The Blasphemous Bicycler

This is the first year I’ve kept consistent records about my bicycling mileage. I have no way to be sure, but it feels like I rode a lot less this year than in years past.

At least now, I have a baseline against which to compare future year’s cycling accomplishments.

New Year Resolutions

1. Weigh Less – I’m shooting for 100 pounds less. General lethargy, coupled with my fondness for curry and beer have inflated me to the point that bicycling and hiking are becoming much less pleasurable than before. The less I ride, the bigger I get, the bigger I get, the less I ride. This is a recipe for disaster. The line must be drawn here.
2. Ride my bike more – I’m shooting for 2,000 miles. I bought a house within easy commuting distance to my office, and I’m taking an online class for the spring semester. I really have no excuse to use my car much anymore. This should help with goal #1, too.
3. Crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women. As soon as I’m back into fighting shape, you fuckers better run.

Now, I’m going to spend the last few hours of 2007 to use up what’s left of my curry and beer reserves.

Beh. I didn’t want to end the year with a 1 mile ride in a housing development, so I took my monkey to the woods and splashed around in the mud a little.

Today: 15 miles
December: 31.5 miles
2007: 1076.5 miles

So, I just moved into a rather new housing development. It only shows up as a construction site in Yahoo’s satellite imagery. It also isn’t in the TIGER dataset.

I managed to scrounge together my helmet and my GPS out of various cardboard boxes strewn around the garage. I rode my bicycle all over my development and now it’s mapped properly.

This is why OSM kicks ass and takes names. I put my bike away less than an hour ago, and the fruits of my labour are already visible on the map.

I think this will probably be my last bike ride for 2007. I had set a goal of riding 2,000 miles this year, and I will miss that goal by about half. House-shopping and moving took a pretty big bite out of my bicycling time this year, so I’m hoping for 2000 miles in 2008.

Today: 1.5 miles
December: 16.5 miles
2007: 1061.5 miles

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages:
Behold, the much-ballyhooed Bald Eagle State Forest, land of trees, home of elves, and wonderous place to ride your bicycle.

Here is a larger version, for your viewing pleasure.

The light green areas are State Forest Lands (tagged as landuse=forest) the dark green areas are either State Game Lands or Wilderness areas of the State Forest (tagged as natural=wood).

The DCNR data was scraped from the PDF maps published by the Commonwealth using the techniques described on the illustrious OSM Wiki.

Klinutus and I are going to attempt to GPS log all the mountain biking trails, which will make the cyclemaps even more stupendously magnificent than they already are.