The Blaſphemous Bicycler

There is a lot of cycling infrastructure in the DC area, and some of it is starting to appear on the OSM cyclemap!

I was in the general vicinity last week for a business trip, and I saw lots of bicycle commuters in Rockville and Bethesda.

Brandi and I got out for a bit of a hike yesterday afternoon. We did a section of the AT from Whiskey Springs Road to the town of Boiling Springs, PA.

I carried my GPS, so now you may follow along on the map.

Spring and fall are the best times for hiking, because the weather affords one the opportunity to sport stylish hats.

The last mile or so before Boiling Springs is across farmer’s fields, which kind of sucks. There were no trees here to break up the wind, and I nearly lost my sexy hat a few times.

There are about 230 miles of the AT in Pennsylvania, and I have about 180 left to do.

_{My development on a Garmin eTrex Legend — click for big}

It’s pretty easy to do, just follow the instructions.

I added my development to the map just 3 months ago, and now I’ll never get lost on my way to the mailbox.

So, I’m planing out my upcoming backpacking trip. I traced a GPX file off a forestry map, and imported it into Google Earth to get a feel for the terrain.

Google Earth is full of useful information.

_{Google Earth Screenshot — click for big}

Today, I learned that my planned route (the light blue line) passes within a mile or so of a recent Bigfoot sighting. (the orange dot). Evidently, less than a year ago, some people ran into a bigfoot in the same part of the woods that I’m planning to hike in!

It was around 7 1/2 foot tall and weighed around 450 pounds. It was covered in stringy brown hair and had an ape like appearance. The witnesses did see the eyes. They had no whites to them and appeared large and black with no glow to them. At first no odor was present, but within a few seconds they smelled a sour, sweaty aroma. The arms came to within 2 inches of the creatures knees.

— Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society Website

Fortunately, I do not believe in the existence of Bigfoot/Sasquatch type creatures, so I think I will be safe.

There’s a brand-new website from the evil geniuses who brought you the world famous Ride Lugged blog:

The Dirt Road Database is a gmaps-mashup type thing to share the locations of dirt roads that are nice to ride bicycles on.

I like the idea. I’m not thrilled about using gmaps-mashups generally^[1], but OSM isn’t quite in a state where this would work….yet.

Anyhow, if you are looking for dirt roads in your neighborhood, or want to tell the world about your favorite dirt roads, check out the Dirt Road Database.

_{[1] Richard Fairhurst’s talk, Why Mashups Suck (and Cartogrpahy matters) is an excellent discussion about this.}