8 posts tagged “bicycle”
So yes, it's true; last night, for the first time ever, I had a mishap on my bicycle in Chicago, pretty much my worst nightmare because I'm 38 and have no health insurance. It's a boring story -- I hit a pothole, at night when I didn't see it, which brought the bike to an immediate stop but not me, and ended up launching me over the handlebars and onto the pavement with an unceremonious thud. Thank God, thank GOD, I was only going two miles per hour when I flipped; can you even imagine what kind of shape I'd currently be in if I hit that pothole at 10 or 20 mph? Now, that said...
--I currently have a bruised rib.
--I currently have a bruised thigh muscle.
--I currently have two sprained wrists, one bad enough that it needs a wrap.
--I currently have six or seven abrasion wounds covering the entire right side of my body (which is what I landed on during my accident, and skidded a little bit), from my knee to my shoulder.
And this, needless to say, is...ouch, fucking ouch, fucking ooh man am I in a lot of whiny 38-year-old no-health-insurance kind of pain. And it was right in the middle of having these thoughts that my friend Kate texted me; and we ended up getting together and smoking up, and trading humorous stories like always, and watching the latest episode of The IT Crowd, as well as a bunch of trailers and opening credits for a bunch of Joe Swanberg video projects, because I'm doing a feature on him right now at my arts center, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, and I figured he's the kind of moviemaker that Kate would be into. And sure enough, she is.
Okay, enough for me tonight; time to lay down and nurse my wounds. Man, oh fucking MAN, am I in a lot of whiny achy pain these days, and of course with no doctor around to give me a prescription for the good shit (i.e. Vicodin). That's probably the worst thing about this all; not the pain itself, which is manageable, but the knowledge that I'll be literally dealing with this pain for the next two months straight, with barely any days off that entire time. When I injured my knee this summer, after all, that took an entire month to get over; and that was a much less intense injury than the bike crash I had last night.
Sigh. Sigh, sigh, sigh. Well, you accept the good with the bad, right? That's what it's all about; understanding where you are in life, of what freedoms in your particular life are important to you, and what kinds of things you're willing to give up for that, like regular health insurance. The pain of an entire half of a body full of bruises is an ordeal; I just keep trying to keep in mind how glad I am that it wasn't worse, that I didn't end up in the hospital against my will, by (God forbid) breaking one of these fragile bones in my body. Always try to look at the bright side of things, that's what I always say. Or, actually, I never fucking say that; I always urge people to embrace the most pessimistic option possible. Oy vey, my wrists! I gotta go fuckin' lay down now and give 'em a rest!
So instead I'm making another inner-city day trip, something that relies on taking the train in one direction, so that the total distance is something a lot more manageable. And today, in fact, I'll be visiting the historic neighborhoods of the near southside -- I'll be taking the train to 35th Street, to be specific, hopping off across the street from where the White Sox play, then meandering my way northward until finally hitting Harrison Street in the South Loop. And believe it or not, this ten-mile (16 km) route will take me through six different areas of historic interest in a single afternoon...
--The campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), much of it famously designed by Mies van der Rohe and other Modernist masters in the 1950s;
--Then historic Bronzeville, the very first neighborhood in Chicago for middle-class blacks, much of it razed over in the 1970s to make room for a cutting-edge urban revitalization project;
--Then Chinatown, not as famous as New York or San Francisco's version, but still a very interesting destination;
--Then over to the Prairie Avenue district, which was the first neighborhood in Chicago for upper-class whites, and which still contains several historic grand mansions from the period (which because of the Great Fire of the 1870s, which missed this neighborhood, also happen to be the oldest set of buildings in Chicago as well);
--Then northeast into the tourist-mecca Museum Campus, a unified and very contemporary green space (built just a few years ago, in fact) linking together three of the city's most popular museums (the Field, Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium) along with Soldier Field, McCormick Place and others;
--And then finally, due west into the historic Printers Row neighborhood, which is where almost every book and newspaper publishing company used to be headquartered in the 1800s and early 1900s (back when a whole lot more book and newspaper companies used to be headquartered in Chicago in the first place), which was then transformed into a residential area after World War II, and is now a popular haven for the creative class.
Zow! It's pretty amazing, all the cool things packed into this small area of the city, once you get to thinking about it; I'm anticipating a very fun trip, accentuated by the fact that it's a public holiday and therefore a ton of other people will be out as well (especially in the more touristy sections of this route). And this should provide for a really great, information-rich map when I'm done as well, which of course is why I picked this route in the first place. Anyway, I'll be taking off in just another half-hour or so, so wish me luck, and make sure to stop by this site throughout the day for small real-time updates during the trip itself.
Anyway, like I said, wish me luck, and pray to the bicycle gods that this adventure be yet one more where I don't get hit by a car. First update coming in just a little bit!
Are you wondering, by the way, why none of my recent bike videos have shown up on my maps yet, or why no new maps have been posted since early July? Well, that's because I'm too busy actually bicycling these days, while the weather is still warm, plus running my arts organization, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which wasn't open yet earlier this summer when I got the first three maps finished and posted. But in just another two months or so, it's suddenly going to be too cold and nasty again to go bicycling on a regular basis, and will stay that way for another six months or so; I figure better to just go ahead and run around and collect up all the raw data for these maps now, while the weather is still good, then spend the winter slowly getting the rest of the maps done at home while hiding from the cold and snow. That way I'll have a good seven or eight maps ready by next spring, when it'll be time to start bicycling again every day, and with all those map placemarks fully integrated by then into Google Local Search.
Did you know that, by the way? That whenever you create a customized Google map, whenever you add a placemark for a specific situation that contains either text or a photo or audio or video, it gets added to the overall Google Maps database? That way, whenever someone does a search on, say, "Wrigley Field," they'll not only get the official Google search result, but the option to view user-created content as well; and any person on the planet who chooses that option, then, will see your placemark right next to the official Google one. Pretty cool, I have to admit, and pretty smart of Google to add all this precious original content to their overall database.
The obvious goal, then, is that people will also combine Google's SketchUp to this all, a free and easy-to-use CAD/CAM program that allows people to create 3D buildings, then automatically load THEM into Google Earth and the Google database as well. If a chamber of commerce could get their stuff together, for example, they could get all the businesses in their organization to fill out a detailed placemark about themselves, plus get someone to make a fully textured 3D version of the business (or maybe the chamber of commerce hiring some computer geek to do all the buildings at once, hint hint, hint hint). The chamber of commerce, then, could create a customized Google map with all these businesses within it, which could be used in all the following ways...
--Adding to the Google online database, for people to stumble across randomly or while searching on a specific topic;
--As a downloadable Google Earth file, at the chamber of commerce's website;
--As a cool standalone demo for visitors at the chamber of commerce offices, or even city hall;
--As a source of press for those businesses; it's not that often, after all (or yet, anyway), that chambers of commerce band together and create a media-rich 3D customized map of all their businesses at Google.
This is what I'm trying to do with my bike maps, after all; not only add a little to the overall Google database, to increase the overall value of the info there, but also to drive traffic to my website "long tail" style, ergo the arts center as well, not to mention do a little boosterism for the city of Chicago, not to mention explain a little about my theories concerning city planning and urban renewal. Oh, plus give smart tourists an idea of other things they can do while visiting here besides going down to Navy Fucking Pier, plus give locals ideas for cool day trips they can make right within the city itself, on a boring Sunday where not much of all is going on, without having to worry about hotels or train rides back and the like. See how many different benefits you get from investing once in a technology like this?
(UPDATE: Well, I can't get VOX's "embed a YouTube video" option to work, and their CMS software forbids the usual embedded objects, so I ended up having to upload the entire video again to my VOX account. Anyway, you should be able now to click on the above to view the video, or just click here to see it over at YouTube.)
Ooh, I'm being really productive today; got a new video edited and uploaded on top of everything else, for use in the series of customized bicycle maps I'm making this summer, which can be opened in both the 2D Google Maps and 3D Google Earth. This video is four minutes long and showcases the northern terminus of Chicago's 18-mile (30 km) lakefront bicycle path, the one I rode to 71st Street last week for Memorial Day. I'll be creating the map for that trip next week, as I slowly make my way through the 250 photos (!) I shot; this video was created specifically for that map, as well as the map for Lincoln Park North.
Oh, and more good news: just a half-hour ago, finally got my new URL cclapcenter.com pointing to the new website for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP), the local arts organization I'm re-opening this week. So that's good; that'll let me get all the templates up tonight and tomorrow, and have a working new CCLaP website by Monday afternoon. Skoal! Thanks a million, Jimi!
I don't think I've mentioned this yet, so just wanted to let everyone know that I recently finished my third customized bike map of the summer, for use in both the 2D Google Maps and 3D Google Earth; this one covers over 40 small neighborhood parks on the north side of Chicago, using a route that covers roughly 25 miles (40 km) of city streets. As regular readers remember, this map took quite a bit longer to put together than the others I've made, since it contains just so much more information; over 150 photo placemarks, in fact, along with all that online research I had to do about each park's history. Anyway, you can click here to check it out online, and then once there you can click on the "KML" link in the upper-right corner for the Google Earth file; those who are interested can see all of my bike maps by clicking here.
Don't forget, I actually have the photos taken as well for my fourth and fifth maps, which I'll hopefully be getting to this week; the fourth will cover the trip from Uptown to the Loop, using only inner-city paved bike paths (i.e. ones that run along the edges of vehicular streets), and the fifth of course will cover the entire 18-mile lakefront bike path, the trip I made just a few days ago and from which I'm still recovering. (Seriously, I really overdid it on Monday. Remind me of this the next time I try to ride 25 miles in a single day.) Anyway, like I said, you can look forward to those maps as well hopefully soon.
Regular readers know that last week, I successfully finished my first-ever customized bike map, for use in both Google Maps (2D) and Google Earth (3D), that one covering the southern two-thirds of Chicago's Lincoln Park. Well, this weekend I finished up my second map as well, which I'm happy to now present to the public; it covers the northern third of Lincoln Park that the first map doesn't, meaning that both maps together now comprehensively cover the entire 14-mile round trip. For those who don't know, the northern third of Lincoln Park constitutes the third official expansion of the park over the years, originally created between the 1930s and '50s; it's not nearly as historical as the southern half, of course, nor as grandiose, and exists more for daily benefit by various neighborhood locals than for out-of-town tourism. Nonetheless, this section of the park does contain some items of general interest as well, including the Jose Rizal Memorial, Montrose Harbor, Margate Fieldhouse and more, not to mention the northern terminus of both the lakefront bike path and the vehicular Lake Shore Drive.
As always, the map is interesting enough when viewing in its 2D online form, through the static Google Maps; where things really start getting mind-bending, though, is when you import the KML file into the 3D Google Earth and take a look that way. Seriously, I just cannot get over yet what a freaky mindjob it is to see one's customized maps in full, stunning 3D glory, with the ability to spin that map and twist it whichever way you want, or perhaps zoom to ground level and traverse the path as if you were actually biking it. Combined with just how easy it is to actually make these maps, it is a flabbergasting new development from Google indeed.
Even better, though (and again, just like last time), it is super-easy to embed media such as photos, videos, text and hyperlinks into one's placemarks, and this info shows up just as easily in Google Earth as it does when you click on one online in Google Maps. It's the final kick to this new service that officially makes it brilliant; it's what turns this customized mapping ability from a fun toy into something much more powerful, almost like a working version of virtual reality. (Don't forget, by the way, all of today's screenshots can be clicked on, to see much larger versions.)
By the way, I figured something out in Google Earth yesterday that hadn't occurred to me before: that if you import both Lincoln Park files I've now made, you can simply turn them both on within Earth at once, allowing you to do the full tour of the park without interruption. I highly recommend checking out the files for the first time in this way! I'm all excited, to tell you the truth, about the opportunity to present a little of Chicago to worldwide strangers in this fashion; I think it's an amazing way to check out a slice of a city a tourist might not normally see, and especially someone who's never gotten a chance to visit Chicago in the first place. As word of these customization tools start spreading, and more and more people start making them for the cities in which they live, I can't wait to see what ends up appearing in the big Google database.
And of course, don't forget to turn on the '3D Buildings' layer as well in Google Earth, when viewing my maps; Chicago is one of something like 30 cities now for which Google owns sophisticated 3D information concerning thousands of its buildings (and not just the Loop, either, but going all the way up to Belmont). It adds to the surrealism even more, and especially when you own a powerful computer and can navigate such a virtual environment in real time.
In essence, it turns the entire thing into not just a scrapbook-style sharing experience, but also a powerful education/entertainment one, like the proverbial "encyclopedia come to life!" that giddy sci-fi documentaries have been promising us for decades, but that no one has yet delivered on. Check out this three-image series above, for example, from one section of my southern map; how you can click on a placemark to get sophisticated multimedia info on a specific spot, or click on the line itself to get the same kind of info concerning that entire section of the park. And this is just a silly little bike map of a small tourist area of Chicago; imagine now applying these new tools to the location of a historic battle, or Egyptian tombs, or a thousand other things I'm sure people will be cooking up over the upcoming months.
Or if entrepreneurialism is your thing, why not think of the possibilities along those lines that this suddenly presents? Take this shot, for example, of the commercial North Pond Cafe, which happens to lie inside the government property of Lincoln Park, and which already exists as a 3D building within Google Earth, just a gray, featureless one? Now imagine if the owners of the cafe hired someone (like me, for example) to go into Sketchup and create a photorealistic version of the building, as well as a placemark containing photos, video, cafe information and a link to their website. Even better, hire the person to create an information-rich map of the entire North Pond area, including the Nature Museum and more; then suddenly your KML file becomes what the marketers call a "value-added advertising experience," something that actually adds to the quality of your customers' lives, not just screams messages at them. Such a thing is currently available in Google Earth to any company on the planet, right this moment; it's also available to arts organizations, neighborhood associations, historical societies, even individuals with too much time on their hands, as I have already so woefully proven.
So what's my third map going to cover? Well, the West Side Park system, to be specific, as well as the historic boulevards hooking them together; I'm going out in just another day or two, in fact, to take the photos and videos. I was going to write out a little background behind what I'll be viewing, but now I'm too tired; just go read the Wikipedia entry on Douglas Park if you're interested. Anyway, if I stop where that red placemarker is above, which is technically the end of the actual parks, that'd be a total of 14 miles, when you factor in the distance from my apartment to the start of the system; there's an el stop there where the placemarker is too, making for an easy commute back to my place. If I still have the energy, though, I'm going to extend the trip to 20 miles, by biking due east to the lakefront there at Roosevelt Avenue, and taking a tour of the South Museum Campus (Field Natural History Museum, Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium); then I'll finally end the trip at Jackson and State, the location of an Intelligentsia Coffeehouse, for which I happen to have a frequent-customer card to turn in, and then catch the train there instead to go home. Wish me luck!
Once again, here is the link for my Lincoln Park North map, and here is the Lincoln Park South one; once there, simply click on the "KML" link in the upper-right corner to download the 3D Google Earth file.
As always, a quick recap first for those who need it...
Because of my looming 40th birthday, I've decided to make a number of big changes to my lifestyle this year; among other things, I've decided to try biking between 3 and 5 miles (5 to 10 km) on every day this year it gets over 60 degrees (15 C), and every couple of weeks to put in a longish bike ride in order to build up my endurance. By the end of the summer I'm hoping for such rides to be 30 to 50 miles in length (50 to 80 km), but for now I'm shooting for more like 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 km); so one of the things I'm doing these days is thinking of various fun trips in the city I could make that would be that total distance, either one-way or round-trip. (Bikes are allowed on all city trains and buses, making one-way bike trips quite easy.)
Anyway, an upcoming promotional event from one corner of the literary industry has inspired what I think is going to be my first longish trip of the year; it's happening this Saturday, in fact, where I will bike all over the north side of the city to celebrate national Free Comic Book Day. I worked out a route on Google Maps, in fact, that lasts 12 miles total, that would not only take me to three comic-book stores participating in the promotion, but up almost the entire length of Lincoln Park as well, including such landmarks of heavy interest as the zoo, the conservatory, the Lorenzo Taft sculpture of Lincoln, the last grave left in Lincoln Park (from when it was a cemetery in the 1800s), two museums, a historic belltower, a mysterious totem pole and a lot more. And such a route of course is especially cool for two reasons:
1) Because I'm actually excited about Free Comic Book Day this year: instead of the usual exclusive collection of lame superhero comics specially given out in the past, this year includes such indie favorites as a Victorian detective story from Eddie Campbell (From Hell), a collection of never-before reprinted Peanuts strips, and more;
and 2), ever since Google introduced the ability to build highly sophisticated custom maps -- ones that can not only have text, photos and videos embedded within the route, along with mile markers and multiple colors, but can also be exported en-masse as a Google Earth (.kml) file -- I've wanted to make one! But to make one, I need to actually go out and ride the route of the map I want to make, and take all the photos and videos that will be in the mashup.
Anyway, like I said, the full route takes me a total of 12 miles (20 km), and takes me by enough interesting stuff to add at least a dozen and a half points to my finished Google map afterwards. The rough breakdown is shown below:
*) My home, Uptown; start/finish.
1) Chicago Comics, 3244 N Clark. Total distance: 1.25 miles.
2) Graham Crackers Comics, 2562 N Clark. Total distance: 2.45 miles.
3) Brainstorm Comics, 1648 W North Ave. Total distance: 5 miles.
4) Southern tip of Lincoln Park: Chicago History Museum, Taft sculpture and more. Total distance: 6.85 miles.
5) Historic Art Deco cafe at southern edge of zoo. Total distance: 7.45 miles.
6) Conservatory. Total distance: 7.8 miles.
7) Chicago Nature Museum. Total distance: 8 miles.
8) North Pond Cafe. Total distance: 8.3 miles.
9) Elks national headquarters and veteran memorial, a ridiculously magnificent structure that must be seen to be believed. Total distance: 8.6 miles. Also in this section, Goethe sculpture and garden.
10) Back officially on the lakefront path, in this case at Diversey. Total distance: 9.1 miles.
11) Start of Belmont Harbor. Total distance: 9.6 miles.
12) "Dog Beach" at Belmont Harbor. Total distance: 10 miles.
13) Mysterious totem pole, near Addison. (I'll explain where it came from in my eventual map.) Total distance: 10.35 miles.
14) Waveland Clubhouse and Bell Tower, recently restored to its original historic condition. Total distance: 10.65 miles.
15) The mysterious "Peace Garden" at Buena Avenue, beautifully landscaped but with almost no official information existing concerning its origin. Total distance: 11.25 miles.
*) Back home. Total distance: 12 miles.
So anyway, like I said, I'm going to try to very slowly make such a trip this coming Saturday, on national Free Comic Book Day; in fact, I asked my oral surgeon today during my check-up if it'd be okay to do such a thing, just a week after my latest bout of surgery, and he said sure. Then I'll upload the photos to Picasa (owned by Google), and the video to YouTube (also owned by Google), so that I'll be ready to import it all into my custom Google map, which will eventually be imported as a whole into Google Earth. Whew, that's a lot of synergy! So wish me luck; and of course if you live in Chicago and want to join me for part of the trip, or a coffee/drink somewhere along the way (I'll be spending the entire day to go its length, so obviously will be taking it easy and making a lot of stops), just drop me a line and let me know.
