Oh the Places You'll Go! (From NoMi, by Bike, in Fifteen Minutes)

Post, image, and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.

Over on the Deets, Ed Kohler often maps out his running routes, whether it's in NoMi or across the bridge.  That practice, and the RunKeeper app on my smartphone got me thinking:  how can we use these programs to get more people biking in NoMi?  Since most people tend to want to get to wherever they're going in fifteen to thirty minutes, I thought I'd start a bit of a social experiment here on NXNS.  Where can you go, by bike, from various points in NoMi in fifteen minutes?

For the inaugural trial run, I started from my place,

hopped on to the river trail, and wound up...

...by the Guthrie.

I stopped as soon as the application told me my fifteen minutes were up.  I traveled the distance of roughly 2.75 miles in fifteen minutes, and I went at what for me was not top speed.  Looking at the map, quite a bit of downtown is also readily accessible with a 15-minute bike ride.  If only 26th Avenue were connected to the river, I could have zipped along even faster.

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day, perfect for biking - in the fifties, sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and a light breeze.  It occurred to me as my phone beeped and chirped at me every few minutes that the Runkeeper app would probably cause Henry David Thoreau to roll over in his grave.  With such a beautiful day, why ruin things by trying to quantify them?  Well, sorry Hank.  I'm trying to raise awareness about biking in my community.  This will be an ongoing project over the summer, especially to celebrate the addition of even more Nice Ride bike kiosks in NoMi.