April 2006 Archives
Location: C&O Canal, Mile Marker 143 to Mile Marker 133
Mileage: about 21
Average Speed: 8.5 MPH
Max Speed: Not Sure
Notes:
Fifth trip overall on the C&O Canal. I started at the hamlet of Little Orleans. I first headed West about 2 miles until I made it to mile marker 143, which is where I had stopped my last trip. After that, I turned around and headed East until I made it to mile marker 133. This section of the path is still very remote, and I saw only 2 other bikers. I completed the long windy journey though the Paw Paw Bends. The locks in this section were pretty interesting. They either had lockhouse foundations or lockhouse replicas in place. There was also a damn of the Canal near lock 56 and at this point, the canal got very wide for a few miles. This section also marks the beginning of the Western Maryland Rail Trail, which runs parallel to the canal path for several miles. The weather was a bit cold and it had rained earlier in the morning, but I was fairly comfortable once the sun started to peak out about an hour into the trip. Wildlife was sparse, the only notable sighting were 2 Canadian Geese who weren't too happy with me infringing on their right to be on the trail. I felt pretty good on the bike, especially for the first time out in a season. My leg which has been giving me problems performed pretty well, although I may be looking for a new bike seat soon. I had hoped to grab lunch at Bill's in Little Orleans after the trip, but he wasn't in. I ended up eating at an Exxon station/diner about 6 miles up the road (Near Interstate 68). I think my next section of the trail will require a start at Hancock.
As always, I added several waypoints to my GPS repository for the C&O Canal.
Notable Landmarks:
Little Orleans
End of the Paw Paw Bends
15 Mile Campground
Capacon Junction Campground
Locks 57 through 54
Fifteen Mile Creek Aqueduct
Sideling Hill Creek Aqueduct
(Note: some of the highlighted route does not show because of poor GPS coverage in those areas.)
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Tool to track loans, etc.. from Prosper.com
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Converts Cell Phone for use within existing house wiring.
I created a public Google Calendar with the 2006 schedule for the Altoona Curve if anyone is interested in connecting to it. The iCal address is:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/uusde9jl1q0voko2b1bhm63i88@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
Creating it wasn't too difficult. I exported the Curve's schedule in text format from their website into Excel, did a little doctoring, and then imported it into the new Google Calendar.
I wish it would be that easy to get my work calendar into it. Stupid Outlook won't export its calendar without crashing the system.
The idea behind Prosper.com intrigues me. Consider it a P2P money-loaning service, cutting out the banks as middleman. Prosper uses credit reports to determine your credit rating and based upon that, users file for or fund loans through a bidding process (think eBay for personal loans). Users with bad credit have higher rates and vice versa, just like in real life. Risk is spread because the loan isfilled by small amounts from several bidders rather than one person backing the full amount.
Being somewhat cautious, I found a loan listing for someone with fairly decent credit and bid to fund $100 of the loan at 10%. The listing ended yesterday and was filled, so it looks like things are a "go" on it. I'll report back as things develop.
It looks like I'll be dropping Verizon land-line service in the near future. Does anyone know of a device that lets you plug in your existing home phone wiring into a cell phone so that I can use my old phones over the cell network? I could have sworn that I saw something like that a few years back.
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A virtual clipboard for between computers, www.cl1p.net/whatever
