Aesthetics of Everywhere

Bike to Work Day is this Friday! There will be pit stops all over DC and beyond with giveaways, food, and drink for anyone who is riding into work. A few of them are even hosting pit stops during the evening commute.

For experienced riders and frequent commuters, be courteous to your fellow riders – many will be attempting to ride into work for the first time. We have to encourage bicycle commuting by making it fun and as stress-free as possible for everyone. Yes, the trails and bike lanes will be more crowded than usual, but it’s Friday. Take it easy.

First time riders, make sure you map out your route beforehand. I often use Google Maps’ bicycling directions but your coworkers may have some suggested routes too. Bicycle maps from the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) are also available here. And don’t be afraid to ask for help if you’re lost. Many cyclists will stop for you and get you back on your way.

To stay safe on the road or trails, be predictable. Signal your turns and remember to also look behind you before passing someone.

While it may be too late for the free t-shirts, go ahead and register at the Bike to Work Day Metro DC website. This will help ensure a more accurate count of riders and help for planning purposes.

Finally, it’ll be in the 70s this Friday. Perfect cycling weather – go ride!

My second week of using Capital Bikeshare was good – I put a bit more mileage on than the last week. I rode 17 miles on the Bikeshare bicycles and about 15 miles on my own bike, but I’m looking to increase my time riding because I’m in training for the Bike MS charity ride in June. I set my goal for Bike MS at 55 miles on Saturday and 50 miles on Sunday, which is more than I’ve ever done on any given day. It’ll be a good challenge for me and I plan to push myself to go on longer rides leading up to the event.

I’m lucky to have a very knowledgeable friend teaching me the ins and outs of road cycling, and I’ve also been learning about bike maintenance and repair (“wrenching”) by just reading and practicing on my own. It’s exciting diving into this new world – though I’ve had a bicycle since I was a child, I never knew much about upkeep or riding position and didn’t think much of it. My boyfriend tells me the bicycle is a simple machine, and really, it is. Putting a little time into learning about how to fix up a bicycle on your own pays off.

I stopped in at the Velocity Bicycle Cooperative in Del Ray, Alexandria last week and I think it’ll be a great space for the neighborhood. They offer shop space for you to work on your bike using their tools, for a small donation. There are also volunteers on-hand to assist, though you are expected to work on your own bicycle. It’s not near enough to me that I could see myself going regularly, but there’s a similar co-op in DC called The Bike House. The Bike House is now at the Annie’s Ace hardware store in Petworth on Saturdays, which is a new hardware store run by very helpful people. And once the Bloomingdale Farmers Market is back in season, The Bike House will be there on Sundays. I’m looking forward to checking that out. In the meantime, lots of riding!

Recently I signed up for a Capital Bikeshare membership to replace one of the bus rides on my commute. Before becoming a member I had only used Bikeshare once, to get home from a friend’s party in the Waterfront area. Here’s my first week using Capital Bikeshare (CaBi):

Saturday. Rode to the Orange line and transferred onto Metro to go to lunch out in Virginia. The bike’s heavy so it felt like more of a workout than when I ride my own bike. It’s also very upright. I made the mistake of not confirming the location of a Bikeshare station before heading out, but managed to find a station by asking a fellow CaBi rider. Docked a couple blocks from the McPherson Square Metro station, where there was some construction going on. Nice weekend morning ride.

Sunday. Didn’t Bikeshare – just rode my own bike around all day. But I did notice that there’s a CaBi station near my friend’s house, which is way up 14th Street. The pace of expansion is pretty sweet, with several new stations planned in Arlington, and some stations on the National Mall!

Monday. Rode to the Orange line again since I work in Tysons Corner and I’m trying to use Bikeshare to regularly replace one leg of my commute. I saw a neighbor leaving for work from the same station. Also, I downloaded the Spotcycle app for finding CaBi stations on the go. The UI is a bit wonky but it’s vastly more useful on a smartphone than the station map on the website, which isn’t mobile-friendly.

Tuesday. Morning ride had the benefit of pleasant weather, though it was warmer than I thought and kept shedding outerwear along the way. Shed scarf as I wait at a stoplight, and so on. Evening ride was non-existent. I was a bit late getting back into the city because I went to happy hour with coworkers and all the docks at my two nearest home stations were full (checked on the Spotcycle app). Walked back from the Metro, but by the time I got there it appeared that a bike-shuffling truck had been by because there were now 4 empty docks.

Wednesday. Morning ride was great – ideal weather, no jacket riding, few cars downtown around the time I left. In the evening I ran a bunch of errands, which was improved by being able to bike between several points. The stations are, at least for me, conveniently placed. Capital Bikeshare even crowdsources suggestions for new locations here: Crowdsourcing Map. A lot of people must have been hanging out in Dupont Circle (or maybe a lot of members live around there?) because the dock was full at the Massachusetts Ave & Dupont Circle station and a couple others on CaBi bikes were waiting for a docking spot to open. After errands I rode home from Dupont with no issues.

Thursday. Again, superb weather. Just cool enough around 7:30am that I wasn’t feeling too warm by the time I got on the Metro. Also discovered one of the best features of Bikeshare – the Rental Statistics on your member page! See total distance traveled, calories burned, CO2 saved, time spent riding… perfect for any data geek like me. Rode back without a hitch after going out with friends.

Friday. Rode a little further in the morning, though it was grey and (relatively) chilly out – saves me a couple of stops on the Metro for not much more effort. The ride back almost didn’t happen. The Spotcycle app told me that there were no docks open at either of my home stations, but I took the chance and rode to my nearest station… full. Then I biked over to the next-closest and there was one spot open!

Week 1 Statistics – or really, 6 days -

• Total Distance: 14.02 miles
• Total Calories Burned: 602.86 calories
• Total CO2 Saved: 9.52 lbs.
• Total Duration (last 200 trips): 2 hours, 52 minutes, 43 seconds

Not bad for what would have been bus rides instead.

Here’s another cyclist’s story of how bikeshare was his ‘gateway drug’ into commuting by bicycle. And, it’s faster than any other mode of transportation within the city.

Who doesn’t love photos of a bicycle derby? The Crystal City Diamond Derby was this past weekend, a fun time with bike polo, several races around the course (with obstacles!), and bikes of all shapes and colors – including a couple riding tandem in the open-class challenge.

Bicycle polo takes some serious skill. By the way, the DC Bike Polo group is hosting a “Beginners Day” this Saturday, March 17 at noon at 13th & D St SE if anyone wants to try it out. I’m told you only need to bring your bicycle and a helmet – you’ll be able to use their mallets and balls.

Big open space – they rented out a parking garage in Crystal City on Saturday for the event.

Cyclists waiting to race.

“Checkpoint: through the van!” One of the ways to get your diamond card stamped in the open-class challenge was to dismount and go with your bike through the van.

Here’s to the end of 2011. It’s been quite a busy and eventful year. I’m pleased with how I’ve been able to keep up with posting what I’ve learned every day, even if I didn’t keep track in June (posting instead about my trip to Korea). One blogging tip I have – especially for longer term projects like my “Everyday Lessons Learned” – is to set aside time to post. Otherwise it’s easy to forget and realize that you’ve fallen behind. If you set a personal schedule of posting and set yourself to it, it’s not hard to keep a blog active.

22: This year was the first year in over 3 decades in which we sentenced fewer than 100 people to death row. From a report by the Death Penalty Information Center, as reported on NPR’s Morning Edition. Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, says one factor in this is crime rates:

This year the murder rate fell to where it was in the 1960s, meaning there are fewer people to charge with capital murder. That’s an enormous drop from the 1990s — when the U.S. executed more inmates than in at least half a century.

23: Did anyone else attempt to read the dictionary as a kid? I’m reminded of my short-lived attempt to read (not necessarily memorize) every word in the dictionary when I see this list of words David Foster Wallace copied out of a dictionary. My bookmark while I read DFW’s Infinite Jest was a sheet of paper on which I wrote all the words he used that I didn’t know the meaning of.

24: Together with the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) forms the Triple Crown of long-distance hiking in the United States.  It’s 3,100 mile long, and runs along part of the North American Continental Divide. A thru-hike (a complete hike of the entire trail from end-to-end) of the CDT takes around six months at a pace of 17 miles/day. Add that one to your bucket list.

25: The East Coast Greenway (ECG) is a 2,500-mile, car-free path planned to go from Calais, Maine to Key West Florida, spanning huge distances with a continuous path. Currently over 25% is already on paths free of motorized vehicles, and the rest consists of interim on-road routes while the rest of the paths are being constructed. The goal for the ECG is to link all the major cities along the way, creating a safe way to travel by non-motorized means between these places on the eastern seaboard.

26: Some of the benefits to having a green roof:

There are many benefits to a green roof including a decrease in heating and cooling costs, which in turn mitigates the urban heat island effect. Other benefits include a natural filter for rain water, an increase in the life span of the roof, a natural habitat for animals and plants and a reduction in dust and smog levels. (via ArchDaily)

27: Detroit is planning a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that will span 110 miles with these dedicated bus lanes. This would make Detroit’s BRT system the largest in the United States. (The largest in the world is currently Jakarta’s TransJakarta BRT system.) Stephanie Lotshaw at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy says that all current BRT systems in the U.S. are under 20 miles.

28: As described in the New Yorker, the Pitch Drop Experiment is the world’s longest running lab experiment, in which University of Queensland physics professor Thomas Parnell poured hot pitch into a glass funnel, tracking how long it would take for a drop to fall. It look eight years for the first drop of pitch to fall, another nine for the second drop, and so far there have been eight drops. The professor currently overseeing the experiment, John Mainstone, predicts the next drop will occur in 2013 – no one has yet witnessed the actual occurrence of a falling drop.

29: Layaway programs are regaining popularity in America with the depressed economy. These allow shoppers to make payments on the full price of a product, only getting the product once it’s paid off. However, there’s usually a $5 service fee, which means that it would typically cost more to buy something on layaway. The option of paying for things on layaway has recently returned to Walmart. Some of the appeal of layaway is that it forces you to put money aside for a specific product, rather than spending it elsewhere, especially because of the sunk cost of the service fee and the extra fee for cancellation if the shopper doesn’t make all the payments.

30: The Teapot Dome Scandal was an incident considered the greatest scandal in American politics, before Watergate. In 1922, during President Harding’s administration, the Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall accepted huge bribes from oil companies to grant them production rights without competitive bidding at Teapot Dome, an oil field in Wyoming. Fall was the first Presidential cabinet member to be imprisoned for his actions while in office.

31: Just to come back around: In 2011, Arlington may have had its first year since the 1950s without a single murder. DC’s also experiencing a decline in murders.

For some other notes in the year-end roundup, keep reading.

Traffic to my blog grew by more than 65% over last year.

Most-read posts on Aesthetics of Everywhere from 2011:

1. Everyday Lessons Learned: May 2011, Week 3
2. T-money for transport and more in Seoul
3. Spa Land in Centum City, Busan (and this one I just typed out quickly on my iPod)
4. Seersucker Social 2011 Photos
5. “Hamtdaa: Together” at Artisphere

Cheers to the New Year! Make 2012 count.

22: A third of all restaurant searches on Google are made on a mobile device. Seems obvious, since people are usually looking for directions or perhaps reading Yelp reviews on their way there, but it’s important to think about if you’re looking to improve your restaurant’s visibility in search results.

23: A good question: How much tech should be allowed in competitive sports?

24: Art has the power to transform lives. See some of the artist JR’s work, especially his famous mural of women’s eyes in Rio de Janiero’s oldest favela. He’s done a similar project in Kibera, Nairobi.

25: Urban planning in Africa still largely follows adopted models from the global north that often don’t apply to African cities. Urbanized areas in Africa need to be assessed according to their own needs. That is the aim of the Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS), an organization that seeks to reform Africa’s urban planning education. Nancy Odendaal, project coordinator of AAPS, explains that the colonial planning strategy that is traditionally taught “simply does not have the built-in flexibility to accommodate the diversity of livelihoods pursued in a typical African city. Conventional urban plans typically criminalize the informal economy, for example, where street vendors are harassed by police and have their incomes curtailed.” Therefore it’s important to understand the unique features and issues associated with each place. An African city should not be designed to imitate the cities of British tradition (or otherwise).

26: Starlings, when they talk, are pretty creepy. They’re loud and spend a lot of time mimicking sounds, including human speech.

27: The Where’s George bill-tracking data is available online. Where’s George is a long-running project to track the movement of dollar bills as they exchange hands throughout the nation. The dollar value of all the tracked bills totals over $1 billion.

28: Cycling more just makes sense. Commuting by bicycle costs less in dollar spend, but takes more of your time. You can think of that extra time spent as an investment in your health. I have a coworker who used to ride his bike two hours a day to work – now that’s active transport. Via Streetsblog, “Can America Afford Not to Bike More?“

29: Map Kibera is a project to map one of Nairobi’s largest slums. The central goals of this crowdsourced effort, as outlined in the Map Kibera proposal, are:

• Raise general awareness of the living conditions in Kibera by mapping, as much as possible the extents of navigable streets and other mappable features within the informal settlement.
• Catalyze the local community and expand the capabilities local participatory mapping, expanding previous work and initiating mapping parties within Africa starting with Kibera.
• Test the licensing mechanisms of multiple mapping platforms by making raw data freely available and uploading that data into multiple systems.

30: A toy that has seen more of the country than I have, in the cross-country adventure Address is Approximate by Tom Jenkins. (Navigation using Google Maps Street View.)

Lots of topics the past two weeks about cool research. I’m deep in data these days, so it’s seeping into all of my thoughts…

8: Before the concept of homesickness came around in the 1750s, it was known as nostalgia and categorized as a medical condition – deaths could be attributed to this condition. Francesca Mari reviews Homesickness: An American History: “By two years in, two thousand soldiers had been diagnosed with nostalgia, and in the year 1865, twenty-four white Union soldiers and sixteen black ones died from it.”

9: A mondegreen is a mishearing of a spoken phrase that results in a more interesting take on the intended phrase. Here’s the origin of the mondegreen:

The term “mondegreen” was coined by Sylvia Wright in a 1954 Atlantic article. As a child, young Sylvia had listened to a folk song that included the lines “They had slain the Earl of Moray/And Lady Mondegreen.” As is customary with misheard lyrics, she didn’t realize her mistake for years. The song was not about the tragic fate of Lady Mondegreen, but rather, the continuing plight of the good earl: “They had slain the Earl of Moray/And laid him on the green.” (Source)

10: New research suggests that the middle class eats the most fast food – not the poor.

11: It’s no secret that bicycling keeps you fit. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that if residents of 11 Midwestern cities ran just half of their short-distance errands by bicycle for four months out of the year, it would save at least $3.8 billion from avoided mortality and reduced health-care costs, and lower the number of annual deaths by 1,100. Results of the study are posted here.

12: Natural Language Processing: Where linguistics meets computers. Check out some of the work by the Stanford Natural Language Processing Group here.

13: The debate around climate change has changed markedly in recent years. A Harris poll in 2007 estimated that 71% of Americans believed burning fossil fuels led to climate change. That number was only 51% two years later, and then dropped further to 44% by June 2011. But this shift in belief has been very one-sided: 70-75% of self-identified Democrats and liberals believe in climate change, while only about 20% of self-identified Republicans do. (The Nation)

14: Mexico City’s Metro officials reported that 23 to 35 people fall into train pits each year. Mexico City is working to install platform barriers in its stations, starting with just two of their busiest stations (due to budget constraints). From The Atlantic Cities blog.

15: A law student in Austria, Max Schrems, requested his Facebook data – and received a CD with a 1,222-page long PDF of his personal information including deleted private messages.

16: Number of people who have disappeared from cruise ships in the past decade? 171. And 19 people have already gone missing this year alone. Because cruise ships tread murky international waters, and it’s often not possible to stop the ship to search for a person fallen overboard, and there’s also a high incidence of suicide on cruises, many cases are unresolved. It’s true, some are likely to be on-board murders. It’s in the cruise industry’s interests to quiet any of these disappearances. The eerie story of Rebecca Coriam, the first public disappearance from a Disney cruise, is recounted in The Guardian.

17: Apples go through a trial by fire kind of process when they’re bred; the process is narrated in John Seabrook’s piece in the November 21 issue of the New Yorker, “Crunch.” This story’s a lot more compelling than it sounds at first. For instance, did you know that apples are often selected over time for their redness, despite the fact that the redder apples have less flavor? It’s called “red drift” – retailers believe customers buy with their eyes, so growers tend to select for redness while sacrificing taste. An all-red apple also hides its cosmetic defects better, meaning more of your apples will be sold.

18: The Love Parade Stampede was an incident in Duisberg, Germany, on July 24, 2010 in which 21 people were trampled to death and over 500 were injured in the underpassthat led to the Love Parade music festival area. This was the only entrance and exit, and long after the stage area had filled up past capacity, people were attempting to enter through this tunnel. Those who were already in the main festival area had no way of exiting, with the masses of people pressing forward to get in. I first saw video footage of this horrifying scene in the crowd-sourced documentary Life in a Day, which records the happenings of a single day as experienced by people all over the world. Al Jazeera coverage shows footage of the event.

19: Pierogies are made in essentially the same way as Korean mandu (dumplings), except the filling’s a bit different and you add sour cream to the flour. Our first batch came out decent, though the process was kind of long. It’s a learning process. I’d say every culture has their own form of dumplings – one of my favorite things to do at family gatherings is sit around with my mother and grandmother and form the mandu by hand, adding special flourishes to mark them as yours (like signing a work of art).

20: There’s a proposed plan to turn an abandoned trolley terminal in NYC’s Lower East Side into an underground public park: Delancey Underground, or “the LowLine”. It’d be like the subterranean equivalent of the High Line.

21: According to XKCD’s notes on the Money Chart, the EPA’s current dollar value on a human life is $8.4 million. Go spend some time exploring that chart.

Hope everyone enjoys their few days of rest and feast. Happy Thanksgiving!

Somehow these last couple of weeks have been even busier than the week before! Sorry for the delay in posting – here are the things I’ve learned every day for the past two weeks. Any cool new knowledge you’ve picked up lately?

16: In many places, we’re pumping groundwater faster than it can be replenished – in certain parts of the Ogallala Aquifer, for example, groundwater is being pumped 20x faster than the aquifer can be replenished. This can result in a lower elevation of the ground surface in the surrounding area.

17: The penny-farthing bicycle was named for this early bike’s resemblance to two coins sitting side by side – the larger penny and the smaller farthing, which was worth 1/4 of a penny or 1/960th of a pound sterling. (Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling by Christopher Koelle)

18: The Kyopo Project by artist CYJO, on exhibit until October 14, 2012 at the National Portrait Gallery in DC, explores the variety of experiences of Korean-Americans. The term ‘kyopo’ refers to a Korean who grew up outside of Korea. Well worth visiting!

19: At one point in time, you could send children through the post. Unbelievable? Well, there are stories of at least a couple of instances…

20: We’re primed to spend more when we go shopping through a number of psychological techniques that aren’t immediately obvious to most of us. Martin Lindstrom explains a few of these with the example of the Whole Foods grocery stores. Those flowers by the front entrance? Unconscious to you, their presence plants the thought of freshness in your mind, since they are so short-lived and perishable. The drops of water continually misted onto the fruits and veggies? They also call up the idea of freshness, though the extra water causes the fruits and vegetables to go bad more quickly. Lindstrom is the author of a book called Brandwashed that discusses more of these techniques of manipulation that marketers employ so effectively.

21: In New Orleans, all-day parties called boucheries are held in backyards and will often involve cooking up an entire pig – every part, including the blood, as Anthony Bourdain discovered on No Reservations.

22: Don’t wear herringbones, houndstooth or small plaids on-air. These patterns don’t capture well on TV cameras: they appear to ‘dance’ around because of the moiré effect.

23: This is probably an obvious fact to many, but South Korea has the fastest Internet speeds in the world - averaging 17.62 Mbps. The United States is in 26th place, with an average speed of 4.93 Mbps. (From a study by Pando Networks)

24: Steeling is the process of re-aligning the edge of your kitchen knife to keep it sharp. Honing steels are the steel rods that are used to hone the blade edge, and ideally, this should be done every time you use the knife.

25: Here’s a neat website called Inconspicuous Consumption - recommended for those interested in sociology, consumer culture, or product design.

26: Mosquitoes can be attracted to you by many cues, including the carbon dioxide in your breath, skin chemicals such as lactic acid, or body temperature. Basically, if you’re a breathing and sweating human being, you’re a target – though certain people seem to naturally attract more mosquitoes than others. Personally, I’ve been eaten alive by mosquitoes lately and wouldn’t mind if autumn settled in quickly.

27: Science explains: how a riderless bicycle can steer itself! Hint: it’s physics. However, the research of Andy Ruina and Jim Papadopoulos on gyroscopic torques and trail has found that these are not required to have a self-steering bicycle, as was commonly believed.

28: Eating three meals a day didn’t become the norm in the United States until as late as the 20th century. Dinner used to be the meal served at home around the early afternoon, but was moved into the evening as cities grew and more people worked further from home; the lighter mid-day meal then became known as lunch.

29: Incredible photos from the mass games in North Korea by Sam Gellman. Via Wikipedia: “Today, mass games are regularly performed only in North Korea, where they take place to celebrate national holidays such as the birthdays of rulers Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.”

30: We’re not the only office who decided to put our geekiness on display to the world around us with Post-It Space Invaders and Mario scenes on our windows. Check out Post-It War, a project out of France.

These summary posts of “one thing I learned each day” will be on hiatus during the month of June because I’ll be going on a trip to South Korea, but they’ll resume in July. I’m being realistic about my blogging during that time because I won’t be on a regular schedule in Korea. I’ll try to get online to post to this blog at least a few times, though!

Here’s a day-by-day list of some things I learned the last week of May 2011.

23: A bicyclist’s rolling stop at a stop sign is known as an Idaho Stop, named for the law passed by Idaho in 1982 that allows cyclists to treat the “Stop” as a “Yield” sign. The law is explained clearly in this animation here: “Get an animated lesson in bikes, stop signs, and the Idaho Stop Law“

24: DC has the highest per capita wine consumption in the U.S. Anyone surprised? When I worked at Trader Joe’s, it wasn’t uncommon to have some customers buying a case of wine (12 bottles of wine) or more every couple of weeks.

25: Multiple types of fruit branches can be grafted onto the same tree root stock, allowing one tree to have (for example) branches growing oranges, lemons and limes.

26: Storing your music in the cloud is just better. Hello, Google Music beta invite.

More exciting news: DC’s Capital Bikeshare program is currently largest in the nation with over 1,000 bikes and over 100 stations around the city. NYC’s got a program slated for spring of 2012 – and their bikeshare calls for 10,000 bicycles, which is about as many bikes as Paris’s Velib’ system had when it first launched in 2007 (Velib’ now has double that: more than 20,000 bikes! lots of sharing!). Obviously, DC is a fraction of the size of NYC or Paris, but it’s still got a promising amount of Bikeshare station coverage already. And stats show that the Velib’ program managed to reduce traffic in Paris by 5% in the first year! (Source)

27: Identical twins, although they share nearly identical DNA (they have variations in their copy numbers), have different fingerprints because fingerprinting is a part of one’s phenotype, the observable expression of a gene, which differs based on environmental characteristics in the uterus during development.

28: The doctor in the sci-fi television show Doctor Who has changed several times throughout the show’s long-running history. The modern Doctor Who show is a reiteration of the 1963-1989 series. It’s a great show, and the episodes can be so different from one another that it’s hard to believe it’s the same TV show.

I admit I wasn’t interested in it at first… the episode “The Beast Below” was the turning point for me. Now I really like it.

29: The Washington metropolitan area has the 2nd-largest concentration of Mormons outside of Utah. It’s estimated that the Mormon population in this area is 50,000 to 60,000, with most living in Northern Virginia. (Source)

30: Seersucker is a light cotton fabric that is appropriate to wear in the spring and summer, traditionally between Memorial Day and Labor Day. DC’s Dandies and Quaintrelles (the same group that organizes the Tweed Ride) is organizing a Seersucker Social this Saturday, June 4th.

31: Tired all day. I’ll just post a recipe from tonight’s dinner: Chickpea Marinara over Couscous. Tasty, simple, vegetarian.

15: Irredentism describes the position of a state claiming a territory owned by another state, “on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, actual or alleged. Some of these movements are also called pan-nationalist movements. It is a feature of identity politics and cultural and political geography. Because most borders have been moved and redrawn over time, a great many countries could theoretically present irredentist claims to their neighbors.”

16: Learned how to play the board game Settlers of Catan!

17: The greater metropolitan region around Jakarta is known as Jabodetabek, and is one of the largest urban areas in the world (whether that means it’s the 2nd largest or the 7th or anywhere in between depends on who you’re asking, though).

18: Learned how to cook a risotto. Lots of fun simmering down. We cooked a nice, one-hour mushroom risotto that turned out pretty well.

19: From one of my best friends (who is an amazing cook and the one who taught me what a roux is), I learned that there are five sauces known as the mother sauces in French cooking. They’re described in more detail than I can probably comprehend here: The 5 “Mother” Sauces.

20: Charlottesville, VA has a really cute downtown historic area, which is worth a visit. We met some punk kids playing guitar and drums outside, and bonded over a mutual love of the Ergs! and Lemuria. Charlottesville is also one of the only places on the east coast where you can get spudnuts, which are yeasted donuts made popular on the west coast. Didn’t get to try any, but my friend Michelle says they’re good.

21: From the National Building Museum’s Intelligent Cities website:

An estimated $127,275,000 more could stay in the local economy if a city could reduce its car ownership by 15,000 cars. All the more reason for bike commuting and public transit. And this isn’t fantasy: from 2005 to 2009, Washington DC gained 15,862 people, while car registrations decreased by 15,000. More walkable cities make for more intelligent cities.