Google Bike Maps - Pittsburgh to Boston Trailhead

Google has announced that their Google Maps application now attempts to provide bike routes. The routing algorithm prefers to use bike paths, lanes, and sharrows, and attempts to avoid hills and highways.

This is great. I asked it for a route from Pittsburgh PA to Washington DC and it routed me via the Great Allegheny Passage and the C&O Canal.


Among bicyclists familiar with riding from Pittsburgh to DC, perhaps no other topic is as continually energetic as, "What is the best way to get from The Point to the trail in McKeesport-Boston?"

• There is the Ft Pitt bridge, Station Square to Baldwin Trail, ~andcastle, and then 837 past Kennywood to the West Mifflin trailhead group.
  • There's a Jail Trail, Hot Metal Bridge, Baldwin Trail variation.
• There is the Second Avenue, Glenwood Bridge, 885 to 837, Kennywood, West Mifflin contingent.
• Finally, there's the schism group that believes it's irresponsible to advise any transient cyclist to ride north of Boston. (that's my denomination)

This discussion generates more passion than Helmet Wars and even the Recumbent Question. I thought it would be interesting to see which path Google picked from the Point to the trail in McKeesport or Boston. It choose this:


This is intriguing - Google choose the Second Avenue route out of downtown, followed by an unexpected direct (and hilly) route from the Glenwood Bridge to Boston PA. It works, and it's lower traffic than 837, but it'd be a lot of work on a bike loaded with panniers.

My review of Google Bike Maps: It's not as good as knowledge of the local area, but if you're unfamiliar and trying to plot a route it'll be a worthwhile tool. It would be wonderful if you could export the Google route into a Garmin GPS for on-bike navigation, but I realize that they're selling 'Droid phones so the GPS export probably isn't likely.

Update (courtesy of Mike from the GAP Yahoo Group): there's a third-party Google-Maps to GPX exporter at: http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx/.

Take Your Child To Work Day: April 22nd

In this week's news we've seen a lot of discussion about taking your kid to work and showing them what you do, and even giving them a little bit of experience at it.

As this 1968 documentary from the REMCO Corporation shows, kids have been training to work at Kennedy Airport for at least 42 years:


Needless to say, the tone of this year's Bring Your Kid to Work Day (BYK2WD) is probably going to be slightly different. Mark your calendars, Thursday April 22nd.

Bike Crop Circles

From John Brooking in Portland Maine:

Austin Plane Into IRS Building A Fake?

I'd like to make a prediction based on today's tragic news story about Joseph Andrew Stack, a software engineer who updated his blog, torched his house, then took off in his Piper Cherokee PA-28 single-engine airplane (aircraft registration N2889D) and flew the plane directly into an IRS office building to express his rage at the machine.

Prediction: he was not in the airplane. It's a fake, a ruse to allow him to run away and try to establish a new identity. (Life imitates art: see the movie Hopscotch.) Stack is a software engineer, and even puddlejumpers are driven by GPS and autopilots these days.

I expect that savvy Federal Agents will lure him out of hiding by sending a voucher for a free Google Android phone to his residence; all he has to do is go to the Austin Texas Radio Shack to claim it, wink wink. No software engineer could resist that.

If I'm right, and in ten days they find this technomage living under an assumed name in a flop hotel (with WiFi) living in the cash economy, I want my Fake News Predictor value increased to +20.
If I'm wrong, and in ten days they announce DNA identification of the charred remains, I reserve the option to allude to a obfuscating conspiracy involving President Obama's Kenyan wetnurse, who was once in a relationship with Vince Foster. This Birther/Truther crossover niche demands an inquiry, and the American people deserve no less.

No Days Like Snow Days

Snow Days rock on so many different levels. For a kid a snow day is like hitting the lottery. It might be a real pain for working parents who need to arrange childcare, but for a youngster it's magic.

Snow Days rock for kids because a friendly force of nature overrides all adult and institutional authority, and generally nobody has to die over it. There's a hint of adult surrender in a snow day announcement that no kid will miss.

I remember listening on my Mom's transistor radio to a long roster of closings; if you missed your school's name you had to wait 15 minutes. Online snow day reporting is one of the true improvements that the web delivers. The night before an anticipated snow day, gradeschool kids are pressing the Refresh button on KDKA.com like it was a one-armed bandit. It would be interesting to see what the hit count is.

I think that if weather.com wanted to improve their eyeballs among the crucial 7-to-16-year-old consumer demographic, they could report on the statistical likelihood of school closings the next day, maybe something like this:

Snow Days rock for me because it's a day when something takes precedence over Business or the Schedule, and we very rarely let anything take precedence over Business or the Schedule. And yet, somehow, we catch up and move on.

Snow Days rock for working folks if (and only if) you've got a job that lets you take the day without losing salary. Otherwise, you just missed 20% of your hours this week, and the Mastercard company doesn't reduce your bill because it snowed.

Snow Days rock for recent immigrants from the South, who really don't get this Yankee stuff and are pleased to be excused from our strange rituals, where people look forward to driving in the snow while talking on their cellphones and demonstrating the implications of physics.

I am grateful for the potentates who make their snow day decisions early in the day, rather than the stingy souls who wait until 0500 to make their call, hoping for safety in numbers. I am particularly impressed at the several rural districts who threw in the towel for the whole week on Wednesday, announcing that they're closed until Monday. I think they're probably generous and light-hearted people. Good karma.

I'm a Sucker for a Great Photoshop

I tell myself that I am a citizen rather than a consumer, but I must admit that sometimes a product, a thing somebody sells, really captures my attention because of the presentation. Check out this Photoshopped image from FastCompany:








The base of the cyclist photo started out as Lance Armstrong's classic gesture counting his 7 Tour De France victories. You'll note the yellow band, and the Discovery team logo on the side of his shorts.

The jersey design comes from a 1929 cover by by Theodore G. Haupt, depicting a bicycle race with a heavy Art Deco gloss. The jersey is made by Retro Image Apparel, and goes on sale in June. See examples here.

The face belongs to Malcolm Gladwell, my favorite writer at the New Yorker.

This jersey catches my eye because it's close to the center of my own Venn diagram - Gladwell (whom I enjoy), The New Yorker (which I read - and am), and cycling. I'd like to think I'm immune to marketing, even ersatz Photoshopps, but I'm not.