Nerd Heaven

I love maps especially when I am planning a trip. But what I love more is looking at Google Earth. I can place a cursor on any point along my route and I get the elevation. My house is at 926 ft. If I run the 3.5 miles down to the river, the elevation drops to 744 ft or a loss of 182 ft. It is tough for me to go up the hill, which I won't do if there is a north wind. My country route peaks out at 968 ft, only 44 ft just a little over a mile from my house. Seems steeper than that but maybe I'm a wuss. The steepest hill I used to tackle, was the 'arb hill' which is about .75 miles long but climbs 170 ft.

When I was in Gagliano,Italy (in the Appennines) I'd try to run to Secinaro and back-only a 5 mile round trip but too hard for this one. It involved a 391 foot climb for 2.5 miles. I had to take several breaks going there but coming back was easy.

Looking at the Cinque Terre region, our path between Vernazza and Corniglia had us climbing 700 feet or so. Google Earth has a neat feature in which you can tilt the map. Instead of just looking overhead, you can look at it from the side as if you were in a boat. Those hills look especially impressive from that angle.

Today was a Y day even though the weather turned out much nicer than predicted. I might go to a poetry reading tonight.