Russ Nelson

27.94 km 91671.47 feet 17.36 mi 5760.00 seconds 96.00 minutes 1.60 hours 10.85 mi/hr

Went out through cow country. Almost got passed by a tractor. Had to pass over some cow muck trail across the road. Ew yuck. But the southern part of the ride goes through some pretty sections, with woods and pasture and corn fields.

On the way back, I did some mapping of the brand-new townhouses at SUNY Potsdam.

34.39 km 112820.01 feet 21.37 mi 8073.00 seconds 134.55 minutes 2.24 hours 9.53 mi/hr

Back home again. Still haven't blogged about the FGC rides, nor about the ride I did in Amsterdam. Have yet to download the photos OR track from the latter. Lame, I know. But I've started to ride again at home, so here we go!

Rode up to Norfolk today. Finally managed to get to their history center at a time when it's open (Tu/Th afternoons). Saw some interesting artifacts. Definitely a folk museum. While in the back, I heard the New York & Ogdensburg doing a train movement. Scurried out the front, hopped on the bike, and raced the train to Norwood. Caught it with just a minute to spare.

So, I got hired by Cloudmade as a Regional Community Ambassador for the Northeast USA. It was our job to set up mapping parties in the cities in our regions, go attend the party, and help build a community of ambassadors. Didn't work. Was plain to me that we weren't meeting our goals through this method. I thought we had made a plan to do something different, but that didn't happen. Instead, management laid off nearly the whole team.

Anyway, I'm still not ready to go back to consulting, so I've got a few feelers out for jobs and am looking for more. Can do any sort of programming work, but am best in Python / Perl / PHP / C / x86 assembly.

Got back from the Quaker Gathering in Blacksburg, Virginia yesterday. Yes, I ran the bicycling workshop. I didn't keep a close track of my rides, but I did at least 12-15 miles every day.

After four years of running the workshop, I had my first accident. Two riders were riding side by side on a rail-trail, and a local bicyclist (possibly speeding -- the posted limit is 15MPH) came down the other side and there was no room to swerve. Two of our guys went down. One had a cut and swollen hand, and the other got a cut and some road rash.

And, more sadly, a Quaker bicyclist got killed on campus. Bonnie Tinker was riding down a hill and a dump truck turned right just in front of her. She went down and under it. Split her helmet and her skull. I got to see the aftermath about two minutes later. Not pleasant. 'Nuff said.