DO NOT ALWAYS LISTEN TO GOOGLE MAPS

I love Google Maps.  Maybe Waze too, if I take the trouble to use it.  The Google universe is just too hard to resist.  I often wonder how we got around in the past without these GPS-enabled digital assistants.  However, there are times when you don't necessarily need to listen to Google Maps and such.

I recently had to be somewhere near Prospect Park, where there's a station for the Q train.  I live near the D train and can switch to the Q at the Coney Island terminal.  Alternatively, I can also catch the Q if I go the other way, but I'll have to go further for the transfer.  Google told me to go to Coney Island but I knew better.  It was early morning, like 5:30 AM or so.  There was hardly anyone going toward Coney Island but there were many people going to work, or whatever, toward Manhattan.  So I took a Manhattan-bound train and felt safer with many more people on the train.  Sure, it took longer to get to the Q later on but safety first.

Occasionally, I have the need to go from the area of Bayshore, NY to Kings Plaza Mall in Brooklyn.  The straightforward route is to take the Southern State Parkway to the Belt Parkway.  And fight traffic near Wantagh and Meadowbrook Parkways.  Normally I opt to take the Robert Moses Causeway to Ocean Parkway (the one on Jones Beach Island that runs parallel to the Southern State, not the tree-lined boulevard in Brooklyn that is the route of the NYRR Brooklyn Half Marathon).  I still have to hit the Meadowbrook in the end but it is a lot more relaxing.  It adds some distance to the trip and may not save any time, even with the smooth ride, but for me it's worthwhile.

Similarly, I usually avoid the Belt Parkway section near the JFK Airport by taking 133rd Avenue.  Or use Avenue J to avoid a section of Flatlands Avenue.  Or a combination of northbound roads to avoid the Cross Island Parkway.

The town of Leonia, NJ recently appeared in the news for their attempt to control traffic that flood their neighborhood during rush hours because of people using Waze and such.  With the new local rule in effect, drivers can be fined $200 for using streets that are now available only to local residents.  Great solution for the town but it sucks to be those drivers going through.  In general, drivers and arseholes who don't yield to anyone, so there were reports of people not even able to get out of their driveway because of the constant flow of traffic.  In the ideal world, some combination of state and town traffic agents would help control traffic flow.  I am sure money is a problem, who will pay for what.  Whatever, now we have some local rules that effectively ban the alternative routes and drivers will just have to suffer on the highway.

MARINE PARK IS ON THE MAP

I have good news and bad news.  Good news is I am still on this ambitious project of "mapping" every Brooklyn neighborhood by running and spelling their names, in that neighborhood.  Or somewhere close.  Just this weekend I finally completed "Marine Park".  The bad news is I took too long to do this Garmin web site finally got rid of Classic view so now any additional maps will look slightly different.  "Marine Park" is one such.  The lines are darker, which is fine, but luckily the underlying map is still the same.  Whew.  All the more reason I should hurry up and finish this before any more changes, whether with Garmin.com or with my own health.  You never know, one day you can be healthy and all, the next day you can no longer run.

For "Marine Park", I broke one of my rules about running.  I hate driving and when I go for a run, I absolutely don't want to drive somewhere just to run there.  But I have to be realistic now.  While I can certainly drive to Marine Park to do the run, it is just much faster when I drive.  And there is plenty of parking at the park, so I really have no excuse not to.  With this executive decision made, I plan to drive to Prospect Park etc some weekend day, really early in the morning for a better chance of finding a parking spot, and be done with those faraway places.  Let's hope the map will be filled soon!

GET OUT AND LEARN SOMETHING

In Vietnamese proverb, there's a phrase that goes

Đi một ngày đàng, học một sàng khôn

It means "Travel one full day and learn a container of smart things", or something to that extent.  While it's true you can learn a lot from watching YouTube videos or from reading exciting blogs, just like this one :-) , all from the comfort of your home, you still need to be out there in the physical world interacting with people and things.  I just came back from a long car ride and indeed learned a few things that I want to share with you.

My long car drive took me from New York City south past Charlotte, NC, passing through D.C.  And back.  I am not a big fan of voice-assisted GPS devices and prefer to print out the direction and not follow it too closely.  For example, if I am to get off I-95 at the exit for Route 123 merely to connect to I-85, just down the road upon entering Route 123, I'd rather not have to know about Route 123.  Maybe saying "Take exit 29 to get to I-85" is enough for me.  I want to memorize the general route, I don't need to know the directions in all its glorious details.  But that's what Google Direction told me as I entered the D.C. area.  I traveled through D.C. before, either for Florida or back from Florida.  I recalled I-95 would take me right through, maybe with some traffic congestion, but it was still pretty straightforward.  Not the way Google Directions had it though.  It seemed GD automatically chose only the shortest distance using interstate roads, i.e. I-this or I-that.  Around Baltimore on the way down, I was to take I-495 to I-695 then I-395 and finally I-295 only to connect back to I-95 eventually.  Or something like that, there are too many switches I don't really know which x95 comes first or last.  Just my luck when I got to the area it was dark and I did get lost briefly.  I had a vague sense that something was amiss and it was getting late so I stopped for the night.  The next day, thanks to the still-complicated direction I crawled slowly with morning rush hour traffic on I-295S.  Maybe it was just as bad on I-95, maybe not.  On the way back, I decided to follow my gut and went with I-95 all the way.  Or just I-85 and I-95, to be exact.  It meant going east a little more, instead of traveling through the heart of D.C., but I like to keep things simple.

The other thing I discovered is that there are too many ways to record toll payment from moving vehicles.  More than I wish to know anyway.  In the NYC area, when you pay toll with EZ-PASS, you slow down significantly and wait for the gate arm to lift or some light tells you payment was made.  A little outside of the metro area you may have places that let you somewhat drive right through without stopping.  And then we also have red-light cameras that if you run a red light you get flashed and a photo of your plate is taken.  You receive the ticket in the mail some time later, always an unpleasant thing.  Seeing flash of light behind you as you drive = bad news.  So when I was in that tiny state called Delaware and approach some toll booth that keeps telling me I have x meters to go before the booth, I slowed down somewhat but still moving at a good pace.  The booth finally appeared, no specific speed posted, so I rolled through and saw a flash of light.  Argh!  What did I do wrong!  I wasn't speeding!!!  On the way back, I noticed the car in the distance in front of me was flashed, then my car was flashed even though I was already below speed limit by 5 or so miles.  So it's just the way Delaware works.  Given that Delaware is so close to NYC, I think there should be a sign that alerts drivers not to worry about the flash.  Is it a crime of some sort to give the camera the finger?  I'm tempted to do that.  I was worried for a few days that some day next week I'll receive in the mail a ticket, from Delaware.

In closing, I'd like to toast the inventor(s) of cruise control.  On a long trip, it made the trip so much more less painful!  Cheers!

Ain't No Mountain High Enough?

Changes can be great sometimes.  Years ago, only the military had access to satellite data.  Then big corporations got into the fun and now the average Joe, too, can wear a gadget that talks to some satellite out there and gather all kinds of info about where he was etc.


The NYRR Jingle Bell Jog was the first race I participated after I became an owner of a G-watch, to be exact, a Garmin Forerunner 210.  As I approached the start line, like many (all?) runners I set my watch to be ready to start record.  Unlike a simple stopwatch that only tracks time, these fancy G-watch needs some time to find  the satellite.  You would have to do that prior to approaching the start line, then when you cross the line you would press Start to, uh, start tracking your work.


The big hill in Prospect Park is formidable, but how does it look graphically?  The accompanying picture's top part tells the story.  The green line is elevation in meters and the blue line is speed in minutes per kilometer.  The use of the word "speed" is misleading because speed to most people probably mean distance per time, like kilometers per hour or kilometers per minute, the opposite of what the graph considers "speed."  The X-axis (horizontal) is distance in kilometers.  It was a 6K race and the Garmin said I ran 6.22K, maybe it included the distance I crossed when I moved left or right to get past slower runners.  The start line in Center Drive was actually on a hill when compared to the East Drive.  Leaving Center Drive and turning left toward the lake, it was an easy downhill run.  I remember joking aloud during the Brooklyn Marathon that there was all to the big race, all downhill!  Just a tad past 3K was where the big hill materialize.  Oh, mine, Hill, what big slope you have!!!  It was not exactly all downhill after the big one, as there were some ups and downs, all the way back to Center Drive.


Remember my beef about the misleading use of "speed" in the graph?  If you think kilometers per minute then the graph makes no sense.  I know I sped up to make a strong finish but yet the blue line dropped.  If I ran faster, should the line not rise at the end?  The thing is the graph really shows pace, as the label on the right Y-axis (vertical) reads "min/km".  The less time you spend on covering a km, the faster you ran.


To see a simulation of the race as carried out by me, visit http://connect.garmin.com/player/133810229 and click Play.  The wonder of technology!