Edward Vielmetti is inviting you to A2B3 lunch on Thursday at Eastern Accents in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

on complementary and substitute goods

The Internet and walking are perfect substitutes for each other; if you walk, you don't need the Internet, and vice versa.

I need my treadputer.
I need my walkstation.

Burns Park Run 2008

I walked the 5k - official time 39:47 (a 12:49 pace). Lots of fun! More details and link to race results when it's online.

UPDATE: Burns Park Run 2008 results are up! Searchable complete results (789 finishers), 10K run, 5K run, 5K walk.

The official race site for the Burns Park Run is where the race results will be.

Some race photos from Mae's Real Stories and The Corkys.

This movie has the course sped up to 5 minutes - it's a terrific route.

Shiawassee River Paddle Event - May 18 2008 - Holly to Fenton, Michigan

Shiawassee River Paddle Event
Sunday, May 18, 2008

Start : WaterWorks Park in Holly, Michigan

End : Strom Park in Fenton, Michigan

Distance : 7 scenic miles of numerous twists and turns

Canoe Rental available with Heavners Canoe Livery

Schedule :

10:00 am : On-site registration begins WaterWorks Building, Broad Street

11:30 am : Introductory Ceremony North side WaterWorks Park

11:45 am : Experienced Canoeists Start at Millpond, Broad Street

12:15 pm : Novice/Youth Canoeists Start at Millpond, Broad Street

12:45 pm : Kayak/ Single person canoeists Start on Shiawassee River, Broad Street

** 1:15 pm : Leisure/fun paddle Start on Shiawassee River, Broad Street **

6:00 pm : Final river sweep completed

On-site availability of snacks and water.

Shuttle transport from 1pm – 6 pm for continuous transport of boats/ people

Trophies for First and Second Place in all three races.

For more info and photos, visit websites :
www.headwaterstrailsinc.org
http://shiawassee-river.blogspot.com/

Registration Forms :
http://www.headwaterstrailsinc.org/RiverRaceregistrationform2008.pdf

Questions ? Call Sue Julian, 248-634-3513.

Rain or Shine !

Pedal powered washing machine

Homeless Dave has this video documenting his design, implementation, and real world daily use of a dual use pedal power system, with a pedal powered washing machine spinning clothes dry, and a separate belt going to a generator for electricity.

We talked on Teeter Talk back in September, and you'll catch a piece of the washing machine discussion there. Naturally there's a sticker.

go urgently, and find some mechanical engineer while you're at it who has powertrain or appliance experience to look at the design and source parts for an improved version.

Technorati Tags: pedalpower, laundry, teetertalk, homelessdave, specialized

this week's questions, with answers, via 103bees

Jim Benson has some interesting queries he's answering in his blog, courtesy of search engine reports from 103bees. Here's a few of mine.

Does Ed Sanders surf?

Hard to say; there's probably at least one Ed Sanders who does. I did find one that is fond of snowmobiles and other mechanized snow-traversal equipment, including a certain Lombard Steam Log Hauler, a firewood-powered log skidder for the New Hampshire woods.

How long does it take to walk two miles?

A mile is eight furlongs; it takes about two minutes to walk a furlong at a good pace, a minute and a half if you're race walking, and three minutes if you're ambling. I just did 3.1 miles at a 13 minutes/mile pace, but that was a a race. Allow 30-40 minutes plus whatever time you want to spend enjoying the scenery.

How long is morel hunting season in lower Michigan?

The morel progression sightings map should give you the best sense for where and when morels are being picked. The crop depends heavily on moisture, and it's been dry (though it just rained). I'd go picking tomorrow, if I only knew where to go near here.

What do you think of when you think of Ann Arbor?

I've lived here too long, so my thoughts are more of a townie perspective than a student or an alumni one. I think of the public library, the cafes, the bus, the railroad station, the river, quiet streets to walk down and more than a dozen places to eat bi bim bop. You're invited to join me for lunch on Thursdays.

Technorati Tags: morel, annarbor, walking, a2b3, 103bees

Burns Park Run 2007 results

The Burns Park Run for 2007 just finished. I walked the 5k in 40:09, a little off my pace of last year but still a sub 13:00 walking mile. Unlike last year, I wasn't sore at all at the end - looks like a year's training paid off.

The USATF has a route map of the 5k race for reference.

Full race results for 2007 are up.

I saw a few photographers there - I'll update this page when there's any photos online and when full race results are in.

UPDATE: from the Burns Park PTO:

Check out today’s Ann Arbor News for a three-photo article in the local section about our own fabulous Burns Park Run! What a success…we had over 1,000 registrants! BIG THANKS to all the local businesses that donated various items to make it such fun. Be sure to thank them when you shop…Stadium Market donated several cases of fruit - bananas and oranges, and all of the cream cheese needed for the 40 dozen Zingermann’s bagels. Caribou Coffee probably poured (free!) 800 or more cups of coffee - 500 hot and a few hundred cold. Arbor Wellness provided all those wonderful free massages, and Durable Graphix provided the banners for free! Various raffle give-aways were donated from our friends at Planet Rock, Jump City, Washtenaw Parks and Recreation, Moosejaw, and the Michigan Theater. Also, prizes came from Orbit Hair Design and Massage, Fantasy Forest, ,Chelsea Community Hospital Wellness Center, Tortoise and Hare, Jerusalem Garden, Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum, and Moe Sports. Sponsorship donations were made by several local businesses, including Clinthorne and Kim Orthodontics, Kay Wilson Pediatric Dentistry, and Realtor Anne Gilbert.

Technorati Tags: 48104, annarbor, burnspark, run, walk, walkertracker

I hit 3 million steps on Walker Tracker today

The little widget says it all:

WalkerTracker.com
Stats for: edwardvielmetti
3,003,964 steps
since May 11, 06

yay me!

Curb your car month: biking in Houston, drive less in Ann Arbor

Mike from mpbloggo is riding his bike to work in Houston, TX - 15 miles each way, and some of that is along freeways. In Biking to Work: One Week he writes about why he's doing this:

[I]t may have something to do with the same thing that makes me hate commercial flight, or sitting in traffic. I realize this may sound self-aggrandizing, or romantic, or naive, but...riding the bike to work gives me a sense of freedom and self-reliance that is otherwise difficult to come across living in a large metropolitan area. As Jenefer would tell you, this is something I have struggled with ever since we moved to Houston. For now, biking seems to be a therapeutic response to the challenge of living in the country's fourth largest, yet arguably most non-descript city.

His bicycle commute is 30-40 minutes per day longer than his commute by car, though it varies a bit by weather (trucks are better in the rain) and traffic (bicycles can go past a whole line of stopped cars on the freeway).

May is Curb Your Car Month in Ann Arbor:

This coming May we’re challenging you to "curb your car" and drive less. We know it's hard, but that's why were here - to provide motivation and offer our complete support throughout May and the rest of the year. Check out our calendar for a listing of over 20 fun and educational events during the month that are sure to inspire you to drive less throughout the entire year. While the events are focused on raising awareness about transit, walking, biking and sharing a ride, there’s no shortage of ways to get around town. Come on, what could be more pleasant than a leisurely, stress-free commute on a lovely summer's day? Be creative and have fun with your daily commute and errands. Rollerblade to work. Bike to the gym. You just might be surprised at how much you enjoy leaving your car at home!

My own one way commute to work on foot is 35-45 minutes, and the bus commute is 20-25 minutes, so my time difference in walking vs. transit is about the same as Mike's. It's nice to ride the bus in a town when your fellow passengers have interesting things to say about public transit in Geneva (the physicist I talked to today) but I do love it when there's enough time in the day to make the trip to town a hike.

Technorati Tags: houston, texas, annarbor, michigan, bicycle, commuting

How long does it take to walk a furlong?

Conventional US maps are measured in miles. This is fine if you are driving, since you can take miles and turn them into minutes by assuming 60 mph and then adjusting for your speed. 20 miles = 20 minutes, or 40 if the traffic is bad, or 15 if you are speeding.

If you're walking downtown, though, it makes sense to pick some other measure - a measure that's calibrated to the walking pace. For this the proposal at the a2b3 lunch was the furlong - 1/8 of a mile, or the the length of a Saxon furrow, or the distance that you can plow a furrow with a team of oxen without pausing, or 220 yards or about 200 meters. It ends up being a mostly useful metric measure at about 1/5 of a km too.

How long does it take to walk a furlong? There's Google Book Search to the rescue, notes from an 1894 Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer:

A furlong-wey meant the time during which one can walk a furlong, at three miles an hour. A mile-way is twenty minutes; a furlong-way is two minutes and a half; and the double of it is five minutes. But the strict sense need not be insisted upon here.

The clock starts to make more sense now - it's measured out so that an hour is 3 miles or 24 furlongs, and 5 minutes is 2 furlongs. An hour of walking at this pace is conveniently and roundly also 5 km.

I'll be walking the 5K part of the Burns Park Run on May 6, 2007 - though a piece of me thinks of it now as the Two Dozen Furlong Walk.

Technorati Tags: a2b3, pedometer, walking, 48104, annarbor, burnsparkrun, furlong, chaucer, googlebooksearch

4500 steps, net 10 emails deleted

I went out for a walk tonight and took my phone and Google Mobile Mail with me. This is a not exceptionally fast but very powerful way to work through my Gmail inbox while I'm moving.

Due to limitations on the display of the phone, and the reality of being out and about while not being focused on traffic or what else is going around me, it's only practical to do this in the evening in my relatively safe and quiet residential neighborhood during the spring, summer, and fall. Maybe my next phone will have a brighter screen that's visible in sunshine, maybe that's not a feature I care about enough to pay a few hundred dollars for. I'm actively looking for gloves for cold weather for next season that allow for better fine motion finger control.

I walked for about 45 minutes and managed to get a net 10 messages reduced from the inbox. Some of this was deleting, some was filing, and some was answering mail (I sent out 4 messages in that time). At this pace, I could never keep up with the typical level of email that comes through my inbox in a day, but it's a really nice way to go for a walk and be moving while communicating. I do miss the mobile parts of Twitter in that regard - that's a lot easier way to be in transit and still in touch - but this has the benefit of getting through to more substantial results than just "what's up".

It's nice to not always be sitting while I'm on the net, in much the same way that it's nice to not always be on the net when I'm sitting down (sometimes it feels like that).

"The postman hits - you have new mail" - news.admin FAQ, 1992.

Technorati Tags: mail, gmail, pedometer, walking, blackberry, 7100t, google