willclarke.net

(This is Part 2 in a series where I answer common questions about bike touring. See Part 1.)

When doing a loaded tour, by far the most fun part of the trip is finding a place to camp for the night. I rarely plan a place to camp - typically, I wait until about an hour before the sun goes down, and then start looking.

As you might imagine, this can be a stressful experience, and for several reasons. First, it’s kind of illegal. Setting up a tent in a public place without permission is technically vagrancy. Second, you have limited time to find a place, because setting up a tent in the dark is difficult and the sun is setting before your eyes. And third, you might not find a place at all, frantically biking until you’re run over by a drunk redneck.

But you always find a place. Always.

There are tons of places to camp once you’re out of the city, including:

• Playgrounds
• Baseball fields
• Non-RV campgrounds
• Fraternal organizations
• Church grounds
• Fire stations
• Schools
• People’s yards
• The side of the road

These last two are there for a reason: they are last resorts. There is a trick with camping in people’s yards - you find a nice looking house, tell them your story, and ask them if they know of a campground nearby. They won’t, and if they take pity on you then they will offer their yard. I’ve never actually used this technique, and Eoin has only once to no avail. The point is, you rarely have to get that far down the list.

There are a number of strategies when public place camping. One is ambiguity: camp between two public properties so whoever is in charge of each may assume the other gave you permission. Another is seclusion: find the place that you won’t be seen, and therefore not questioned. And the last is to have a good excuse.

This is how the legend of Ed Rollins was invented. On our last tour around Pennsylvania, about five days in, Eoin and I were frantically searching for a place to camp. The day had been rainy and overcast, and due to the cloud cover, it started getting darker sooner than expected. We started unloading at one potential site, a lot behind a transportation department office. But about 15 minutes after we started unloading, a bright flood light came on from the office, one of those timed lights that come on at a designated time in the evening.

Nightfall was fully upon us, and we had to relocate. This is, for a cycling tourist, the worst case scenario. On top of this, my knees were shot and I didn’t want to bike any further. So Eoin went out and scouted a new potential spot.

A few minutes later, he had found one - a set of pavilions in what seemed like a public park (this late at night, it was hard to tell). I followed him there and we began to set up. The downside of this location is that it was across the street from a bunch of houses, full of potentially nosy citizens, a cyclist’s nightmare. As we set up our tents with flashlights and head lamps, we envisioned their frantic calls to the authorities: “Sheriff! We got a couplea boys down here, settin’ up tents in the dark!” I wasn’t going to move again. I don’t care what the sheriff says.

So I came up with an excuse. If we were questioned, we’d say that Ed Rollins, from the department of Public Works, has asked us to travel across the state and chart bike routes for his employer. We’d need to have our story straight, so we began adding details: Ed Rollins fought in Vietnam. He blew out his knee so he can’t travel himself. His wife is Susan. She makes a superb green bean casserole. You know why it’s so good? It’s a secret! (The secret is that she only uses the freshest ingredients - a secret we promised to only divulge under intense pressure from the Sheriff).

It was preposterous and would never work, but it helped us feel better about the situation. We could hear people coming and going from the nearby houses. Each time we did, we all dropped to the ground and turned off our lights. We were paranoid.

Of course, nothing ever happened. Nothing ever does. In all our travels, we’ve never had anyone give us more than a second thought. And why should they? We’re clean, we don’t build fires or cause damage, and we leave no trace. For anyone harboring objections to our flagrant disrespect for the law, keep in mind that we break the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

In an abstract sense, loitering and vagrancy laws are absurd. Think about it - it’s illegal, as a human being, to exist somewhere for too long. And this is on public land, land that ostensibly belongs to us as members of the public. Now, I get it - if the laws didn’t exist, there would be problems. I’m not saying the laws aren’t important. I am just selfishly and hypocritically carving out exceptions for me and Eoin. If you’re thinking about taking our advice and camp similarly, please leave no trace.

Of course, not all camping opportunities are illegal. Tonight, Eoin and I are enjoying the hospitality of the Surf City chapter of the Loyal Order of the Moose, a fraternal organization that allowed us to camp in their yard and consume Yuengling in their lodge bar for an outrageous $1.75 per pint.

Between Eoin and I, we have slept in the yard of author T.J. Jackson Lears, on church grounds, inside a community center, and from people on the internet we contacted. That’s another source of legal camping - there are a few web sites, such as couchsurfing.org and tastefully named warmshowers.org, that help travelers find camping and lodging with others. The drawback of this resource is that you need to know approximately when and where you will be in a particular place.

And when you badly need a shower, And there is always a motel. Or, since we lack motors, perhaps a bitel? No, that’s silly, but that’s what happens when your belly is full of cheap fraternal brew. Time to sign off - stay tuned for future updates!

I’m getting ready for my first bike tour of the season. After a long winter, northeast weather has finally shaped up on a weekend I have free, and so my travel partner Eoin and I will take to the backcountry roads and make our way from downtown Philadelphia to Surf City NJ and back. It’s about 140 miles round trip, or about 70 miles per day.

When I tell people about the bike trips I do, they look at me like I’m crazy. Sometimes it’s more than a look - they tell me I’m crazy. “But that’s only two hours by car!” I was told recently by a friend. “I could never do that!” said a coworker.

Both of these comments are wrong in their own way; the latter is factually incorrect and the former misses the point. Yes, you can get to Surf City in two hours from Philadelphia in a car. In fact, you can do it in an hour and a half. But the goal when touring isn’t the destination, it’s the experience of the journey - seeing the landscape fade between urban and rural, exploring new places at a mentally digestible pace, and seeing the parts of America not homogenized by the Interstate Highway System. It’s fun, and anyone can do it.

Since I think a lot of the confused responses I get from people about my touring hobby stems from them not knowing what what it is, I thought I’d take some time to write up an explanation of bike touring. Read on, and as I complete the tour over the course of the weekend, I am going to update this with our experiences.

Touring for Dummies

Bike touring is traveling long distances by bike. This sounds simple, but can be done many ways. Some people travel with a crew helping them - these are usually charity fundraisers of some sort - while others are self supported. Some carry lots of gear with them, others travel unloaded, staying in hotels and buying anything they need along the way.

I’m an advocate of self-supported, loaded touring. I’ve had the opportunity to participate in supported tours, but in my opinion, that takes a lot of the adventure out of it. I enjoy touring because there is planning and unexpected challenges that come up that test your versatility. With an inflexible route and a support crew, there is none of that. You just bike along the dotted line on the map. At my local gym there is a cycling machine with a high-def LCD screen that makes it look like you’re biking outside. I don’t use this machine for the same reason that I don’t do supported touring.

Loaded touring is bike backpacking. But it’s better than backpacking, because you can cover a lot more distance and since you rarely stray far from civilization, you don’t have to carry several days worth of food (provided you’re willing to occasionally deign to consume food of the fast variety). Camping is fun and seems cheaper than hotels, although I’m sure if I compared the amount of money I’ve spent on camping gear to the cost of your average rural motel times the number of nights I’ve been camping, it would be a wash.

What roads do you take?

This is always one of the first questions I get about touring. People act like interstates are the only way to get around. This notion is logical - while the Interstate Highway system accounts for around 1% of the total road mileage in America, almost a third of our miles are logged there. Most people know only the streets around their city and the interstates to escape it. Beyond that, well, that’s what Garmin is for.

So while the 46 thousand miles of the Interstate Highway system are off limits¹, there are over 4 million miles of roads that criss-cross the country, a vast majority of them imminently bikeable. The problem is, of course, that there is no way to determine a road’s bike friendliness from a map. Roads are weight-coded according to the density of their traffic, but what about their shoulder? This information is oddly omitted.

To solve this problem, many bike organizations make maps specifically for touring cyclists. The most prominent, the Adventure Cycling Association, sells maps of popular, bike friendly routes all around the country. The maps include detailed map sections and cue sheets for travel in either direction, with details about other bikable roads and alternative routes if you want to take them.

However, just because we ride a 19th century invention doesn’t mean we want to use 19th century navigational tools. So in March of last year, Google helped us leapfrog into the 21st by adding biking directions to Google Maps. Now, whenever you get directions, a simple click of a button generates a bike friendly route which not only includes roads but bike trails and lanes in most US cities.

There are problems. On one occasion, Google directed me onto a collapsed bridge, and on several others it put me on what can only very loosely be called bike paths. One seemed more like a sand pit. The main problem is that while Google Maps understands bikes, it doesn’t understand that not all bikes are the same. A road bike cant ride on gravel, period. There needs to be a way you can tell it to avoid these types or paths.

But I nitpick. Overall, the new biking directions have been a boon to touring cyclists. They have opened up tons of new places to explore, and Saturday morning, Eoin and I are doing just that. We’ll be traveling through the Pine Barrens in New Jersey and then to the coast where we will dip our feet in the water before turning our bikes around and heading back to Philadelphia. I hope to continue to blog the trip as we travel or, failing that, I will post time-delayed updates once I get home.

1. This is yet another area that American Exceptionalism is at risk - this year, China is set to overtake the US in the size of it’s intercity expressway system, their equivalent of our Interstate Highway program.

Bush as president made sense. A country with citizens this profoundly stupid deserve him. Now we have accidentally elected an intelligent president, refused to implement any of his policies except in their most watered-down forms, and proceeded to hate him for it. It’s heartbreaking to watch.

Perhaps Palin in 2012 is inevitable. We’ve certainly gotten stupider since 2008. Like how telling a child not to play with fire isn’t enough - you have to let them go ahead and burn themselves.

The Muslims are coming! They are going to build a “community center” near Ground Zero. I case you forgot (and your car’s bumper promised you never would!), Ground Zero is the Hallowed Ground where Muslims killed a bunch of people. Ever since then, we hold the ground sacred and don’t allow anything but the most somber and respectful establishments to operate there, such as Christian Churches, bank headquarters (they’d never do anything to destroy America), one hundred thousand Muslim-run hot dog stands, and of course strip clubs.

The Imam who is behind this, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a seriously suspicious character. Less than a year ago, his wife was on Fox News [sic] where Patriot Laura Ingraham (no, not Dr. Laura, the younger one) referred to him as a moderate Muslim and praised his efforts to open this community center. Today he is a Muslim extremist who wants to do something comparable to placing a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust museum. That’s some serious radicalization in just one (midterm election) year. Just imagine how radical he will be by October 2012!

Besides, it’s just insensitive! When members of a religion do something bad, it’s the entire religion’s fault. They should be more sensitive to the victims, kind of like how we don’t build Catholic Churches around elementary schools anymore*. To do otherwise would be caving to their evil demands, and you’d have to be a lilly-livered effete east-coast liberal to do that.

They should build it somewhere else - if for no other reason than to avoid violating our Constitution’s guarantee of Free Exercise of Religion Unless It Bothers Anyone In Any Way Or Involves Brown People. Just relocate! But not Staten Island (still too close)… or Kentucky (they’re always about eight years behind, so it’s still too soon)… or Georgia (too religious already)… or California (too gay). But somewhere else. Less hallowed ground. I’m not saying Alaska but we’re all thinking it.

There, that’s settled. Now if we can just get rid of those Mexicans. And Iranians. And Koreans. BE AFRAID

*shamelessly stolen from The Daily Show last night.

Destruction:

Killing is better than cleaning. An analysis of an oil spill in 2002 off the coast of Spain found that, “of the thousands [of birds] that were cleaned, most died within a few days, and only 600 lived and were able to be released into the wild. According to a British study of the spill, the median lifespan of a bird that was cleaned and released was only seven days.”

BP is using the disaster to distract from another ecological disaster. A 2005 refinery explosion in Texas City, TX released 36,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides and 17,000 pounds of benzene as they tried to replace a faulty doohickey. The details aren’t important, the point is they knew they could avoid public scrutiny by acknowledging the spill while the Deepwater Horizon was still bleeding oil.

Incompetence:

Exxon, Chevron, and BP CEOs all admit their local disaster plans for the Gulf region include provisions for saving walruses. Walruses, of course, do not live anywhere near the Gulf, unless you count…

Rush Limbaugh, who brushes off the oil spill since more oil is spilled every year in Nigeria than in the Gulf. He’s, of course, right. 1.5 tons have been spilled there in the past 50 years, and unlike in America, there are no laws on civil liability, and no accounts set up to compensate victims whose livelihoods have been destroyed. I’m waiting for his explanation on why this makes it okay. On his fourth wife, I suppose he’s an expert on failed drilling attempts.

In the starkest example of Congressional curmudgeonry since Ted Stevens told us about the series of tubes, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Flyover state) announced this week that, although he has never used an ATM, he does buy his own groceries and therefore knows about the holograms.

The holograms, you know, those things on the products that the colored fella at the grocery store scans with the red laser. He’s not out of touch!

According to the New York Times, in a recent briefing on the BP oil spill, BP senior vice president Kent Wells said, “there’s just no way to measure it.”

No way, Kent? Let’s see, in order to make an accurate estimation of the spill, you’d need to know exactly how big the hole is, and how quickly the oil is coming out of it. If only we could get that information.

Oh, turns out we can. From this video, recorded by BP earlier this week. They’ve had access to video like this for weeks but have been refusing requests to share it. And for good reason - independent analysts say that, based on the video, oil is spilling at anywhere from four to twenty times faster than the official estimate of 5000 barrels (210000 gallons) a day.

Of course there are all kind of complicating factors - some of the spill is methane, it assumes a constant spill rate, and the fact that there is currently a second leak in addition to this one. So in a way, BP is right, there is no way to measure it exactly. But we can make some pretty accurate guesses, and their conservative one ain’t it.

One of the (many) nagging doubts in my head as 2010 starts is the ability of Apple to deliver on the hype of their mythical tablet computer. iSlate, iTablet, Magic Slate, iGuide, whatever you want to call it - I just can’t see it being that useful.

From the rumors, it seems like Apple is prepping an iPod Touch on steroids, complete with ten-inch touchscreen and an always-on data connection. It will probably have an App Store, maybe even the same one as the iPhone. And it will be used to read books.

I don’t mean to insult it on that ground alone, but I have to question a device whose main feature is to do something that, statistically speaking, most people hate. Don’t get me wrong - I love reading - but I am also painfully aware that most people don’t. And I can’t imagine the masses paying $1000 (the rumored price, according to the Wall Street Journal) so they can read. Even Twilight.

Of course, it will do other things as well. It will do everything the iPhone does, including playback of video, web browsing, and game playing. It’s gonna look cool, and it’s interface is going to be bad ass. It’s going to be able to do a lot - but what do we want to do with it?

It’s going to be a “Kindle killer” I’ve heard, in what I consider a disturbing trend to label all new electronics devices murderous villains. How come every new product has to violently assault an existing product in order to be considered successful? Can’t it just be a new, better thing? But I digress.

Holding a ten inch device is going to be weird. Either you will hold it with one hand behind the screen, which will mean you have to only control it with one hand, or you will hold it with both hands and use your thumbs, which won’t reach everywhere on the screen. You could place it on a table, but the viewing angle will be bizarre and you’ll have to hunch over it like a Mongoloid*.

I feel like whenever you’re using the device, you will be thinking one of two things:

1. This would be just as easy on my iPhone, without the need for this expensive second device, or
2. this would be a lot easier on my computer.

Apple has killed tablet projects exactly for reasons like this before, so I have to hope that this time they’ve figured out how to get it right. Allegedly Steve Jobs has been working almost exclusively on this project since he returned to Apple, and he is very happy with the product. But Steve was also very excited about the Apple Cube and both revisions of the AppleTV, which ultimately failed in the market.

Microsoft’s Steve Balmer showed off a tablet PC on Wednesday at the CES trade show. Didn’t hear about it? Yeah that’s because it was boring as hell. Microsoft has been flogging the tablet concept for what’s going on ten years now, failing spectacularly at generating significant consumer interest.

I want to be wrong here, after all, I love Apple and I have a job now so I could probably afford it. So, Apple, impress me.

* I’m not sure if the term Mongoloid is offensive. If it is, I’m sorry. I’m sure Mongols are good people, with exceptional posture.

What I did:

• Visited Seattle for the New Year.
• Traveled to Vancouver in the snow.
• Fell in love with a girl.
• Hiked Blood Mountain alone in the frost.
• Celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans for the fourth year in a row.
• Hiked in the F.D. Roosevelt Park with my dad.
• UrbanHiked all over Atlanta.
• Quit my job after 3 years.
• Learned Objective-C.
• Bought a ton of bike gear.
• Biked the Shenandoah National Park.
• Biked the C&O Towpath to DC.
• Visited the Smithsonian Museums of American History, Natural History, the National Art Gallery, and the National Zoo.
• Helped Mary study chemistry in Baltimore.
• Biked to New York.
• Met author TJ Jackson Lears; slept in his yard.
• Watched a live taping of the Daily Show.
• Had a mind-blowing experience in Central Park.
• Performed stand-up at an NYC comedy club.
• Took a bus back to Atlanta.
• Crashed on friends’ couches.
• Sold almost all my possessions.
• Found a new job in DC.
• Moved into a row house in Columbia Heights.

What I learned:

• Nice people are everywhere. “Southern hospitality” is a myth - “Universal hospitality” is the reality. Life is hard and if we’re not nice to each other, nothing works.
• The human body is at it’s best when pushed to the brink. If you’re not regularly breathing heavy, you’re not living enough.
• You’re capable of more than you think, if you can put yourself in the situation where failure isn’t the easy way out. Force yourself out of your comfort zone, so you have to fight your way back in.
• The mind loves confirmation - be skeptical, and seek opposing viewpoints.
• Cold weather isn’t so bad. Just wear more clothes.
• The body of human knowledge is like a beach, and in our brain we have, at best, a handful of sand from which we construct our worldview. Don’t be surprised we all disagree from time to time. We’ve got different sand.

I learned a lot, but not enough. Here’s to a happy and fulfilling 2010!

For weeks I sent emails to companies advertising job openings on craigslist, with dismal results. I sent dozens of well-written, thoughtful emails hyping the skills and qualifications that would make me an ideal candidate for the specific job for which I was applying. And I didn’t hear word one back.

I’ll be honest - it was depressing. Applying for jobs can be very stressful because you’re making your first, and possibly only, impression in what can be a perilous medium. How formal should you be? Should you use a salutation? (I say no - you’ve already named the recipient in the To: field, leave it at that.) Does the email body act as a cover letter, or should you attach a cover letter separately? The process is not incredibly well defined, and on top of that, there are all kinds of easy mistakes you can make - forgetting to attach a file, copy and pasting some text from another application without changing some important text, and of course the everyday grammar and spelling mistakes.

I finally heard back from what I thought was the most unlikely job - one I had applied for not more than twenty minutes prior. More than that, the job hadn’t been posted for more than a couple hours.

After thinking about it, and reading that the ratio of job applicants to job openings is at an all-time high, I realized how important timing is. As someone who has posted jobs on craigslist before, I know how overwhelming the response can sometimes be. So the lesson I learned is, don’t even bother with jobs that have been posted for more than a couple days. This is especially true with unskilled or semiskilled labor jobs - their inbox is full, and they’re just going find a qualified candidate in the first ten or so applications and ignore the rest.

From then on, my goal was to jump on all jobs as soon as they were posted. Craigslist can make this really easy if you have an RSS reader that updates frequently - just go to the “Jobs” section in your city, search for some keyword (mine was “PHP”) and then at the bottom of the page, there is a little RSS link. Click it for an RSS feed for just that search. Then, whenever a new job gets posted with that keyword, your reader will let you know and you can respond quickly.