Bike Fitting

Yes, they fit bicycles.

The technology put to work in a bike fitting is often an attention-grabber. Lasers, cameras, data readouts and computer imagery that can be manipulated to be seen from multiple views add a certain sizzle to a process that was previously, more often than not, an eyeball estimation.

More Kidsickness

Oy...here.

“But what do they really want?” Mr. Konigsberg asked. “I think they want to know that their child is being taken care of. That their child isn’t sick. Or homesick. Or lonely.”

“Well, in this situation by definition you are dealing with emotionally needy people,” I said.

“Homesick kids?” he asked.

“No, kid-sick parents,” I said.

Phone Nation

Watching the passers-by holding their smart phones in front of them as they walked was like watching a parade of monks with heads bowed over their breviaries. As night settled in, I could see the glow of the screens shining upward on the faces of their owners, who were being guided down the street by peripheral vision and the feel of the sidewalk under their feet. It was like being in one of R. Crumb’s street scenes — everyone lost in a private thought bubble, everyone walking with a private posture.

Read the rest here.

Virtual Jackson Hole

Check out this site. These high definition 360 degree photos are amazing.

Better to be there in person, but vistas like this would get anyone excited to head out.

Thanks to The Mountain Culture for the tip.

Hitting back on Email

How many emails do you go through every day? Cutting into your time a bit too much? You can break the vicious cycle and pull back. I try to use the phone more as it provides personal contact and eliminates those little misunderstandings that a poorly or hastily crafted email can bring on you.

My wife has a better method, she refuses to use it. But she is a dying breed.

The Times has a good article today on how someone was able to cut back email considerably. Check it out here.

I stopped using e-mail most of the time. I quickly realized that the more messages you answer, the more messages you generate in return. It becomes a vicious cycle. By trying hard to stop the cycle, I cut the number of e-mails that I receive by 80 percent in a single week.

Digital Nature

does not stand up to the real thing. From Popular Science.

The real window, as you might imagine, was the most restorative. The researchers expected the plasma screen’s ability to score somewhere between that of the window and the wall, but it ended up being no different than the latter. Furthermore, the longer the window-gazers looked outside, the more they recovered. The plasma screen had no such effect.

No Kidding.

More on Technology in the Wild

National Parks Traveler has a great post on the use of cell phones and personal locater devices in the woods. We wrote on this topic recently, but wanted to jump back to it after reading this latest post. Here's an important comment from a NPS search and rescue guy on a story of a hiker who, after feeling lost in the fog, called for help:

"I know there may be things left out of the letter-to-the-editor, but this guy sets off his PLB and then sets up shelter? Whatever happened to setting up a shelter, getting in a sleeping bag, making something to drink, sleep the night away and see what the next morning would bring in regard to clear weather, finding the trail, seeing the highways below, etc.?" wonders Mr. Farabee. "This guy, it seems to me, has very quickly and all too readily called for the cavalry to come to his rescue. At the seemingly 'blink of an eye' he has put a great many people at risk and to a great deal of trouble. Whatever happened to a little personal responsibility, sucking in his gut and waiting a day or two?"

Absolutely right.

Several years back I was on the south slope of the Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, playing with friends. Half our group decided to do a long hike (a 30 mile circumnavigation of Double Mountain), starting rather late in the day. They stumbled into camp about 1:00 AM, in good shape, but tired. One of our party asked why I hadn't gotten worried and tried to do something after they failed to return after dark (very late August above the Arctic Circle--"dark" was about 10:30 PM). One of my friends responded for me:

"Steve might have been concerned, but wouldn't have done anything until at least noon the next day. These guys were experienced, and relatively well equipped, and sometimes you just get delayed..."

That response was right on. As we ate breakfast with our tired hikers the next day, The same person asked John, "were you worried that we might think something had happened to you?" John replied, "We knew Steve would not have acted until noon today..."

We all need to take some responsibility when out in the woods, on the river, our in the mountains. Take the cell phone if you need to, but let's not use it unless we really have to...

Wi-Fi in State Parks

USA Today recently published an article on the growing number of state parks with wi-fi access.

"There is a growing need for many of our visitors to be able to stay in touch with friends, family members and co-workers while they are away," says Roy Stearns, a spokesman for California State Parks, which has more parks equipped with Wi-Fi than any other state.

Three years ago, none of California's 278 parks had Wi-Fi. Now 50 are so equipped, including state beaches at Malibu, San Clemente and Half Moon Bay.

When I was growing up and camping all over the country with my parents, there were always folks with big travel trailers that had television. We never did, although we would take advantage of electric hook ups occasionally. My gut preference now would be to not have wi-fi in parks, but on the other hand, if having the service gets more people out camping in the parks, maybe it's not such a bad thing in this wired world. Heck, we always had music playing at Gray Knob.

The Outdoor Retailer Blog has a short post and a poll you can take on the topic here.

More Good Opinions

From Tennessee, check this out.

It’s a hard sell at a time when television news features endless reasons for alarm – abductions, sexual predators and freak accidents (like children falling in wells or being attacked by bears) among them. We all need to unplug, for the sake of our children.
In his book, Louv sings the praises of allowing one’s offspring to roam the neighborhood alone. Nice concept, but often impractical. We live on a busy city street, not a suburban cul-de-sac. Scheduling dates with nature seems to be the next best solution.

Buy a Tree

and watch it grow on Google Earth. More here.

Weekend Post

We live in a national historic district in a rural area of the Virginia Piedmont. There are wonderful vistas, dirt roads, large horse farms, neighbors driving carriages, low light pollution. This is the country that John Mosby rode and fought the Yankees, and we fought off a major development before the housing bubble made developments much more difficult. Being in the country there are few decent public utilities, such as water and sewer and good telephone lines. There is no cable television, nor will there ever be.

Which leads to our internet access. There are three choices: dial up, satellite and "wireless broadband" We use the later, and generally it works well. But the last week it has basically not worked well, and simple tasks such as blogging has been painful to accomplish. As I sat watching the load icon spin and spin and spin and spin, I realized that this week the kids are out of school, and that every time these problems seem to occur is when school is out. Hardly scientific, but it looks to me that all of the kids in this area whose parent use this wireless broadband are playing online games with their xboxes or pcs.

So, if I can upload this post, the blogging will get back on a regul;ar basis once the kids are back in school, or we get them outside playing again.

What We're Up Against

Came across this list recently. it's from last Fall, but well worth looking at to understand one man's thoughts (he's an advocate of technology) on how technology is swallowing up more and more of our daily lives.

2. Immersive experience
We have moved to 24” screens and 5 speaker sound as standard for gaming. This is just the beginning of what will become completely pervasive environments for media, entertainment, and participation. Video glasses will become commonplace ways of accessing immersive video wherever you roam. 3D TV without glasses is a reality and not far from commercialization. While 3D efforts using colored or polarizing glasses will continue for some time, the real future is in providing different images to each eye, as in Philips’ 3D TV initiatives. It will also be possible to generate realistic 3D images from 2D video. While Second Life already provides a quasi-3D environment, a couple of steps beyond is where we will use video glasses, gloves, and other immersive interfaces so that we will experience actually being there, rather than seeing ourselves in a virtual world. This is inevitable, the only question is when we will get there.

I'm not a Luddite, I wouldn't be blogging if I was. But I consider the ultimate immersive experience being out in nature with out technology.

Wild Weasels

So Gen Y wants do extreme things.

Here's a vocation for your high school senior--Wolverine Biologist. It combines science, technology, wilderness, and a critter that would "rip your face off" if it could.

Read this Patagonia essay as support for my statements. Of course, we'll need to protect the remaining wolverines for any of this to work.

Hmmmmmmm

Is this a good thing?

Podcasting Nature

We've written a bit in the past about using technology to get people back outside. Here's a link to an article from Pennsylvania where Wilkes College professor is creating short podcasts in lieu of tour books or trail guides.

Currently up on the iTunes website is a trail guide of "The Meadow," which is a natural area directly south of the Market Street Bridge.

"The Meadow has many grasses, herbs, and small shrubs and trees in it," said Rachel Curtis, a Wilkes biology major. "I mainly worked on podcasts concerning the plants that may be found in the natural area, but there's also a podcast describing the history of Kirby Park, which is very interesting."

This is being done in other places as well, and I must admit I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not. The Luddite in me says "hell no!" But, I trend toward calling it good right now because of the Gen Y connection with technology, but have yet to make a final decision for support.

The National Park Service is also doing this work at places Like Yellowstone and Grand Teton, to good effect.

Technology and the Outdoors

OK.

We want to get kids outside, away from the television, computers and video games.

Can we do that by using those same items of technology to help lure them outside?

I know a number of folks that say the only way to engage kids now is to infuse technology into kid's outdoor experiences. Using a GPS or video camera are good examples of this. But what about using the internet to introduce kids to a wild place, like Grand Teton National Park? The Park Service is trying this out at GTNP and other locations with efforts like video podcasting and what they call "webisodes".

Here's a recent story that describes what they're doing.

I'm still on the fence on this, but I'm sure that going the way my Luddite friends want to go, which is: "get the kids out like we got out, we don't need any technology, ever" may not always work. On the other hand, I'm intrigued by Lowell Monke thoughts on this-- he once said "throw out the computers and give the kids shovels!" There are prices to pay for a reliance on technology.

It does seem that many kids today view technology as more than an accessory, and that shows a root of the nature deficit problem , but also gives opportunities on ways to reconnect the kids, as long as we don't forget our real goal.

Let's give the NPS a chance to show if these new tools do in fact get kids back outside in the Parks.