Something came up and I dropped the idea. The morning of the Boston Marathon, I didn't even feel like watching and instead went about my usual gwriting, with a message for a newlywed friend. Then came 3pm and social media was abuzz with news of the explosion near the finish line. I followed the news for hours, on TV and on handheld devices. It was sad but not surprising. It seems not a matter of if but when. I was nowhere near the site of the explosion, but I could have been there. It happened at an event for a sports that I love. Sure, living in New York and liking to run in desolate area that is away from civilization, or early or late in the day, any day I can be a statistic in police blotter, but it still gnawed at me. It can happen anywhere that has many people together, but it still affected me personally because I love the sports of running.
Enough with the brooding, this morning I decided to resume doing what I love. I thought of just running straight out and back, but then why not make a tribute to the people affected by the bombing as well? I've been experimenting with GPS writing, or gwriting for short, and got pretty good at it. Here's the route I took for today's 7 km. (I would want to make 8 km, my usual daily distance, but the phrase is short and 7 km was all it took.) Always one to come up with clever names, I call this route "BOSTON BETWEEN US", because the letters fall between Avenue U and Avenue S.
See the route animated here:
http://connect.garmin.com/player/298813321
very cool, but can you tell me how you managed to create the S without flying over all those buildings on that block?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Eric. I drew the S from the bottom up. Midway up the right side I paused the watch and continued my way upward. When I got to the other side of the block I unpaused the watch. The satellite only knew that I was last on one side of the block and all of a sudden appeared on the other side so it drew the line connecting the two positions. With the watch still recording I ran from the left side of the S to the right side, but not all the way down - you don't want the top of the S to meet the middle. I ran back to the left side of the S one more time, paused the watch and ran to the right side and unpaused. Ideally, the two times I paused and unpaused happened at the same precise pair of points but that didn't happen so you have two lines cutting across the block, but luckily the S is still recognizable.
ReplyDeleteSame technique was used to make the "a" and the "e" on Earth Day (today!), http://www.qaptainqwerty.com/2013/04/happy-earth-day.html
thanks for the details! never realized that the watch would draw out the gps trace line like that when you pause and restart. I'll have to give this all a try soon. FUN
DeleteWith that little technique, the possibilities are almost endless. You do have to be mindful of when to pause and un-pause and you will end up running more than what the GPS watch says, but the result is very satisfying. Do share when you have a word or phrase "written", Eric.
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