Tag: ridesfv

I had no idea how many miles of road there are in the San Fernando Valley, so I decided to try and look it up. The most recent information I could find is from this 2008 report. It says:

The City of Los Angeles has approximately 6,500 miles of … [paved] streets divided into two geographic areas, Metropolitan (53 percent) and the San Fernando Valley (47 percent). It is the responsibility of the Bureau of Street Services to maintain all streets in a perpetual good to excellent condition.

47 percent of 6,500 is 3,055. I’m sure there are more streets now than there were ten years ago, so let’s call it 3,200. I don’t have any way to figure out what percentage I’ve completed, but it’s not anywhere near that!

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.