The Smiling Man Loses His Hat – AKA “My new project makes me go on weird rides”

Tonight’s ride looks like a smiling at lost his hat.

I hear you asking: “Why the weird ride?” Here’s the thing: I’m a guy who repeats himself a lot. I find something I enjoy, and I NEVER CHANGE IT. Or I change it so slowly that it doesn’t feel like it’s changing.

So, I’m changing that. Two things that made me decide on this project:

1. Strava has a “Heat Map” function; it shows all the streets from every ride you’ve logged. More common streets glow brighter (that’s why it’s called a heat map) but all I care about is the log of all streets.
2. I read this post about a woman who plans to ride on every road in Alaska.

I’ll never ride every road in California. I’ll never even ride every road in Los Angeles. But I can ride every road in the San Fernando Valley. Will it take a long time? Sure. But I have no time limit. Right now I’m just riding on streets I don’t remember using, but pretty soon I’m going to have to start actually planning these rides or I’m going to leave a bunch of short chunks all over the place.

This is what I’ve got so far:

And this is roughly what I added today:

I have no idea how many miles of roads there are in the Valley. At least five, that’s for sure.