Segments and plane respect

I was in the Fairfax area this week and got in some running around the work day (Larry can you see these photos?)

Sometimes my Garmin loses its mind and won’t boot (so I have to wait until it battery is completely discharged before bringing it back to life) or I have forgotten to charge it.  In these cases, I can use my iPhone as a GPS tracker using the Strava app.  This choice is not my favorite to use because it chews battery on the phone a bit more quickly and it shows only a time run, the distance and the average pace (vs. a near real time pace).  It does the job in any case.   

One thing the phone Strava app does do however that the watch doesn’t is inform me when I am approaching some established Strava segment.  Almost without fail when I am traveling in some town for business, when this comes up … it becomes some sort of dare that I cannot ignore.  The phone will inform me that I am approaching the “hairy horocrux hill climb of Hallow Haven” and I feel obliged to at least give the segment a spurt of some pace.  If I already know the segment, then I may well ignore it, but when it is new to me, I feel obliged to bite.  The problem / neat thing about this is that I really have no idea if the segment is 100 yards or several miles (unless of course it is named something like “Sisters of the Holy Hand Grenade 5k” or “Marriott Parking Lot Quarter Mile”).  I can sort of see on the phone the general path and make a guess as to what the length might be but I really don’t know (although most segments in suburban settings are somewhere between 0.1 and 1.2 miles in length. 

There is also a clock gauge that appears when you are in the segment letting you know how much time you have taken on the segment.  You can sort of judge how much of the segment you have done as this meter fills the length of the gauge. 

Of course, when I complete the run, I am curious to see how well or poorly I have stacked up in the mix.  Usually in larger cities, I end up somewhere ranked in the couple hundreds (but then I note that the top performances are almost done at 3:28 per mile pace), and if I am in a bit more isolated area, I might crack the top ten, or even snare an FKT for my efforts between two ash trees. 

===================================================================Things to remember when you travel on a plane that you don’t own (an list in progress):

- help someone who needs their bag put into / taken out of overhead storage
- give the person in the middle seat the right of way to the two arm rests
- don’t assume that you can sit in any seat other than the one you have purchased or reserved.  There are the increasingly rare occasions where there are indeed seats open if the flight is not fully booked, and you can switch seats, but don’t take the seats that are not your reserved seats until you know that seat won’t be occupied. 
- this is not the place to take off your shoes
- when standing up, do so under your own power and try not to use the seat in front of you as a gym bar to get up.   Only under extenuating circumstances should you use the body of an unknown person to prop yourself up into a standing position.
- if you elect to listen to something (like a movie), you should do so through headphones
- I too am a fan of many foods with strong odors but this not the place to enjoy such fare (also true of strong perfumes, colognes, body washes, etc).
- there are people who truly need a service animal.  We all know who they are.  Let’s not mix up a desire to travel with our pet as an expected service.
- don’t drink alcohol to excess
- stay in your seat when you sleep (meaning don’t move your sleeping self into the seat next to you)
- don’t read, view, etc the stuff on the computer or device of someone else.
- use the rest room as if you are an adult and not at frat party.  If you must fart, use the rest room.
- if you are creating an incident, expect that everyone on the plane will take video of every second of it
- when leaving the aircraft under normal circumstances, we unload it from front to back

I have some for the airlines as well, but that is probably of little use.