Aaron's online journal: July 2005

Critical Mass, July 2005

I joined in Critical Mass Chicago today. About 25 miles around Chicago with a couple thousand people on bikes is really fun. I recommend it to anyone with a bike. If you are on a bike, it's a friendly environment where everyone generally yells "Happy Friday"

Little Mass

Critical Mass!

Super Ride 01

I Made the Super Ride. And it turned out to be longer than I thought it would be. I won't include the mileage here, you'll find out at the end of the story.

Here is the final map of the paths I took. Everything north of where is says "Loncolnwood" is the North Branch Trail. Everything on the lake is the Lakeshore Trail. Everything else is city streets.

My original plan was to just ride up and find the start of the trail. So a big part of my trip was just going up the streets. I found a great way up, nearly a straight shot is a street called Elston, which also happens to be almost all bike-friendly with dedicated (small) bike lanes. This was great and made the trip easy. For parts of this ride, I was beating the cars too. They get backed up at stop lights and when it turns green I'm at the head of the pack, even though some of them pass me, by the next light, they're stopped up again and I pull up to the front of a new pack.

I took it easy for the entire trip, knowing that if I were going to survive such a trip, I couldn't really push myself in any one part. Even so I was going about 20mph the whole way up. Maybe the cars made a nice draft for me or maybe I've gotten stronger.

This is the map at the base of the North Branch Trail. As I was checking out the map, a guy rode up and asked if I had ever ridden this before. I guess it was his first time on the trail too. We talked for a bit, his name was Dylan and he was going up to meet a friend and camp out or something. I guess he also fixes up bikes and sends them overseas for people without bikes. Seemed like a cool dude; I said I hoped to see him at the top, and I took off.

Soon after I got onto the trail, I noticed just how much it isn't like the other park or trail I've ridden in Chicago. It's semi-dense forest which occasionally breaks out to find a crosswalk over a major road. The whole trail had me ride by two golf courses.

This is a little more than half-way up the North Branch Trail. The sign quality is lacking. So far I've only seen about 20 people, which is very quite compared to the Lakeshore path. I've passed a lot of green spaces where there were people having BBQs or what-not. Looked like a couple big parties, and several smaller groups enjoying the parks.

I didn't really read the signs or maps, but I learned that I want to follow the red arrows. This pole is right next to the sign in the above photo.

The red arrows (or rather my lack of sign-reading) has led me astray. After riding on some crappy dirt road for 10 minutes it started to rain, I found my way to this place where I called Nathan to give a status report. He tried to help me find my way to the Botanic Gardens, I knew I was pretty close.

Looking at my situation later. I was in fact this close. You can see "Me" and "Botanic Gardens" in the map and a shear .4 miles between them. It the time I spent on the crappy dirt road, I could have found the Gardens and taken cover under their overhang instead of getting soaked. At the time though it was sort of fun to get stuck in the rain. It was an epic adventure after all.

I did find the Gardens after a while. But totally forgot to grab a picture of the front entrance. This I took on my way out. After I got there I pretty much turned around immediately, but before I left, Dylan and his friend came riding in! What timing. It was funny to see him again and this is actually where I first learned his name. Perhaps I'll see him again on the path someday. (I didn't get a picture of Dylan, I thought it would be weird to ask a stranger for such a thing.)

I got on the right path this time, and started making my way south. It doesn't look it here, but the rain has completely stopped. This is all mist that's rising off the path. It looked really nice.

When I stopped later up the road to take a picture, I noticed Nathan had called. I sent him a pic to confirm my status/mileage.

I still felt pretty good up to 60-65 miles. It was the last few miles after that where things started really hurting. My neck and legs really started to get sore. I was afraid to stop for too long lest my legs seize up or something. I also had to stay on the seat or else blood would wake up my butt and then that would start hurting too.

It was bitter-sweet to finally get home. I made my way into the shower pretty quick to get all the dirt and bugs. I tried to have some food but thought might throw up, so I settled for some water and went to bed. Good ride.

This is the next day. I'm surprised I can walk, in fact I'm not much worse for wear. I went about cleaning my bike and re-lubricating the working parts and generally finishing my ride chores. Here is proof of the final mileage. 74.35 miles! It was an awesome ride, and something I look forward to doing again.

The horses that did the work. Can I call legs "guns"?

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For more photos, check out the photobucket page.
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Super Ride

I mapped out this ride, it follows two bike paths and ~30 miles one-way. I'd love to go for this one day. It starts at my place and ends at the Botanic Gardens in north Chicago. If I actually made the ride, there's no way I could actually enjoy the gardens and then make it back. 60 miles is a huge undertaking for me and the stop at the Gardens would have to be a refueling stop.

Super Ride

Revenge of the Sith: The Abridged Script

              SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
           Ian, you're under arrest for being
           a manipulative motherfucker.

                      IAN MCDIARMID
           I got a threshold, Jedi. I got a
           threshold for the abuse I'll take.
           And right now I'm a race car and you
           got me in the red. I'm just saying
           that it's fuckin' dangerous to have
           a racecar in the fuckin' red. It
           could blow.

Revenge of the Sith: The Abridged Script

Top 10 Web Fads

A few golden oldies here. I got a big kick out of seeing Ellen Feiss again.

read more | digg story

What's the Deal With "Cat Ladies"?

What's the Deal With "Cat Ladies"?: "A Virginia judge declared on Monday that 82-year-old Ruth Knueven is unfit to own pets, after animal-control officers seized her 488 cats."

Garry's Half-Life 2 Mod

This is the best sandbox mod for HL2 I've seen. It's very easy to use and lets you build just about anything.

Garry's Half-Life 2 Mod

Lychee Drink

"Refreshing? Pretends, then strikes"

:-)

Lychee Drink

Gmail Compose link

I hacked up a bookmark to launch a gmail compose in a new window. Try it out.

Save the following link as a bookmark: Compose

Update:
I've improved the bookmark. Now if you have text selected, it'll add that text to the body of the new message.

Bookmark this new link for the extra functionality. Compose

Improv Everywhere

"Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has excecuted over 40 missions involving over 100 undercover agents. The group is based in New York City."

Photos: Taste + Nextfest

A couple weekends ago I went to the Taste of Chicago and the negatives the next day. I had my new camera phone with me and took many poor small pictures.

I didn't get to many pictures from the Taste, as it's sort of silly to take shots of people walking around eating food... So there are shots my friend Sonya and the park.

10 pics...

I took a lot more pictures at Nextfest where I hung out with Matt & Nerissa. There was a lot to see there. I'd say there were probably equal parts cool stuff and flim-flam. After Nextfest we went out to lunch and walked around Millennium Park, which is a lot nicer when there are people inhabiting the place.

92 pics...

セガトイズ「ニャーミー」 (robot cat)

This is a creepy robot cat, Sera is much better.

Near Me

THE.SCENE

Very good show, it's got everything a good drama needs. Lots of characters, intruiging story with lots of twists. I think it also captures a part of net communication in a way I've never seen before. Lots of movies have some bullshit stuff involving the internet, it looks like they don't do anything that's really not possible. For starters there is hardly any dialog, most of the show you're just watching a computer screen and the various conversations going on between the people involved. All in all, it's very smart.

THE.SCENE

CNN.com - Astrologist sues NASA over crash - Jul 4, 2005: "MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- A Russian astrologist who says NASA has altered her horoscope by crashing a spacecraft into a comet is suing the U.S. space agency for damages of $300 million, local media has reported."

Star Destroyer Built Before Your Eyes

Slashdot: "'These people spent 10 hours constructing their very own Imperial II-class Star Destroyer from LEGO and capturing over 7000 frames of the process with their webcam."