Tour de Madeira 2007 planning

Well it's time to start thinking about Tour de Madeira 2007. Well, actually it has been time to be thinking about it for quite some time now, and not to worry - I, your faithful blogger, have been doing just that.

Although the 2006 T de M was very successful (my take - PJs take), I felt that the route could definitely stand some improvements. All in all, it was a solid route, but there were a few areas that merited a second look. As always, feel free to familiarize yourself with the ground rules.

And I am pleased to report that I have (at last) finalized a route for the 2007 edition. So let's take a brief look at the changes / updates:

1. After my Tour de Fairport Harbor planning, I had a breakthrough involving Eulerian paths and cycles and such, and so of course I began applying this knowledge to improve the Madeira route. There are 44 "bad" nodes in Madeira, not including the start and end nodes of Kenwood and Camargo. While I did not exhaustively prove this to be the case, I did quite a bit of study on the matter, and I believe that the shortest way to turn these bad nodes good is to apply the following 23 artificial edges
   
   • Kenwood / Dawson Kenwood / Shawnee Run
     
   • Dawson / Eleck Dawson / Rosecrest
     
   • Strifler / Springcrest Euclid / Pineneedle
     
   • Euclid / Wallace Euclid / Maple
     
   • Longfield / Camargo Euclid / Sanoma
     
   • Euclid / Hosbrook Euclid / Summit
     
   • Southside / Summit Southside / Fowler
     
   • Southside / Wallace Laurel / Miami
     
   • Osceola / Maxfield Longfield / Maxfield
     
   • Sanoma / Osceola Sanoma / Iuka
     
   • Sanoma / Sanoma Rita / Sanoma
     
   • Miami / Greenbriar Thomas / Greenbriar
     
   • Thomas / Mapleleaf Thomas / Tances
     
   • Thomas / Locust Dee / Thomas
     
   • Berwood / Jethve Dee / Britten
     
   • Juler / Wesley Juler / Dee
     
   • S Timberlane / Fowler Miami / Juler Ct
     
   • Fowler / S Mingo Fowler / N Timberlane
     
   • Hosbrook / Miami Hills Hosbrook / Shewango
     
   • Miami / Locust Miami / Shewango
     
   • Berwood / Homart Homart / Thomas
     
   • Rathon / Thomas Homart / Thomas
     
   • Thomas / Sanoma Homart / Thomas
     
   
   23 edges for 44 nodes instead of only 22? That is to handle the bad node at Thomas / Homart, and its neighboring bad nodes of Homart / Berwood, Thomas / Rathon and Thomas / Sanoma (the last 3 entries in the above list). You can think of it as 2 edges going from Homart / Berwood to Thomas / Homart and Thomas / Rathon to Thomas / Sanoma (going through Thomas / Rathon). I chose to break it out as 3 edges as shown above - distance-wise it's the same
   
   So, in comparison to the duplicate edges of the 2006 route, only duplicating these edges is approximately 0.4 miles shorter than last year's route. By my calculations it was 2441 feet, but it is a bit silly to give numbers that precise when my mode of measuring is an online mapping tool that can't hardly get that accurate I'm sure. Seems like a lot of work for less than 1/2 mile savings. But hey, 1/2 mile is 1/2 mile. And actually, given that there's at least one new street since last year. I think this will be the optimal route until and unless Madeira adds any more bad edges (most new streets are just going to be out and backs and therefore no changes to this route are necessary)
   
2. In addition to shortening the distance, there were a couple of other tweaks that I tried to put in. First off, I tried to eliminate as many out and backs as possible. Obviously, all the culdesacs (and lo, there are many) are going to require going out and stopping / slowing to turn around and come back. But last year's route had (by my count) 9 additional out and backs. Every time you do this you slow down - it's much more efficient to design a route that takes them out. This year's route only has 1 non-necessary out and back, and that was left in to avoid the next point
   
3. Avoiding left turns and traffic lights. I left an out and back on Miami Hills from the Timberlanes to Miami because without it, there was no way to avoid having to make a left turn onto Miami, and so I figured this was a good trade-off. The 2007 route tries to avoid having to turn left on to or off of major routes, and to have any intersection with a traffic light consist of 2 right turns at different sections of the route (to avoid potentially being stopped at a red light)
   
4. Where possible, avoiding uphills. This is probably on par with the 2006 route - there's only so much you can do.
   

I hope to try this out within the next few weeks, probably ear-lie on a Saturday morning. The current record is 5:43:33, and I think that it's not out of the question that I can get it done in under 4 hours.

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

The demise of ECF

I have done some thinking about ECF, and I have decided to put it on hold. The more I thought about having to limit it to 275 just made it definitely lose some "cool factor". But don't worry, I have other plans...

3,141 Postcards

So I was sitting around, wondering what new "everywhatever" I could do from my couch that would still have the "cool factor" that you hear Dan talk so much about, and I came up with this idea:

I'm trying to get a postmarked postcard from every county and county-equivalent in the United States sent to me. It can be sent by anyone, but it has to be postmarked from a zip code within the county. Ideally, I would like the postcard to be about the county it was sent from, but it's not a requirement.

I've set up an separate blog to keep track of all of those postcards, as to not clutter up Dan's excellent blog. You can keep up with it here: http://3141postcards.blogspot.com/

Right now I'm going through and soliciting local Chamber of Commerces and Visitor's Bureaus to see if they will send me one for free. Once I get a P.O. Box, I will allow unsolicited postcards to be sent to me from loyal readers :)

Every Municipality in Harris County

Carey here,

Last Sunday I completed my trip of Every Municipality in Harris County in 5 hours, 6 minutes, and 26 seconds. As stated in the previous post, I had 34 cities to cover, with almost half of them not even having 5,000 people living within the Harris County borders.

Myself and two random people, Kelly and Karen, whom I met through a meetup.com road trip group, gathered at On the Border in the northwest side of the county for lunch to fuel up for the drive. The restaurant was in a Census-Designated Place (not a city!) called Cypress, which is the epitome of suburbia. Every single store was a chain and every single house looked identical. I felt like I was in some kind of twilight zone...

I made sure to have lots of carbs and protein (steak quesadilla, yummy!), as I would need it sitting in the car for 5 hours. I don't know if this is actually helpful from an energy standpoint, but I like to rationalize eating anything that's not very good for me.

We set off due northeast on the aptly named Cypress-Tomball Road to the start point. Before we even got there, Kelly had to go to the bathroom. I forgave him since we hadn't started the timer yet :) So we made it to #1 Tomball without incident. So far I've already spent almost an hour in the car without starting the official timer. I wasn't looking forward to the drive back to On the Border, then back home again, but that comes with the territory. As soon as we crossed 249 heading towards Waller, I started my trusty Pampered Chef kitchen timer.

The drive out to Waller from Tomball (on the also aptly named Waller-Tomball Road) was nothing but trees; there weren't many signs of civilization. At #2 Waller we turned the corner and went south towards Katy. Keeping up with the road naming scheme, I was looking forward to the road being named Waller-Katy road, but for some reason it was called Katy-Hockley Road. I had no idea where Hockley was, but I sure hoped I wasn't heading towards it!

I hit my first blunder of the day when I turned a corner that didn't seem like I was supposed to turn at. So I turned around and went in the direction I thought I was supposed to go. Then I saw the freeway from the direction we came from, which I knew couldn't be right. Well, after that I just had to stop and look at a map. Turns out the first turn I thought I wasn't supposed to take was actually the correct direction. I turned around again and shamefully accelerated back to the route.

Katy city limits were well marked, with a sign as well as a different color pavement (usually a clear indicator that road maintenance has changed hands from one governmental body to another). We turned around after crossing the border to #3 Katy and went down Clay Road back towards Houston. Little did I know at the time that I was not following my own directions. When we hit Beltway 8, I told everyone that we had hit city #4 Jersey City and turned towards Houston. I jumped on the toll road then, suddenly... too suddenly, I-10 arrived. I looked at my directions and found that Clay Road was actually the boundary for Houston after we were supposed to hit Jersey City further north. So, without any fanfare, I told our group that we had actually been in #4 Houston for a couple of miles now. So I got off the toll road, turned around for 4-5 miles to get now #5 Jersey City. Then I turned around again, got on the toll road, again, and set off to begin our tour of cities that are completely surrounded by Houston.

The Memorial Villages are 6 of said municipalities, all grouped together, completely surrounded by Houston. First we hit #6 Hedwig Village, #7 Piney Point Village, #8 Bunker Hill Village and #9 Hunters Creek Village, then we crossed the freeway and hit #10 Spring Village and #11 Hilshire Village. We hit all 6 of them in under 15 minutes. The interesting thing about all these villages is that they are all independent municipalities, but they all share police and fire service separate from Houston. This was a very posh area; we saw quite a few very large mansions. Looking at some of the census demographics of the area, the median income of the villages ranged from $66,000 for Hedwig Village (a lot of Shopping Centers) to $185,000 for Piney Point Village (a lot of Mansions). It was a nice drive with lots of trees and beautiful houses.

Next up were the tri-cities of #12 Bellaire, #13 Southside Park, and #14 University Park. These cities are also in a cluster completely enveloped by Houston. A lot of business professionals live in Bellaire because they have one of the best schools in Houston ISD. University Park has a lot of early-retired rich people who want to live close to Rice University while their children go there. Just like the villages, it's way out of my price rage! Southside Park is so small I don't even really know what's in it.

Now we headed southwest to the annoying portion of our trip: Cities that really have no business being in Harris County. We went down US-59 and got off at the Beltway frontage road. We turned on a Stafford Road and went down one block to hit the tiny tiny area of #15 Stafford that was in Harris County, or so I thought. While writing this I was remembering that I needed to be in a little subdivision to be in Stafford in Harris County, and we never went in one. I went to my trusty TxDOT map and was able to take a sigh of relief. I had changed my route because there was a second, easier portion of Stafford to get to. Crisis averted, it counted!

After Stafford we got back on the Beltway towards Clear Lake and ran through #16 Missouri City, which is also mostly in Fort Bend County, but just happens to peek into Harris County. Then we hit I-45 and took it south, exited and hit #17 Pearland, which is mostly in Brazoria County. Now we were starting to get into true middle-middle class suburbia. All the houses looked under 2,000 sq. ft., and only half of them were kept up. Most of the cars parked on the road looked about 6-7 years old, and there was a not-so-spectacular-but-still-OK park nearby. Of course a lot of people are starting to move to move from the Clear Lake area (upper-middle class) to Pearland because of its low cost and proximity to Houston, so I have a feeling those property values are going to increase.

And finally we went far enough down I-45 to get to what's called the "Clear Lake" area, which is named after the lake the area surrounds. That lake happens to also be the Harris County/Galveston County border, so I only have to hit the cities on the northern portion of it. The municiaplities are going to come fast and furious now, since we're mostly past the reaches of Houston's gigantic land-grabbing hands. Only Clear Lake City was swallowed by Houston, the rest remain unscathed. So I exited NASA Road 1 and was immediately in #18 Webster, which is where I got married not too long ago! We took a right on NASA Road 1 and immediately after hitting the border for #19 Friendswood (mostly in Brazoria County), we took a left into Challenger Seven Memorial Park, the boundary for #20 League City (mostly in Galveston County).

Then we begin our tour of NASA Road 1. This was the kingmaker of this trip: A straight road that goes through many municipalities, as well as (of course) the NASA Space Center! NASA is to us Houstonians like the Statue of Liberty is to New Yorkers. We consider it a tourist attraction, so we never actually go there unless we have out-of-town company or it was a school field trip. I've lived here 4 years and I've never been. My wife has been, but only on one of those school field trip. I've even passed right by it dozens of times when we were making trips down here from Baytown every weekend for wedding planning. But I digress...

Along NASA Road 1, we went through the main portion of Webster, then #21 Nassau Bay (Kelly really enjoyed saying the word "Nassau" for some reason), #22 Pasadena, #23 El Lago, a quick u-turn left on Kirby Drive to catch #24 Taylor Lake Village, then at the end of the road, #25 Seabrook. It was a beautiful drive along the northern border of the lake. We saw marinas everywhere. This was very much a marina community. Pam and I actually looked in this area to live when we first moved down here, but it was so much more expensive than Baytown was, so we decided against it.

Next was TX-146 going north. This is a road most people in the Houston area don't really need to go on. It's lined on both sides with refineries. If you're coming from Louisiana and going to Galveston and didn't want to take the ferry, this is the way you'd take to get there. But who doesn't want to take a ferry!? We drove straight through #26 Shoreacres and exited at Main Street after #27 La Porte.

The next city, Morgans Point, always seemed like an anomaly to me. From the freeway, as well as a satellite's point of view, it just looks like a large shipyard. A very large shipyard. It hardly seems like there could be enough people living there to justify incorporation. We crossed the city limits to enter #28 Morgans Point and, lo and behold, there was the city hall/police station/courthouse building on our left. There was even a single Morgan's Point Police Department patrol vehicle. We only saw a couple of houses to our right, so we knew at least someone lived there. After the trip I looked up more specifics of the city: In 2000, they had 336 people and 111 households. The children attend La Porte ISD. And the Morgans Point police are dispatched through the La Porte Police Department. They boast a property tax rate of 0.54%. City Council meetings are the first Thursday of each month and the municipal court is only in session one day a month on the first Tuesday of the month. They have garbage and even curbside recycling pickup. Who knew?

Next up was a Houston Landmark, the Fred Hartman Bridge. I swear, every time I see a commercial about Texas trucks, I see this bridge in one of the Texas landmark montages. The funny part is that this bridge is completely surrounded by oil refineries and shipyards. Even on that website I liked you too, it takes care not to show you the surrounding area. But one of the most interesting things about all the oil refineries is that, for safety, they are brightly lit all night. If you cross the Fred Hartman Bridge at night, it's one of the most spectacular visuals you could see of something so ordinary during the day. If you're ever in Houston, you should check out this bridge at night at least once.

Once we crossed the bridge, we immediately exited into the city where I lived for three years, #29 Baytown. Oddly enough, the fastest route back to the remaining cities was back over the bridge (because of the natural barrier of the Bay), so we turned around and headed back. Next was westward on TX-225 towards Houston. On the freeway we crossed #30 Deer Park and Pasadena again. Deer Park/Pasadena are famous for their roles in the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy, with John Travolta. Gilley's, the bar from the movie, was an actual working bar and remained in operation until a fire destroyed a portion of it in 1990. The bar was closed, but the structure remained until it was finally torn down in 2001. Unfortunately, I never got to see it myself.

We went down Shaver Street/Main Street in Pasadena to grab the most out-of-the-way city, South Houston. This is another small city that's surrounded by Houston on one side and Pasadena on the other. I made my last blunder of the day by missing my turn onto a road that was named something other than what the map said. We passed South Houston High School on our right and figured if we were in the Parking Lot of that, we would be in South Houston. I double checked when I got home and we were, indeed, in #31 South Houston, barely.

On the way back we went to the hottest Subway I had ever been to in my life. It was obvious the A/C wasn't working, but I thought it would of been too hot to even keep the store open. It was a relief to finally get outside, where it was 93 degrees in the afternoon sun. It must of been in excess of 110 degrees inside. It was not pleasant at all.

We drove all the way up main street to the last remaining automobile tunnel in Houston, the Washburn Tunnel. This is another one of those landmarks that most people who live here never go on. It's in between the I-610 loop bridge and the Beltway 8 toll bridge, so you can always just take a freeway across rather than take the tunnel. Luckily for me, the next two cities were just across the tunnel.

We took a left after the tunnel and we were in #32 Galena Park. This was definitely a lower-income area, as all the houses were small and run-down. The one thing that really caught my eye is that all the street signs were black on yellow. I had never seen a color scheme like that before. We turned on Main street and, after an open stretch of nothing, crossed into #33 Jacinto City. Jacinto City was like Galena Park, but a little more fixed-up.

The last city was pretty uneventful We took I-10 to I-610 to US-59 towards Cleveland (Texas). We got off near the airport, took a right into an area with lots of trees, and picked up the final city, #34 Humble (pronounced "Umble" for you northerners). The landscape in the northeast looked just like the northwest: lots and lots of green trees.

I stopped the timer at 5 hours, 6 minutes and 26 seconds and we drove 30 minutes back to the restaurant. I was really kicking myself for making those screw-ups at the beginning, but not enough to want to try a second attempt :) On to the next project, which will probably be the Every Local Bus in Houston trip.

ECF planning

So the planning is on for ECF. What is ECF, you might ask? After much careful thought and deliberation, I have decided my latest craze shall be named Every Cincinnati Favorite, or ECF for short.

Busken, Graeters, Larosas and Montgomery Inn all had nice pages with hours of operation for all their stores. Skyline? Not so much. I sent them an email asking if they had that anywhere corporately, but the response I got was pretty much "Nope". So, while it wasn't quite the "Screw you" that Carey got from Houston Metro, it was also not the "Oh, here they are all and here's some free gift cards too". So I just got off the phone with 35 Skylines asking them for their hours on Fridays. And only one of them gave me the hours that the particular person was working, though a few tried to give me hours for Saturday.

I have decided that Friday must be the day to do this. Most stores have extended hours on the weekend (Fri/Sat), and the reason it has to be Friday instead of Saturday is that the Busken at 8th and Walnut is closed on Saturdays.

I think my plan is to do all the early stores starting at 6 am till 10 am. There are 14 Buskens and 11 Graeters (2 Graeters don't open till 11). Here's a map with those 25 locations. I looked up the actual driving directions for a route starting in Hebron (SW near the airport in KY) and ending on the west side of town, and it was 3 hours 49 minutes
. Taking out the 4 stores on the south east side drops it to 2:52 which is what I would probably do. 3:49 is just driving time and doesn't include stopping in each of the stores nor traffic which could be troublesome. Depending on how my trial runs go, I might take out the 2 Springdale stores (far north).

What? Trial runs? Mwahahaha. Yes, I may go on a trial run of this part this upcoming Saturday.

Anyways, now that I have all (but 2) hours of operation, here is a breakdown. As mentioned there are 25 stores that open before 10 am. The others open at 10, 10:30 and 11.

Closing times:
Of the early stores, 9 close before 6 p.m. This shouldn't be a problem since I should be hitting those first thing. Though actually 1 or 2 of the ones I wanted to skip in the morning are among these 9 - I'll have to remember those. Also I bet that the 2 Skylines that I didn't get an answer for close early (i.e. they were closed when I called just now) - they're downtown so it wouldn't surprise me.

8:00 - 1 Skyline (7th and Vine downtown)
9:00 - 3 Skylines
10:00 - 1 Graeters, 5 Skylines
10:30-10:45 - 8 Graeters, 1 Montgomery Inn
11:00 - 5 Buskens, 4 Graeters, 2 Montgomery Inns, 2 Skylines
11:30 - 1 Larosas, 1 Skyline
Midnight - 25 Larosas, 7 Skylines
12:30-12:45 - 5 Larosas
1:00 - 3 Larosas, 4 Skylines
2:00 - 1 Skyline (Oakley)
3:00 - 8 Skylines
3:30 - 2 Skylines (Kenwood and Plainfield Rd)
4:00 - 1 Skyline (Clifton)
24 hours - 1 Busken

If the numbers don't add up, and they probably don't, sue me. It's interesting trying to find a rhyme or reason to some of the closing times. Like it doesn't surprise me that the Clifton Skyline is the latest closing - all those UC students. But why does Norwood close at 10? Don't Xavier students need their 3-ways and Coneys?

Also, the times for Skyline were their dining hours - some of them had drivethrus that stayed open later. I'm not sure how I feel about drivethrus - kind of defeats the whole purpose of visiting every restaurant. Though I used the delivery / carryout hours for Larosas, as opposed to dining areas, because at least there you're actually going IN to get your pizza (or your garlic sticks or 20 oz beverage, as the case may be)

I think this is definitely doable, and one of the cool factors is that it's going to be close. It will take some excellent logistical planning and execution to make it happen in one day. There's something cool about having a 24 hr deadline rather than just going as fast as you can without a deadline. Good thing I'm the (self-proclaimed) world's #1 expert on such matters...

And, one final point, Carolyn has decreed (and if there's anybody who knows her way around the middle of the night, it's her) that 3 a.m. is still night time, but 4 a.m. is morning.

EDIT TO ADD: There was a missing Skyline!!! After talking to Amy at work, she was remembering one downtown on 4th street. I double checked the website, and it was there, but only listed as a Downtown store. The other 2 downtown stores are also listed in the general Cincinnati category. That would have been a disastrous faux pas to not include that one. Naturally, this just cements Skyline's place as "worst website evah"

Cincinnati Favorites

So after watching Mark Malkoff's record-setting performance of 171 Starbucks in Manhattan, I dusted off a few of my plans. The first one I thought of was the plan to visit every Kroger in the area. There were 108 Krogers in what Kroger considers the Cincinnati "area" (which goes from Batesville to Maysville to Hillsboro to Sidney), and IIRC, the estimate was 22 hours or so to visit all of them (and that's just driving time - not including time to actually go in and buy something).

After ruling that one out, I remembered the 58 Krogers in what I considered Cincinnati. That came in as somewhere around 8 hours of driving time (much more realistic), but I had dismissed it as lacking "cool factor". Upon review of the Starbucks video, I may need to reconsider that. I think that there is definitely some cool factor involved.

But what has currently grabbed my fancy is visiting every "Cincinnati Favorite". Though there are more brands listed on the aforementioned website, I narrowed it down to Busken, Graeters, Skyline, Larosas and Montgomery Inn. With apologies to Sturkey's and Glier's, whatever they are, if after 10 years of living here I have never heard of you, you don't qualify!

So I then set my sights on acquiring the store list. As I already knew, this can be one of the most challenging parts of the whole endeavor. Larosas has an EXCELLENT page - a full store list with Google Maps mashup! I was even able to get latitude and longitude coordinates off of it, so that was nice.

The other sites weren't that bad - I eventually was able to get a full list, but then I ran into another problem. Skyline's store list contains stores inside Kings Island, the Zoo, Coney Island and Great American Ball Park. After thinking about it for a bit, and an (unrelated) trip to Kings Island (where I of course did some reconnaisance work), I decided that those stores don't count. After all, there are also Larosa's and Graeter's in Kings Island, and neither company lists those locations on their official store listings. If Skyline wants to artificially inflate their store count, that's their own business. So I decided (and I do declare myself to be in the best position to arbiter) that only stores that are open to the public are counted. Skyline also lists a store inside the IRS building in Covington, but a quick phone call confirmed that they are open to the public, so they're in.

Then I turned my sights to boundary locations. What, exactly, is considered "Cincinnati". It was easy to rule out locations in places like Oxford, or Hamilton, or Batesville, or Lebanon, or Walton. But as you start getting closer, the line becomes much hazier. If you count Mason, then what about Landen. And then if you count Landen, well what about Maineville? How about Amelia or Goshen? Independence or Alexandria, KY? Lawrenceburg or Bright, IN? There were somewhere around 150 locations to visit, depending on where you drew the line.

But then I decided to just make the boundary the 275 loop. It's a nice definitive boundary without any room for wiggling - either it is inside or it isn't. And that still gives 104 stores. I didn't think that 150 was doable in 24 hours, given the fact that many of them don't even open until 10 a.m. (the exception being Busken). So you don't really have a full 24 hours - it's more like 15 or 18, though I did see a few Skylines that were open till 3 a.m. on weekends and the Hyde Park Busken is open 24 hours a day.

The rules, just as in the Starbucks movie, are that you have to visit every store, and you have to buy something at every store and consume at least part of it. If you happen to come across a store after closing time, then if you can get an employee to sell / give you something, that can count. More codified rules will be written as necessary.

Stay tuned!

171 Starbucks!!

Yes there are indeed more folks out there like me. Mark Malkoff, a NYC resident, came up with the plan to visit all 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in a single day. After a few false starts and much planning, he pulled it off on June 29, 2007.

You can watch the 10 minute video recapping the event at the appropriately named 171starbucks.com.

The rules were that he had to make a purchase at every store, and consume at least part of it. He managed to do the first 14 hours or so on bicycle, but then, hopped up on caffeine and with a hobbled leg, he did the last part in a car.

Due to bad luck and / or some delays, he arrived at 2 stores after they were closed. One was shown in the video as closed at 10:12 p.m., although the store sign said they were open till 11. The employee, after much begging and attempted bribery, parted with a biscotti for $1. At another closed store, it took $80 for a pound cake!

He ended up spending over $369, but finished nearly 23 hours after he started.

Definitely awesome, and it has renewed my vigor in some of the other tasks that I could do around here. Perhaps Every Kroger isn't such a bad idea, or maybe Every Larosas!

Old comment!

So no more than 10 minutes after the posting of my last post, I get an email with a notification of a comment on my blog. As a side note, if you use Blogger, you should definitely turn the feature on that emails you on comments - otherwise you may be missing some.

This was a comment on my first post on this blog from a fellow county-counter. He actually also lives in the Greater Cincinnati area (nearby),but has racked up over 2500 counties. So a leeeetle ahead of me.

Anyway it was good to hear from another county enthusiast. He has his own blog about the subject which I highly recommend.

One of his posts is an article from the Pioneer Press, in St. Paul, Minnesota. It talks about us crazy people and also mentions

"There's a guy who has a Web page about his whirlwind visit to all 88 counties in Ohio — he did it in 24 hours."

Woohoo I'm famous!!!!!!

County game

Not quite an every whatever, but close. Here's a little game:

Take your basic county map of Ohio.



Starting at Adams, and ending in Wyandot, make your way through all 88 counties in alphabetical order. Obviously this is impossible to do all in one trip, but the game is to see how few "strikes" you get. Every time you have to start over (i.e. you reach a county that has no non-visited adjacent counties that are after it alphabetically), you choose an adjacent county that is before it alphabetically, and count yourself with one strike.

I'm thinking that for Ohio the "magic" number would be somewhere around 12-15.

Oddly, there do not appear to be any states that you can do this without strikes, unless you count Hawaii which has kind of "fuzzy" borders due to the water. Delaware and Rhode Island (which have the fewest counties at 3 and 5 respectively) are doable with a single strike, as is Connecticut (8 counties).

New Hampshire (10 counties) is an interesting case:



Without the rules of having to start and end at the alphabetically extreme counties (Belknap and Sullivan), it's doable with one strike (Belknap-Carroll-Coos-Grafton-Merrimack-Sullivan, Cheshire-Hillsborough-Rockingham-Strafford). But if you force those boundary conditions, it takes 3 (Belknap-Carroll-Coos-Grafton-Merrimack-Strafford, Rockingham, Hillsborough, Cheshire-Sullivan).

I like the symmetry of starting and ending in the extremes so we're doin' it baby!

Every Municipality (in Harris County, Texas)

Carey here (not Dan).

As usual, I like to like to use Dan for inspiration and I borrowed his every city in a county idea to my own county, Harris County, Texas.

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and our counties are no exception. Harris County is 1,778 square miles and third largest in the country by population. This is compared to 413 square miles of Hamilton County, Ohio. Needless to say, it's going to be a much longer trip. However, there will be fewer municipalities to hit, since the city of Houston alone takes up 33.8% of the entire area of the county.

Texas is a little different in Ohio in that they don't have "villages" or "townships." All we have are cities and unincorporated county areas. These unincorporated areas are basically the same things as townships. They don't always have a set border, but they are considered census-designated places.

From speaking with Dan, I think these are the ground rules we came up with, which is pretty much what he's already discussed in the previous post:

• Municipalities are usually defined by state statute. Anything considered an unincorporated area (i.e. township) by the county doesn't count towards the goal, as they do not always have defined boundaries.
  
• If a city is split into two or more disconnected parts, you only have to visit one of the parts to count the city.
• You are allowed to leave the county, but any city you pick up outside of the county doesn't count towards the goal. You must be inside that city inside the target county.
• If any part of a city is in the County, it must be hit.

So, with these ground rules in mind, here is the list of municipalities in Harris County that require visiting:

• Baytown
• Bellaire
• Bunker Hill Village
• Deer Park
• El Lago
• Friendswood
• Galena Park
• Hedwig Village
• Hilshire Village
• Houston
• Humble
• Hunters Creek Village
• Jacinto City
• Jersey Village
• Katy
• La Porte
• League City
• Missouri City
• Morgan's Point
• Nassau Bay
• Pasadena
• Pearland
• Piney Point Village
• Seabrook
• Shoreacres
• South Houston
• Southside Place
• Spring Valley
• Stafford
• Taylor Lake Village
• Tomball
• Waller
• Webster
• West University Place

The shortest path I could find was 205 miles and estimated 5.75 hours. See my map here

And I have a date set! It looks like I'll be attempting this route on the afternoon of Sunday, July 22, 2007 with a few people I know who wanted to share in the world record. I'll report on the trip afterwards.

Every Municipality

So a new thing I've been tinkering with - every municipality! I started with Hamilton County, of course because hey that's a cool place to start! As with the Every Zip code problem, one problem with EFM is getting a list of all the municipalities, as well as finding the actual borders.

Each county in Ohio is broken up into (generally rectangularish) townships. Hamilton County has 12 townships. I believe there used to be 14, but Cincinnati Twp and Mill Creek Twp have been completely annexed by the city of Cincinnati. When a county was first formed / surveyed / whatever, it only had these townships as organizational units. As cities and villages are incorporated, land is taken away from the townships to form said cities / villages.

In very urban areas, this can lead to some odd township boundaries, or even removal of the township. As I mentioned before, there are 2 historical townships in Hamilton County that no longer exist. Or Columbia Township which now only exists in several small islands, since the rest of it has been annexed by other cities.

So, the list of places to visit:

Cities:

• Blue Ash
• Cheviot
• Cincinnati
• Deer Park
• Fairfield
• Forest Park
• Harrison
• Indian Hill
• Loveland
• Madeira
• Milford
• Montgomery
• Mount Healthy
• North College Hill
• Norwood
• Reading
• Sharonville
• Silverton
• Springdale
• St. Bernard
• Wyoming

Villages:

• Addyston
• Amberley Village
• Arlington Heights
• Cleves
• Elmwood Place
• Evendale
• Fairfax
• Glendale
• Golf Manor
• Greenhills
• Lincoln Heights
• Lockland
• Mariemont
• Newtown
• North Bend
• Terrace Park
• Woodlawn

Townships

• Anderson
• Colerain
• Columbia
• Crosby
• Delhi
• Green
• Harrison
• Miami
• Springfield
• Sycamore
• Symmes
• Whitewater

Now you might ask yourself: "Why Dan, I live in Mack, or Dillonvale or Finneytown - you missed my town on your list!!". And the reply of course is that you do not live there. You live in Green Township, or Sycamore Township, or Springfield Township (respectively). Those are what are called Census Designated places. Or, in other words, they just don't really exist, outside the minds of the people that live around there.

I have nothing against CDPs (other than that they would make my trip longer), but the problem with including them is that their borders are abstract and/or nebulous. To take some examples of some west-side Hamilton Co. neighborhoods. Where's the border between Mack North and Mack South. Or either of them and Bridgetown. Or Covedale, Dent, White Oak or Monfort Heights? You may think you know the exact border, but I guarantee you that out of 10 people, at least 5 would give different borders.

So, I have decided to stick with actual municipalities, with elected officers and official boundaries and such. Similarly, I chose to treat Cincinnati as just one city, rather than try to divide it up into neighborhoods - same kind of border problem. Maybe for my next trick I will visit every ward in Cincinnati (I believe there are 25).

And again, you might ask yourself: "Why Dan, Loveland and Milford are in Clermont County, not Hamilton, and Fairfield is in Butler County! I thought this was a Hamilton County thing?!?". Actually, most (local) people know that Loveland is partially in Hamilton County, as well as Clermont and Warren, as one of only 5 cities in Ohio that are in 3 counties. And Milford has a tiny sliver in Hamilton County, near the former terminus of the Little Miami Bike Trail. But Fairfield?!? Even the Wikipedia doesn't know it's partially in Hamilton County. In browsing the city's website as well as the county auditor's website, I am forced to agree that there is a tiny section (less than a block long) of Winton / Gilmore Road of Fairfield that is in Hamilton County - near 275 and the Cincinnati Mills mall.

Here is a map of the various places in Hamilton Co (click to enlarge)



Note that it includes CDPs.

and here is my first draft at a route

Isn't Google Maps new feature of being able to auto drag and drop maps and directions cool! It's like they're listening right to me! This nearly eliminates the need for places like http://www.routebuilder.org and http://www.gmap-pedometer.com.

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 Madeira ground rules 2.0

Okay, as an update to the first draft and as a companion to the basic ground rules, here are the ground rules for Tour de Madeira 2.0

1. Rather than listing off every street, I will list out the various border streets and special cases. Where a specific side of the road is mentioned, the route must include riding / walking on that (Madeira) side of the street. Where the city border does not occur at an intersection of two streets, you must ride / walk past the Madeira city sign posted on that road before turning around. Any streets within these borders that are not specifically excluded must be visited

• Montgomery Road (from Hosbrook to Galbraith - SE side)


• Galbraith Road (from Montgomery to east of Miami - south side)


• Miami road (north of Galbraith - west side)


• Camargo road (both sides - from west of Blome to Madisonville)


• Shawnee Run road (from east of Madeira Hills Dr - north side)


• Kenwood Road (from south of Kenwood Hills to Euclid - both sides)


• Euclid Avenue (from Ken Arbre to Hosbrook - south side; east of Hosbrook - both sides)


• Ken Arbre Avenue (from Euclid to Stewart - south side)


• Stewart Avenue (from Woodsway Dr to Ken Arbre - east side)

2. Special Cases - for some streets, it is unclear what actually consists of a "road". Or some roadways are definitely roads, but it's unclear where the border is between road and driveway. Some clarification for those cases.

• Goff Terrace - From Miami to the Ferrari's parking lot


• Railroad Ave - From Miami past Center and into the first parking lot (7805 and 7809 Railroad)


• Dones Ave - From Camargo east of Marvin to where it splits into 2 driveways (going east to 7845 and south to 7825)


• Marvin Ave - From Dones to Sellman Park; no need to go past the Parking Lot


• Iuka Ave and Osceola Ave - at the south ends of both of these streets, there are triangular "median" type structures. You must travel around all three sides.


• Paisley Lane - You must go around the corner until the road dead ends into the driveway for 6680 Paisley


• May St - You must go all the way to 6600 and 6609

3. These streets are specifically NOT included

• Any of the streets of the mobile home park on Dawson Road


• Greylock Drive
• Any "named" streets on the campuses of any of the schools


• Shawnee Pines Drive
• Dot Ave
• Miami Road south of Shawnee Run road


• "Extended" driveways, such as 6873-6929 Fox Hill Lane


• The path through Sellman Park to Fox Chase Lane - though you are allowed to travel that if you feel that would be advantageous


• The narrow separate pedestrian walkway at the south end of Rita Avenue. You still have to travel all of Rita, but you do not have to especially go through this walkway as you do with the medians on Iuka and Osceola

4. There are no one-way streets within the tour limits

Every Street ground rules 1.0

After the first draft, I've thought of some updates to the Tour de Madeira ground rules. While planning the T de M 2007, I thought of some areas that might need clarification. Also, after doing the Tour de Fairport Harbor, I also realized that there was a need (yes, a NEED) for a set of abstract ground rules for things that are common to all tours of this sort (like generic rules for how to handle cul-de-sacs or intersections or borders), as well as tour-specific ground rules (like a listing of streets / borders for a specific tour). So this post will contain the generic rules. Further posts will come (soon?) with Madeira rules 2.0 as well as the Fairport Harbor ground rules, and of course a report of T de FH '07.

1. The full length of every street within the tour's ground rules must be visited, but you are allowed to go outside of the tour limits if you want. Official time is from start to finish, and includes any break or rest time. You are allowed to ride or walk your bike on each street. You may travel on the sidewalk if it is convenient, but travelling on the sidewalk does not count towards completing the route. Except where specifically excluded, travelling through any part of an intersection between two streets counts as visiting the entire intersection. To count a segment of road as "completed" you only have to ride on one side of the street, though of course, you can choose to ride on both sides, if you deem it to be advantageous.

2. When going down cul-de-sacs, you must make an effort to "round the bend", but you do not have to scrape the curb. Similarly, when travelling to the end of a particular intersection, you do not have to go into the cross street to "fully" complete the street you are on, as long as a reasonable effort is made to get to the end of the street.

3. If there are any one-way streets (or one-way sections of particular streets) within the tour limits, you must travel them in the correct 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.

Computer Programs and the (now) 63-Bus Ride

Yes, the new METRO schedule change is out, and they split Bus 8 (South Main/Yale) into Bus 8 South Main to the south and Bus 66 Yale to the north. So now that makes 63 buses I have to ride. I had better get going on this before they change it again!

I managed to get all the bus times (post-bus 8 split) and threw them all into a database. I've been trying my hardest to use this data to my advantage to find an optimal route. In my mind, an optimal route would be one where I would have at least a 10 minute wait between buses (to avoid the late bus factor) and no more than a 30 minute wait between buses.

My first script did just that. You gave it a starting spot and how long you wanted to wait, and it spit out a route for you. You could either have it spit out the first route found or the fastest route found. The problem with this is processing speed. In order to find every bus route possible, it is a worst case of 63! calculations (63! means 63 factorial, or 63*62*61*60* ... *3*2*1). If you throw that into a calculator, it comes back with 2 X 10^82, or a 2 with 82 zeros after it. This means that even if I had a super computer that could do a billion checks a second (which is unreal speed), it would take 3 X 10^67 years to calculate a solution. So... that won't work.

My second script was to cut it down into little pieces to aid in a human-aided search. You could put in point A and point B and it would try to find the best path between them. The script works, to a point. The problem is that it usually skips over some crosstown buses that you need to get, because it would take too long to get them later. But it does very good at finding quickly the fastest path using 3-4 buses between two points. At least that's something. I also added a user-input variable for a "first bus" that you have to take, as well as an exclusion list of buses that you may not take on your trip. Another problem with the script is that there is no advanced string matching for the starting point, so if you don't spell the street name exactly like it is in the database, it won't know what you're talking about.

My next script is going to be 100% user input. I think this will be the best help in finding a good route. When you give it a starting point, it will spit back at you all the routes that go through that point. When you pick one of those routes, it will spit out every stop along that route, including what times it will get to that route, and which buses intersect it at that route and how long you'd have to wait at that stop to hit that bus. Then you click one of those stops and the process repeats. It will keep a running tab of what buses you've taken to get to where you're going and let you back up as many spots as you need. Unfortunately, I probably won't get to this until after my vacation next week.

Making the Most of the 62-Bus Ride

First of all, a correction to my original post. There are 62 local buses in Houston, not 61. I grouped buses 26/27 together. If you look at a map, they're pretty much the same line. They go around in a circle around downtown. Bus 27 goes clockwise and bus 26 goes counterclockwise. But, they have different numbers, so I'll consider them different lines.

I think the biggest question I get asked about riding every bus in Houston is "why?" I think the biggest reason is: adventure. It's the same reason that someone would drive 3 days cross-country when they could of just taken a 5-hour flight. It's the same reason you can't help but slow down to look at a car crash. It's a break from the ordinary. With every adventure comes a story; a story you can tell others. A story you can tell your friends and family. I mean, what is my alternative? Spending all day making copies and staring at a computer screen? Besides, I never give up a chance to promote public transportation. You can ask any of my co-workers that and they would tell you the same thing!

But is this enough? I think so. But, if this adventure ends up getting press, I'm going to try to do something charitable. I would seem like a waste not to. I'm a good person, after all! Yesterday METRO released a news article that 10 of their mechanics were putting away $3 of each of their paychecks into a fund to buy bicycles for Houston's Fifth Ward kids for Christmas. Last year they managed to buy 58 bicycles. This year they are hoping to buy 500 bikes with help of donors. I think this is an amazingly worthwhile cause. What I'm going to do is try to set up a way to accept pledges to go towards this fund, where people can pledge a per-bus donation for my big trip, then an optional bonus if I can finish the entire thing. This way, even if I don't make it, I will still raise money for charity. Every dollar I collect will go towards buying those kids these bikes. They will compliment all the new bike racks that METRO is putting on their buses quite nicely.

Houston buses

In case you aren't monitoring the comments for posts that were written 6 months ago, I thought I would clue you in on a recent development. Yesterday I got a new comment on this post

I have inspired someone else!!! Fellow is going to attempt to ride all 61 local buses in Houston. Follow the link for more information.

It's almost enough to make me want to go down to Houston to ride with him :-). And just think of how many counties I could pick up travelling down there!!

I had considered doing something similar in Cincinnati but shelved the idea. The problem is that just about every bus in Cincinnati goes from downtown to somewhere. There are only a few (51, 41, and probably a few others that I can't think of off the top of my head) that are more of "cross-town" buses. So that's not really a problem for completing the route - actually it would make it pretty easy. All you'd need to do (for the most part) is just get on and off various buses downtown, which just didn't seem as "cool" as some of the other things I had come up with. A larger city with more buses (Chicago and New York to name 2) I think would be a worthwhile challenge. Still maybe this will inspire me to come up with a good route for Cincinnati.