Neighborhoods.