Written In Stone

A friend and i went on a bike ride, which we started by riding light rail. One of the (many) great things about Seattle's light rail line is that it can extend the range of  bike rides.  I can do 30, 50, 60 mile rides in the south end that were just not reachable before.  I can reach towns and neighborhoods, roads and trails that i could never get to. I even managed to ride to the Carbon River ranger station at Mount Rainier in one day without taking a car.  Because of this system I can experience places that were not available to me before. And i can take people with a shorter cycling range to places that i've enjoyed.  It's great.

Another great thing about the light rail is the large amount of public artwork that graces the stations. On the recent ride in question, i got off the train at the Sea Tac airport station, and was face to face with an beautiful piece of artwork called Flying Sails. 

There are two large pieces, one at each end of the platform. Each is a collection of spinning, mirrored, rectangles making up one of the two eponymous "sails".  The individual panels can turn and twist in the wind, since the station is partially open to the elements.  Most of the shiny rectangles have a word carved into them. One of the sails, at the north end of the platform, contains mirrored panels that have Pacific Northwest Native American tribe names carved on them.
 

The mirror panels in the south sail have the names of various cities around the world carved into them.
I really like it!

Since i liked the artwork and it is about Salish tribes and about geography, i was drawn towards it like a moth to a flame.  I immediately noticed a few cities i have been in.  Regensburg, Rouen and Brno, caught my attention first; briefly the thought of their similar latitude in northern Europe went through my head.  I lined up the reflected photo of my bike at the top of this post for my friends outside of Karlsruhe, another city i have visited which i know the latitude of.

As i stood staring at it, i couldn't help but notice that there was a man hanging from a harness in the middle of the artwork.  He said he was the artist who created it, and he was cleaning it "because it was not intended to be outside".  He looked down at us and said, slyly, "Have you figured it out yet?"

Not willing to bite his hook, i just shrugged and told him i really liked it.

He told me the hidden secret was that they were all cities on the same longitude or latitude as Seattle.  I quickly asked him why Innsbruck was not there, since when i was in downtown Innsbruck in 1999 i noticed a monument with the latitude on it: 47.2°, which is Seattle's south suburbs (the location of the airport) -- you don't really get any closer than that.

But curiously he said, "no, Innsbruck is way too far south".

There were a lot of cities i recognized. I noticed that Budapest was not there. But Karlsruhe was.  I didn't say anything else, but i know that Karlsruhe is not on 47, nor is Brno, Regensburg, Wissembourg, Metz or Rouen.  It was kind of uncomfortable, especially for someone who suffers from perfectionism as badly as i do.  I was embarrassed for him!

Well, we took a bunch of photos of the artwork and pedaled off and had a great bike ride.  But when i got home, i couldn't stop the data geek in me -- i did some research and crunched some numbers.   First i took the latitude and longitude of every city on the sail and entered them into a spreadsheet.

The stated idea of the artwork is that the sail contains the names of cities either on the same latitude line or longitude line as Seattle.  There are not many cities in the world on 127 degrees West longitude.  Sacramento is, but south of there it's all open ocean, and a couple of small towns in northern Canada.  Those are on the sail. But my concern was with the latitude cities -- so i graphed only those cities.

As usual, a graph helps us process the data in a meaningful way; it allows us to visualize patterns we might not notice in just a list of numbers.  When looking at this graph, it becomes immediately clear that a couple of the American cities are on Seattle's 47.4 degrees North latitude (and a couple of the Asian cities get close to it). But then they start to trend northwards and then there are a bunch of European and Asian cities which are all clustered on 49° N!

So next i put Seattle (green circle) and Vancouver BC (blue triangle) on the graph.  I also put a dotted line of Seattle's metro area from north of Everett.to Olympia.   And i found a bunch of European & Asian cities that actually are on the same latitude as Seattle, about 47.4° N, i graphed those with a dark red dash.

The trend is very clear here.  Although the cities on the sail trend far north of Seattle, there are plenty of options of cities that do match Seattle's latitude.  Ulaan Baatar, Orléans, Zaporizhzhya, Gyor, Rosenheim, Novoselovo, Vama, Basel, Volgodonsk, Budapest, Starodubskoye, Zurich, Qiqihar, Innsbruck, Rostov on Don and Nantes to name but a few.  It's not for a lack of cities at 47.4 that they are missing from the artwork.

This graph showed me what really happened. The calculation for determining the cities in the artwork used the latitude of Vancouver BC (49.3° N), instead of Seattle's latitude!  He missed by well over a hundred miles.  The artist made an error which got literally chiseled into stone!

I imagine he just punched in 49 instead of 47 when he was searching for cities.  Easy error.  Terrifying to a perfectionist, but not really that big a deal. 

(It did occur to me that that perhaps the artwork was originally planned to be in Vancouver, but at the last minute it went to Seattle instead so he just changed 2 or 3 panels.  The "not supposed to be outdoors" comment suggests that there was a change in plans, but the tribes would also change And when he spoke to me he was really quite emphatic;  he seemed to believe it was accurate.  And he told me Innsbruck was too far south.  It's not, it's almost as exact as is possible.

The problem isn't that i can't see past the error to see the beauty -- i can, i quite enjoy it; i'm very glad it's there.  I'm capable of holding two ideas at the same time. I thrill at the beauty of the art and marvel at the accomplishment of creating it while being frustratingly aware of the error.  Too aware, i admit. The whole thing made me think a lot about my perfectionism.

One of the big problems with perfectionism is fear.  Fear that prevents accomplishment. This guy jumped in and made something amazing.  Yes, he made an error and that error is permanent.  But he didn't let worry stop him.  He avoided the Brain Crack of perfectionism.  And he created something great.

On the way home i managed to get a good photo of both of us reflected in this wonderful artwork.

Statistics That Shape Our Life

When i worked in radio, there was one overnight job i had where my only responsibility was to sit in a studio for 7 hours.  That's it.  Just be there.  The station was automated, i had to sit there and listen in case something went wrong.  I got a lot of reading done.

At 5:00 in the morning the newspapers were delivered to the station, i'd grab them and browse..  There were 3 of them, the local paper, the New York Times and USA Today.  I would often read USA Today cover to cover.  It took about 5 minutes:  not much substance. 

At that time in USA Today there was a ridiculous feature called Statistics That Shape Our Life.  This is annoying for so many reasons, not least of which, is that we shape statistics, not the other way around. I usually glanced briefly at it and then moved on.

But one morning in about December 1986 there was a Statistics That Shape Our Life that left me slackjawed.  It was so funny i just had to cut it out. I stapled it to the acoustic tiles on the wall of the studio so everyone could see it.  This was a big mistake.  It meant that i had to stare at that stupidity 7 hours a day 3 nights a week.  I wish i could find it; i've searched and searched on the internet to no avail.  So i'll have to re-create it. This farcical Shaping Statistic was a pie chart titled:

What School Kids Think of Jello With "Stuff" In it.  

It  looked like this

The labels said, Tastes OK  29%, Tastes GREAT 23%, Fun to throw 48%.

Excuse me?  That's just weird. 


It took about two weeks of staring at it before i figured out how it was written.  (I'm slow.)  I had found it funny, but for the wrong reason.

Any worthwhile graph or statistic will tell you the sample size.  This one didn't.  That was the give away! I think i can deconstruct it.  The key was that the author was working from home, in an era when that was so rare no one would think of it. Here's what i think happened:  the guy who's job it was to create this little corner of the page was just about at deadline.  He was sitting in the dining room wracking his brain on what silly, pretend, life shaping graphic he should put in the "nations newspaper" the next day.

Meanwhile his kids and their two friends were in the kitchen raising hell like kids do.  He gets tired of yelling through the door at them to quiet down so he storms into the kitchen and tells them to eat their desert and be quiet. Then he has an idea.

He asks the first kid, probably the older of his two, what he thinks of the Jello.  The kid is trying to be cool in front of his friends so he shrugs and says, "Tastes OK".  (That's 1 out of 4, one quarter, tweak it a little for effect, 29%).

The next kid wants to out do his big brother so he shouts, TASTES GREAT!   (That's 1 out of 4, one quarter, tweak it a little for effect, 23%)

Then the next kid, the weird friend who's trying to get attention, makes up something she thinks will make her friends laugh: FUN TO THROW! And the fourth kid can't top that so, laughing, he says the same thing.  Bingo.  49%.

This ridiculous "statistic", run in a supposedly reputable newspaper, had a sample size of....  four, and they weren't independent, their answers were based on previous responses.   It is impossible to fail more completely at statistics, and journalism, than this USA Today graph did.

February Capitol Hill tunnel update

Currently there are three TBM, Tunnel Boring Machines, digging 21 foot diameter holes through the hill i live on.  In only 4 more years (22 years after we voted for it) there should be light rail trains running in these tunnels.  I've been facinated by the tunneling process:  i frequently stare down into the big hole where the station will be and a year ago i calculated the route of the tunnel using GPS and walked the entire length.  That was fun!

Sound Transit's website has generally monthly project updates, however they only show the most recent and the updates don't say WHERE the machines are, only how many feet they have dug so far.  So i've been processing the data they release and posting maps showing the monthly progress: September, October, December, January. The February data was released this week.  Here are the current locations of the three TBM:

Brenda has just started it's second run, and is under the plaza at Seattle Central Community College.

Balto has passed out from under Volunteer park, crossed E Prospect St and is heading for 13th Ave E.

Togo is under the corner of Lowell school, near the corner of 11th Ave E & E Mercer St. Getting close to the end!

Worst Day Of The Year Ride

Bike Works' first community ride of the year was tonight. The name is more of a reference to tomorrow (Valentines Day is no fun for those of us who are single), than the rain.

It didn't rain.

We had a good group and a very fun ride up to Fremont, using the wonderful new connector trail under the Ballard Bridge.

(The yellow lines are bridges! The topo maps don't know that there is a road hanging above the canal or the valley and actually adds in that elevation as if we went down and back up. So i drew in the major bridges we crossed.)

January Capitol Hill tunnel update

Currently there are three TBM, Tunnel Boring Machines, digging 21 foot diameter holes through the hill i live on.

Sound Transit has a page with the most current (generally monthly) project update.  I've been using that data to plot the locations of each machine on the map.

The January data was released this week, so here are the locations.

Brenda is currently being trucked back up to Capitol Hill to start over again on the second tunnel.

 Balto is exactly where Togo was last month, under 17th Ave E & E Galer St.

Togo has made it to the Water Tower loop at volunteer park!

70,001

Tonight on the ride home from Bike Works with Ken, i reached a bit of a milestone.

That's 70,000 miles lifetime. I was kind of proud.

Yes, i started tracking my miles when i was in first grade, it's a little embarrassing.

Seattle's Steepest Streets Slip-up

During our recent snow week, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, which covers the news for my neighborhood, was discussing sledding options and linked to a post from a couple of years ago. That post referenced the steepest streets page on the City of Seattle website.

I went to the City's page and took a look at the list, as this kind of thing interests me. My first impression was that the list looked slightly different from the one i'd seen on the City's page back in the 1990s, and still seemed to omit some streets in south Seattle but nevertheless i accepted it as accurate.

Here's the list (steepest blocks in Seattle from the City's page):

26.04% E Roy St (25th Ave N to 26th Ave N)
23.8% E Boston St (Harvard Ave to Broadway Ave)
23.6% E Highland Dr (24th Ave N to 25th Ave N)
22.6% Mercer St (Melrose Ave to Eastlake Ave)
22.5% E Boston St (Boylston Ave to Harvard Ave)
22.4% Mercer St (24th Ave N to 25th Ave N)
22.3% E Prospect St (24th Ave N to 25th Ave N)
22.0% Helen St (24th Ave N to 25th Ave N)
21.7% Helen St (25th Ave N to 26th Ave N)
21.5% Ward St (25th Ave N to 26th Ave N)

The page also lists the steepest unpaved street as:
28% NW 60th St (2nd Ave NW to 3rd Ave NW)
which is steeper than the steepest above.

However, as i looked closer, i noticed something interesting.
Two of these streets don't exist!

22.6% Mercer St (Melrose Ave to Eastlake Ave)
22.5% E Boston St (Boylston Ave to Harvard Ave)

Both were removed before1961 as part of the the construction of Interstate 5 which plowed a huge trench through the heart of the city, removing hundreds of streets and over 5,000 houses.


So the #4 and #5 steepest streets in Seattle haven't existed in well over 45 years!

As i looked closer i found that the list is four decades out of date in another way! The Avenues on the east slope of Capitol Hill (between 23rd & 27th) which make up 7 of the blocks on this list have the directional  North.  But that's wrong; in reality they have the directional East.  The other three entries, (including the 2 non-existent ones) on the west slope of Capitol Hill, mention Eastlake Ave, Melrose Ave, Broadway Ave & Boylston Ave which also should have the directional East. They have had that designation for over 40 years since the directionals were re-organized in the late 1960s.  The directionals on the list are from BEFORE that re-organization.

This list is not the whole city and it's half a century out of date!

The city's webpage states the survey report is from 1969, but that is seems unlikely.  It appears to me that the data on this page (Steep Streets in Seattle) is taken from a 1950s survey report of Capitol Hill only, not of the whole city. When this web page was created sometime between 1999 and 2012 no one even GLANCED at the data to see if it made sense.

All Roads (2011)

All year i have been tracking each day's ride on the map, using my Topo mapping program. After each ride i either draw my route in, or if i brought the GPS along, i import the route from the unit. I combined the maps each month. This has created some fascinating maps, including my discovery that i had, in the course of my daily riding, covered every street in the seven neighborhood district of Capitol Hill. Now i have combined the monthly maps to create a single map of all routes ridden for the calendar year 2011. Here's the big view (with the loops in Portland OR cut off.).  (As always with images in Blogger, clicking on the image will show you a larger version).

mrk. 2011 all roads ridden.  (c) Mark Canizaro

Next i'll zoom in and show just the city limits of Seattle.  I like the way the connector routes show up and the neighborhoods all merge together into a blot.  I suppose it shows the extent of my movements even better than mobile phone tracking does!

mrk. 2011 Seattle Streets Cycled.  (c) Mark Canizaro

And finally i zoomed in to the central neighborhoods where i spend most of my time, zoomed in so that blocks start to take shape.

I love what this data shows me.  It's been a lot of work drawing every day's route and i think it paid off.  But i'm probably not going to do it for 2012.

December Capitol HIll Tunnel update

Currently there are three TBM, Tunnel Boring Machines, digging 21 foot diameter holes through the hill i live on. Sound Transit has a page with the most current (generally monthly) project update.

The December data was released this week, so here are the locations of each machine that i calculated from that data.

 Brenda has finished the first tunnel to Convention Place is currently being disassembled and trucked back up the hill.

Balto is under the big curve in the pedestrian only section of Interlaken Park.

Togo is at E Galer St between and 17th Ave E.

Capitol Hill Streets Missed in 10 Months

I love visiting places: seeing a new place and learning something.   It's why i love to travel to far away countries and why i love to bicycle in the city.  I get a huge thrill from just being in a place, any place, every place.

I've always loved maps, maps are such an amazing representation of real world data.  I love maps so much.  i have to admit in addition to the honor of being somewhere and the thrill of learning, there is a bit of an urge for checking off boxes too. I'm a collector.

As a kid, i loved coloring in states, counties and countries i visited -- i still do in fact.  And maps to me, are just screaming out YOU COULD BE HERE!   A street map is just a graphical set of places to be, to see, to learn about.  To color in!   Maps are to be drawn on.  When i was in high school i bought a map of my city and a felt tip marker and tried to keep track of every street i had bicycled on.  And later i got another which i colored in with every street i had been on in a car.  I covered quite a lot of the city.  I loved being there.

As i moved to Seattle, I started a streets bicycled on map, on paper with felt marker.  I kept it up for a long time.  I don't know how accurate that was and i eventually stopped coloring it in.  And any motivation towards completeism i ever had, any interest in being on EVERY street, was trumped by my belief in the reality, and beauty, of imperfection.

But i still wonder how many streets in Seattle i have bicycled on, how many i have missed. I'm always excited when i ride on a new street or new block.I know there are neighborhoods that i have probably covered almost completely in the last 20 years. When i first got my Washington Topo(tm) map software as a gift, back in about 2002, my first thought was to start coloring streets.   But i was too busy and didn't have the patience.  

What i did do however, was draw in bike rides.   Frequently at the end of a ride i would draw it on the map afterward.  I saved those over the years.  A couple of years ago my friend Kent gave me an old GPS unit, and since then i often take it on bike rides with me so it will draw my route on the map when i get home.  Sometime last fall i unconsciously got in the habit of drawing, either freehand, or with the GPS, my bike ride EVERY DAY.  Sometimes i would post them on this blog at the end of a ride.

Then in April i started merging them together into a full month of riding map for each month; this is fun because it shows a big mess of rides and that data shows where i go often, rarely, and not at all.  Today i combined all of my rides for October into one file and then merged that into the 2011 year to date file. 
 

It showed me that i've covered a lot of central Seattle. I've covered almost all of downtown.  I haven't ridden as much in Wallingford or Ballard as i have in past years, i've covered the bike trails and main routes around town, and ridden many different routes south to Bike Works.  This map is cropped so it doesn't show the routes i've taken outside of the city (i tried to post that, but the lines just weren't visible they were so small).  But there is something that really jumps out on this map. The large group of neighborhoods that make up Capitol Hill are so thoroughly covered that it's a solid mass.  I had to take a closer look at that.

Wow!  When i blew it up i immediately could see that from I-5 to 19th Ave E and from Madison Street to Interlaken Park i had only missed a few blocks.  So i made a map with only the missed blocks drawn in.

 

So without trying, with out even a thought, i've cycled almost every block in this 2 square mile neighborhood in just the first 10 months of the year. And that's only counting the rides that i drew in.  There are a few, such as the cemetery, that i know i did, but didn't get drawn in.

Since i'm only left with a couple dozen out of the 1,000 or so blocks in the area, i'm left with a quandary: should i just go about my daily business, not thinking about this and see how many of the red blocks i cover normally in the next two months, or should i set out exploring, see places i haven't seen in awhile, or have never seen, bicycle even more in my city. There is certainly a voice inside of me suggesting it is somehow more PURE if i don't go out of my way, but of course i can't resist the opportunity to explore. 

Check back at the end of November and again at the end of the year for an update.

UPDATE (end of November):
I covered many of the missed streets this month.

Purple streets are blocks i rode this month, but had not for the first 10 months of 2011.  Red blocks are still missing.  Yellow blocks are not drawn in but i'm pretty sure i have ridden them.  I'll do them again.  And the X's are blocks that the map says exist that don't really exist.

A lot of these that i 'filled in' this month, i covered in my daily travels, but quite a few i went out of my way to experience. In at least one case i took some friends along on a ride home from BikeWorks covering a section of 13th Ave E.

 I had fun plotting routes and exploring.  And it was good motivation to get out and ride.  I'm pretty sure that i had been on all of these streets in previous years, all but one or two blocks looked familiar.  A few more in December and i can call it a complete coverage year!


UPDATE (December 11):
This afternoon on my way home from running errands near the University i covered the few blocks connecting to 19th Ave that i had missed and then when i looped down the dead end on Pike St off of 18th i completed my fun task of picking up the few missing streets on Capitol Hill, so i covered every block of every street in every neighborhood on Capitol Hill in 2011. 

October Streets ridden

In September i rode 342 miles, 97 miles less than last year.   I volunteer for a bike ride in the San Juan Islands every year and this year i was in a car instead of on the bike, that more than made up for the difference.  Here's where i rode in September.  (Blue is bus rides and train rides)

Here's a blow up of the central city.  (The green is riding the Octobike with 7 other people in the Arts parade.)

I rode 403 miles in October.  Fifty miles more than last year.  Here's the big map.

and the city map.

I do love Autumn!

October Light Rail Tunnel Map update

Currently there are three TBM, Tunnel Boring Machines, digging 21 foot diameter holes through the hill i live on. Sound Transit has a page with the most current (generally monthly) project update.

Last month i posted maps that show the location of each machine.  The October data was released this week, so here are the locations.

Brenda is digging the first of 2 tunnels from Broadway and Denny to Pike & 9th while Balto & Togo are digging from the University Station to Broadway and John.

Brenda is currently under Union St at Bellevue Ave, a block past the Northwest School.

Balto is at E Louisa St between 20th Ave E & 22nd Ave E

Togo is at E Lynn St between 19th Ave E & 20th Ave E

Mapping the progress under Capitol Hill

Currently there are three TBM, Tunnel Boring Machines, digging 21 foot diameter holes through the hill i live on. Sound Transit has a page with the most current (generally monthly) project update. However, it shows the distance in feet that each machine has dug, there is no map, no clue exactly where the machines are. I've asked Sound Transit to provide that kind of page, but they have not. And, in fact, they seem to be a little worried about people knowing where the machines are. They insisted for the first 2 months that they had not started digging under the Montlake Cut, until one day they suddenly announced that they had completed the tunnels under the canal. The tunnel is less than one tunnel diameter below the bottom of the water!

Since i plotted the route of the tunnel on a USGS map when they first released the route, i figured today that i could plot the progress report too. So here are three maps that show the locations, according to the Sept 27 progress report, of each Boring Machine.

Brenda is digging from Broadway and Denny to Pike & 9th. (There will be a second run for Brenda to dig the second tunnel.)

Balto & Togo are digging from the University Station to Broadway and John.
Balto

Togo

In addition, that progress report page is dynamic. It only shows the most current update and i could not find any way to read previous updates. (So if you're reading this in the future, that link will not show you the data i was working from). I will try to post maps every time they release a new progress report, no promises though.

Pennant Race

Baseball and data have been absorbing passions of mine since i was very young. One of the first things i did when i first got my hands on a computer in the late 1970s was to develop a way of tracking the Major League standings and developing new statistics from the data i got from the newspaper.

While i still love baseball, i've lost a lot of interest in the Major Leagues with the outrageously greedy owners and downright evil usurper of a commissioner. But i still love data and for the last several years i've been tracking the standings in an interesting, beautiful way.

I update daily win-loss data once a week; i have figured some tricks, but it still takes quite a while. I'm sure there is a way to have the computer automatically search out the scores every day and insert it into my database, but i haven't figured that out yet.

The graphs are by division, there are 6 divisions, 6 pennant races in baseball these days (they call it the crown, the pennant is for the league). The reason for such a large number of divisions is to create those painfully long and boring playoffs that take up most of the fall.

I plot the daily standing (winning percentage) of each team in the division. It's a great way to see how the season unfolds. You can SEE pennant races. Teams will tangle for a period, the lines will tie in a knot, then one will move away. You can see slumps and streaks. You can even see double headers if you look closely enough. You can instantly see if i division is a tight race or a blowout. It's also interesting to me how the games seem to have different value as the season progresses. The emotional reaction is that games late in the season mean more, but looking at the graphs, you can see how one game causes a much bigger jump in the standings early in the season than it does late in the season. This is standard mathematics, of course they all count the exact equal amount, but it LOOKS different, and it looks different from what we normally assume.

The dotted line is the league wild card -- the highest placed 2nd place team. It's strange to blog about dynamic data. It's going to be frozen in time here. I had been intending to post this at the end of the season, but with a week still to go i find it fascinating to see that gap to the finish line. I've got graphs now for four years, but i'll just post this year's i think. Every year is different, but they are all beautiful.

American League East

The Yankees and Red Sox tangle it up all season and then the Red Sox slump big at the end. Otherwise no real position changes in the second half of the season, but FOUR teams above .500! The rest of the divisions have only 2 (or 1).

American League Central

The Tigers and Indians tangled mid-season for first, then the Indians dropped down into a battle for second with the White Sox. Twins have a long slow but deep slump after the All Star break. Tigers are the only team above .500.

American League West

Mariners collapse in July but fairly stable otherwise. Two races, far apart. Two teams above .500 two below.

National League East

Phillies start to finish. Braves have a good season, no one close, but can't touch the Phillies.

National League Central

This wonderful tight knot in July with the Pirates, Cardinals and Brewers ended with a huge split.

National League West

Two decades

Today is the 20th anniversary of when i arrived in Washington.

On Sept 12 1991 drove north from Berkeley California, where i had been visiting my girlfriend. I spent that night in Salem Oregon and in the morning headed up I-5.  At 11:30 AM i crossed the river in to Washington for the first time. When i got to Olympia, my new home for the next 10 months, i was in awe at the rainforest and the mountains and water and i continue to be today. I moved to Issaquah in the Seattle suburbs in June 1992 and into Seattle for good in October 1992.

In the 20 years that Washington has been my home, i've spent a total of 17.4 years in the state; traveling has accounted for an accumulated total of two and a half years. The two decades were divided in the middle by the year long trip to Europe.

Since last year (the tipping point) i've spent more time in Washington than anywhere else, over a third of my life. It sure went quickly.

Seattle is a fascinating city, a very young city. My two decades here are about 1/6 the history of the city. It's impossible to avoid the feeling that it is a city in it's late adolescence. There was an enormous change in 1999 & 2000, the city grew up. I've really lived in two very different cities, Seattle in the 1990s and Seattle in the 2000s. I know things are changing everywhere, but i think it's remarkable how much Seattle has changed in the last two decades.

And it's not just the attitude, the feeling, the personality, (if a city can have a personality!) that has changed. I was chatting with the woman next me on the bus the other day, we agreed that there are few cities in the world where the urban landscape changes as rapidly and dramatically. I've only lived here 20 years but on any bus ride, any walk or bike ride i can point to an amazing amount of places where buildings have changed, sometimes more than once!

August ride map

I rode 407.5 miles in August down from the 450 in July but up 2.9 from last year.
I rode on 22 days.

July ride map

In July i rode 450 miles, only 9 miles off of a record for July.

I rode 19 days, 61%, down considerably from previous months,
partially because i was out of town several times for work, or
HAM radio volunteering but also because i lost a little interest
early in the month.

June riding

In June i rode 498 miles, riding 22 days (73%).

roads ridden in May

In April i posted a map of all of my rides for the whole month.
Here's May. In May i rode 503 miles. I rode 26 of the 31 days (81%).