A quick update on my previous post...

For the tl;dr* crowd: I heard that the state DOT was taking over maintenance of the CW Trail. There's a meeting at Thurston Co Parks HQ on Sat.

There are green fliers along the southern leg of the trail saying that Thurston Co Public Works is taking over trail maintenance from the Parks Dept. No more information than that, unfortunately. (Oh, and the Thurston County website is so very awful.)

My previous engagement for Saturday has been canceled (long story), so I may be going to the meeting mentioned in my previous post. Or I might bike in the Earth Day ride. Or do yardwork. :)

*too long; didn't read

This morning on my commute I was stopped by a nice woman with a couple of dogs -- I see her fairly often in the mornings (through the winter, her dogs had little headlights!) -- and she invited me to a meeting to organize a trail advocacy group for the Chehalis Western Trail.

Apparently, budget cuts at the county are basically closing the entire parks department (News Tribune, Nisqually Valley News), and the management of the trail in particular is being handed over to the DOT. (That 2nd bit I don't have any direct info about.)

So folks are getting together to keep the trail useful by pedestrians and cyclists.

They're meeting Saturday April 18 at 11am at the Thurston County Parks Office, and will be talking to Kerry Hibdon, the Thurston County Capital Projects Manager. Unfortunately, I can't be there, so I thought I'd pass this along to the OlyBlog community

If anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to pass them along to the dog-walker who gave me the flier the next time I see her. (I don't have any other contact information!)

Not exactly Oly-specific, but I just found an article about this WWII British poster that I think could be a great personal motto.

And it's striking graphic design, too!

From another article:

Back in the spring of 1939, it was an anonymous civil servant who was entrusted with finding the slogan for a propaganda poster intended to comfort and inspire the populace should, heaven forbid, the massed armies of Nazi Germany ever cross the Channel.

Astonishing.

Our street is getting to the consistency of a slushee with ice chunks in it. chad360 & I have spent some time out there shoveling -- no sidewalk, but we've worked on the edge of the roadway, and he did some cleaning on the roundabout at the corner.

But it's turning into water pretty fast, and the drains aren't draining very well...I can't imagine we're alone in this, either. Anybody know what happens now? (Other than, well duh, flooding.)

Oh, I can't wait until it's gone and I can get back on my bike! I tried riding around our neighborhood this afternoon. Some spots had "tracks" in between berms of snow, others were clear, and some were slushy messes that I had to get off and walk through. Bleh.

Because if I don't start, it won't happen.... Here's a huge batch of articles on online community:

• Some community tips for 2007
• The Crunchland Method (Scroll down a bit)
• Design for Community (out of print book)
• Yahoo! Design Patterns: Reputation
• Building an Online Community
• Community: from little things big things grow
• Develop Effective Forum Leadership (check the related articles?)
• Got any stats on lurkers vs contributors?
• Common pitfalls of building social web applications (see also parts II & III)

These come from some folks who have run or are running fairly large online communities, some of which have been going for quite a long time.

The point being that I think OlyBlog as a community could stand to do some learning from these sources. (I almost jumped into the anonymity question but never did get my thoughts together.) After almost 10 years of web communities, there actually is some best practice available. :)

More to come, hopefully. I am notoriously lousy about following up on these sorts of vague big ideas, so no promises.

Yesterday afternoon & this morning were a bit like bicycling through a warm sponge. In a good way, if that makes any sense. As everyone probably knows by now, we are heading into a couple of days of potentially record-breaking warm weather.

Although at the moment, all that hot sunny weather looks entirely theoretical. It's warmer, warm enough that I wore a t-shirt, no jacket, but still quite overcast. I guess the weather peeps know what they're talking about, though.

So don't forget to bike safely: dress lightly, carry (and drink!) plenty of water, and take breaks when you need to. And an extra tip: don't give blood & then expect to ride later in hot weather. I learned that the hard way last summer! I ended up begging a ride home from a co-worker.

On that note: my bikes are both a little too oddly shaped to carry on the bus (grumble grumble grumble) but I do have a couple of co-workers with larger vehicles who have standing offers to take me & my bike home in an emergency. Or if chad360 is around, he can come get me. Or, according to company policy, I think I could check out a company car, although I wouldn't want to put my bike in it! Or, worst case, I can bring my bike in the building and get myself home on the bus.

It's good to have some backup plans, because sometimes stuff happens. So far I've needed a ride 3 times: the aforementioned day, a rainy evening, and the day I almost got hit by a semi on the way in. That time, I thought I was fine, then somebody asked me about it, and I pretty much dissolved.

Anyhow, be safe out there!

(I missed a few days, I know. Didn't ride at all yesterday or Saturday; Sunday's ride was actually kinda lame. Freezing cold, blown almost sideways.)

So I'm writing this series as part of my Bike Commute Contest experience, but I don't tend to take the "Contest" part of the thing very seriously. I just don't ride anywhere near enough to be in the running for any sort of prize. The first year I rode, the guy who won was biking from Olympia to DUPONT. Yeah. Not ever ever ever going to beat that, or even get in the general neighborhood of it.

And there's always one crappy day where I just say "eh" and skip the ride, so there goes consistency. (Plus consistency award ties get broken by distance IIRC, so we're back to that.)

But...I can count all of this for two other contests! At work, we're doing this 10K steps a day challenge, which even includes a "friendly" competition with a few other credit unions in town. Bike time counts, too. So with that and some very serious gardening on the weekends, I'm averaging the equivalent of 18,800+ steps per day. I'm sure someone who hiked 10 miles is probably going to kick my ass, but I'm feeling pretty good about it anyway.

Then, I'm in this online bike challenge group as part of another website community, and this summer the founder has announced a "streak" challenge, so whoever rides the most consecutive days wins a super-cool GPS bike computer. (Drool drool drool) Again, I can't win for distance (although last month & so far this month I'm right around #10), but I can definitely be consistent, assuming I can tough out the "eh" days.

(Critter report: saw a lizard today, which I narrowly avoided rolling right over, and some squirrels. I can't believe I didn't include squirrels in yesterday's post!)

Yesterday I had a thing after work that involved biking out on Martin Way & then Carpenter Road. I had almost forgotten how squirrelly it can be riding on really busy highway-like roads. I love biking, but I'm not exactly what you'd call the most expert cyclist. (As chad360 can attest to.)

Yes, there is a bike lane on Martin Way; however, there's also quite the dip by Top Foods: a long downhill followed by a long uphill, and the traffic zips by at (I would guess) 45+ MPH. So I stuck to the right edge of the bike lane, more in the shoulder than the lane. Heading east, I got to a pretty nice clip myself on the downhill, which is fun if slightly unnerving.

(Not including dogs on leashes)

• Cats. This morning I saw a black cat & a big orange and white kitty. The most "OMG ponies!!!1!" (cute) thing I've ever seen on the trail is a guy with some sort of harness/carrier thing on his shoulders with a cat perched in it.
• Birds. Mostly, I just hear them or only see them out of the corner of my eye, but one day last week I had to dodge around a pair of ducks who just weren't going anywhere. And a few weeks ago, a pair of (???) swooped across the trail right in front of my face. I swear I saw a belly and underside of wings on one of them.
• Bunnies! Have already seen a few this spring; they dart across the trail and are gone almost by the time you realize they're there.
• Deer. Last winter (December?) a deer and I startled each other in almost-dark on the trail west of Fones Road.
• And this morning I saw raccoons for the first time, between Boulevard & Dayton.

Four of them, off in the distance, and I went through one of those mental checklists as I got closer: too big for bunnies; wrong behavior for cats; wrong shape for dogs.

As I approached, they dove off into the bushes, then 2 came back out and did a perfect imitation of old-style highwaymen. One stood up on hind legs, drawing himself very tall, while the was on all fours standing across the path. But I zipped by them, leaving them turning their heads to look at me, then scampering away.