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Bartlesville Byways

July 31, 2009 — gmeador

My Walking Routes

[This post was later expanded and turned into a recommendation.]

This summer on a number of mornings I walked different routes in Bartlesville both for regular exercise and to prepare myself for my Oregon day hikes. There are three routes I like to walk.

Caney/Silver Lake Loop

My favorite is to park near the Memorial Bridge on Adams and make a 4.5 mile loop. I walk up over the bridge and follow the bike trail under Adams and then south along Silver Lake Road until I reach the Wesleyan fields. Then I turn west on the Pathfinder Parkway and follow it across the Caney River, then parallel the river northwards past the high school and back up to Memorial Bridge.

I’ve used my iPhone’s MotionX GPS app to record these walks. Here’s a KMZ file for the Caney/Silver Lake Loop you can open in Google Earth. To use it, RIGHT-click on that link, save the link to your computer and then open that KMZ file in Google Earth.

Adams to Atwoods

I took advantage of the cool weather this morning to walk this route, which is a 4.0 mile roundtrip. This summer the city has been working to widen and redirect portions of this route around erosion along Turkey Creek and the Caney River, so I haven’t been on it as much as usual. I park either at Atwoods or the Memorial Bridge and take the woodsy Pathfinder Parkway along and over Turkey Creek and past M.J. Lee Lake and along the Silver Lake road extension to Robinwood Park. There I cross the Caney on the Frank Phillips bridge and take the southern fork of the Pathfinder down to the Memorial Bridge on Adams. You can get a good view of the old interurban trolleyway near the Caney River along the latter part of the walk, and I always enjoy walking past the orchard between Frank Phillips and Tuxedo boulevards.

Here’s the KMZ file for the Adams to Atwoods route.

Baird Loops

For several years John Baird, former BHS calculus teacher, has kindly invited me to walk with him through the Woodland Park neighborhood where he lives. John pieced together a two-loop route that adds up to 3.0 hilly miles, contrasting to the above level Pathfinder Parkway routes. After this walk I’m always happy to join John for a drink at Jude’s, although he prefers coffee over my pricey Italian soda.

Here’s the KMZ file for the Baird Loops.

Other Options

There are other routes I could take, of course. The Pathfinder Parkway extends from Robinwood to Johnstone Park, for example. I like the part of the path around the orchard, past Blazer softball fields, and then by some fields where there are a couple of horses. There is an oddball bench along there that is great to lie down on for some sun in the autumn. But I seldom venture on west from there past the sewage treatment plant.

The Pathfinder Parkway also extends from the Wesleyan fields up a steep hill past the church and out from the woods onto the open land and developing neighborhoods near Wayside school and down to Jo Allyn Lowe Park and even under Price Road into Colonial Estates. This portion of the Pathfinder seems to be the busiest, but I prefer the woodsy river or creek portions of the trail.

I used to ride my bike a lot along the Pathfinder Parkway from the Will Rogers School over to Sooner Park, back when I rented a house on Yale Avenue. But that segment is too short to attract me these days. I’d love for the city to extend the Pathfinder from Colonial Estates eastward south of the Food Pyramid, cross under Washington Boulevard, and on northeast along Bird Creek past my own neighborhood over to Tri-County Tech. But I won’t hold my breath.

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Loners are not Alone

June 11, 2009 — gmeador

We are not alone

Here’s a great essay from fellow introvert Jonathan Rauch about our orientation. As he notes, we’re not necessarily socially inept nor shy, but we are different. I’m known as a favorite and funny teacher and am comfortable with public speaking and leadership roles, actively participating and speaking up for causes that are important to me. But I am most definitely an introvert, happily spending much of my time alone.

Here are 10 tips for introverts from Nancy R. Fenn:

Assert yourself as a legitimate personality type. There are two legitimate personality types: extroverts and introverts.
Correct people when they refer to introverts as neurotics. Introverts are not neurotics. They are introverts.
Correct people when they refer to introverts as prone to mental illness. Introverts are no more prone to mental illness than others. When extroverts are under stress, they overeat, smoke, drink and become violent. When introverts are under stress, they withdraw. This does not make them mentally ill.
Correct people when they assert that introverts are anti-social. Introverts are not anti-social. They are drained by other people and must limit their time in company, but they are friendly and loving people.
Correct people when they assert that introverts have nothing to say. On the contrary, introverts won’t speak unless they have something important to say!
Put a proper value on your ability to be a good listener. Good listening skills are invaluable in all areas of business and industry.
Do not apologize for time spent alone. Explain to critical “others” that introverts need to spend at least half their time alone for good mental and emotional health. Then assert, if necessary, that introverts are a legitimate personality type.
Introverts are not losers. Take pride that you are in the company of such introverts, past and present, as Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles Darwin, Mahatma Gandhi, Michael Jordan and Bruce Lee.
Stand up for introverted children who are being misunderstood in your presence. This is one of the most healing things you can possibly do for yourself as it will heal your own inner child.
Don’t let pushy extroverts interrupt you while you’re reading a good book. Explain politely that you can’t talk right now, you’re reading a book.

And, lest we get too serious, here’s an old joke:

How can tell if a physicist is an introvert or an extrovert?

She’s an introvert if she looks at her shoes while talking to you. She’s an extrovert if instead she looks at your shoes.

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Going Cellular

May 21, 2009 — gmeador

More folks are going wireless

With the end of the 2008-2009 school year, I cancelled my Vonage VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service. I thus joined the 18% of adult Americans (and over one in five US households) who have only cell phones. I’d previously cut the POTS (plain old telephone service) back in December of 2007, but hooked up the internet phone as a backup to the cell phone.

My Vonage plan of 500 minutes for about $23 per month was certainly cheaper than the traditional service and included nice features like Caller ID, digital voice mail, selective number blocks, and having my cell phone ring simultaneously with the internet line. And ditching my old POTS number for an unlisted internet phone cut off all of the political and other annoyance calls that the “Do Not Call” list had failed to kill off.

But I simply am not social enough to chat away on the phone, so I was getting very little use of that vestigial land line. And occasionally the internet phone would go offline, not coming back up until I cycled the power on the Motorola base unit. My iPhone service already costs me over $70 per month, so I decided to save $276 per year and go cellular only. Since my “teacher step raise” for next year will be a whopping $475 before taxes, saving $276 sounds pretty good. If I keep scrimping, I can keep up with inflation…maybe.

I figured that there would be some pain involved with the cancellation, and there was a bit. Vonage won’t let you cancel via the internet, claiming it is for security reasons. But you can do everything else online, so obviously they really just want you to talk to an agent who will try to save the account. After navigating their annoying voice-response switchboard a polite agent offered me a 100-minute monthly plan for $10 plus some fees (said plan does not appear anywhere I could find on their website), but I didn’t bite. And disconnecting the service incurred a charge of $43.19 – sounds a lot like Ma Bell’s old gotchas, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t anywhere near the pain AOL customers reportedly went through a few years back when they wanted to ditch that service, and I’ll start saving money in less than two months.

I’ll have to be more vigilant about having my cell phone charged and handy. But now I have some money I can put toward my favorite summer mental health therapy – a week of hiking along the Oregon coast. And sure enough, cell phone service out on the trail is pretty spotty – thank goodness!