Favorite Things: May 2018 Edition

New series of monthly (my intentions at least) things I'm really enjoying...

Ride Report

Ride Report is an app which uses your phone's location data to automatically keep track of your bike rides. For each ride it asks you a simple survey "How was your ride." After collecting enough survey data from rides Ride Report can generate a map showing the worst and best rides for a city. Some cities are even using this data to make better transportation decisions.

I'm not sure if this app will work at a smaller scale for a city like The Dalles, but the idea is very cool. The more people the use it the more helpful it will be. At this point I've only ever said my rides were great and being the only user in town this is very unscientific. I highly recommend using this app for fun and better city planning or at least better informed fellow cyclists.

Libby

Libby is an app which allows you to borrow ebooks through your local library. For some reason it is much easier for me to get through a book quickly if I have it as an ebook on my phone. Libby combines the convenience of ebooks with the price of the public library (AKA free). The ereader itself has a different interface but is pretty comparable to Google Play Books and Kindle in my opinion.

There are a few drawbacks to getting your books this way however. Popular new books have very long wait times. If you place a hold on a hot new piece of fiction you might have to wait for six months plus. Also, the duration of the loan is shorter than a normal book from the library. Only 2 weeks. So if you're like me and it takes you a while to work your way through a novel this might not always work for you or you'll have to be interrupted in the middle of your story (this happened to me while reading Carrie).

If you use a public library (or at least The Wasco County Library) and have a device to read ebooks Libby is wealth worth trying out.

Good Fruit Grower

This article and video interview of my cousin Nick Anderson reminds me of how blessed I was to grow up on a farm. Having a family life that requires you to learn how to work and parents who teach you how to have fun doing it is one of the greatest gifts a child can have in my mind. I can't really take my kids to work with me so this one of those virtues I'll have to pass on to my kids some other way.

Comments

How to not dread running.

It’s warming up and the sun has been shining (kind of). You could almost say it was running season. I have to admit however, at the when it first started warming up this year I was dreading starting to run. Memories of last year's misery haunted me and I was seriously contemplating giving the whole thing up. Ultimately I did give running one another shot. So how are things going this year? Pretty darn well actually. Better than ever even! This year I’ve earned PRs for every distance Strava keeps track of, I haven’t suffered any injuries and I’m genuinely enjoying myself. This is much better than last year. Last year I had a short and fairly miserable season, plagued with injuries. Last year I had a few goals tied up with running . I wanted to run longer and faster than I ever had. I had really detailed goals for each week of the summer, how far I should be running and at what pace. I tried to make sure I never broke the “10% rule” adding too m...

Why I'm running for the parks board

Two months ago now I declared my candidacy for election to Northern Wasco County Parks and Recreation District Board of Directors Position Number Five. A mouth full of a title. I really enjoy our local parks and have no major qualms with the parks district or the current board. They have done a fine job maintaining and improving existing parks and programs. So there's question you are probably asking and I am required to ask myself. Why am I running? Democracy requires contest What is the point of an election with only one candidate? Without contested races there is almost no need for real public discourse unless some controversy springs up. This is all too common for local elections in Wasco County. Uncontested races are akin to a business handing a job to the first and only applicant. This wouldn't work in the private sector and it shouldn't work for public offices. Surely the citi...

About goals and failing them.

Earlier this year I made a few goals for myself. One was to run . A lot. The other was to write , a lot more than I have. Sorry to say I haven’t kept either of these really well. Sometimes life get in the way, sometimes things don’t work out the way you hoped, sometimes you set the wrong goals and sometimes you just plain fail. I’d like to say life got in the way and things just happened, but I have to be honest. Running Major failures in the running department. As you can see from the graph below, things were going pretty well for a time. Right on track. However, around the 30k per week mark I started to have nagging shin splints. Not so bad that I was ready to give up running (the proper cure for shin splints) but bad enough I knew I should back off. So I did, only to later end up with shin splints before during and after every running session. It was finally bad enough for me to realize I needed to lay it off...

Mr. Polehn writes

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