THAT'S AMORE

The past few years for Valentine's Day, I led a group run that spells out something related to that over-commercialized event.  The first year it was "LOVE", the following it was also "LOVE" but packed into a neat little square, in the style of that famous Robert Indiana sculpture.  Last year, it was "I {heart} U", where the heart symbol was where the {heart} is.  A Facebook memory reminded me, belatedly, that this year it should be "xoxo".  I said "belatedly" because I totally forgot about it and already designed the route to spell "amore", the Italian word for love.  It could have been the Spanish word "amor" but because of that Dean Martin song I went with "amore".  The little pun about "a moray" (eel) and "amore" is one of my favorites, so "amore" it is.

The route makes no use of any special skill with pausing and unpausing of GPS watch or smartphone app.  I am tempted to throw in one, though, to make the top of the "r" better show the arch at the top of that letter.  It'll be an optional thing.  If you don't do it, the letter still looks like an "r".

9:30 A.M. Saturday 15 February 2020
Bartel-Pritchard Square
Brooklyn, NY

We'll walk to the green dot on the "a", without activating watch or smartphone app, then start from there.  Event is open to the public, so do come if you are in the neighborhood.  I'll be on the traffic circle of Bartel-Pritchard a little before 9:30.

STRAVA CLUB - STRAVA ART

First there was "Strava or it didn't happen", meaning unless you can show that Strava recorded your run/walk/ride it didn't happen.  Everyone is on Strava, so it seems.  Next came Strava Art, the art of drawing pictures or spelling words using the Strava app.  Strava, the company, wanted to be more than just record people's exercise.  They want to be part of the social media phenomenon, thus born Strava Club, where like-minded people can get together and share info.  Surprisingly, there was no club for fans or practitioners of Strava Art.  So I decided to create one.  In the beginning, it was just my "GPS writing" or "gwriting" but lately there are a few good drawings of animals and other objects.  Check out my little Strava Art club in Strava at the link below

Strava Art Strava Club

PPTC GROUP RUN - LOVE RUN 2019

Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote, "How do I love thee? Let me count the miles." And count the miles I did, with nine other runners.

Check out the Relive video

https://www.relive.cc/view/2134496363

From the practice run I had a few weeks ago, I learned that the "i" looks better, less slanted at the bottom, if I start the run on the side of the Grand Army Plaza arch. We would basically run along Eastern Parkway, so the closer I was, vertically, to the bottom of the parkway the better.

While doing the left side of the heart, Strava almost messed me up. I just paused it while at the intersection of Park Place, Grand Avenue, and Washington Avenue, ran around the corner of Prospect Place and Grand Avenue, as I was about to Resume, I noticed that the Pause point was actually at Sterling Place and Washington Avenue. Strava does act weird sometimes, in this case it was a block behind where I actually was. Being the perfectionist run-artist that I am, I ran back the intersection of Park, Grand, and Washington, press Resume, waited a few seconds, then Paused again. Ran around the corner of Prospect and Grand, verified that all was good, then pressed Resume. And that's how we had the first relatively rounder corner of the heart. There were many more Pause and Resume, each time I paused the run to show my running mates the progress.

Also from the practice run, I realized that I should take advantage of the width of Eastern Parkway to make a rounder bottom of the heart. It came out pretty good. The group had to be careful crossing the wide Parkway, NOT at the zebra crossing, but we did wait for red lights, so it worked out. Very worthwhile, as we all know round-bottomed hearts make the rocking world go round.

DIY I {heart} U

While I would love to have you join me at the Love Run on Saturday the 9th of February, 8:30 A.M., by Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza, should the timing not good for you, here's a turn-by-turn direction on how to get it done.  One slight change I will implement is the start will be on the northern side of Union Street, where the tail of the first arrow is.  (The run starts from the green hexagon and ends at the red hexagon.)  The baseline of the letters and symbol is Eastern Parkway so we might as well start as close to it as possible, vertically.

The letter P means you pause your watch or app at those locations, then resume recording where the letter R appears.  Most of the time, the app or watch would be fooled into drawing a straight line between the two points, so we get a less blocky heart.  One time I tried to spell MISSY but Strava at the last minute changed the Y into a T, so it really happened before.  Hopefully it won't happen to you.

There ya go, have fun spelling "I {heart} U" on your own.  Some people may be able to learn guitar by watching YouTube videos, but others may need Dan Smith to teach them, so no guarantee my little turn-by-turn instruction will get you there but give it a shot and share with me the outcome.

I {HEART} U

If spreading love is the Brooklyn way, you can do it with me this coming Saturday the 9th of February.  I will lead a run for the Prospect Park Track Club that will spell out "I {heart} U", as shown below.  It'll cover about 4 miles, at least that's what Strava recorded when I did the test run last week.  I made a sleight of hand, or rather sleight of foot, to make the lines that seem to cut through the block, like the right side of the heart symbol.  I suspect Strava measured the distance along the straight line.  We'll actually run along the two legs of the right triangle, so it's a longer route.  The shortest distance between two points if a straight line, ya know?  See, who said high school math/trig isn't useful?

PPTC hosts the event but it's free to the public.  Your fellow runners may encourage you to join the club and we may retire to some cafe to grab a much-deserved breakfast, Dutch treat.  An hour or so of your time is all you'll spend.

See you 8:30 A.M. at the corner of Union Street and Prospect Park West on Saturday the 9th of February!

"PARK" ART-RUN WITH A TWIST

A week from today I'll lead a run that spells out the word "PARK", but with a twist.  In place of the letter "A" is the logo of the Prospect Park Alliance.  I made a test run some weeks ago and the result is shown below.  I learned some lessons and they were applied to the Gmap-Pedometer link at https://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=7218671

There is a Facebook event to RSVP but you will need to ask to join the PPTC Members Discussion group, https://www.facebook.com/events/1463953043734534/.  If you don't have a Facebook account, or rather not join the group, simply show up at the side of The Picnic House at 9 AM on Sunday April 8, 2018.  That would be the left side when you face the building from the road.  Note that the word is spelled backward, starting with K and so on, so that when it's done we'll be near some businesses for coffee and such.

The better-designed map in Gmap-Pedometer above saves a side trip to the edge of the park to connect the R and the "A".  Also, the "A" is better executed with no extra lines on the left side.  When I did the run, the Green Market was in full bloom and there was only narrow path to go between the park and the arch.

Here is very wordy instruction for making R and K.

Start at the bottom left of the letter K, which is the side of The Picnic House. Follow the road to a T intersection then go right until you hit another T intersection then trace your way back to the other T intersection. Note that as there is no street corners like when we run on the street, I try to make use of the road intersections as often as possible.

Go up to the next intersection but don't actually touch it. I want a little gap between the top of the K and the bottom of the R. Again trace your way back to the T intersection. Make your way diagonally across the meadow. You should finish at another T intersection. The K is done!

To make the R, make your way across the meadow again, also diagonally to another T intersection on the other side. First do the bottom of the R by going down toward the top of the K, but don't actually arrive at the intersection because I believe the letters look better if they don't actually touch each other. Turn around and go up the road, follow the curve to form the top of the R as well as the right side. Again look for another T intersection then make your way across the meadow one last time. Go up the right side of the R one more time toward Grand Army Plaza.

I love serifs and probably will make them for the K and the R in the actual run.  Just stick with me if you want it done.

"A" is a bit more challenging because a few times it involves stopping the watch and resuming it.

So we finished the R should have traced our way back to the top right corner of the R. Take the path that goes under West Drive toward Grand Army Plaza. Where the letter P is on the map, pause your watch/app then run through the arch, past the fountain, all the way to Plaza Street East. The letter R on the map means you resume the watch/app. Run back toward the arch but along Plaza Street West. Don't cross the street to the side of the Green Market. Instead, go to the fountain, then pause the watch/app again. Run to Plaza Street West and Lincoln Place then resume. Run back to the arch one more time, along Plaza West but this time go as far east of the plaza as you can. Go across the street back into the park to where the letter P is and pause. One more time run through the arch, past the fountain, and onto Plaza Street East, but a little distance off the other point you made earlier. Resume watch/app. Run back to the arch along Plaza Street East. Do not cross the street to the Green Market. Instead go to the fountain and pause watch/app. Run to Plaza Street East and Butler Place then resume watch/app. The really difficult A is finally done!

Run along Plaza Street East to Vanderbilt, turn right to go up Vanderbilt to St. Marks Avenue. Turn right to go along St. Marks then turn right into Underhill Avenue. From Underhill, turn right into Park Place. Go past Vanderbilt a few step and stop watch/app. The whole thing is done!

To have a rounder letter P, do not wait until you are actually at the corner of Underhill and St. Marks to turn. Instead, run on the northern side of St. Marks and start crossing St. Marks when you are about the length of three cars from the corner. Likewise, don't start going straight down Underhill after making the turn. Run to the western side of Underhill and aim for the middle of the block. Execute similar maneuver for the turn at Underhill and Park Place.

THE YEAR IN GWRITING, PART TWO

In 2017, I actually won a contest with my run-art/gwriting/StravaArt, did some special requests from fans, and saw my work went to the dogs, in a good way, and, last but not least, created a menorah.

Just donut {swoosh}

Some time in August I found out from my track club's Facebook group that there was a donut-themed contest.  Draw anything donut-inspired for a chance to win a dozen donuts and entries into the Montclair Bread Company 5K Doughnut Run.  I actually came up with two designs, one of a donut being dunked into a cup plus the "Just donut {swoosh}" above.  Supposedly competition was light but I won that's all that matters.

Amy rules

In November, I asked for suggestions of what to write during future runs and one of the response was "Amy rules".  What's interesting with this particular task was that on that day I went for an NYRR OpenRun at Cunningham Park.  I planned to get there ahead of time to gwrite "Amy rules" before OpenRun started.  However, I made the mistake of trusting my memory, instead of Google Maps, and ended up getting lost briefly. Not totally lost, mind you, I still know my Queens geography, just enough to lose time and not able to finish the gwriting prior to OpenRun.  I used Strava app to do the writing so I simply paused it when I was done with "Amy".  Went to do OpenRun with Runkeeper app, then returned to where I was and un-paused Strava and proceeded to finish the whole two-word sentence.  Oh yes, it was no coincidence that I made "Amy rules" in the borough of Queens.

Bergie

Another suggestion came from the owner of a dog named Bergamot Grey, or Bergie for short.  Other dog names that I made in 2017 were Bandit and Beemer.  Just by coincidence that they all start with the letter B.  Yes, I am a dog person, but I do have a not-too-strict rule that dog names shouldn't be names normally reserved for people, such as Michael or Peter.

This Menorah Was Really Good

With the holiday season approaching, a Jewish friend asked if I could draw a dreidel.  Or a menorah.  Sure, I can.  New York City has many rectangular city blocks and a menorah with squarish branches could be drawn in many places.  But what if we want one that has nice, round branches?  As I reviewed the map for NYC, my first choice was the Mill Basin peninsula in Brooklyn.  However, unless I can walk on water (Jesus Christ!) or if Moses can part the water for me, there was no place draw the handle of the menorah.  A better choice was the crescent-shaped streets of Rego Park, Queens.  A few people were interested and we ended up having a small convoy of cars to make the trip from Prospect Park to Rego Park.  Shown above is my test run, during which I mistakenly lit the candles in the wrong spot.  I should know better that a few things in the Judaica world go from right to left, not unlike Chinese.  For the group run, we did it right to left but the flames didn't show that well.

THE YEAR IN GWRITING

The first title I thought for this blog was “This Week In Gwriting”, which is a nod to Leo Laporte’s podcast "This Week In Tech". I didn’t get around to writing the blog post and the year 2017 is almost over, so without much further ado, let us review some of the Gwritings, or StravaArts, I made this soon-to-be-over year.

Linda

My most recent oeuvre, made just this Christmas Day.  It was not the first time I made a Linda route.  Back in August while vacationing in the exotic island of Aruba, one hot steamy morning I ran Linda but the non-grid streets threw me off.  It took a while before I found the chance to redo it, on the streets of un-exotic Brooklyn, New York.  While I can easily cut through a city block to make the middle section of the letter "a", I try to avoid relying on the trick.  While planning the run, I picked Flatlands Avenue as the street that will naturally provide the needed line.

Grab A Bite With Jimmy




"Grab A Bite With Jimmy" is another run-art that makes good use of the existing environment, i.e. no Dark Magic via the use of GPS app's pause function.  Well, to a certain extent.  Jimmy is this friend of mine who seems to have a very healthy appetite.  The quasi-roundabout near Zucker-Hillside Hospital provided the perfect round-ish food that Jimmy seems to eat a lot of.  However, to achieve the bite mark I did have to use Dark Magic.  While I have no plan of drawing offensive pictures any time soon, this was my early foray into drawing, not just writing.

Make Some Noises With Adam

I followed the success of "Grab A Bite With Jimmy" by making "Make Some Noises With Adam".  Adam won two awards earlier in the year from the track club.  Instead of wooden plaques or paper certificates, the prizes were cowbells.  Very useful for a cheerleader like Adam!  To get the trapezoidal shape of the cowbell I did have to resort to my special trick to make the slanting lines.

Resist With Lisa, Sort Of

Back in February, I made "resist" and dedicated to Lisa LMK and others who, duh, resist the current administration.  In November I wanted to make the both the fist and the word "Lisa" but I ran out of time.  Yes, these things take time.  Sorry, Lisa LMK!  I still have the area where "Lisa" would be, I'll return to the area some day to do it.  "Lisa" and fist will appear together in CityStrides, that web site that gives me so much joy and aggregation aggravation.

There are more but there are a few more days left of the old year.  I might make another post just yet!

RUN ART GETTING MORE GRAPHIC

I'm pretty good at spelling out letters and words during my runs, as seen in "Crystal" and "Heather" below, some recent samples.

Naturally, my friends asked if I ever drew actual pictures, not just letters and numbers.  While I did a few, the majority of my run arts have been limited to just letters and numbers.  With my special block-cutting technique, technically anything can be drawn, given enough time and proper planning.  And so I did, recently, advance to the next phase of my run art, with "Jimmy" and "Adam". 

With the "Jimmy" piece, there is this roundabout traffic circle in Glen Oaks, Queens that I have yet covered on my CityStrides map. I have this friend Jimmy who is well-known for his strong appetite. The roundabout made a perfect food item, whether a bagel or a donut.  The fun got better as I tried to include a bite mark in the food item.  Of course, I had to use my virtual trespassing technique to make the bite mark.

Adam is another friend in the run community.  A great runner himself, he loves to cheer fellow runners with his cowbells.  Not just the small cowbells somewhat cube-ish type, but the real, rectangular ones.  Every year, Prospect Park Track Club has a dinner party at which members receive awards as voted by the club.    In past years, the awards came in the form of a plaque or similar form.  In 2016, someone came up with the excellent idea of awarding cowbells!  So useful!  Adam won in two categories and now often carry them to the cheer zone, thus in my run art there's a cowbell after his name.  To achieve the angular shape of the cowbell, I again resorted to cutting through city blocks.

PROSPECT PARK SESQUICENTENNIAL

Prospect Park in Brooklyn opened to the public in 1867.  It is turning 150 years old this year.  The Prospect Park Alliance is hosting many events starting Saturday April 1.  On April 2, my running club, the Prospect Park Track Club, will host a run in cooperation with the Alliance.  I designed a route that spells out "150".  Faster runners will lead the group from the front while slowpokes like me will lead from the back.  The run starts at 9 A.M. and will be slightly less than 3 miles.

PPTC runs normally start from Grand Army Plaza but this run is different and will meet at 10th Street and Seventh Avenue, which is the top of the "1" in "150".  Actually, it will be slightly away from that corner, toward the park.  Usually when runners spell words and numbers they make very blocky and straight characters.  I go through great length to make sure the characters are curvy, that corners are rounded and not at ninety degrees.  It is easy to mistakenly spell "ISO" instead of "150" so I want to avoid that.  More details will be provided on how that's done.

Register at https://goo.gl/UknXdS

For more information about anniversary events hosted by the Prospect Park Alliance, visit

https://www.prospectpark.org/news-events/events/2017/4/2#opening-weekend-2017

CITYSTRIDES - WHAT MORE CAN A MAP-LOVER ASK FOR?

I love maps.  I sometimes spell words during my runs.  I started to spell the many Brooklyn neighborhoods but life got in the way.  At some point, I thought about how nice it would be to have all my runs/walks on one map.  Turns out there is such a tool and it's called CityStrides.  You connect your CityStrides account to Strava, MapMyRun, and Runkeeper then all your routes are in one map!  So wonderful!  Of course, in my case many of my carefully drawn routes are no longer recognizable because the many lines overlap but it's still a nice way to visualize one's activities.  I love the tool so much I actually update this blog after a multi-month hiatus!!!

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!

UNSET IN SUNSET PARK

Continuing my philosophy of "slow progress is better than no progress" today I resumed "writing" Sunset Park.  I thought I only had enough time for two lowercase letters, so "un" it was, i.e. Sunset still needs the uppercase S.  Below is the doctored image with "un" and "set" combined.  There was a second green marker to denote the start of today's walk, but I don't like those things so I left it hidden in the lower layer.  Only a trace of green shows in the combined image.  The area was desolate and it was getting dark, the rain was coming down again, so it was good that I didn't attempt to complete Sunset.  Any day now, any day now.  We seem to go to Costco once a month so if I don't finish this in January, by February it will be done!

SET IN SUNSET PARK

What a great feeling it is once you are resolved to do something and make modifications to your plan to achieve the final outcome.  So I decided I would walk if I have to, instead of running, just to complete my run-mapping of Brooklyn.  Running is more interesting but not always optimal, like after a meal.  Just a few days ago I churned out "Slope", for Park Slope, after a brunch with the track club.  Today I was in the neighborhood of Sunset Park and had a little time for running.  Not enough to do the entire "Sunset Park", or even the word "Sunset", but that is not a problem.  I am already stitching together the map in Photoshop, no harm to do one syllable at a time, like "set" as in "Sunset".  "t" didn't come out a straight as it should but it's beyond my control.  I guess at different time of day the satellite can be uncooperative.  Perhaps when I stitch "set" together with the other syllables it won't look so bad.

HAPPY NEW YEAR - BROOKLYN RUN-MAPPING RETURNS

Happy New Year!  I didn't declare it but deep down I know I want to resume blogging.  There should be only so much Facebooking one can do.  Be more of a content producer, not just a mere Liker and Bait-Clicker.  Without much further ado, here's a topic close to my heart, running and spelling out the neighborhoods of Brooklyn!  I prefer to call it Run-Mapping!

I should have known better but as I was done with the areas close to where I live, things get more challenging.  I have this weird rule about running - no driving to the place to run.  In other words, I should not drive x miles out to some place just to run around.  I guess it has to do with my strong dislike of driving.  If I am to complete this run-mapping of Brooklyn nabes, sooner or later I'll have to drive to where I want to run.  Until such time, I'll make the most of my travel.

Late in December I ran to Marine Park just to spell "Park".  Marine Park is about 5 km from me so spelling the whole "Marine Park" was not possible time-wise.  Lately on these runs I have one or two phone apps to track my "writing".  At one time I even thought if not for this run-map project, I probably can retire my Garmin GPS watch.  The apps work the same way with regards to pause and resume, so I can use them to virtually cut through city blocks to make letters like K and R with their pesky diagonal lines.  When they actually work as they are supposed to, that is.  On the "Park" run, they didn't.  Both Strava and MapMyFitness totally miss the P and then went crazy the rest of the run.  Luckily, I did have the trusty Garmin, even though the lack of a rectangular city grid threw me off my course.  As shown below, "Pa" is a big disappointment, even to a non-perfectionist like me.  The "a" is too far away from its neighbors and "r" looks too much like an "n".  I should have done my usual virtual trespassing in making the diagonal lines in "k".  I use the picture in the map anyway but deep down I know I will re-run that route to make a better word.

Even though I am a member of the Prospect Park Track Club, I don't go to Prospect Park that much.  Living far south almost in Coney Island, it's a bit of a trip for me.  But I do go there from time to time and I should take advantage of those trips to finally add Park Slope and neighbors to my map.

On New Year's Day, I volunteered as a backup time-keeper for the Club's Harry Handicap race, held in Prospect Park.  After the race, I had some food and was in no shape to run so I did the next best thing to spell out "Slope" - I walked.  It was not as interesting as running but for these far-flung places I just have to make the best of my time.  Again, MapMyFitness screwed up but Garmin Forerunner again saved the day.  I gladly used the picture in the big map although there are many more street blocks I need to capture to make the map truly continuous.

Given the annoying changes Garmin make to its web site, I should hurry up and run more neighborhoods sooner before some changes render my techniques useless.  Wish me luck! 

WELCOME TO BAY RIDGE ETC

Welcome to Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, the two neighborhoods I recently added to my Brooklyn GPS map.  The map really needs to be expanded to include other neighborhoods but work has kept me busy.  I know, I know, Manhattan Beach still does not have its beach and Bath Beach should be further to the west.  So many nabes, so little time.

I must note that Bay Ridge was somewhat challenging in that its east-west streets are wider than the north-south ones.  I ended up using lots of iTrespassing to make the lowercase letters half-a-block wide.  It was a decision I made while out running.  In the planning stage, I was going to use the entire block's width, thus would not have enough width to spell Ridge, so I started the e in Dyker Heights and it unfortunately overlaps the D in Dyker.  Another word to re-write some day perhaps...

BEAST PACING

I love running and already explored different areas of the sports.  I've run various distances from 5K to full marathon.  I volunteered/worked as course marshal, lead cyclist, water station staff, bag-checker, photographer, etc.  Something new I'm about to get into is pacing, that is, running a race at a specific pace holding a corresponding sign so that other runners of that pace can follow.  Or pass me if they choose to.  My first pacing race will be the Run and Ride Half Marathon at Dorney Park, http://www.runandriderace.com/#!dorneyparkhalf/c24p1 .  The company that coordinate pacers and race organizers is Beast Pacing, http://beastpacing.com .  I love encouraging runners so I really look forward to the race.  I just hope they don't run with headphones so that my words of encouragement won't go to waste.  I myself don't run with headphones whatsoever.  Here's to Beast Pacing!

The images are made from two route arts, from my morning runs yesterday (Saturday Aug 29) and today (Sunday Aug 30), digitally combined.

A BEACH IN BROOKLYN

Having a job is nice but being at work 9 hours a day plus 2+ hours driving back and forth and you then don't have time for fun things, like running and tracing out words that represent the locale.  Even with some new pairs of running shoes to test out I didn't add any new neighborhoods to my GPS Brooklyn map.  I finally got around to putting on a new pair of Kismet Core Pop from Newton Running and made the "Manhttn" map below, for the neighborhood of "Manhattan Beach".  I know, a few vowels are missing but I really did not have much width and height to work with.  Hampton Avenue only runs so far east.  While I can go as far as the gate of Brooklyn Community College, I wouldn't have the necessary two-avenue height to make the t's stand out.  Using artistic license and dropping the a's is the way to go.  Sorry, Manhattan.

For work, I drive by the area everyday, via the Belt Parkway, so one of these days I'll just stop by and spell the shorter version of Beach, namely "Bch".  Yeah, I know the neighborhood border on the west is West End Avenue.  In planning the route, I realized that if I stick to that, the second t would not have room to display its horizontal stroke.  So invade Brighton Beach, at Corbin Place, I did.

BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS

After a two-hour car drive in yucky NYC traffic to go from the Coney Island area to the High Bridge Celebration, I felt pretty lousy.  The festival was good but since I just visited the area a few weeks back for the High Bridge 5K Trail Race, it was not as big a novelty as it could be.  The long car drive didn't help.  I salvaged the day by completing my push to put Brighton Beach, Brooklyn on my map.

It was quite a challenge to add the Beach to the seaside town.  There was not much vertical room to work so I had to use the beach area.  In the beginning, I walked with my running shoes but after a while I decided to blend in by walking barefoot.  As a bonus, I was able to walk right into the lapping waves, aaahhh.  Note that not only I didn't have much vertical space to maneuver in, because of construction, the Boardwalk ends at Coney Island Avenue, where the h is.  I spelled backward from the h and used MapMyRun's on-screen path to make sure I have enough space between the letters. Everything went well until B, which turned out to have too small a belly.  Oh well, it's a busty B, or maybe it's just upside down.

Speaking of Brighton Beach memories, here is what used to be "my" first home in the U.S.  This is the corner of Brighton 1 Street and Neptune Avenue.  Neptune runs left to right whereas Brighton 1 is where the five cars point to.  The road used to be one-way the other way.  My first night in the U.S. was spent in a house that would be where where the white car (fourth in the line) is.  Oh well, the price of commercialism.  Maybe someday when I become rich and famous I can buy the new building to knock it back down and rebuild the old home from a photo my #1 Blog Fan has.

WELCOME TO BRIGHTON BEACH, WELL, ALMOST

The past two days were hot and humid.  I didn't get up early enough to beat the heat, i.e. run at 5 AM or so.  Today I made up by running "Brighton", as in Brighton Beach.  I didn't like the fact that the area is small, with few large rectangular blocks to work with.  I thought of skipping it but then Eugene Morris Jerome may be upset.  My first night in the U.S. some 30+ years ago, I did sleep in a house in the area.  It belonged to an uncle but he has moved away since then.  The new owner knocked down the house, along with a few adjacent ones, and a big building is being constructed on the lot.

I knew that the area has these mouthful Brighton 1 Street and 2 Street etc but did not know about all the alleys that in other parts of town would just remain nameless.  There were Brighton 5 Walk, Brighton 5 Court, Brighton 1 Path, etc.  Most of these so-called streets are narrow and are mere empty space between two houses.  It is nice to have them nonetheless although I would not use them late at night.

T-intersection of Brighton 1 Path, which continues to the right of the tree, and Brighton 1 Walk, which runs from the foreground of the photo to the background.

Brighton 5 Court, which simply connects Brighton 5 Street to Brighton 6 Street.  It is relatively wide compared to other  named alleys in the area.  I recall one really narrow alley with overgrown weed and three or four guys sitting in the middle of the road.  Mugger paradise!