Walk Across America… one day at a time
I hitchhiked from Boston to Anchorage in the summer of 1976. I bicycled across the United States from Everett, Washington to Washington, DC in the summer of 1996 and kept a daily journal.
It’s now time to walk across.
This idea is the brainchild of Hutch DeLoach. I saw his mention on twitter about motivating yourself to get out and run each day. His trick is to log the miles you run, on a map!
“Run a virtual race and track your progress on a state or US map. (I ran from the East coast to the West coast and read on the internet about some of the small towns I was running through.)” — Hutch DeLoach
That is brilliant! I actually think about it each morning as I go out the door at 6:00am to do my four miles… “Where would I be now if I was tracking this?” Let’s get this straight from the beginning. I’m a walker, not a runner. I walk from 6:00am to 7:30am every morning, so this isn’t a spead contest. On Sundays I do six miles.
So that’s my new project. I’m going to start logging my morning jaunts and make the stats available on my SharePoint site. That’s where you, dear reader, come in.
As you probably know by now, I’m not a geek. I love gadgets, robots, technology and stuff, but when it comes to doing the down and dirty, you’ve probably got me hands down. I’d like to have people create routes for me on Bing or Google maps to show where I’d be at the end of each day.
There are thoughts of me even going to some of the places as we track my progress along the way. Can you imagine when I hit a specific city on the map, I’ll fly in and give a presentation and actually get to do four miles from there. There’s so much possibility here!
I’ll make the data available so that you can access it and feed your app. If I can figure out a way, I’ll make it available through SharePoint web services so you can consume the data automatically. I’ll also create links to any projects that would like to use the data.
What columns would you like to see in order to track this? A typical log will have this as fields as a minimum:
- Date
- Time of Day
- Distance
- Time
What else would you want to see in a log that will be interesting.
I’m very excited about this. It really does get me out the door in the morning. Thank you, Hutch DeLoach. I wouldn’t have thought of it without you.
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- Walk Across America... one day at a time
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Where to eat. If you are going to ‘Walk across America’ Mark you need to be considering how to take advantage of the best regional fare. Food. You are going to be hungry, and you should only eat the best. Where do Sharepointers think you should eat when you travel through their town? Since your route above goes right through my house, I’ll save you a seat at our table when you get that far!
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the mention. I’m glad you found the idea as motivational as I did. From time to time I blogged about the towns I passed through and thought you might get a chuckle out of this entry:
http://hutchdeloach.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/where-in-the-world-is-theba-arizona/
I’ll be watching your progress so keep up the good work! Here’s to your continued motivation! :-)
Kindest Regards,
Hutch DeLoach
http://www.hutchdeloach.com
Along with places to eat you should note any places to visit. If you gave advanced warrning of the towns you were coming up on then readers who live in the area could suggest places of interest to visit, or share interesting facts and tidbits.
For example if you go through Cleveland, like it looks like you would, you would want to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or eat in the Warehouse District, or wander through the shops in the Coventry area.
If you do ever visit any of the towns maybe a blog entry about the town and the people you meet would be cool, or if anyone has any cool SHarePoint Projects going too. Especially if you hit any of the smaller towns that never get SharePoint events. I live in Youngstown, not a small town, but I always have to go to Pittsburgh or Cleveland an hour and a half away to attend any events.
Just a thought. :)
Trudy